Volume 14, Number 4 · February 26, 1970
A Tone-deaf Musical Dictionary
By Charles Rosen
Harvard Dictionary of Music
Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by Willi Apel
Harvard, 935 pp., $20.00
The conventions of a dictionary are as formal as those of a sestina, a minuet, or the architectural orders. In a preface, Dr. Willi Apel ominously compares the use of his volume to a visit to the dentist, but that, too, has its formalities and its ritual. In this work, revised and enlarged after twenty-five years, the useful is evidently intended to outweigh the sweet. Nevertheless, no literary genre can so easily combine instruction with delight as the dictionary. The majesty of the OED, the intimate charm of the Petit Larousse, depend on the classical sense of propriety that they exemplify, works of art never read as wholes, but whose unity radiates and reveals itself in all their parts. In a dictionary, lack of grace entails a loss of utility.
Review, 4575 words
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