A comprehensive and exceptionally wide-ranging work of reference, indispensable for anyone with an interest in music – whether professionally or purely for enjoyment.

          It covers opera and ballet as well as orchestral, solo, choral and chamber music. Detailed entries deal with composers and their works, instruments of every kind, musical terms and genres, orchestras, performers and conductors – and even authors whose work has inspired musical composition.

          Containing over 500 new entries, this new, substabtially revised edition completely supersedes its predecessors. The result is a thoroughly up-to-date dictionary, incorporating composers and performers working today, as well as the results of the considerable new research going on into the music of the past.