Customer Reviews

Harvard Dictionary of Music: Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged (Series I: Diaries)

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

This reference book has it all. I have never been disappointed when looking up a musical term -- everything from musical periods, notation, tempo markings in all languages I've come across, descriptions of musical forms, and theory concepts. It should be on the bookshelf of every serious musician.

This is the dictionary that I used when I attended the USC School of Music. The entries are unsurpassed so far as classical music is concerned, but I did have to look for other resources when I needed accurate indepth information on jazz or popular music. It would be difficult in this day and age to have one all-encompassing reference on every musical style in existence, so I think that the work stands on its own and may dilute its effectiveness if it were to overextend itself by trying to accomodate everybody. As a former composition student and someone who scored in the top 3% on the music theory portion of the graduate record exam, I wholeheartedly recommend this dictionary.

This book, together with 'Baker's Bigoraphical Dictionary of Musicians', is one of my most frequently used reference books. The edition I have is Willi Apel's second edition, revised and expanded; there is a later Harvard Dictionary of Music done by another editor, but this one has been on my shelf for over twenty years, and I have come to find it incredibly useful for ready reference as well as giving information for further research.

Most entries have citation and bibliographic information so that further research becomes an easier task; my one regret in this direction is that there has been so much scholarly work done in the past thirty years since this publication that is missed from this listing, but much of music reference material is not that time sensitive.

This is a very comprehensive text with regard to music technical information, particularly when it comes to ancient, medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. In the modern area, it is a little less helpful, and does not really address the area of pop music at all.

The one thing I could wish for would be an index of some sort in the rear; even designed as a dictionary, many articles become encyclopedic in length or nature, and an index would have made this that much more useful. However, there is a good deal of cross-referenced material, making it easy to use in research mode.

The entries themselves range from just a few words (for example, Gusto, con [It.] - With style, with zest.) to multi-page entries (examples include the entries on countries such as France and Germany, discussing their histories of musical tradition). There are entries of history, of technique, of composition, of instruments, even of the mathematics and physics of sound, harmony and rhythm. Many major opeas and other musical pieces have entries - however, this is not a biographical dictionary, so there are very few entries of this sort. The listings go from Mozarabic chant to Mozarteum, for instance, without Mozart between them.

One might have minor quibbles here and there with the data (and no such undertaking as massive as this dictionary can be without fault and error), but in general, this dictionary serves the general seeker and the student of music very well.

I purchased the HARVARD DICTIONARY OF MUSIC (KINDLE EDITION) with some really high expectations. I suppose in book form, it would be great. I bought the Kindle format, and it was horrible. The search function searches for every occurence of a term in the entire dictionary which is of no use because I will at times have to click through pages and pages of occurences to find a definition.

Amazon should build in some kind of process where it will go through a heirarchy going through words or terms as keywords first then occurrences. For example, if I'm searching for the word "tetrachord", I'll get 39 results. In those results, I still need to find which is the definition and which are occurences throughout the dictionary. NOT VERY HELPFUL.

As a music grad student, I was really exited to have this resource available on my Kindle. In hindsight, it wasn't so great a purchase.

This new and revised edition of the Harvard Dictionary of Music is a must-have for anyone of the classical persuasion who doesn't have the first edition or whose copy of it dates from long ago and is in danger of falling apart with age and use.

As it is based upon serous scholarship that is not compelled to de-emphasize the importance of the Viennese Classical school or even to sneer at the later Romantic, it is an ideal read or reference for those of us who are happy with music of those periods and their predecessors.
John Traugut

Book had some wear, but I expected that. Got what I ordered. Fairly quick delivery...Thanks
Book was suggested by my son's music teacher.

The formatting is deplorable: typos and pagination problems, no separation of entries, virtually unsearchable, unbrowse-able--all drawbacks in a "dictionary." Just lug around the hard copy if you care about music, about words and definitions, about lexicography in general. (Unlike the real Harvard Dictionary of Music, there are no bibliographic entries, but compared to the overall dreadful implementation of the Kindle edition, this is a minor defect.)

I wanted so badly to overcome the obstacles, but the Kindle incarnation of the Harvard Dictionary of Music is a disaster. Do not buy it.

As someone who knows extemely little about classical music who wants to know more, I bought this book some time ago and, it has been quite helpful. However, it is also true that although this the twenty first printing was in 1997, this, the Revised Edition was copyrighted in 1972 by Willi Apel (and previous copyright dates of the book were 1944 and 1969 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College). This Second Edition undoubtely needs to be revised. Since I have had it, I have noticed only a of couple areas in which I think it needs to be changed (and it has been extremely helpful as to others). Firstly, The entry on "Ballet" on pages 73-76. On page 75 this book still says "There is still much disagreement about the quality of the ballet in the Soviet Union" and proceeds with a brief paragraph about ballets performed and produced there. Since it not only is the Soviet Union not the Soviet Union any more, and since other things have changed as well since Willi Apel's page 75, there really ought to be revisions in this book reflecting that. Secondly, as to the entry "Voices-ranges" on page 920, this book says, "Human voices are usually divided into six ranges: three female voices, soprano, mezzo-soprano and contralto, and three male voices, tenor, baritone and bass" and subsquesntly gives subcategories of these, but omits countertenor entirely from this entry which it should not. It isn't that countertenor can't be located in this book. It is not with the rest of the voice types where it belongs, in my opinon. When I found it what it said was "OLD (CAPS MINE) name for (male) alto, derived from CONTRATENOR ALTUS [See Contratenor] which I did on page 204 which said in part, that it explains, that four part writing and the consequent separation of ranges resulted in a renaming so that there existed contratenor altus (alto) and contrateor bassus (bass) which, the book says, explains the name alto "for a part that, from a modern point of view, can hardly be considered 'high', as well as countertenor for the male alto". This entry sounds to me like it has relegated countertenors, who are alive and performing and recording now, to history. In my opinion the term countertenor should be included in the entry "Voices-ranges" with the rest of the male and female voice types, so they are all together where they belong. This entry also refers the reader to the word alto page on page 31, which states of the male alto "....(2) Originally the alto was a high male voice....this type of voice, also known as countertenor, was cultivated especially in England, where the church music of the 16th and 17th centuries definitely implies its use." What this entry and these entires taken together also imply is that countertenors, male altos as such, are history since they are not included in the entry "Voices-ranges" as extant in the world which is to say living now , performing now, and recording now. Saying that this voice type (p. 31) was cultivated in England where the church music of the 16th and 17th centuries implies its use says nothing to me about the use of this voice type in the latter half of the 20th cantury and in the 21st century. I am very new to classical music and I am living proof that it doesn't require a lot to know that t here are countertenors : Charles Brett, countertenor, one of the male soloists ( the soloists on this CD which is of Händel's Messiah are: one soprano, one mezzo-soprano, the aforementioned countertenor, one tenor, one bass, and one boy soprano) singing as recorded on this exceptional recording of this 18th century work conducted by John Eliot Gardiner is one. I also have at the present time one recording each of Dunstable's Motets and The Old Hall Manuscript by The Hilliard ensemble (two countertenors, three tenors, two baritones) which I been able to listen to as much as I'd like to, but have enjoyed nevertheless. This book needs to be revised as to this subject matter and with a view to enabling readers to become aware of all of the voice types that there are as well as what they capable in the appropriate place which is in the same place. Additionally, since there have been recordings of works on period instruments for more than a few years, it would help if the differences between, for example, a period violin and modern violin were addressed in this book and they are not. As someone who knows little about this I hope that, for others( I am not in a position to buy a new edition of this book, if ever there will be one), there will be a revised edition without these problems. Highly recommended otherwise , however, at this time.