Notes for NOTES

The Music Library Association has announced its publication awards for 1999. The Vincent H. Duckles Award for the best book-length bibliography or other research tool in music was presented to two publications: David Fallows for A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415-1480 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and James B. Sinclair for A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). The MLA Publications Awards Committee noted that "David Fallows has opened his workshop to outsiders, allowing us to benefit from his thoughtful scrutiny, over the course of fourteen years, of some 2,000 songs in at least seven languages and preserved in nearly 200 manuscript and printed sources. The Catalogue's importance does not lie in its comprehensiveness, however, to which, in any case, it makes no claim; rather it lies in the acuity of its author's judgements regarding genre, concordance, attribution, and style. The sort of vade mecum that earns gratitude with every use, what could easily have become unwieldy is instead elegant and practical." [For a review of this book, see Notes 58 (2001): forthcoming.--Ed.] The Awards Committee further noted: "It would be difficult to imagine a better Ives resource than James Sinclair's Descriptive Catalogue. Rising to the occasion, it is, simply, more than an identifying thematic reference, more than a documentation of sources, more even than its own title claims. The medium has been tailored to the oeuvre. Internal references from work to work do more than record attributes of the material: they contribute to the biography of the works and their author. More information than has been collocated before now establishes borrowings and models, while the significance of premiere performances and recordings has never been made clearer." [For a review of this book, see Notes 57, no. 1 (September 2000): 114-15.--Ed.]

Jeremy Smith received the Richard S. Hill Award for the best article on music librarianship or article of a music-bibliographic nature for "From 'Rights to Copy' to 'Bibliographic Ego': A New Look at the Last Early Edition of Byrd's 'Psalmes, Sonets & Songs,'" Music & Letters 80 [1999]: 511-530. The Awards Committee observed: "Through an exhaustive examination of bibliographical and documentary evidence Jeremy Smith convincingly determines that the edition with which he is concerned appeared in 1606 or 1607, and not 1599 as previously thought. More importantly, Smith's investigation provides insight into Byrd's position as a leader in defining intellectual property rights of the composer and 'the evolving roles of printers, publishers and authors,' issues that remain timely today."

Philip Brett won the Eva Judd O'Meara Award for the best review published in Notes for his critique of The Beggar's Opera as realized by Benjamin Britten (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1997), and two other scores by Britten, Notes 55, no. 3 (March 1999): 735-39. The Awards Committee commented: "Philip Brett places each of the works in the context of Britten's life and in the context of British music of the first half of the twentieth century, giving readers a better understanding of how these works influenced the creation of the later operas. The author guides the reader through the issues of arranging a composition in a "creative" versus "authentic" manner and how that relates to changing views of early music. Further, the review challenges the idea of issuing, posthumously, unpublished and fragmentary works of a famous composer instead of the works of composers active today."

Other MLA Awards. The MLA Board of Directors granted its Special Achievement Award this year to Jane Gottlieb "for the eloquence and elegance with which she speaks on behalf of and about the Association, and how she creatively, craftily and confidently worked out the implementation of Plan 2001, helped to oversee its successful completion, and thereby has recast the profile of our Association for the 21st century."

At the recommendation of the Nominating Committee, MLA Citations were awarded to three individuals who have contributed significantly to the profession over the entire span of their careers, each taking a different...