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