biographies, greatly extend the enumeration of such works in the present
guide. Full bibliographic data are given, along with critical annotations.
Author index.- Hixon, Donald, and Don A. Hennessee. Women in Music: An Encyclopedic
Biobibliography.2nd ed. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1994. 2v. ISBN 0-8108-
2769-7. ML105 .H6.
First edition, 1975. An index to material about women musicians in 169 refer-
ence works. More than 28,000 names are included, about 700 of them opera
singers. A useful index makes it possible to locate all the sopranos, contraltos,
etc. - De Lerma, Dominique-René. A Bibliography of Black Music. Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood,1981–1984. 4v. ISBN (v.1) 0-313-21340-2. ML128 .B45
D34.
A monumental inventory, consisting of 19,397 entries, of books, articles, and
academic papers. Coverage is international, with emphasis on the U.S., and the
most coverage before 1975. Citations give full data; annotations are thorough
and perceptive. Author index.
Collective Biographies
This is a selection of the most useful works. Principal general gatherings of biographi-
cal information on musicians are listed first, followed by the specialized compilations
on operatic musicians. A longer list of collective biographies of singers appears in
Farkas (#162).
Musicians in General
165.Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians.8th ed. Ed. Nicholas Slonimsky.
New York: Schirmer, 1991. xxxv, 2,115p. ISBN 0-02-872415-1. ML105 .B16.
First edition, 1900. The most useful and reliable handbook of musical biogra-
phy and the most entertaining of all music reference tools. Perceptive, critical
accounts of lives, with worklists and bibliographical notices. Slonimsky’s witty
entry for himself is a classic of its kind.
166.Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music.Ed. Don Michael Randel. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., 1996. xi, 1,013p. ISBN 0-614-37299-9. ML105
.H38.
A collection of about 6,000 entries, mostly for composers (musicologists are
among the missing). Much overlap with #165. This volume serves as a partner
to the New Harvard Dictionary of Music(#17), which has no biographies.
167.International Dictionary of Black Composers. Ed. Samuel A. Floyd Jr.
Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999. 2v. ISBN 1-884964-27-3. ML390 .I58.
An outstanding compilation, whose 1,273 pages are devoted to 185 com-
posers, living or dead, concert or popular musicians. “Black” is used in the42 Opera