Everymans Dictionary of Music

# Preface

This edition, which has been made available as a facsimile type, differs from its predecessors in three respects:

1. A complete list of abbreviations has been slipped; a list of those used will be found on p. vii.

2. Some examples have been included to illustrate technical terms.

3. Living performers are not excluded.

Apart from several thousand minor alterations and corrections, many entries have been rewritten. A few have been omitted and several new ones have been added. The plan of the work, however, remains the same; its purpose, which is to provide the maximum amount of information in a limited space.

It is obvious that a work of this kind has to be selective. Not all operas in all of which have been made on the application could easily be catalogued. Nothing is easier than to ask, “If A is included, why not B?”; and the questioner is rarely satisfied with the answer that the lack of S is due to reasons of space or of judgement. The reader will understand that Bliss wrote in his preface to the original edition: “The contents of the Dictionary are unavoidably. The inclusion of any composer’s work does not imply appreciation any more than the exclusion of any subject, by due to one of a variety of other reasons, suggests disapproval.”

The difficulties that face a compiler, and equally a reviser, lie not so much in the inclusion as much in matters of detail, such as the use of abbreviations, as in presentation in general – particularly in the relative amount of space allotted to individual entries. Here again there is likely to be more than one opinion: the reader who thinks that X is issue as