Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart

Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik (MGG) is one of the world's most comprehensive encyclopedias of music history and musicology, on account of its scope, content, wealth of research areas, and reference to related subjects. It has appeared in two self-contained printed editions and a continuously updated and expanding digital edition, titled MGG Online. Created by Karl Vötterle, the founder of Bärenreiter-Verlag, and Friedrich Blume, professor of musicology at Kiel University, the first edition was published by Bärenreiter-Verlag in Kassel from 1949 through 1986, comprising a total of 17 volumes (MGG1; numbered in columns) and reprinted in paperback in 1989. As early as 1989, its new editor Ludwig Finscher began planning a second, revised edition with 29 volumes, which were published from 1994 through 2008 in cooperation with the publisher J.B. Metzler (MGG2; with a topical part in 9 volumes and a persons part in 17 volumes, a supplement and two index volumes, all numbered in columns). As the result of a collaboration between the above publishers and Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) in New York, MGG entered the digital world as MGG Online, with Laurenz Lütteken as its editor-in-chief. Karl Vötterle began planning MGG with the creation of "a comprehensive keyword index" in 1942, which was completed in the following year. He had intended Friedrich Blume to be the editor. This material, which was saved from a fire at Kiel University in July 1944, was further developed at the musicological institute of the University of Kiel. But it was not until 1948 that the project became more concrete: Taking into account the given economic circumstances, the initial plans involved the publication of 112-page booklets every few months, the first of which came out in 1949. However, this system was soon abandoned, as the initial booklets were consolidated into the first bound volume in 1951, followed by the second volume in 1952.