ChoiceReviews.online, an ALA/ACRL publication, May 2005
For 856 events listed by date, Cowdery et al. cite 5,948 published papers under 100 subject headings, including abstracts
in accord with RILM practices and detailed indexes at the end. This book far surpasses its precursors, Marie Briquet's
La musique dans les congres internationaux, 1835-1939 (1961), listing papers at 164 events, 1835-1939, and John Tyrrell
and Rosemary Wise's A Guide to International Congress Reports in Musicology, 1900-1975 (1979), listing papers at
several hundred events; neither of those books includes abstracts. A few music papers at meetings in related fields may
be missing here, but not many. The papers themselves range from landmarks, including ambitious youngsters' splashes and
luminaries' retrospectives, to a few excuses for travel funds. Inevitably, some are reworkings of earlier studies and
some are preliminary reports on later landmarks; however important, such circumstances are hard to fit into abstracts.
Scholars studying the history of music scholarship will dig deeply into the listings, making the set essential in major
research libraries. Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students, faculty, professionals.
--D.W. Krummel, emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Reprinted with permission from CHOICE, copyright by the American Library Association.
(link available by subscription only: www.choicereviews.org)