The Oxford Dictionary of Music

With over 10,000 total entries, The Oxford Dictionary of Music is the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and accessible music reference of its size now available. Here is a wealth of concise informationon music and musicians from the Middle Ages to the present day. Written to appeal to general readers as well as academics and professionals, the book is an indispensable addition to the reference shelf of the concert goer, the opera buff, the record buyer, the radio listener (and television watcher), or anyone involved in music, whether amateur or professional. From Abbado to Zuckerman, from Abide With Me to Zar und Zimmermann, from Accordion to Zither, the book's easy-to-use, alphabetically arranged entries emcompass musical topics of all kinds: composers, performing artists in all fields, orchestras, titles and descriptions of individual works (including operas and ballets), musical instruments, musical forms and terms, institutions, and writers on music. Its coverage of composers is exceptional, offering up-to-date and accurate lists of principal works with unparalleled nationalities. The book is a greatly revised and enlarged edition of Michael Kennedy's popular Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. It adds almost 500 completely new entries and features extensive changes and revisions (including complete rewriting in many cases) of some 150 other entries. Among the 10,307 A-Z entries in The Oxford deictionary of Music, the reader will find: --Biographies of over 2,000 composers --Extensive, accessible, up-to-date lists of composers' works --Almost 1,800 entries on performers --Over 2,200 definitions of musical terms --Over 550 entries on musical instruments --Abundant cross-references --Attractive, readable two-column format About the Author: One of England's foremost music authorities, Michael Kennedy has been music critic of the Daily Telegraph of London since 1950 and its northern editor since 1960. He has written books on Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Britten, as well as on Mahler, Strauss, Barbirolli, and the Halle Orchestra.