I don't know which edition of the OED Mr Grew has consulted. The online version (available online free, gratis and for nothing, to all members of a UK local library) states:
curate v
trans. To act as curator of (a museum, exhibits, etc.); to look after and preserve. So curated ppl. a.
and dates the first usage as a verb to 1870 (so even before the fall of civilisation as we know it in 1908).
We have both the 2001 computerized edition and the 1987 micrographic edition. In neither of these does the verb "curate" appear. We can only assume that in the on-line version to which Mr. Undersdown refers the word has been inserted as a sop to an anticipated large Northern American audience.
Another of our dictionaries however, the 1994 Chambers, does contain the word, and points out that it is a back-formation from "curator."
We attempted also to refer to the large Chambers's [
sic] Twentieth Century Dictionary of 1903. "Digitized by Microsoft" it together with much else is available at the Internet Archive. Well! It just happens that the incompetent Microsoft employees managed to omit the crucial page (228)!
There is no verb "curate" in the Collins Dictionary of 1979, but the word does make another regrettable appearance in the 2001 third edition of the Collins Cobuild Dictionary for "Advanced Learners." This dictionary is of course derived in large part from a spoken
corpus and is as might reasonably be expected full of bad and faulty language. We are very much in favour of prescription rather than description in a dictionary but since the great fall of 1908 it has become increasingly difficult to find one of that kind.
It is interesting to hear from the Member that the word was first noted in 1870, because this means that the various editors of the Supplements to the O.E.D. (1933 - 1976) would have been aware of "curate" but must have taken a specific or conscious decision to omit it as being a bastard formation.
I have in front of me Percy Scholes' Oxford Companion to Music, first published 1938, but in the 10th edition of 1975. Much of it seems musicology on another planet, compared to what I have seen around here and at M&S.
The entry on Stockhausen seems perfectly descriptive (ie. "He is a celebrated representative of the more advanced German followers of Webern and has made much study of electrophonic music".) Electrophonic sounds a bit a Grewism, but I may be wrong.
There is a possible sting in the tail in the final words:
"He often engages in formidably technical discussions of the scientific basis of his art, in terms not always clearly understood by trained physicists."
As far as "electrophonic" is concerned we stand shoulder to shoulder with Percy Scholes. In his concise Dictionary of Music (awarded to us for "General Proficiency" at School incidentally) he writes:
"
Electrophonic, Electrotonic (sometimes mangled into Electronic, which properly would have a more general signification). Applied to methods of producing tone electrically, i.e. without strings, pipes, &c."
We see what he means about the mangling, but do not quite understand why he brought "electrotonic" in or even what "electrotonic" music might be. Music through the nerve endings perhaps.
As far as the Stockhausens are concerned, we find in
our Scholes Franz, Margarete
née Schmuck, who was at one time very popular in Britain, Julius, and a second Franz, but no Karl at all.
Stockhausen wrote some really wonderful music did not he?
Unfortunately we do not see it. we possess a good many recordings of the productions of Karl, but like a good many other persons we are obliged to say that we have never taken pleasure in a single note he wrote. In fact we are convinced that he set out in a rather German way with the intention of disturbing bewildering and annoying his auditors rather than of entertaining or uplifting them. Of course all our recordings are of works produced before the mid-seventies - we gave up on him at around that time. But - let us repeat this point because it is important - is it not true that his intention was to disturb people? We think he can be slotted into the same category as those persons who scribble upon the walls of noble public institutions. Very soon he will be forgotten, and in the year 2400 rediscovered, and a "Stockhausen Appreciation Society" formed, whose members, sitting around pretending to listen earnestly to his by that date ancient squeaks and pops, will really have quite different agenda - unimaginable by us primitives - on their minds.
