State of the Art Survey of Reference Sources in Classical Music

Harold Samuel, music librarian and professor of music at Yale University, provides an excellent overview of the growth and development of musicology and the implications for library music collections in his recent article “Music and the Music Library” (Library Trends, April, 1977, pp. 833–845.). He notes that the musicologist's narrow emphasis on the “serious music” of Western Europe has broadened to include serious study of ethnomusicology, popular music, “serious” music of the United States, and musical performance. While my survey does not cover popular music, the growing importance of the other three areas is reflected in the best reference books of the past year.