Music: Musical Super Sleuth

Musical history has not been kind to the memories of Johann Kittl, Anton Titl and Rudolf Bibl, three 19th century composers whose reputations were as truncated as their names. Nevertheless, K.T.&B. have an outspoken champion— Boston Composer-Musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky. Along with some 10,000 other menand women-about-music, the three have recently been embalmed in an impressive Slonimsky-built ossuary of pure research: the 1,855-page fifth edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (G. Schirmer; $18).

Since its original publication in 1900, few researchers have challenged the au thority of Baker's Dictionary.* But Musicologist Slonimsky, a...

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