This book is an entirely new work rather than a revision of Lyndsay Langwill's sixth edition. It is the standard work in its field, the most comprehensive work on wind instrument makers in any language and a major reference tool for collectors and researchers. Some features of the New Langwill Index are: Entries for nearly 6500 makers and inventors, active from the beginning until the middle of the 20th century; Nearly 400 representations of maker's marks; An index of makers under workplace, listing over 1000 localities; A comprehensive bibliography of over 600 titles. - Publisher.

A Choice "Best Academic" book in its first edition, The Recorder remains an essential resource for anyone who wants to know about this instrument. This new edition is thoroughly redone, takes account of the publishing activity of the years since its first publication, and still follows the original organization.

The second edition of Susan J. Maclagan’s A Dictionary for the Modern Flutist presents clear and concise definitions of more than 1,600 common flute-related terms that a player of the Boehm-system or Baroque flute may encounter. Fully illustrated with more than 150 images, the entries describe flute types, flute parts; playing techniques; acoustics; articulations; intonation; common ornaments; flute-making and repairs; flute history; flute music books, and many more topics. Unique to the second edition are entries on beatbox techniques and muscles of the face and throat. Entries now also feature bibliographic cross-references for further research. Carefully labeled illustrations for many flute types, parts, mechanisms, and accessories help make definitions easier to visualize. Appendixes provide further information on such subjects as flute classifications, types of flutes and their parts, key and tone hole names, head joint options, orchestra and opera audition excerpts, and biographies of people mentioned in the definitions. Contributed articles include “An Easy Guide to Checking Your Flute Tuning and Scale” by Trevor Wye; “Flute Clutches” by David Shorey; "Early Music on Modern Flute” by Barthold Kuijken; and “Crowns and Stoppers” and “Boehm Flute Scales from 1847 to the Present:The Short Story” by Gary Lewis. Maclagan’s A Dictionary for the Modern Flutist, second edition is an essential reference volume for flutists of all levels and for libraries supporting student, professional, and amateur musicians.

This welcome volume encompasses the entire history of the bassoon, from its origins five centuries ago to its place in twenty-first-century music. James Kopp draws on new archival research and many years' experience playing the instrument to provide an up-to-date and lively portrait of today's bassoon and its intriguing predecessors. He discusses the bassoon's makers, its players, its repertory, its myths, and its audiences, all in unprecedented detail. The bassoon was invented in Italy in response to the need for a bass-register double-reed woodwind suitable for processionals and marching. Composers were quick to exploit its agility and unique timbre. Later, during the reign of Louis XIV, the instrument underwent a major redesign, giving voice to its tenor register. In the early 1800s new scientific precepts propelled a wave of invention and design modifications. In the twentieth century, the multiplicity of competing bassoon designs narrowed to a German (or Heckel) type and a French type, the latter now nearly extinct. The author examines the acoustical consequences of these various redesigns. He also offers new coverage of the bassoon's social history, including its roles in the military and church and its global use during the European Colonial period. Separate historical chapters devoted to contrabassoons and smaller bassoons complete the volume [Publisher description].

The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).

This is the first book to combine museum-based conservation techniques with practical instructions on the maintenance, repair, adjustment, and tuning of virtually every type of historical musical instrument. As one of the world's leading conservators of musical instruments, Stewart Pollens gives practical advice on the handling, storage, display and use of historic musical instruments in museums and other settings, and provides technical information on such wide-ranging subjects as acoustics, cleaning, climate control, corrosion, disinfestation, conservation ethics, historic stringing practice, measurement and historic metrology, retouching, tuning historic temperaments, varnish and writing reports. There are informative essays on the conservation of each of the major musical instrument groups, the treatment of paper, textiles, wood and metal, as well as historic techniques of wood and metalworking as they apply to musical instrument making and repair. This is a practical guide that includes equations, formulas, tables and step-by-step instructions.