When it appeared in 1986, The New Harvard Dictionary of Music was hailed in many quarters as the most valuable single-volume reference work on classical music in English. Now, still unsurpassed in the classical field, it has become even more valuable, with a new edition… The Harvard Dictionary now makes incursions into rock, pop and world music… This is all good news for music lovers whose tastes run to the traditional, the more so for any who might want to broaden them.

The essential one-stop reference has been newly updated, making it even more essential. After all, how else are you going to find out what euouae are (the vowels of the words ‘seculorum Amen’ sung in Gregorian chant) or that you just missed Berlioz’s 200th birthday?

The book—approximately 1,000 pages in length—is solidly accurate and refreshingly concise. Best of all, it provides a complete listing of all relevant terms, literally from A (Abendmusik, or evening music) to Z (Zigeunermusik, or gypsy music)… In short, the Harvard Dictionary of Music is amazing, wonderful, and highly useful.

[The Harvard Dictionary of Music] manages…to live up to a sentence from its own entry on ‘Dictionaries and encyclopedias’: ‘The success of a dictionary is judged mainly on its factual details, completeness of coverage, and clarity of presentation.’ On all these counts, this volume scores very highly.

The Harvard Dictionary of Music (Fourth Edition) is a resounding success… I can’t imagine how Harvard University Press can offer such a detailed and meticulously produced volume for $40, but that being the case there is no reason it should not become a much-thumbed part of every serious music-lover’s library.

Readers will not be disappointed with the fourth edition of the Harvard Dictionary of Music, long known as the essential single-volume music dictionary. Existing articles have been fine-tuned, and additions and deletions reflect new developments in musical scholarship as well as the changing world and its political boundaries.

[Moves] impressively and easily between non-Western and Western music, integrating ancient theory and modern practice into a genuinely, and invigoratingly, global survey.

Its discussion of complicated technical issues is admirably concise and clear (see the entry on ‘twelve-tone music’), and some of its entries on pop music are both sensible and amusing… This book has proved of daily, error-free usefulness.

May well be the indispensable one-volume reference work on the subject of music—classical, ethnic, pop or rock… If you must know the difference between the Lydian and Mixolydian modes, you can find that lucidly described, but not to the exclusion of a note on the practice and etymology of doo-wop.

This single volume [provides] as full a range of non-biographical information as most of us are likely to require.

A genuinely indispensable book, readable, accurate, and completely reliable.

Easily the most useful of all musical dictionaries because of its accuracy, concision, and ease of reference.