Cummings, David (Michael)
Cummings, David (Michael)
Cummings, David (Michael) , intrepid English music lexicographer; b. London, Oct. 10, 1942. After 770 taking his B.Ed, degree at Sidney Webb Coll. in London (1975), he entered the mundane profession of British schoolteacher. His passion for music and its elucidation led him to wade perilously in the backwaters of musicography with the ineluctable mission to correct the errors of his predecessors and contemporaries. From 1980 he served as an advisor and contributor to various standard music reference works, and also wrote articles and reviews for music journals. He was ed. of The New Everyman Dictionary of Music (6th ed., 1988; new ed., rev., 1995 as The Hutchinson Encyclopedia of Music). With D. McIntire, he was co- consultant ed. of the International Who’s Who in Music (12th ed., 1990), and subsequently served as its ed. (14th to 17th eds., 1992–2000).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire