[close] The Oxford Dictionary of Music is the indispensable guide for all music lovers and performers, both amateur and professional. It brings together an unrivalled collection of entries - 12,500 in all - covering musical subjects of all kinds in an authoritative and accessible way. There are entries on composers, performers, conductors, musical terms and forms, instruments, works, venues, and a host of other topics. There are 5,000 entries on composers, most with worklists that have now been brought right up to date. The entries on conductors and performers, which include contemporary musicians in all fields: John Mark Ainsley, Daniel Barenboim, Kathleen Battle, Marilyn Horne, Sumi Jo, Trevor Pinnock, Simon Rattle, Bryn Terfel, Michael Tilson Thomas, have also been updated. There are entries on directors and critics, producers and designers of international repute from across the centuries, on writers and scholars, and on musical journals and other publications. There are entries on individual works, including operas and ballets, on orchestras and companies from around the world, and on famous opera houses, concert-halls, and musical festivals, including Salzburg and Edinburgh. Musical terms and styles such as musique concrete, chromaticism, and tutti, and forms ranging from operatic, vocal, and film scores, to song cycles, chamber, hymns, barbershop, and oratorios are covered, as are general themes such as musicology, acoustics, and absolute pitch, and historical periods such as the Byzantine era. Finally come instruments from the familiar - strings, wind, and brass - to the less familiar - aeolian harp, bamboula and sackbut. [close]