This is a tremendous reference for serious students and fans of music. It's really an irreplaceable resource. Within its 800-plus pages are descriptions of musical dictionaries and encyclopedias of all kinds, by national origin and by genre, biographical dictionaries and dictionaries of quotations, compositional devices and handbooks. Then there are the books devoted to musical histories and chronologies, guides to musicology, bibliographies of musical literature, and bibliographies of music. There are catalogs of music libraries and musical instruments, electronic information resources, and yearbooks, directories, and guides. Anyone with a yen for music research will save hours, if not months, of time and find the best resources available by making the Annotated Bibliography their first stop. --Stephanie Gold