Word: schwann
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Just ten years ago, 340 singers of classical song were pleased to find their names in the roomy pages of a catalogue called the Schwann Artist Listing, which named all available LP phonograph records according to performer, from Licia Albanese to Silvana Zanolli. Many of the 340 have long since been weeded away, but in the new Artist Issue out this month, 97 squinty-type pages are devoted to the recordings of 2,330 singers, from Bruce Abel to Erich...
...vinyl age that has produced such a blossoming has as its sole historians Cataloguer William Schwann and his three assistants. The earnest list makers also publish a monthly catalogue of recorded music; most issues contain about 500 new releases, and record buyers feel understandably anachronistic if they own anything older than last month's book. But the nature and scope of the revolution in musical taste are best seen in the Artist Issue, which Schwann first published in 1953 and has put out five times since. It is a revolution of expanded taste as much as refined taste...
...INSTRUMENTALISTS. Of the 1,213 instrumental soloists Schwann lists, most are pianists (452), but curiosity seekers may dig out the name of Bruno Hoffman-the one and only glass harmonica virtuoso. Along with lonely exponents of the virginal, the psaltery and the oboe d'amore, there are 166 violinists, 88 organists, 73 harpsichordists, 64 flautists and 56 cellists listed, each count a statistical gain over 1960. Walter Gieseking and Sviatoslav Richter are the leading pianists, with 46 recordings each; Richter had only 19 three years ago, and, having made the biggest jump of any instrumentalist, he is now being...
...first Schwann Catalog contained eleven record-company labels, 96 composers, 674 listings; the current issue contains 303 labels, 718 composers, 19,830 listings...
...Schwann Catalog grows at the rate of as many as 400 listings a month. If the growth keeps on accelerating, the brass-eared listener will soon have to give up his sleep to get to the bottom of the pile...