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Bibliography and Discography on Music for Solo Wind Instruments and Orchestra.

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Bibliography and Discography on Music for Solo Wind Instruments and Orchestra. By Hermann Haug. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, 2004. [3 v. ISBN3-7651-0377-2. [euro]98.] Indexes, appendices.

This set is a perfect example of the awkward and, one hopes transitional state in which reference publishing finds itself. For this is a database. It almost certainly was created as a database, and fine as it is in print, would be infinitely more flexible and useful if it were offered to the world in an online form. For instance, to use these books to gather information on all the wind concertos by a given composer, one must consult an index that gives only the number of concertos by a composer in each section of the set, and then flip to the individual sections to find the detailed information. Or, to find the works for a given combination of solo instruments, one must scan the "Two or More Solo Instruments" chapters, each of which is alphabetized by composer. One can readily imagine more complex queries that would be almost impossible using the print volumes, but quite simple in an online database.

But if an author wants remuneration for his work, he has to publish it. And if issues of academic promotion and tenure are involved (admittedly not an issue in the present case), publication...

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