The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia ed. by Caryl Clark and Sarah Day-O'Connell (review)

Among the many types of biographical literature on major composers, the genre of the single-volume, multi-author reference compendium is distinctive in its appeal to researchers at many levels. Its best examples provide an authoritative and engaging starting point for investigations into its subject's life, works, and major critical and cultural contexts. They also serve as a digest of current approaches to research and analysis in these areas. With its encyclopedia volumes on George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, and Giuseppe Verdi, Cambridge University Press has become a mainstay of the genre in recent years. The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia is a significant addition to the series, even as it exposes a difficulty in developing this type of literature. The pool of subjects is rather exclusive, since they derive from the extensive and influential bodies of research that have accumulated around canonic composers. Joseph Haydn has already been represented in the genre by Haydn (David Wyn Jones, ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002]), an outstanding volume in the Oxford Composer Companions series. Acknowledging that this work, along with the more recent Das Haydn-Lexikon (Armin Raab, Christine Siegert, and Wolfram Steinbeck, eds. [Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2010]), continues "to ably serve the reference needs of Haydn scholars, performers and listeners" (p. xv), Caryl Clark and Sarah Day-O'Connell have steered The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia in a decidedly less conventional direction. The result is a text that is informative and thought provoking, but uneven as a reference source.

Instead of a survey of essential knowledge on works, genres, important persons, and contexts, The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia is "organized around clusters of ideas" (p. xv). Consequently, it diverges from the form and substance of a typical biographical reference volume in several ways. An elementary example is its lack of documentary and evidentiary appendixes. Such elements are not necessarily crucial; in other compendiums their usefulness and durability certainly vary. One helpful traditional component often seen in an appendix—a chronology—does endure here, but it is placed within the front matter. Another component, a critical works list with catalog cross references, does not. The lack of such a tool is regrettable, since the use of Hoboken numbers is not thorough across many articles, as well as the index of compositions. The absence of such research tools suggests that nonspecialist readers may still need to consult more-conventional reference sources to use The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia to its fullest.

The book's distinctive focus on ideas is reflected above all by the scope of its articles. Written by a group of sixty-seven international scholars, the individual contributions total just under ninety items, fewer than the numbers typically found in works with a more conventional contextual approach. Strongly guided by historiographical considerations, their coverage moves outward from traditional categories of context, style, and reception to encompass current or novel themes that lie beyond the purviews of the encyclopedic forerunners mentioned above. The articles take two forms: concise contributions, classified as "entries," and a small group of extended contributions, described as "conceptual essays" (p. xvi). Since a thematic arrangement of the essays and articles would not offer any clear benefit, all are ordered together alphabetically. A detailed thematic guide would have been a welcome aid to understanding how "clusters of ideas" could be perceived and traced through these articles.

The eighty-one entries address a wide range of subjects. Traditionally rooted subject entries such as "Court," "Church," "Enlightenment," "Reception," and "Aesthetics" can be found, but they are complemented by entries focusing on subjects such as "Composers and Music Professionals," "Teaching and Students," and "Amateurs," as well as broader intellectual or practical matters bridging them, including "Relationships and Friendships," "Gender," "Commerce and the Market," and "Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism," to name just a few. Reception is covered over three discrete entries: "Reception, Contemporary...