The Oxford Companion to Music is a music reference book in the
series of
Oxford Companions produced by the
Oxford University Press. It was originally conceived and written by
Percy Scholes and published in 1938. Since then, it has undergone two distinct rewritings: one by
Denis Arnold, in 1983, and the latest edition by Alison Latham in 2002. It is "arguably the most successful book on music ever produced" (Wright, p. 99).