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''The Oxford Companion to Music'' is a music reference book in the
series Series may refer to: People with the name * Caroline Series (born 1951), English mathematician, daughter of George Series * George Series (1920–1995), English physicist Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Series, the ordered sets used in ...
of
Oxford Companions ''Oxford Companions'' is a book series published by Oxford University Press, providing general knowledge within a specific area. The first book published in the series was ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'' (1932), compiled by the ret ...
produced by the
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
. It was originally conceived and written by
Percy Scholes Percy Alfred Scholes PhD OBE (24 July 1877 – 31 July 1958) (pronounced ''skolz'') was an English musician, journalist and prolific writer, whose best-known achievement was his compilation of the first edition of ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' ...
and published in 1938. Since then, it has undergone two distinct rewritings: one by
Denis Arnold Denis Midgley Arnold (Sheffield, 15 December 1926 – Budapest, 28 April 1986) was a British musicologist. Biography After being employed in the extramural department of Queen's University, Belfast, he became a Lecturer in Music at the Univ ...
, in 1983, and the latest edition by Alison Latham in 2002. It is "arguably the most successful book on music ever produced" (Wright, p. 99).


Single-volume edition by Percy Scholes

The first edition, a single-volume work, was produced in 1938, edited by Percy Scholes, and was written almost entirely by him alone. The second edition, published 1939 includes a 64-page categorised ''List of books about music in the English language'' by Scholes. Wherever possible, Scholes tried to use primary source material, rather than summarizing other people's work. His preface to the First Edition describes how he played and read through thousands of sheets of music, as well as reading thousands of concert programs and studying "old literature and long-bygone musical journals". From this research, he produced about fifty-five volumes of notes. Each of these was devoted to a separate branch of musical knowledge. He then sought peer review of each of these volumes with specialists in the particular branch of musical knowledge. Finally, these volumes were broken up and re-constituted in alphabetical order. Scholes' intention was to produce a work relevant to a wide range of readers, from the professional musician to the concert-goer, "gramaphonist", or radio-listener. His work was aimed at a reader for whom it "will neither be beyond the scope of his pocket nor embarrass him by a manner of expression so technical as to add new puzzles to the puzzle which sent him to the book". The result was a work which was highly accessible to the general reader, as well as being useful for the specialist. While scholarly and well-researched, Scholes' style was also sometimes quirky and opinionated. For instance, his original articles on some of the twentieth-century composers were highly dismissive, as were his articles on genres such as jazz. His entry on the can-can concluded "Its exact nature is unknown to anyone connected with this Companion." He produced several revisions prior to his death (in 1958), with the last full revision being the 9th edition in 1955. The Tenth Edition, published in 1970, was a revision of Scholes' work by John Owen Ward. Ward considered it "inappropriate to change radically the characteristic rich anecdotal quality of Dr. Scholes' style." Although he brought some of the articles up to date, he left much of Scholes' distinctive work intact. A distinctive feature of this Companion is a series of "imaginative" portraits of composers created by the artist
Oswald Barrett Oswald (Charles) Barrett (1892–1945) was an English artist and illustrator. He also signed his work with the pseudonym "Batt". He produced a wide range of drawings, illustrations and paintings, though is best known for biographical portraits of ...
(known as "Batt"). These consist of engravings (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Byrd, Chopin, Elgar, Handel, Haydn, Liszt, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner), and a frontispiece which is a colour reproduction of an oil painting of "Beethoven in Middle Life", described by Scholes as "the artist's personal gift to the volume" (see the Preface to the First Edition).


''The New Oxford Companion to Music''

In 1983 a wholly revised two-volume work, titled ''The New Oxford Companion to Music,'' was introduced. This was edited by
Denis Arnold Denis Midgley Arnold (Sheffield, 15 December 1926 – Budapest, 28 April 1986) was a British musicologist. Biography After being employed in the extramural department of Queen's University, Belfast, he became a Lecturer in Music at the Univ ...
who made extensive use of other specialist contributors, some 90 in all. The work was significantly broader in coverage than Scholes' original (there was for instance a perceptive article on
Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
), and is the most extensively illustrated of the three versions. Arnold expressed his intention of adhering to Scholes’ principles and indeed included much of Scholes’ material in the new work. Nevertheless, he cut out much of the personal opinion and quirkiness which was characteristic of the original. For instance, he substantially increased the coverage of female composers and performers, who were almost totally absent from Scholes' work. There were no further revisions of this version, probably due to its relative unpopularity and Arnold's own early death in 1986.


2002 revision

In 2002, a third work was produced. This one, edited by Alison Latham, goes back to the original title and to the single-volume format. Latham assembled her own team of over 120 contributors, some of whom had contributed to the prior (Arnold) edition, and others drawn from her own previous editing work (for example on the ''Grove Concise Dictionary of Music''). This edition consists of some 7400 articles and aims to bring the work up-to-date: for example, in its coverage of areas such as electronic music and computers. The 2002 revision is more current, handier and more affordable than its predecessor. However, it abridges the text and eliminates most of the illustrations.


External links

The text of the 2002 edition can be accessed online vi
Oxford Music Online
which is also a portal for ''
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...
''. As well as being available to individual and educational subscribers, it is available for use by members of many libraries worldwide.Oxford Music Online
listing
at
WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...
.


References


Bibliography

* Arnold, Denis (1983). ''The New Oxford Companion to Music: Volume 1: A-J; Volume 2: L-Z.'' Oxford: OUP. * *Scholes, Percy A. (1938). ''The Oxford Companion to Music: Self-indexed and with a Pronouncing Glossary.'' Oxford: OUP. *Wright, Simon (1998). "Oxford University Press and Music Publishing: A 75th Anniversary Retrospective." ''Brio'' 35, 2 (Autumn-Winter), p. 89-100. {{DEFAULTSORT:Oxford Companion to Music, The 1938 non-fiction books 1983 non-fiction books 2002 non-fiction books Encyclopedias of music Music guides Oxford University Press reference books