The grove concise dictionary of music

Designed to meet the needs of every music listener, from the occasional concertgoer to the more serious student and professional, this book includes more than 10,000 entries, specially written with an eye to the shorter length of a one-volume reference. Includes biographies of composers and performers, explanations of terms, and easy-to-find titles of hundreds of musical works, plus historical accounts on important topics such as the development of polyphony; outlines of non-Western music systems; and discussions of musical acoustics, complete with illustrations and musical examples.