An Index to Music Published in The Etude Magazine, 1883-1957, and: L'edition musicale dans la presse parisienne au XVIIIe siecle: Catalogue des annonces (review)
- An Index to Music Published in The Etude Magazine, 1883–1957, and: L’edition musicale dans la presse parisienne au XVIIIe siècle: Catalogue des annonces
Historical newspapers and journals have long been used by historians as primary sources of information, but it is only recently that music scholars have had the basic bibliographical resources available to them to plumb the depths of these resources. Projects such as RIPM (Répertoire international de la presse musicale) have begun to open up the historical riches of the musical press, and two new resources add significantly to this research.
Uniquely, the musical press has traditionally published not only information about music, but printed music itself. One new resource bringing these sources to light is E. Douglas Bomberger's new index to The Etude magazine. Bomberger, known for his work on nineteenth-century German and American composers, has provided an invaluable snapshot of musical taste during seventy-five years of American history as well as the meticulous spadework of providing access to both obscure works and composers, many of whom have fallen off the current map. Fully half of the index is devoted to an issue-by-issue listing of pieces published in The Etude. The remainder of the book provides indexes to composer names (including their dates, when available), titles of pieces, authors of texts, and [End Page 412] instrumentation. This volume will be invaluable to music librarians, especially in those institutions with runs of the journal.
A different sort of catalog, though no less useful, is Anik Devriès-Lesure's compilation of advertisements of new musical works in the eighteenth-century Parisian press. Well known for her dictionary of French music publishers which received the Music Library Association's Vincent H. Duckles Award in 1990 (Anik Devriès and François Lesure, Dictionnaire des éditeurs de musique francaise, vol. II [Géneve: Editions Minkoff, 1988]), Devriès-Lesure has provided citations and transcriptions of musical advertisements from twenty-four publications including the Journal de Paris, the Mercure galant, and the Mercure de France. French editions by composers from Karl Friedrich Abel to Francesco (Frank?) Zappa, from Mondonville to Mozart are included. This source is certainly recommended for its documentation of French musical culture in the eighteenth century.
