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MGG Online

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2019

Susan Wollenberg
Susan Wollenberg*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford, [email protected]
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Type
Digital Resource Review
Information
Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , December 2019 , pp. 491 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2019 

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References

1 On the MGG team I thank particularly Naomi Perley (Subscriptions Manager and Technical Assistant, RILM) and Ilka Sührig (Editorial Director, MGG Online) for their kind and helpful assistance during the preparation of this review. As this was my debut as a digital reviewer I have been grateful to Arun Prasath (Data Management Analyst, Lady Margaret Hall) for his expert technical guidance. My thanks are due to Martin Holmes (Alfred Brendel Curator of Music, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford) for some illuminating discussions, and to Gregory Burton of the Faculty of Music Library, University of Oxford for his generous help.

2 See www.mgg-online.com; www.oxfordmusiconline.com. On their differing ethos see ‘Preface’ to MGG Online (in ‘About MGG’).

3 Grove, George, ed., A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 4 volumes (London, 1879–1889)Google Scholar; Blume, Friedrich, ed., Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, 17 volumes (Kassel and London: Bärenreiter, 1949–86)Google Scholar; 2nd revised edition [MGG2], ed. Ludwig Finscher, Sachteil (9 volumes) and Personenteil (17 volumes) together with indexes and Supplement (Kassel and London: Bärenreiter; Stuttgart: Metzler, 1994–2008) as well as index on CD-ROM. A more detailed history is available in the Preface to MGG Online.

4 Sadie, Stanley, ed., New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 volumes (London: Macmillan, 1980)Google Scholar; 2nd revised edition, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 29 volumes (Oxford: Grove, 2001); for the online resource see note 2 above.

5 For details of MGG2 see note 3 above. For the launch event for MGG Online at the AMS in Vancouver (November 2016), see inter alia vimeopro.com/vcubeinc/mgg-goes-digital.

6 Lütteken, Laurenz, ‘Music(ologic)al Knowledge in the Digital World: Preliminary Notes Concerning MGG Online’, Fontes artis musicae 63/3 (July–September 2016): special issue, ‘Referencing Music in the Twenty-First Century: Encyclopedias of the Past, Present, and Future’, ed. Tina Frühauf, 222–229, at 228Google Scholar.

7 Lütteken, ‘Music(ologic)al Knowledge in the Digital World’, 222.

8 Lütteken, ‘Music(ologic)al Knowledge in the Digital World’, 228.

9 Statistical information here is derived from ‘Masthead’, in ‘About MGG’; the 50 or so areas of editorial responsibility are principally chronological (from ‘Ancient’ to 21st century), geographical or disciplinary (e.g. Gender Studies). Grove online (in ‘About [Grove]’) provides comparable information about its editorial team (complete with some photos). Certain features of the MGG home page are available without subscription: open areas include the documents in ‘About MGG’ and the guidance to readers accessible via ‘Help’ (see below for more details), as well as searches yielding limited previews of articles.

10 The main categories within these cycles are: major revisions, or fresh versions, of existing articles; new entries; and substitutions for items licensed from Grove that were included in MGG2. The current focus of major revision is on towns, countries, and biographies. I am grateful to Ilka Sührig for this information (email communication, 30 January 2018).

11 Todd, R. Larry, Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Bartsch, Cornelia, Fanny Hensel geb. Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Musik als Korrespondenz (Kassel: Furore, 2007)Google Scholar.

12 MARKUS BANDUR, Art. Musiklexika, in: MGG Online, hrsg. von Laurenz Lütteken, Kassel, Stuttgart, New York: 2016ff., zuerst veröffentlicht 1997, online veröffentlicht 2016, https://www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/11546, accessed 25 October 2017.

13 ‘Musik und Gender im Internet’, http://mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de; Fuller, Sophie, The Pandora Guide to Women Composers: Britain and the United States, 1629–present (London and California: Harper Collins, 1984)Google Scholar; New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, ed. Sadie, Julie Anne and Samuel, Rhian (London: Macmillan, 1994)Google Scholar. As was noted in Women and the Nineteenth-Century Lied, ed. Aisling Kenny and Susan Wollenberg (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), Chapter 1 (‘Introduction’), 4: ‘Sadie and Samuel’s volume seems to enact the process whereby first neglect, then attention and finally integration might mark the stages with which women composers have been sidelined in … works of reference, then had the spotlight thrown onto them, and eventually were … integrated into the mainstream literature. The second revised edition of the main Grove Dictionary was thus able to draw on the vastly expanded coverage of women composers offered by the 1994 volume’.

14 PETER JOST, Art. Lied, in: MGG Online, hrsg. von Laurenz Lütteken, Kassel, Stuttgart, New York: 2016ff., veröffentlicht 2015–07–02, https://www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/11684, accessed 22 October 2017.

15 Clara Schumann is referred to, in passing only, apropos Brahms; Rufus Hallmark’s article on Robert and Clara’s joint Lied opus appears in the bibliography.

16 Rethinking the relegation of women composers to the fringes, and allowing them entry in their own right into the closed circle of male composers hitherto represented in music histories, could certainly be justified for Fanny Hensel; aside from her achievement in the genre, as the older of the two siblings she could be thought to deserve first place here instead of following after Felix (the latter also happens in Grove on Lied: see https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.16611).

17 HANNS-WERNER HEISTER, Art. Konzertwesen, in: MGG Online, hrsg. von Laurenz Lütteken, Kassel, Stuttgart, New York: 2016ff., zuerst veröffentlicht 1996, online veröffentlicht 2016, https://www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/11495, accessed 30 November 2017.

18 See inter alia Weber, William, ‘Musical culture and the capital city: the epoch of the beau monde in London, 1700–1870’, in Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Susan Wollenberg and Simon McVeigh (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), Chapter 5, pp. 71–89Google Scholar; Ritterman, Janet and Weber, William, ‘Origins of the Piano Recital in England, 1830–1870’, in The Piano in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Instruments, Performers and Repertoire, ed. Therese Ellsworth and Susan Wollenberg (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), Chapter 8, pp. 171–191Google Scholar; and Weber, William, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. A notable omission from the existing ‘Konzertwesen’ bibliography that could usefully be remedied is that of McVeigh, Simon, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. Revision of the bibliography could also correct some small slips such as the misspelling of Mary Sue Morrow’s surname and her book title, and the omission of the ‘u’ from Michael Tilmouth’s surname.

19 Bashford, Christina, The Pursuit of High Culture: John Ella and Chamber Music in Victorian London (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007)Google Scholar; Doctor, Jenny and Wright, David, eds, The Proms: A New History, consultant editor Nicholas Kenyon (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007)Google Scholar. Within the MGG article text the Proms receive merely a brief mention in a list of concert types and series; this famous institution might be thought to merit more space allotted to it in a revised version.

20 Convegno internazionale, La Spezia, July 2013: selected papers in Ad Parnassum: A Journal of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Instrumental Music, 12, Issue 24 (October 2014) and 13, Issue 25 (April 2015)Google Scholar.

21 Musgrave, Michael, The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

22 Grove’s article on the subject is helpfully divided into short sub-sections under headings such as ‘Music societies’, ‘The benefit concert’ and ‘Subscription concerts’: https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.06240.

23 SILKE LEOPOLD, Art. Barock, in: MGG Online, hrsg. von Laurenz Lütteken, Kassel, Stuttgart, New York: 2016ff., zuerst veröffentlicht 1994, online veröffentlicht 2016, https://www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/11913; https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.02097 (published in Grove 2001).

24 CHRISTA BRÜSTLE, Art. Weir, Judith, in: MGG Online, hrsg. von Laurenz Lütteken, Kassel, Stuttgart, New York: 2016ff., zuerst veröffentlicht 2007, online veröffentlicht 2016, https://www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/14560, accessed 30 November 2017.

25 HARTMUT KRONES, Art. Wellesz, Egon, in: MGG Online, hrsg. von Laurenz Lütteken, Kassel, Stuttgart, New York: 2016ff., zuerst veröffentlicht 2007, online veröffentlicht 2016, https://www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/14562, accessed 30 November 2017.

26 Egon Wellesz, Incognita (1950), premiered by the Oxford University Opera Club under the conductorship of Sir Jack Westrup (1951); On Time, Op. 63, (1946–50); and Songs of Return, Op. 85 (1961).

27 MELANIE WALD-FUHRMANN, Art. Spotify, in: MGG Online, hrsg. von Laurenz Lütteken, Kassel, Stuttgart, New York: 2016ff., veröffentlicht 2017–09–13, https://www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/14561, accessed 19 October 2017; PAUL WATT, Art. Shaw, Bernard, in: MGG Online, hrsg. von Laurenz Lütteken, Kassel, Stuttgart, New York: 2016ff., veröffentlicht 2017–10–23, https://www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/11294, accessed 24 October 2017.

28 The notice celebrating its first year online (November 2017) gave some statistics: ‘Since launch, we have made 75 significant updates to articles and large article sections; we have also published 19 newly written articles, and six new entries; these are joined by 90 minor revisions’ (email communication to subscribers from [email protected]., 30 November 2017). Hundreds of articles had already been updated prior to the launch.

29 ‘Walther Dürr †’, MGG Online (16 January 2018).

30 As Figure 4 shows, care is taken with multi-authored articles (including any worklists and bibliographies) that exist in several versions, to indicate exactly which authors were responsible for particular sections and lists in the different versions.

31 Via the Help button: ‘Website Help: How to use the MGG Online platform’; additionally, the ‘FAQs’ section provides much practical information under various headings, including subscriptions, access, and technical questions.

32 https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.52554; NINA NOESKE/SUSANNE RODE-BREYMANN/MELANIE UNSELD, Art. Gender Studies, in: MGG Online, hrsg. von Laurenz Lütteken, Kassel, Stuttgart, New York: 2016ff., zuerst veröffentlicht 2008, online veröffentlicht 2016, https://www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/12150, accessed 19 October 2017.

33 Throughout this article, English translations from the original German are my own.