| INTRODUCTION Johnson is engaged in the impersonal task oJ compiling a dic-tionary; but he has made that task personal to himsdf, has rootedhimself in the centre of the work that is to be done, partly by thelength and arduousness of his labours but even more so by hisunreserved acceptance of his own destiny as an English man ofletters. --John Wain, Samuel Johnson (1974)The first Baker s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians appeared in1900. Its editor, Theodore Baker, was an American, born inNew York in 1851, who went to Leipzig to do a dissertationon Native American music. Returning to his homeland in 1890, heworked for the New York publishing house of G. Schinnet; producingnot only the first edition of Baker s but a second in 1905, among otherbooks. Nicolas Slonimsky arrived in the 1940s to produce a Supple-ment to the fourth edition, which appeared in 1949. "lhking charge,he published a completely revised fifth edition in 1958, a sixth in1978, a seventh in 1984,.and an eighth in 1991. Ever larger than itspredecessors, the last has 2115 pages with double columns; containingapproximately two million words, it weighs eight pounds. As a one-volume compendium, it has no competitors and probably never will. Some expository writers produce books; others favor essays. Arare few excel at the art of the entry. What Nicolas Slonimskv894- ) shares with Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)is the production |
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