Interested in a range of academic disciplines, with thorough educational background, Józef Reiss (1879–1956) studied medicine (1898/1899) and history (1899-1902) at the Jagiellonian University. In addition, he was passionate about philosophy and aesthetics, and had qualifications to teach history and geography. He gained PhD in musicology in 1911 from the University of Vienna, supervised by Guido Adler. His knowledge of several languages (Greek, Latin, German, Italian, French and Esperanto) made it easy for him to study sources in foreign languages. His interest in research was miscellaneous, spanning from history of music to theory, aesthetics and psychology of art. The first phase of his work focuses mostly on early Polish music. Later on his interests became more varied, encompassing specific aspects of theory of music, the history of violin playing, developments in symphonic music, music in Kraków, and music customs in Silesia. His writing is aimed at comprehensive presentation of history of music, bibliographical studies, and reference work. Next to his academic, popularising and teaching activities, throughout his life Reiss worked as a music journalist. This keen interest provided at the same time a source of income – he published over a thousand articles and treaties issued by tens of magazines and newspapers. Apart from that he was an excellent speaker, capable of attracting attention of big audiences, giving various talks, readings and public lectures, including broadcasts for the Polish Radio in Kraków. A considerable number of Reiss’ collections and so far unpublished manuscripts has been kept in the libraries of the Academy of Music in Katowice and the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow, for example ‘Źródłowy Leksykon polskiej kultury muzycznej’ [‘The Source Reference of Polish Musical Culture’] and the playfully entitled ‘Śmietnik czyli materiały do Leksykonu polskiej kultury muzycznej’ [‘Waste Heap: Materials for the Dictionary of Polish Musical Culture’]. They contain drafts of entries on specific people and subjects, notes and extracts from the musicological literature, biographical data and indexes of works for the sections devoted to composers, genre-specific lists of compositions (e.g. patriotic songs, mazurkas, operas on Polish themes, oratorios, and string quartets) as well as a detailed bibliography of persons and subjects entries. All of it could be considered a database for the entire Dictionary. The author of this paper quotes three unpublished articles written by Reiss. Two of them come from the Krakow-based manuscript ‘Ryszard Wagner w Polsce’ [‘Richard Wagner in Poland’] and ‘Wystawy muzyczne’ [‘Music Exhibitions’], whereas the third source can be found in the manuscript from Katowice: ‘Krytyka i recenzja muzyczna’ [‘Music Criticism and Reviewing’]. What is more, two short fragments in the article on Wagner were completed following the information from the manuscript ‘Antologia polskiej literatury muzycznej’ [‘Anthology of Polish Music Literature’] stored in the Main Library of the Academy of Music in Katowice.