September, 2001

If you read to the last page of the Summer, 2001, issue of the International Piano Quarterly you found an article about the shortcomings of the latest "Groves" dictionary, formally known as the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, 2001. Shortly before I read the article I had looked for two women who had been listed in the 1980 edition and found them missing in the 2001. That was a discouraging turn-off of this latest "comprehensive" source, so I had dismissed it as inept and looked no further. But then the author of the IPQ article, Donald Manildi, showed me the index of pianists and it sparked my curiosity as to how many women had been slighted. Later I received the IPQ and read the article and decided this web site needs to find out how their women are being represented!

The second paragraph of the IPQ article begins:

It would be pleasant to report that the New Grove second edition represents what we have been waiting for. Unfortunately a thorough examination of its biographies of 20th-century pianists reveals numerous problems, too many to be tolerable in a work of Grove's reputation and pretensions.

The two names I originally found missing were Pnina Salzman (b. 1924) and Edith Farnadi (1921-1973). Both were in the 1980 edition. When I set out to research missing names I limited it to historic women, no longer living. (The present day additions and omission of women are probably much greater.) As Manildi mentioned in his article, it was very surprising to see Olga Samaroff’s name dropped, but there were two other women who were listed along with Samaroff in the 1986 Grove’s edition of American musicians and not included in the 2001 general edition: Natalie Hinderas (1927-1987) (also listed in the 1980 edition) and Hilde Somer (1930-1979). I am happy to tell you, though, that the 2001 edition of Bakers Biographical Dictionary of Musicians still includes Farnadi, Hinderas and Somer, (but has also dropped Samaroff!!). Other historic women pianists Bakers includes, that the New Grove never has, are: Adele aus der Ohe, Ruth Deyo, Ania Dorfmann, Katherine Heyman, Erika Lie-Nissen, Anna Mehlig, Marie Pachler-Koschak and Antoinette Szumowska. (It helps that Bakers has an index for "Women Composers and Musicians".) And then there are women pianists who you have to go to Thompson’s International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, 11th edition, 1985, to read about, such as Winifred Christie, Wilhelmine Clauss-Szarvady, Augusta Cottlow, Fanny Frickenhaus, Cecile Genhart, Yolanda Mero-Irion, Caroline Montigny-Remaury, Olga Samaroff, Vera Timanova, and the Verne sisters.

I strongly agree with Manildi that there needs to be a current dictionary of pianists; almost all of these names listed above are in George Kehler’s The Piano in Concert, 1982, but that has been out of print for years, and are mentioned in David Dubal’s The Art of the Piano, 2nd edition, 1995 (which also is currently out of print). That need for current information, and dissatisfaction with available resources (before the newest Baker and Groves were out), was the driving force behind the development of this web site.

Even though none of the historic women entries that I looked at in Groves 2001 had been updated, I was very encouraged to see the addition of the new entries by Charles Timbrell, notably women like Annie d’Arco and Marcelle Meyer (who, by the way, was missing from the index of pianists). This brings up an interesting conclusion: maybe the only way to get new entries, of historic people, is to have a recent biography written about them. It seems obvious that the new French entries by Charles Timbrell are a direct result of his seminal book on French pianism. It’s not like these people weren’t important before, the book is just too significant to ignore.

What led me to this conclusion wasn’t the French additions but the African-American ones. It was surprising that Natalie Hinderas was omitted in the 2001 Groves after being in 1980 and 1986 (American), but what was even more surprising was the inclusion of two other, lesser known, black women pianists for the first time in 2001. Hazel Harrison (1883-1969) and Philippa Schuyler (1932-1967) both had biographies written about them since 1980, Harrison in 1983 (Born to Play: The Life and Career of Hazel Harrison by Jean Cazort and Constance Hobson) and Schuyler in 1995 ( Composition in Black and White: The Life of Philippa Schuyler by Kathryn Talalay). These women aren’t new on the scene: both were in Donald Hixon’s Women in Music (1993) and Eileen Southern’s Dictionary of Afro-American Music and Musicians, as well as other sources. But I think that their published biographies make them too difficult to ignore, too "alive". It can’t be that the New Grove was trying to be politically correct or they wouldn’t have dropped Hinderas. Whatever the reason, I applaud Manildi ’s demand for a current, accurate, dictionary of pianists. Meanwhile, I hope that this website, with its monthly updates and contributions by readers, can help fill that need in some small way.