Customer Reviews

Dictionary of Composers and Their Music

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Yes, the selections are incomplete - but how much can one include in such a book. The truly comprehensive book would cover many more volumes. The exclusion of Arvo Part is sad but I hope Mr. Gilder will listen to his readers and think about this.

I have used this book for 20 years since it's earliest edition. I have found NO OTHER BOOK like this with Cross-referencing of Dates to Composers names. I know this book will only improve with each edition. The first edition was barely more than 400 pages. Mr. Gilder has added a lot more since.

He deserves DUE CREDIT for having amassed such a wonderful book. Thank you, Mr. Gilder,,,for years and years of pleasure and learning.

Enrique Sanchez Miami, FL

This is a useful reference work, specially because of the three formats of listings, however I find it somewhat biassed in the sense that it makes a very complete listing of the works of some unknown composers while making a very suscint description of the work of more important ones, or even ignoring them. For example, there is no mention to Mr. Arvo Part(Contemporary) or Jean-Fery Rebel (barroque). There is a brief mention to Muzio Clementi or Giusepe Torelli while there is a somewhat complete listing of the works of Francesco Cilea. Very respectfully I think Mr. Part and Mr Rebel are at least as well known as Mr. Cilea and even as Mr. Eric Gilder, the author, who also appears fully reviewed. This is a useful reference work, specially because of the three formats of listings, however I find it somewhat biassed in the sense that it makes a very complete listing of the works of some unknown composers while making a very suscint description of the work of more important ones, or even ignoring them. For example, there is no mention to Mr. Arvo Part(Contemporary) or Jean-Fery Rebel (barroque). There is a brief mention to Muzio Clementi or Giusepe Torelli while there is a somewhat complete listing of the works of Francesco Cilea. Very respectfully I think Mr. Part and Mr Rebel are at least as well known as Mr. Cilea and even as Mr. Eric Gilder, the author, who also appears fully reviewed.

It is not only the exclusion of composers but the fact that there is no indication of the criteria used for including or excluding them or for the depth of coverage given. There is no way to infer why are ,for example , Don Gillis or the author himself given more than twice the coverage given to Mauro Giuliani, just to mention something that can be found from page 143 to 146. There are plenty of examples like this. There are 8 works by Mr Gilder, and less than a dozen works by George Philippe Teleman, none by Tartini, Giusepe Torelli or Johann Pachelbel...! I really felt disappointed with the recomendation of this book.

When I discovered that at one point the LA Weekly was using this as their major music reference, I was shocked! I have the 1993 revised edition, and have SEARCHED for two names I would assume to be in the most basic biographical music dictionary written after 1965: Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn. And yes, I looked for Clara Wieck and Fanny Hensel--no luck. Oddly enough, Mr. Gilder did include Amy Beach and Thea Musgrave, both of whom definitely deserve this inclusion. Although I have not done a thorough survey, these are the only two women composers I found in the book.
We can only assume, from Mr. Gilder's apologetic preface, that he considers both Clara and Fanny's contributions to the "world's musical treasury...too inconsiderable to make them worthy of special mention." Given the ommission of these two composers, I was not surprised to see neither Hildegard von Bingen nor Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre. Mr. Gilder has, however, seen fit to include his own compositions.
I am not an ardent feminist out to make sure every woman composer who ever lived has representation in biographical dictionaries. I do think it irresponsible to NOT include two of the most famous, especially when both Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn are covered. Unlike Thea and Amy, the contributions of Clara and Fanny were always overshadowed by the music of their husband and brother, respectively. If this book garners any reputation as a reputable and reliable reference, that will continue to be the case. I see it is now out of print. I hope if another edition is published, these tremendous oversights will be remedied, amongst other issues already mentioned in other reviews.

For a serious music listener, the knowledge of when and where a piece of music was composed is pretty useful because it helps the listener understand deeper the relationship between the music and its composer and the impact of the environment on the composer. However, there were not many works dealing with this issue. The efforts of the author did help bridge this appreciation gap. In the first part, the author listed the composers alphabetically, and under each composer his music was listed chronologically. Part two surveys the major pieces of music composed in the same year, thus giving the reader an impression of the contemporaries of the music. Timelines of the composers's lifetimes are displayed in part three to give an overview of the contemporaries of the composers.

Each part of the book is well designed and useful. However, there are some flaws in this book. As previous reviews pointed out, many composers were not fairly covered and no reason or criterion was given. Moreover, I feel the need that the author should make another listing for each composer that shows the chronological order of the compositions in the same style, for example symphonies, concertos, etc. Anyway, this book is still a valuable reference for every music lover.

This is an excellent reference if you are interested in the major composers and not in the thousands of other American and European composers. The three parts: alphabetic listing of composers and their works (in chronological order), chronological lists of composers and a complete timeline are useful when a listener wants to know who composed what (major works), who is contemporary to whom and what happened in the music world around a certain period or in a certain year. As a serious listener of classical music, I never use this book all by itself but I use it in conjunction with 'Classical Music the Third Ear', 'The penguin Guide of CD/DVD', 'The Classical Music All Music Guide' and the 'Canon of Classical Music' book. However, I do use it!!!