The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is one of the largest reference works on Western music. Originally published under the title A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and later as Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, it has gone through several editions since the 19th century and is widely used. In recent years it has been made available as an electronic resource called Grove Music Online, which is now an important part of Oxford Music Online.
Humour
Two non-existent composers have appeared in the work:
Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup was the subject of a hoax entry in the 1980 New Grove. Esrum-Hellerup's surname derives from a Danish village and a suburb of Copenhagen. The writer of the entry was Robert Layton. Though successfully introduced into the encyclopaedia, Esrum-Hellerup appeared in the first printing only: soon exposed as a hoax, the entry was removed and the space filled with an illustration. In 1983, the Danish organist Henry Palsmar founded an amateur choir, the Esrum-Hellerup Choir, along with several former pupils of the Song School, St. Annae Gymnasium in Copenhagen.
Guglielmo Baldini was the name of a non-existent composer who was the subject of a hoax entry in the 1980 edition. Unlike Esrum-Hellerup, Baldini was not a modern creation: his name and biography were in fact created almost a century earlier by the renowned German musicologist Hugo Riemann. The New Grove entry on Baldini was supported by a fictional reference in the form of an article supposedly in the Archiv fur Freiburger Diozesan geschichte. Though successfully introduced into the encyclopaedia, Baldini appeared in the first printing only: soon exposed as a hoax, the entry was removed.
Seven parody entries, written by contributors to the 1980 edition, and full of musical puns and dictionary in-jokes, were published in the February 1981 issue of The Musical Times (which was also edited by Stanley Sadie at the time). These entries never appeared in the dictionary itself and are:
- Brown, 'Mother' (Mary) (b 1550; d Wapping 3 Jan 1611)
- Ear-flute
- Hameln [Hamelin]
- Khan't, Genghis (Tamburlaine) (b Ulan Bator, c1880; d New York, 22 Nov 1980)
- Stainglit (Nevers), Sait d'Ail (fl Middle Ages) – i.e. 'Stanley Sadie', following the example of Luis van Rooten
- Toblerone
- Verdi, Lasagne ['Il Bolognese'] (b Bologna, 10 Oct 1813; d Naples, 15 March 1867)
