IT is now over a decade since the compact disc became the dominant medium for recorded music. Farewell to vinyl, to wow, hiss, rumble and flutter, not to mention loose pick ups. The new medium has proved voracious musical items that had existed only as footnotes in reference books suddenly have studio time and marketing skill bestowed on them in plenty. Special magazines are on sale, offering samples of new releases. The meaning of Mozart was laid bare for the bicentenary of his death in 1991.

All very welcome, even if some folks didn't get to the stage of appreciating that a live performance is the real thing, and the CD is the adjunct.

The effect on music literature is marked. The publishers of this work list 48 other titles on the dust jacket. Then came the CD's younger brother, the CD-ROM, offering vast swathes of data to computer owners. By now, a standard package like Encarta will give you the lives of the great composers, the musical instruments of the world, with pictures and a snatch of the sound of each one.

So what chance is there for a stand alone book, that kind of object that's used as a nostalgia theme item in pub decor? Well, this example is beautifully produced and excellent value. But soft nay, pianissimo. The text abounds in references to NAWM. Unearth the glossary and lo, NAWM is the Nortori Anthology of Western Music, also edited by Claude Palisca, professor emeritus of music at Yale. There are two sets each of CDs, abbreviated in a core set of four CDs, and there are interactive CD ROM programmes in preparation.

A first reaction is that the book on its own is like the toy robot unwrapped on Christmas morning batteries not supplied. But persevere, and discover the many wonderful items within the 22 chapters, each of which is a college learning module with a very full bibliography. For instance, did you know the word Baroque comes from the Portuguese barroco, describing a deformed pearl? Or that the Americans really had a musician called Supply Belcher (1752- 1836)? (A deformed pearl of information for you).

Beyond this, there is the distinctly American method, where each discrete fact is taken as having equal value with every other one. It leads to a chronology or annals rather than a cohesive, integrated interpretation. And since the method also is to accord each century, roughly, a chapter of its own, it means the music of classical Greece, with reconstructed fragments available on NAWM, gets only a page less than Beethoven.

While this provides an Olympian overview, it means that, on topics where plenty of information is available, whole subjects are digested in two generalised sentences. Even the extended treatment of modern and American music, newly added, suffers from over digestion.

There is also an additional problem of technical language. If terms like "augmented fourth" and "parallel fifth" are introduced without explanation, this presupposes at least three years of study.

There are also musical examples given with figured bass; I did not find any explanation of what the figures mean. There is one example of lute tablature, in French notation, but nothing showing how Italian and German lute systems work.

Likewise, there is an extensive treatment of plain chant, but no specific reference to the Requiem, or to the concepts in the Dies Irae. For anyone coming from outside the Catholic tradition, an explanation of the belief system is essential to appreciate the functional as well as the aesthetic values expressed in the musical setting of liturgical words.

Yet the book has such endearing nuggets that, even without the CDs, it ranks as a magnificent feat of compilation, and its usefulness is proved by the range of languages into which it has been translated. Paradoxically, its quirks mean that it will complement rather than supplant other works, and it should be recommended, though not exactly for reasons the publishers may have intended.