The Encyclopedia of Music
By Max Wade-Matthews
Instruments of the orchestra and the great composers. This is an authoritative guide to instruments of the orchestra and great composers. It covers the history of music-making, each family of instruments, over 100 composers and much more. Comprehensively written and beautifully illustrated with over 1,000 paintings, drawings and photographs, this book is an indispensable reference for music lovers everywhere.
An Excellent book! This book is fabulous because of its grasp on very many topics in this very diverse world of music. It begins by defining music and its universal qualities and then tells of the different insturments of ancient cultures and tells of how music was originally structured. I find this book great for people who are well knowledged of music and equally so for those who want to become well knowledged of music. This books massive variety of information is both usefull and informative. It gives thousands of beautiful pictures and offers detailed information on 100s of instruments organized by section. It also gives wonderful descriptions of composers who are grouped by their eras. It gives very informative information on each of the eras (a big plus!). This is a great book that no music lover should be without. Great music encyclopedia I really recommend this book to anyone who wants a nice overview of Musical instruments, history, and composers. It has great coverage of all the instruments and some information on how they work and are played. It covers a ton of music history and talks about many composers. I haven't gotten a chance to really thoroughly read it yet but I'm already very impressed and like it better than the other encyclopedia I had looked at. Awesome book! I am a high school music teacher and I use this book for my music appreciation class. It is extremely accurate and very helpful with instruments, composers, and time periods!
