The Oxford Dictionary of Music
Revised Edition
Michael Kennedy and Joyce Bourne

"Without question the most comprehensive, detailed, reliable one-volume work on music available"—Music & Musicians
An indispensable guide for all music lovers and performers, both amateur and professional, The Oxford Dictionary of Music brings together an unrivaled collection of entries—12,500 in all—covering musical subjects of all kinds in an authoritative and accessible way.

Polkabilly
How the Goose Island Ramblers Redefined American Folk Music
James P. Leary

The Goose Island Ramblers played as a house band for a local tavern in Madison, Wisconsin from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s. The group epitomized the polkabilly sound with their wild mixture of Norwegian fiddle tunes, Irish jigs, Slovenian polkas, Swiss yodels, old time hillbilly songs, "Scandihoovian" and "Dutchman" dialect ditties, frost-bitten Hawaiian marches, and novelty numbers on the electric toilet plunger. In this original study, James P. Leary illustrates how the Ramblers' multiethnic music combined both local and popular traditions, and how their eclectic repertoire challenges prevailing definitions of American folk music.

The New Grove Guide to Wagner and His Operas
Barry Millington

Drawing upon the scholarship of The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, the most comprehensive dictionary of opera in the world, Barry Millington here offers a concise, readable, and user-friendly guide to all things Wagnerian. Complete with a new preface, updated bibliography, glossary, and discography, The New Grove Guide to Wagner and his Operas furnishes both seasoned Wagner lovers and neophytes with all they require for an in-depth appreciation of this unique historical figure.

The Oxford History of Western Music
6-volume set
Richard Taruskin

"Nearly 4,000 pages long, Taruskin's multi-volume history of Western music expresses the magnificence and melancholy of its age ... Taruskin's book, singular in every possible way, will take its place on the short list of compendiums, going back to the ninth century, that have reviewed the musical world from a position of supreme authority. Like them it will change things. Like them it will last."—The Nation