Richard Taruskin's five volume work has now been made available online by Oxford University Press. The original six volumes were published in 2004, and a new paperback five‐volume version appeared in 2009 (Taruskin, 2009). It is this updated version that is now available, offering the full text, notes, bibliography and further reading for all the 69 chapters of the original. Taruskin's original received widespread critical acclaim for its accuracy and erudition, its wide cross‐cultural (not “just” musical) reach, and its readable style. The reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement encompassed many review comments by saying: “The Oxford History of Western Music is not a work of reference […] it is a visionary addition to our understanding of our culture” (Scruton, 2005).
While such comments are well‐justified in their praise of the print work, they point to a potential problem with an online version. The strength of online resources is in their potential to retrieve information accurately and swiftly. Conventional reference works lend themselves perfectly to this – encyclopaedias, yearbooks, financial, legal guides and the like can be searched using single or combined terms and the answer to a query is soon at the user's fingertips (literally).
In the case of Taruskin's work, while it is in many ways a reference work, it is not entirely or exclusively such a work. In his introduction to the history he is at pains to point out the difference between the conventional survey approach and his own. In surveys, editors fit as many individual pieces of music and composers as possible into their writing. The multi‐author approach tends to put the objectivity of the analysis of individual works or styles at the centre and the author's own stance as secondary. The intention is to include as much as possible, to cover everything so that the reader can find some mention of any piece he or she might choose to look up in the index. This survey approach is particularly suited to encyclopaedias or histories which aim to chart every happening associated with the history in question.
Taruskin is clear that his approach is much broader – western music is placed in its wider artistic and cultural context. So he is writing about trends and new developments, about seminal works that changed the way music was perceived or written, not about every composer, let alone all the works ever written. This means that, as a work of reference, the whole is less appropriate for online searching. It no longer becomes a port of call for information on every piece of western music. Furthermore, the fact that this whole work is written by one man means that it gains its interest and validity from the reader staying with the reading of the text rather than dipping in and out, browsing or looking up specific items in the index. I was certainly drawn to reading large chunks of the text. Did I want to do this online? Frankly, no, as, although the text is well‐presented for this on screen, it is not my preferred reading style.
In terms of the online approach, access is via a password, for which institutions will pay subscriptions. Rates are not publicly available; institutions have to apply individually. However, assuming the subscription has been made available, the user will find a site that is attractive without being gimmicky, and pages load quickly. The buttons across the top take the user directly to general in formation or each of the five main volumes of the work. Once in a volume, the left‐hand column offers the opportunity to drill down within each chapter to specific sections. The search facility is straightforward to use, and searches can be saved, as can references etc if one signs up to a (free) personal login within the paid subscription.
My attempts to search for composers by surname did not give expected results. I enquired of the publishers and found there had been a bug in the search facility that had been ironed out. On my next foray the index was certainly more thorough. It should take terms from the full text, but there are still some surprising gaps. Vaughan Williams could not be found and my old favourite, Max Reger, produced nothing. Stanford eventually produced one reference to C.V. Stanford among nine, the remainder being to Stanford University. A search for Sturm und Drang elicited 110 references, most of which were to the word “und” used in quotations. This happened both using the phrase with and without quotation marks. The four references to the movement only appeared when I restricted the search to the individual word Sturm or Drang. This works for such a distinctive phrase, but takes a while for the user to establish the best search term. How would it work for Romantic? This term turns up 211 references including a section on Josquin des Prez amongst others. In a printed index, all the nuances of meaning of the term Romantic could be separately indexed in the same section, enabling the user quickly to find the required section of the book. When one goes in to an article for which one has found a reference online, it is not easy then to find the search term on the page (it is no longer highlighted in the text at this point). This must be mildly irritating if one is following up a number of references, as it entails a lot of on‐screen reading. Sections of the book are given as a whole page on screen. This is better for reading a whole section, but in the case of pages that are extremely long it can be difficult to find a specific search term.
One of the trumpeted benefits is cross‐referencing to Grove's Music Online (www.oxfordmusiconline.com). If an institution has both subscriptions, then these references will be visible on‐screen and users can move freely between them. This could be very useful to researchers.
In general, The Oxford History of Western Music has been well‐presented in its move to the online version, and it is easy to reach particular sections, though not necessarily any more quickly than with the print version. However, as a source for searching for factual information about specific pieces of music, this is not necessarily the right source. In order to have a more efficient index, the search facility should be better at taking users straight to the reference source. Searching within a particular volume might also be useful. At the moment the paperback version, available on Amazon for much less than the recommended retail price of £90, might still be the preferred option for some libraries.
