Robin Newton wrote:

>The sixth edition of Grove only broke even a few years ago.  Its a
>long-term venture, and it tries extremely hard to be a worthwhile one.
>Having Grove online could make it available to far more people than can
>afford to buy the entire dictionary, which can only be a good thing.  I
>mean, for heaven's sake, Grove is staggeringly expensive as it is, why
>knock what could be a cheaper and more efficient way to view the work?

Have they ever considered CD ROM or the higher density disc DVD?

I have often wondered how much of the cost of the set is the printing.

>As for Nielsen, I'm afraid the article is not as big you or I would like.
>I'm not entirely sure why, but he's got around 3000 words plus full
>work-list and bibliography.  Personally I feel that he and Sibelius should
>get around the same, but its not the case.  Its actually a truly bizarre
>activity trying to work out how many words a particular figure 'deserves'.
>Our criteria are far from concrete, but I don't see how they can be any
>other way.

I have enjoyed tracing composers through the past editions of Groves...and
yes, we have a 4th edition.  I recall the first edition article on Brahms
(he was still alive) was a page and a half while the article on Raff was
about twice as long.

>Grove is a huge venture and one that is nearly impossible to bring off to
>any degree of satisfaction.  Its never going to be perfect - we are at the
>mercy of finances, of contributors, of politics, of time, of knowledge and
>more.  Give us positive solutions and ideas, not dismissals.

I guess what I find frustrating and something that might be considered are
the spin offs of Groves.  I managed to acquire the set on American Music.
Somehow it seems to me to be counter productive to have these spin offs to
be more complete than the set.  I guess I don't understand the logic in
this.

Another concern I have relates to the assignment of articles.  In general
there seems to be some effort to find the "right" people to cover an
individual but I recall some instances for the last edition...one in
particular where someone was assigned someone, and they had never even
heard a note of that composer's music.

Karl