2006

BH — Music

Das Jazzbuch: von New Orleans bis ins 21. Jahrhundert; mit ausführlicher Diskographie [The Jazz Book: From New Orleans to the 21st Century; with a Detailed Discography]. Joachim-Ernst Berendt and Günther Huesmann. 7th rev. and updated ed. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2005. xvi, 925 p. ill. 23 cm. ISBN 3-10-003802-9: EUR 29.90 [06-1-072]

The Jazzbuch, first published in 1953 by “Pope of Jazz” Joachim-Ernst Berendt (19222000), has been the standard work on all forms of jazz for over fifty years, and possibly the best selling book on jazz ever. In 1989 Berlin jazz critic Günther Huesmann took over the revision of the work, as a partner for the previous edition, and now as sole editor.

For this seventh edition, Huesmann left much of Berendt’s organization and some chapters completely unchanged, while revising, enlarging and revising other parts. New sections for the 1980s and 1990s have been added. The chapters for male and female jazz singers have been combined, and the numerous music note examples present in the previous edition have been removed. The discography does not attempt historical completeness, gives only “useful” information and includes only works currently in publication.

Berendt was known for his sometimes controversial and polarizing pronouncements on the musical style he popularized in Germany — a style he always viewed through a political lens as the expression of protest of the oppressed blacks in the racist USA. Huesmann’s contributions lean more toward an appreciation of a diversity of voices and developments within the genre. Where Berendt might have taken up the precarious living conditions of jazz musicians in today’s USA, Huesmann gives much more space to the European jazz scene.

This edition of the Jazzbuch should not be missing from music and jazz libraries and is particularly recommended to those wishing to inform themselves about a musical style while it is still living. If there is ever an eighth edition, the discography should be expanded to include out-of-print works and a bibliography should be added, even if that pushes the work into two volumes. [beh/rb]

Handbuch der Klavierliteratur zu vier Händen an einem Instrument [Handbook of the Piano Repertoire for Four Hands on One Instrument]. Klaus Börner. Zürich; Mainz: Atlantis-Musikbuch-Verlag, 2005. 535 p. Numerous musical examples. 22 cm. Order number ATL 6265. ISBN 3-254-00265-2: EUR 39.95 [06-1-073]

Although Cameron McGraw’s Piano Duet Repertoire (2001)provides a good listing of the four-hand literature, Börner’s book has the advantage of including valuable commentary— giving an overview of four-hand pianism as well as a great deal of specific information having to do both with performance and the compositions themselves. The challenge a given piece presents in performance is indicated on a scale from one to five.(Klaus Wolters’s Handbuch der Klavierliteratur—see RREA 8:188—uses a much more granular scale of 15!)

The listings for each composer are organized chronologically. For the 19th and 20th centuries they are organized by country, which is not without its problems, for example in dealing with composers from Alsace, Austria and Bohemia. And why is Ligeti listed under Austria, while Jan Kalivoda is put with the Czechs?

Given that among the greats only for Mozart and Schubert are compositions for fourhand piano included in the central core of their work (followed by Brahms, Dvorak and Reger), it is astonishing how wide the repertoire actually is, with compositions by Hindemith, Fauré, Debussy and Ravel as well as many other, less well-known composers. Contemporary composers are not well represented. (German composers fare the best, the youngest listed born in 1963.)

Although Börner specifies relevant publishers, libraries, archives, etc. to help the reader actually locate scores, it would have been helpful had he included online sources such as the large music databases of the Bavarian State Library and the British Library. Furthermore, it is regrettable that Börner generally omits the two-piano repertoire.

The work concludes with a variety of appendices (listing, among other categories, transcriptions, anthologies, pedagogical literature, and rock and pop) and an index.

Börner’s handbook, which really does offer considerably more than a mere bibliographic listing, is also sold together with Wolters’s earlier Handbuch der Klavierliteratur: Klaviermusik zu zwei Händen (2002—see RREA 8:188) as the Handbuch der Klavierliteratur zu zwei und zu vier Händen (Zürich, 2006) for 69 Euros. [ar/sl]

Dictionnaire des compositeurs de Belgique du moyen-âge à nos jours [Dictionary of Belgian Composers from the Middle Ages to the Present Day]. Thierry Levaux. Ohain-Lasne: Éditions Art in Belgium, 2006. 736 p. ill. 24 cm. ISBN 2-930338-37-7: EUR 49 [06-2-271]

This biographical dictionary, compiled by Thierry Levaux of the Université libre de Bruxelles along with six additional musicologists, contains 1,400 entries. Composers from the Medieval era are included with due consideration to the shifting borders of Belgium’s predecessor states; composers of the 19th and 20th centuries are included if they were born or active in Flanders, Wallonia, or Brussels, the three regions of the contemporary Belgian state.

Articles are signed by their contributors, using initials. The articles vary widely in terms of length and comprehensiveness—anywhere from the two lines devoted to André de Huy to more than 11 columns for Jan Absil. The amount of information included was left to the discretion of the contributor, and contributors were not required to include a list of works for the composers they profiled. Thus some articles lack works lists entirely, while other articles have very comprehensive ones. The articles also lack individual bibliographies, and this lack is not rectified by the presence of a general bibliography (organized by subject) on pages 726-736. There are a number of idiosyncrasies in terms of the form of name chosen for a composer’s entry, and in the treatment of prefixes such as de, le, and van in the alphabetizing of names. Still, this volume can be recommended for inclusion in major music reference collections, as there is currently no other work that provides such in-depth coverage of Belgian composers; the user will find many composers here who are not to be found in the New Grove, MGG, and the like. New and updated entries are posted to the work’s web site, http://www.compositeursdebelgique.be/usite/compositeursdebelgique_frbe/index.asp. [mr/crc]

Bayerisches Musiker-Lexikon Online [Online Dictionary of Bavarian Musicians]. Ed. Josef Focht for the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München, Musikwissenschaft. München: Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität, 2006. (Veröffentlichung der Universität München). (http://www.bmlo.uni-muenchen.de) Gratis [06-2-272]

This online reference work is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the University of Munich, and the Bavarian State Library. It can presently be accessed through two portals: the Bayerische Landesbibliothek Online (http://www.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/muslex) and Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Musik [Virtual Reference Library for Music] (http://www.vifamusik.de). The State of Bavaria was considered a natural choice for this pilot project in view of the state’s long cultural history and significant cultural impact. In the course of future projects, it is intended to expand this database into a trans-regional and transnational lexicon of European musicians.

Data input began in June of 2006. Uploads of new data take place every two or three months. Search functionality is upgraded on a continual basis, covering composers, performers, music publishers, instrument-makers, musicologists, and other music-related persons who lived or worked within the borders of Bavaria, or who otherwise had an impact on Bavaria’s musical life. The chronological scope reaches from earliest times to the present. Entries include links to illustrations, musical examples, and audio and video files. The entries are compiled from data mined from the digitization of standard music reference works such as F.J. Lipowsky’s Baierisches Musik-Lexikon or Ernst Ludwig Gerber’s Historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler as well as through mining other library and archival resources, both online and print.

Users can consult an alphabetical list of names and subjects to see whether an entry exists for the person or subject they are interested in, and can then link from the list to the desired entry. The software offers good search options and allows the entries to be configured in a variety of ways depending on the user’s goals. [mr/crc]

Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon: OEM [Austrian Encyclopedia of Music]. Ed. Rudolf Flotzinger for the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 25 cm. ISBN 978-3-7001-3042-0; ISBN 3-7001-3042-2 (set): EUR 199.50 (subscr. price) [06-2-273]

Vol. 2 Gaal—Kluger. 2003. xiv, 519-1,078 p. ill. music. ISBN 3-7001-3044-9: EUR 44.90.

Vol. 3 Kmentt—Nyzankivskyi. 2004. xiv, 1,079-1,640 p. ill. music. ISBN 3-7001-3045-7: EUR 44.90.

Vol. 4 Ober—Schwaz. 2005. xiv, 1,641-2,170 p. ill. music. ISBN 3-7001-3046->5: EUR 44.90.

Vol. 5 Schwechat—Zyklus. 2006. xiv, 2,171-2,772 p. ill. music. ISBN 978-3-7001-3067-3 ISBN 3-7001-3067-8: EUR 44.90.

There is little to add to the review of the initial volume of the OEM (see RREA 8:179) except that this fifth and final volume includes an index of alternative names, an index of errata, and an addendum on death dates. The open-access Internet version (http://www.musiklexikon.ac.at) is enriched with images and audio and will be continually updated and expanded. Between the OEM, the Musikgeschichte Österreichs [The History of Music in Austria] (see RREO 96-1-058), and the Lexikon zeitgenössischer Musik aus Österreich [Encyclopedia of Contemporary Music from Austria] (see IFB 99-B09-656), Austrian music history is well covered. [mr/ab]

Christoph Graupner: Thematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke; Graupner-Werke-Verzeichnis (GWV) Instrumentalwerke [Christoph Graupner: Thematic Catalogue of the Musical Works; Graupner Works Catalogue (GWV) of Instrumental Works]. Ed. Oswald Bill and Christoph Großpietsch. Stuttgart: Carus, 2005. xxxvi, 364 p. ill. 28 cm. ISBN 3-89948-066-X: EUR 80 [06-2-274]

Almost all the manuscripts of works by Christoph Graupner (1683-1760, Court Kapellmeister in Darmstadt from 1711) are owned by the Hessische Landes-und Hochschulbibliothek [Hessian State and University Library] Darmstadt (LHB), known since 2004 as the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek [University and State Library] Darmstadt (ULB). Based on this extraordinary collection, the Graupner-Werke-Verzeichnis was assembled as a project of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. It includes 415 instrumental works “connected with Graupner,” of which 310 are authenticated. His vocal works consist of “over 1,400 cantatas written for the court chapel choir, another dozen theatrical works, and two dozen secular cantatas,” among which the editors count Graupner’s Neu vermehrtes Hessen-Darmstätdtisches Choralbuch [Newly Expanded Choral Buch of Hesse-Darmstadt]; these are to be covered in a future volume.

The catalogue contains rich introductory material and scholarly apparatus by both editors, including a list of authentic copies in RISM and in libraries. Due to the impossibility of dating Graupner’s works with any exactness, the material is organized by form and genre, and then by key, arrangement, and standard title and number. The nine chapters of the catalogue are: (1) Works for Piano (and other keyboard instruments such as the cembalo), (2) Chamber Music, (3) Concerti, (4) Overtures and Table Music, (5) Symphonies, (6) Incerta (questionable works), (7) Anonyma (works not in Gaupner’s hand and not naming him), and (8) Falsely Attributed Work — those works preserved anonymously in Graupner’s legacy that were written by others but found their way into the secondary literature in connection with Graupner; the actual composers’ names are of course given.

The GWB belongs in libraries with large music collections; libraries that catalog musical works using the Regeln für die alphabetische Katalogisierung von Ausgaben musikalischer Werke (RAK-Musik) [Rules for the Alphabetical Cataloging of Editions of Musical Works] must have it, because it has been included as a standard authority in the revision of the M9 Appendix for uniform titles and numbering rules. [mr/rb]

Thematisch-chronologisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Alexander Skrjabin [Thematic-Chronlogical Index to the Compositions of Alexander Scriabin]. Daniel Bosshard. Ardez: Ediziun Trais Giats, 2002. 335 p. ill. music. 30 cm. Order # ETG 108. EUR 123 (www.trais-giats.ch) [06-2-276]

The listing of Scriabin’s compositions (p. 9-269) includes his works with and without opus numbers, incomplete works and fragments, notebooks, works of doubtful authenticity, and Scriabin’s own listing of his juvenilia. The customary data are provided for each entry (title, incipits, instrumentation, editions, etc.). In addition, the compiler provides an exhaustive, forty-page bibliography (extending beyond print to films and videos) and a complete discography (twenty-five pages) listing recordings up to the era of long-playing records. There are no indexes (e.g., genre, names of performers, dedicatees, authors, etc.). This volume belongs in every library with an extensive collection in music history. [mr/sl]

Harenberg-Opernführer: der Schlüssel zu 500 Opern, ihrer Handlung und Geschichte. Mit CD-Tipps der “Opernwelt” [Harenberg Opera Guide: Key to 500 Operas, their Plots and History. With CD Tips from the Magazine “Opera World’]. 4th ed. Dortmund: Harenberg, 2003. 1,248 p. ill. 25 cm. Taken over by Brockhaus, Mannheim; subsequently publ. under the title Harenberg-Kulturführer Oper. ISBN 3-611-00896-6 (Harenberg); ISBN 3-411-76107-5 (Brockhaus): EUR 50 [06-2-277]

Harenberg-Opernführer [Tonträger] [Harenberg Opera Guide (CD Edition)]. 2d ed. 12 CDs. Dortmund: Harenberg, 2000. Subsequently published by Brockhaus, Mannheim, under the title Harenberg-Kulturführer Oper [Tonträger]. ISBN 3-611-00897-4 (Harenberg); ISBN 3-411-76107-5 (Brockhaus): EUR 78 [06-2-278]

Harenberg-Kulturführer Oper [Harenberg Cultural Guide: Opera]. Ed. Michael Venhoff. 5th ed. Mannheim: Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2007 [publ. 2006]. 799 p. ill. music. 25 cm. Previously publ. under the title Harenberg-Opernführer. ISBN 978-3-411-76162-3; ISBN 3-411-76162-8: EUR 50 [06-2-279]

Harenberg-Kulturführer Oper: CD-Edition mit über 200 Aufnahmen; mehr als 15 Stunden Musik mit den besten Sängerinnen, Sängern und Dirigenten [Harenberg Cultural Guide: Opera: CD edition with over 200 recordings; more than 15 hours of music with the best singers and conductors]. Mannheim: Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2006. 12 CDs. Earlier title: Harenberg-Opernführer [Tonträger]. ISBN 978-3-411-76166-1; ISBN 3-411-76166-0: EUR 78 [06-2-280]

The Harenberg Opernführer (HO), accompanied by a CD edition, first appeared in 1995 (see RREO 96-1-061), followed by subsequent editions in 1997 (2d), 2000 (3d— see RREA 7:180), 2004 (4th, by Brockhaus). The original format offered a wealth of information, including biographies of composers, timeline of operas in chronological order, articles about each work (with cross-references to the CDs), plot summaries, and photographs. Multiple indexes offered excellent access to the material. Further apparatus included a glossary and biographies of singers. Attention was given to lesser known and contemporary works often ignored in other opera guides.

By comparison, the Harenberg-Kulturführer Oper (HKO) comes up short. The “revisions” involve largely a shrinking of the original edition and elimination of many of its positive features. The number of pages has been downsized from 1,248 in the HO to 799 in the HKO. Whereas the HO offers information about 150 composers and 500 operas, the HKO covers only 131 composers and 288 operas. The HKO focuses on the traditional, tried-and-true repertoire, leaving out lesser-known works. The articles are largely identical with those in the HO, but the tables, indexes, and other auxiliary apparatus have been reduced or eliminated. Many scene photographs have been replaced by less relevant images. The companion CD edition of the opera guide, with “over 200 recordings and more than 15 hours of music with the best singers and composers” is identical with the CD edition of the HO.

If one was lucky enough to acquire the Harenberg-Opernführer, all the better, since its successor, the Harenberg-Kulturführer Oper, is far inferior to its predecessor and offers much less for the same price. Libraries will not want to purchase the HKO, since there are plenty of better opera guides available. The unfavorable comparison applies just as well to other volumes of the Harenberg-Kulturführer series, such as the “Konzert” volume, which suffers from similar flaws. [sh/akb]

Lexikon des Klaviers: Baugeschichte, Spielpraxis, Komponisten und ihre Werke, Interpreten [Piano Lexicon: History of their Construction, Performance Practice, Composers and their Works, Pianists]. Ed. Christoph Kammertöns and Siegfried Mauser. With a foreword by Daniel Barenboim. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2006. 805 p. ill. music. 26 cm. (Instrumenten-Lexika, 2). ISBN 3-89007-543-6: EUR 118 [06-2-283]

This volume is the second to appear in the series Instrumenten-Lexika (see RREA 10:179, Lexikon der Violine for the previous volume). It covers an enormous range of material having to do not only with the piano in the modern sense, but with keyboard instruments generally—from the clavichord and the organ (which is to be the subject of its own volume) to digital pianos, and not just classical music but also salon music and jazz, extending to pianists born around 1970. As always, one can identify superfluities in and omissions from the text, but focusing on them tends to obscure how stimulating and informative the material actually is. More serious is the absence of an index, which would have opened up the huge wealth of information contained in the book. A fulltext CD would have been even better. Nonetheless, this is a work of very high quality that belongs in every music library. [ar/sl]

Bibliographie der Orgel: eine Bibliographie der Orgel mit über 53.000 Titeln [Bibliography of the Organ: … with over 53,000 Titles]. Marco Brandazza. 2d ed. Berlin: Pape, 2005. 1 CD-ROM. ISBN 3-921140-70-6: EUR 87 (Pape-Verlag, Prinz-Handjery-Str. 26a, D-14167 Berlin) [06-2-284]

Calling itself “the most comprehensive bibliography of our time on the history of organ building,” the second edition lists almost twice as many printed titles as does the 2001 first edition (see RREA 8:194). The emphasis is on European publications, but the editor strives for completeness, with the caveat that many guides published by individual churches and not available through the book trade may not have been captured here. Works about the organ’s electronic relatives are selectively included; Internet publications and accompanying sound recordings are not.

The layout has been significantly changed and the first edition’s earlier shortcomings (including many typos) largely corrected. The search screen offers many different search options. The search tab “Documents” contains, inter alii, two works by Uwe Pape: Orgelbauwerkstätten und Orgelbauer in Deutschland von 1945 bis 2005 [Organ-Building Companies and Organ Builders in Germany from 1945 to 2005](4th ed. 2001); and Fachwörterbuch für Organisten, Orgelbauer und Orgelfreunde: deutsch-englisch [German-English Terminological Dictionary for Organists, Organ Builders, and Organ Lovers] (4th ed. 2001). These were also included in the 2001 CD-ROM.

Uwe Pape (1936- ) is a prolific documenter of organs in German cities and towns and author of many books about the organ, including his two-volume Organs in America (Berlin, 1982-1984). In this new edition of Pape’s Orgelbauwerkstätten, the index of “Organ Building Companies and Organ Builders” has been updated through 2005, but the appendix listing companies gone out of business since 1945 has been dropped. However, one can find detailed information about organ companies in Hermann Fischer’s 100 Jahre Bund Deutscher Orgelbaumeister: 1891-1991 [100 Years of the Association of German Master Organ Builders] (München, 1991) and through the website of the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Orgeldokumentation (IAOD — www.aedv. cs.tu-berlin.de/projects/orda/iaod.html), of which the author is a member. There is also a price list of the Pape-Verlag’s books in stock, most of which are either authored or published by Uwe Pape.

The author considers this bibliography to be a work in progress and invites supplementary contributions. In the introduction are references to two other reliable bibliographies— the RILM (http://www.rilm.org) and the Bibliographie der Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde [Bibliography of the Society of Friends of the Organ] at http://www.gdo.de. [mr/ga]

Bibliographie zur Geschichte der Orgel in Berlin-Brandenburg [Bibliography of the History of the Organ in Berlin-Brandenburg]. Uwe Czubatynski. 2d updated ed. Rühstädt: U. Czubatynski, 2005. 62 p. Deposited as a .pdf file with the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (http://d-nb.info/97701407X). [06-2-285]

The author first published this bibliography in 1993 as part of his library-science thesis at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Entitled Probleme und Aufgaben der landeskundlichen Bibliographie am Beispiel eines orgelkundlichen Verzeichnisses für Berlin-Brandenburg [Problems and Approaches to Regional Bibliography as Exemplified by an Organ-Literature Index for Berlin-Brandenburg]. Uwe Pape concurrently published Czubatynski’s bibliography of 545 titles under the same title as this second edition.

The self-published second edition contains 701 titles, ordered chronologically and continuously numbered; some of the titles are updates editions included in the first edition. The second edition includes Internet addresses for web sites about the organ, special libraries and bibliographies, and archives and institutions with significant collections on the subject. The work contains indexes of places, names, topics, and abbreviations. Czubatynski’s home page—http://www.uwe-czubatynski.homepage.t-online.de/orgel—gives a list of his publications.

With very few exceptions, the citations in this bibliography are also listed in the Bibliographie der Orgel (see RREA 12:152). Czubatynski’s bibliography thus serves as a useful, on-line searchable complement to this larger work. [mr/ga]

Das große Buch der Trompete: Instrument, Geschichte, Trompeterlexikon [The Comprehensive Trumpet Book: Instrument, History, Trumpeter’s Dictionary]. Friedel Keim. Mainz [et al.]: Schott, 2005. 860 p. ill. 25 cm. ISBN 3-7957-0530-4: EUR 24.95 [06-2-286]

This volume is a greatly expanded new edition of the author’s Trompeter-Taschenbuch [Trumpeter’s Pocket Book] (Mainz: Atlantis, 1999). In addition to the short biographies of 50 classical trumpeters from the 17th century to the present, 10 famous jazz trumpeters and 60 pop or rock music trumpeters presented in the historical and technical chapters (chapters 1-5), 1,900 more are covered in the dictionary section of the book. Since further biographies appear in chapter 10, the simplest way to find a particular trumpeter is via the name index. After three introductions and the historical, biographical and technical chapters, subsequent chapters cover such topics as the trumpet in literature and the trumpet in film and television. The 15th chapter, “Trumpeter’s Dictionary,” takes up the next 504 pages and is divided into the same categories as the initials chapters: classical, jazz, and pop trumpeters. This is followed by the appendices, which include a discography, a list of instrument illustrations in the text, five pages of trumpeter portraits, and reviews of the original Trompeter-Taschenbuch. Finally, an addendum provides 20 new trumpeter biographies that did not make it into the main chapters. Women are underrepresented, as they indeed are among professional trumpeters, but integrated without fanfare. One criticism is that the names of groups such as the Canadian Brass, mentioned throughout the text, do not appear in the index. The inclusion of many performers’ biographies in the historical chapters rather than in the dictionary section leads to some confusion. A better solution would have been to put all biographies in a single alphabetical or chronological sequence. All in all, though, a solid effort with good content which belongs in every music library. [mr/hh]

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