The Oxford Companion to Music (Oxford Companions) - Hardcover

Latham, Alison

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198662122 ISBN 13: 9780198662129

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2002

Synopsis

First published in 1938, The Oxford Companion to Music has been the first choice for authoritative information on all aspects of music. Now, 17 years since the last edition, the Companion is here to serve a new generation of students, teachers, performers, concert goers, record collectors, and music lovers.
Completely revised and updated by a distinguished team of contributors, the Oxford Companion to Music features more than 1,000 new entries than the previous edition; more than 70 percent of the entire text is either new or entirely rewritten. Here, in articles that range from clear, concise definitions of musical ideas and terms to extended surveys of musical forms and styles, is authoritative coverage of virtually every musical subject. Embracing the world of music in all its variety--including jazz, popular music, and dance--the Companion offers a concentrated focus on the Western classic tradition, from the Middle Ages to the present day.
More than 8,000 articles sweep across an extraordinary range of subjects: composers, performers, conductors, individual works, instruments and notation, forms and genres. From the study of music--theory, aesthetics, scholarship--to the way it is performed and disseminated, the Companion provides comprehensive, accessible coverage of music in all its artistic, historical, cultural, and social dimensions.
Comprehensive, authoritative, up-to-date, and designed throughout for clarity and accessibility, the new Oxford Companion to Music, like every edition before it, will immediately become an indispensable resource for all who wish to enrich their love and knowledge of music.

About this title

About the Author:

Alison Latham is a well-known editor of music reference works. She has edited The Musical Times and for over ten years was publications editor at the Royal Opera House, Convent Garden. She was assistant editor of The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music and the co-editor of The Cambridge Guide to Music and Verdi in Performance.

From Booklist:

The new Oxford Companion to Music updates two earlier works: the original 1938 Companion, last published in 1970, and The New Oxford Companion to Music, a two-volume set published in 1983. Its focus is classical music from the Middle Ages to the present. In the preface, editor Latham notes that "non-Western and popular musics are included, but mostly in so far as they have had an impact on the Western classical tradition." According to the jacket blurb, there are more than 1,000 (out of more than 8,000 total) new entries, and more than 70 percent of the content has been revised or rewritten. Well over 100 scholars and writers contributed to this edition.

Entries, arranged alphabetically, vary in length from one or two lines (Orchestral score; Rite of Spring, The) to several pages (Copyright; Form; Handel, George Frideric; Pianoforte). Biographies (of composers, artists, etc.), instruments, well-known works, countries, societies, musical terms and types, and sociocultural aspects (Music on the Internet, Politics and music) are all covered. Nine major multipage essays on topics such as "The Baroque Era" and "Opera" are printed on a light gray background and arranged in sections. Some are new; some are repeats from the New Oxford with necessary revisions. Some entries show the British origin of the work, such as Eighth- note, defined as the American term for quaver. Tables and examples of notation are added where needed, but the photographs, portraits, and reproductions of paintings and scores found in the New Oxford have been omitted. The writing is accessible to a wide range of users, from students and professional musicians to the general reader and listener.

Libraries that own Baker's Dictionary of Music (Schirmer, 1997), which is somewhat similar in scope and size, will want to purchase this as well, because each title has many unique entries. In general, although Baker's has more references to popular music, Oxford includes more scholarly and technical detail as well as bibliographic references that have been expanded from other editions. This will be a standard purchase for smaller libraries that want to update the classical music section with a reasonably priced, one-volume work. RBB
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About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0198662122
• ISBN 13: 9780198662129
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1450