I am as delighted as the next reader to find Ravel’s Jeux d’eau defined as Water-games, as if it were not the play of fountains but a form of water-polo. True howlers and misinformation of course abound in all dictionaries, and the Harvard Dictionary of Music is no exception, but they are to be expected and even welcomed they complement the more serious parts of a work of reference as the satyr-play sets off the tragedy. Within a paragraph he expertly punctures any pretensions to authority or even usefulness the hapless tome might have: The object of his philippic was the second edition of the Harvard Dictionary of Music, and he laid into it with a will: “The Harvard Dictionary of Music offends against decorum on the first column of its first page.” Having set the terms of engagement, he lashes about him left, right, and center, starting with “the initial entry, A,” before pulverizing con abbandono and Abbreviations. Charles Rosen’s first review in these pages appeared just over fifty years ago, in the February 26, 1970, issue, and it was an absolute stinker.
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