As I have said, it would seem impossible, even for so narrowly provincial and chauvinistic a work as the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, to find any plausible basis for the glorification of English musical genius. But where others fail to achieve the impossible, the _Britannica_ succeeds. In the present instance, however, the task has been difficult, for there is a certain limit to the undeserved praise which even a blatant partisan can confer on English composers; and there is such a paucity of conspicuous names in the British musical field that an encyclopædia editor finds it difficult to gather enough of them together to make an extensive patriotic showing. He can, however, omit or neglect truly significant names of other nations while giving undue prominence to second- and third-rate English composers.
And this is exactly the method followed by the editors of the _Britannica_. But the disproportionments are so obvious, the omissions so glaring, and the biographies and articles so distorted, both as to space and comment, that almost any one with a knowledge of music will be immediately struck by their absurdity and injustice. Modern musical culture, as set forth in this encyclopædia, is more biased than any other branch of culture. In this field the limits of the _Britannica’s_ insularity would seem to have been reached.
I have yet to see even a short history of modern music which is not more informative and complete, and from which a far better idea of musical evolution could not be gained. And I know of no recent book of composers, no matter how brief, which does not give more comprehensive information concerning musical writers than does that “supreme book of knowledge,” the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. So deficient is it in its data, and so many great and significant modern composers are denied biographical mention in it, that one is led to the conclusion that little or no effort was made to bring it up-to-date.
It would be impossible in this short chapter to set down anywhere near all the inadequacies, omissions and disproportions which inform the _Britannica’s_ treatment of music. Therefore I shall confine myself largely to modern music, since this subject is of foremost, vital concern at present; and I shall merely indicate the more glaring instances of incompleteness and neglect. Furthermore, I shall make only enough comparisons between the way in which British music is treated and the way in which the music of other nations is treated, to indicate the partisanship which underlies the outlook of this self-styled “international” and “universal” reference work.