In 2014 Bärenreiter and J. B. Metzler, the publishers of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG), entered a long-term partnership with RILM.
Musicology’s foremost reference work
MGG Online will include the content of the 1994–2008 print edition of MGG as well as future updates, revisions, and additions which will be made using the TEI-edition of FontoXML. Regular updates will guarantee that MGG remains musicology’s foremost reference work. All entries from this widely consulted and cited encyclopedia will be accessible to users through the new online database beginning in 2017.
User-friendly platform
Bärenreiter and J. B. Metzler will remain responsible for MGG’s content and will ensure that MGG Online continues to offer up-to-date and authoritative articles. RILM will bring its expertise to bear on the design of the online database and the creation of a user-friendly platform that will be fully equipped with the most advanced search and browse capabilities.
Update, rewrite and produce new articles
The internationally renowned musicologist Professor Dr. Laurenz Lütteken (Zurich) will serve as general editor for MGG Online. Given his wide-ranging expertise, Prof. Lütteken is the ideal content manager; he will work with the publishers’ editorial staff and an international advisory board that will monitor the updating work. Outstanding scholars from all pertinent fields will use FontoXML to update entries, or, if necessary, rewrite them, and will produce new articles. MGG Online will thus maintain the tradition of excellence long associated with MGG, and will become the essential e-resource for international music scholarship.
About MGG
For over half a century the abbreviation MGG has stood for the reference work Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Friedrich Blume was the founding editor of the first edition of MGG, which was published by Bärenreiter from 1949 to 1986. The second edition, edited by Ludwig Finscher, appeared between 1994 and 2008 as a co-production of Bärenreiter and J.B. Metzler; it comprises 29 volumes and 25,000 pages, with approximately 20,000 articles written by over 3500 authors from 55 countries. MGG offers well-researched and authoritative texts on almost every aspect of music, as well as numerous professional directories, bibliographies, tables, figures, and indexes. As its original subtitle suggests, MGG is in the fullest sense a universal encyclopedia of music.