Blacks in Classical Music A Bibliographical Guide to Composers, Performers, and Ensembles

Awards:

• Choice Outstanding Academic Book, 1988

Reviews:

• Blacks in Classical Music is an index of biographical information on approximately 300 black composers, performers, conductors, symphony orchestras, and opera companies. The compiler, using Standifer and Reeder's 1972 Source Book of African and Afro-American Materials for Music Educators as a starting point, lists materials in periodicals, dissertations, and reference books from the 1700s to the 1980s, with the great majority from the twentieth century. An attempt has been made to list European, African, and Western Hemisphere materials comprehensively, except for items from Music Index after the 1979-80 cumulation. Materials on Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson are deliberately limited (because of recent bibliographies on each), and reviews of eight major operas and concert singers are represented selectively. . . the strength of this new book is the number of black composers and performers of classical music included. . . Many of the people listed in Blacks in Classical Music are not well known, however, so the book will prove useful to those looking for the names of blacks in the field, as well as a timesaver for those looking for information on a specific person.
  —Reference Books Bulletin
• The first in a projected series of idiom-specific bibliographies in black music, this work treats classical music. It is a comprehensive index to newspaper and periodical indexes (including H.W. Wilson indexes), biographical dictionaries, bibliographies, dissertations and theses, music collections, and published discographies. Its more than 300 black artists and ensembles span the period from the mid-1700s to the present, and range geographically from Europe and Africa to the US, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Scholars, researchers, students, and reference librarians will find that this guide makes searching easier; bibliographers will welcome its detailed and helpful bibliographies. It complements Eileen Southern's reliable and scholarly Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians (Ch Jan 83) and Dominique-Rene De Lerma's Black Concert and Recital Music (1975- ) and Black Music in Our Culture (1970). The six sections include a 54-item bibliography of recommended readings, composers, symphony and concert artists, concert and opera singers, reference works (those examined in compiling this guide), and research centers and catalogs. . . A very fine addition. . .
  —Choice

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• General Section
• Composers
• Symphony and Concert Artists
• Concert and Opera Singers
• Reference Works
• Research Centers and Dictionary Catalogs
• Index of Artists
• Index of Authors