Baker's Dictionary of Music

It's sad but nonetheless true that Nicolas Slonimsky died in 1995, yet the 1997 Dictionary of Music is thoroughly Slonimsky. It includes all the material written for his Lectionary of Music (that was expunged by editors), and then some. After Slonimsky's death, Schirmer Book editors reconstructed his work (using original manuscripts) and added hundreds of Slonimsky articles for a new, comprehensive, mostly Slonimsky dictionary of music. The result is that most deadly of dictionaries: the text that can't be put down. From Slonimsky's highly entertaining introduction to the A to Z itself--1,171 pages of musical definitions, biographies, and Slonimsky storytelling--this is a rare volume that both instructs and amuses.