General
Concerns
About the Compilers
General Concerns
The information
provided at this site was statistically arrived at; i.e.,
decisions as to which composers and which of their works should
be included were based on objective criteria, not subjective
preferences. The particular 500 composers selected scored
highest on a combination of diagnostic variables--for
more information, see the Statistics feature.
The approach
taken here--focussing as it does on identifying what might be
termed the 500
"currently most relevant" classical composers--forces us to take
some care in interpreting the results. For example, the Basic
Works Library as compiled does not deliberately seek
to represent all of the 500 composers treated here; many of the
more minor of these individuals produced no single work that merits
special singling out above the rest of their oeuvre. Moreover,
there are undoubtedly works that belong in a "Basic Library" list
that were written by composers not among the 500 treated here.
About
the Compilers
This project
was originally conceived by Charles
H. Smith (B.A., M.A., Ph.D., M.L.S.; currently Professor Emeritus
of Library Public Services at Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green)
in 1993, at which time data collection was begun. Dr. Smith personally
collected and integrated all of the basic information represented
here, but eventually enlisted two additional individuals to assist
him in finalizing Version One of the project in 1999. These individuals
were: Brian Newhouse (M.A., M.L.S.), long-time music cataloger
at Princeton University (who was especially helpful in coming
up with the classification of composer styles), and Amy Wiedenbein
(M.M.), a musician and researcher currently teaching at the Cincinnati
State College in Cincinnati. Dr. Smith researched and implemented
just about all of the revisions for Version Two.
Dr. Smith
would like to specially acknowledge the Web page
production assistance of Yinghua Lu, Jennifer Rakestraw and
Megan Derr, and most recently the research assistance of Ryan Dowell. Comments may be addressed
to Dr. Smith
by email at: charles.smith@wku.edu.
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