Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music

Composer Gagné has been writing on the topic of modern and contemporary classical music for about three decades. Her dictionary focuses on composers of and, occasionally, the musicians performing, concert music during the 19th and 20th centuries. It consists primarily of an alphabetical listing of almost 400 people and topics and lacks a table of contents that would alert readers to other, smaller sections. These include a key to acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology, and a useful introduction that defines modern and contemporary classical music and describes "how techniques and technology interacted with the art." While there are cross-references within the entries, they contain no leads to further resources, surprising in a series whose aim is to "aid high school and college students doing term papers or introductory research projects," though this is a minor problem. The bibliography begins with a table of contents and an introduction that suggests several seminal books on broad topics, essential writings by composers, and books about composers and compositional analysis. It is divided into sections by composer and by format (e.g., books, journals, and websites about individual composers, multiple composers, and organizations). BOTTOM LINE This dictionary will be an excellent and useful addition to high school and college libraries as well as to the collections of modern classical music aficionados.—Sarah Sutton, Mary & Jeff Bell Library, Texas A&M Univ., Corpus Christi, TX