Analyses of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Music, 1940–2000, and: Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition; The First Twenty Years (review)

Many music researchers and music librarians have long been familiar with Arthur Wenk's bibliographies of analyses, first of twentieth-century music and later of nineteenth-century music. Wenk's purpose was to cite and thus facilitate access to the analyses found in journal articles, monographs, doctoral dissertations, and Festschriften. He focused on art music in the western European tradition, citing scholarly writings in English and other European languages, especially French, German, and Italian. His efforts, all issued in the MLA Index and Bibliography Series, culminated with Analyses of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Music: 1940–1985, which was number 25 in the series (Boston: Music Library Association, 1987). The present volume, by D. J. Hoek, is an update of that work. In undertaking the daunting task of extending coverage through the year 2000, Hoek has done a great service to scholars, music students, and those of us who help them.

If for no other reason, Wenk's bibliographies have remained popular and useful simply because they have had little competition. Their nearest rival is probably Music Analyses: An Annotated Guide to the Literature by Harold J. Diamond (New York: Schirmer Books, 1991). Although broader in temporal scope than Wenk's books, Diamond's book cites only writings in English, thereby diminishing its value to serious scholars.

Some people might expect electronic abstracting and indexing services to have rendered Wenk's work obsolete, but such is not the case. With Music Index, RILM, and the International Index to Music Periodicals available online, it is surely easier than it used to be to search for analyses. For several reasons, however, these resources do not necessarily make the process easier, faster, or more foolproof. The most important reason is that significant analyses lying buried in sources primarily about other topics may not show up in titles or brief abstracts. Thus, an update of Wenk's work is particularly welcome.

The size of this project has increased almost tenfold since Wenk began. In his first book, Analyses of Twentieth-Century Music, 1940–1970 (Ann Arbor: Music Library Association, 1975), Wenk cited 1,225 analyses of works by 225 composers; in his new edition, Hoek cites 9,306 analyses of works by 1,066 composers. Wenk's original list of periodicals included forty-six titles; Hoek's list now includes 167.

In his new edition, Hoek retains Wenk's organizational structure, which still works well. Each citation has an entry number, and entries are in alphabetical order: first by composers' names, and then, under each name, by author for those with few analyses and by title for those with more than ten. Hoek has renamed Wenk's "Other Works" to "Various Works" to refer to writings analyzing more than one work by the same composer. An index of authors' names is at the end of the book.

Another feature Hoek retains is Wenk's use of abbreviations to refer to all journals, Festschriften, and monographs in the citations. Since he incorporates all of the material from Wenk's previous edition, it is understandable that Hoek uses the same format for his own edition. Nevertheless, using Hoek's updated edition would be much less cumbersome for researchers had he used full entries, especially for the journal titles.

It is disappointing also that Hoek does not provide more details about his standards of inclusion. For example, he does not specify what constitutes analysis, but only says that he has added to Wenk...