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Music Books - A Quick Reference

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#1 · (Edited)
Recommended books- Listed by Category!

With gratitude to vertciel, thanks for a key concept to Kurkikohtaus, and special appreciation to all who have recommended music books, a listing of such books will be preserved on the opening page of the thread. Almost without exception, listed books also have a link-back to the post where they were recommended. We will update this list periodically. Furthermore, if anyone is aware of book recommendations in other threads that ought to merit mention in this collation, you may contact us (preferably via Private Message) so that we may perform the necessary edits, if desired.

1. Music Appreciation & Survey Texts:

History of Western Music/Grout david johnson
Listen/Kermin-Tomlinson
The Enjoyment of Music/Machlis & Forney
Classical Music A New Way of Listening/Waugh
Music/Grunfeld
The Continuity of Music/Kolodin Hexameron
The Joy of Music/Bernstein Hexameron/groovesandwich
What to Listen for in Music/Copland Hexameron/kxgfxg/Hazel
101 Masterpieces of Music & Their Composers/Bookspan BuddhaBandit
Concise History of Western Music/Griffiths bartleby
Classical Music (Eyewitness Companions)/Burrows Rachovsky
The Encyclopedia of Music/Wade-Matthews opus67
Classical Music 50 Greatest composers-1000 Greatest Works/Goulding StlukesguildOhio/lou/Vesteralen
Essays in Musical Analysis (6 vols.)/Tovey Private recommendation- anonymous contributor
Oxford History of Western Music/Taruskin emiellucifuge
The Language of Music/Cooke jalex

2. Composer-specific Tomes:

Sibelius/Barnett
Sibelius (in four volumes)/Tawaststjerna
Symphonic Unity The development of formal thinking in the symphonies of Sibelius/Murtomaki Kurkikohtaus
The Essence of Bruckner/Simpson Gustav
Beethoven- Impressions by his Contemporaries/Sonneck
Evening in the Palace of Reason Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment/Gaines
Schumann on Music: A selection from his writings Hexameron
Johannes Brahms: A Biography/Swafford World Violist/kg4fxg/Hausmusik
Beethoven/Sullivan bartleby
Aspects of Wagner/Macgee
The New Grove Wagner/Millington
Wagner's Ring A listener's companion & concordance/Holman
I Saw the World End A study of Wagner's Ring/Cooke
The Wagner Operas/E. Newman Chi_townPhilly
Edward Elgar: Memories of a Variation/Powell
Edward Elgar: Record of a Friendship/Burley
Elgar in Love/Hockman & Allen Elgarian
Mahler: His Life, Work, and World/Blaukopf
Chopin's Funeral/Eisler Isola
Robert Schumann Herald of a new poetic age/Daverio Artemis
A Companion to Beethoven's Pianoforte Sonatas/Tovey Private recommendation- anonymous contributor
Mozart in Vienna 1781-1791/Braunbehrens Elgarian
Mozart & His Operas/Cairns Kieran
Beethoven/Solomon quartetfore
BBC Music Guide- Schumann's Piano Music Vesteralen
Charles Ives Remembered- An Oral History/Perlis, ed.
Testimony (Shostakovich)/Volkov RandallPeterListens
Dvořák Romantic Music's Most Versatile Genius/Hurwitz Truckload
Beethoven The Music & the Life/Lockwood GGlueck
Berlioz- Memoirs jalex
Cambridge Companion to Schubert/Gibbs, ed.
The Beethoven Quartet Companion/Winter & Martin Hausmusik

3. Historical & Stylistic Periods:

Medieval Music/Hoppin
Music in the Renaissance/Reese
Baroque Music/Palisca
Music in the Baroque Era/Bukofzer
Music in the Classical Era/Pauly
Nineteenth-Century Romanticism in Music/Longyear
Romantic Music/Plantinga
Twentieth-Century Music An Introduction/Salzman
Music in the 20th Century/Austin
The Sonata in the Baroque Era/W. Newman
The Sonata in the Classical Era/W. Newman
The Sonata Since Beethoven/W. Newman Hexameron
The Rest is Noise Listening to the 20th Century bartleby/al2henry
The Classical Style/Rosen Artemis/Edward Elgar
Composers Voices from Ives to Ellington/Perlis-Van Cleve Barger
Modern Music/Griffiths Edward Elgar
Music Here and Now/Krenek hemidemisemiquaver
Quasi una Fantasia Essays on Modern Music/Adorno
Nineteenth-Century Music/Dalhaus Hausmusik

4. Instrument-specific Books:

The Composer-Pianists- Hamelin and the Eight/Rimm
The Art of the Piano/Dubal
Five Centuries of Keyboard Music/Gillespie
The Great Piano Virtuosos of our Time- ...Account of Studies w/Liszt, Chopin, Tausig and Henselt/von Lenz Hexameron
The Great Pianists: From Mozart to the Present/Schonberg Hexameron/Air/andruini
Piano Playing with Piano Questions Answered/Hofmann
Piano Technique/Gieseking & Leimer CML
After the Golden Age Romantic Pianism & Modern Performance/Hamilton Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet/Stowell, ed. Hausmusik
The String Quartet/Griffiths carlmichaels

5. Theory & Composition:

Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory/Miller verticiel
Principles of Orchestration/Rimsky-Korsakov anmarwis/Barger
A Guide to Orchestration/Adler Edward Elgar
Counterpoint in Composition/Salzer & Schlachter
Counterpoint/Kennan
A Practical Approach to Sixteenth-Century Counterpoint/Galdin
A Practical Approach to Eighteenth-Century Counterpoint/Galdin
Forms in Tonal Music: An Introduction to Analysis/Green
Classical Form: theory of formal function for instrumental music/Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven/Capin Herzeleide
Harmony and Voice Leading/Aldwell & Schlacter Herzeleide/bigham45
Tonal Harmony/Kostka & Payne bigham45
Counterpoint/Piston Jeremy Marchant
Foundation Studies in Fugue/Hugo
Technique of Canon/Hugo chee_zee
Treatise on Orchestration/Berlioz jalex

6. Other Music Interest

The Symphony/Steinberg Chi_townPhilly/kg4fxg
From Paris to Peoria How European Virtuosos Brought Classical Music to the American Heartland/Lott
The Virtuosi/Schonberg
The Book of Musical Anecdotes/Lebrecht
Lexicon of Musical Invective/Slominsky
Letters of Composers/Norman & Shrifte Hexameron
Conversations with Karajan/Osborne
Karl Böhm- A Life Remembered (Memoirs) Gustav
Collins Dictionary of Music/Kennedy Cyclops
1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die/M. Rye, ed. Sanctus493
The Lives of the Great Composers/Schonberg World Violist/Species Motrix/kx4fxg
Elementary Training for Musicians/Hindemith CML
Wondrous Strange- the Life and Art of Glenn Gould/Bazzana
Glenn Gould Reader/Page Isola
NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music/Libbey kg4fxg/Mirror Image
Musicophilia: Tales of Music & the Brain/Sacks Barger
NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection/Libbey Sam Guss
The Music Instinct how music works & why we can't live without it/Ball 52paul/Lunasong
The Great Conductors/Schonberg
The Compleat Conductor/Schuller superhorn
Music & Society Since 1815/Raynor quartetfore
The Composer's Advocate/Leinsdorf GGlueck
Evenings with the Orchestra/Berlioz jalex
Three Classics in the Aesthetics of Music/Debussy-Ives-Busoni jalex
Conversations with Menuhin/Dubal
Wordsworth Dictionary of Musical Quotations/Watson, ed.
Dictionary of Musical Quotations/Crofton & Fraser, ed. goldie08
The Great Transformation of Musical Taste Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms/Weber Hausmusik
 
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#129 ·
Two books to add to Music Theory; The Art of Parimento by Giorgio Sanguinetti and Music in the Galant Style by Robert Gjerdingen. Two of my most prized books on music theory. Gjerdingen's book provides examples and structures for each of the many musical formulas used by Italian Galant composers, many of these also are backwards compatible with baroque music.
 
#134 ·
Don't bother clicking that, it's just a bad audio fragment of some 80's like pop song.

A good book on Mahler by the way is: The Life of Mahler by Peter Franklin (Cambridge 1997)

Also a very interesting and relevant book is Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge by Lawrence Kramer
 
#135 · (Edited)
Elijah Wald: How The Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music. Avoid this book at all cost, as well as the other quirky dreck Wald has foisted on us, including the infamous "Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues," which is nothing short of an assassination of blues and Alan Lomax. Elijah Wald should have been a newspaper reporter if he thinks this is "history." He calls himself a "historian, not a critic," as if history were a literal rendering of every bit of detritus which co-existed in the same time continuum. This overly-literal approach of his means, among other things, that The Monkees were just as important as Jimi Hendrix (although, even back then, they were not taken seriously enough to be invited to Monterey Pop). Oh, and incidentally, "DE BLUES" was "invented" by Alan Lomax, for the edification of white folks, and Wald reminds us that Robert Johnson was, above all, a "working musician" whose job it was to please audiences with popular ditties during his live gigs. According to Wald, Lomax wanted "only blues" from Johnson, and thus created a horrible distortion of history (even while it was happening, and not yet history). Hogwash!

What's worse is when OTHER people start believing this stuff, as was evidenced on the "All About Jazz" forum in the thread, "The Importance of the Blues in Everything." Witness the wholesale invasion of jazz snobs, rewriting blues & jazz history until it becomes a Starbuck's version, politically and artistically neutralized into a benign, emasculated theme party.
 
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#136 ·
Some horn and brass method/technique books that should have a mention are:

The Art of Brass Playing by Phillip Farkas
The Art of French Horn Playing by Phillip Farkas
The Horn Handbook by Verne Reynolds
The Horn by Barry Tuckwell
Essentials of Brass Playing by Fred Fox
 
#137 ·

Arnold Schoenberg's Journey by Allen Shawn

This is the best book I have found on Schoenberg. It's concise, readable by the layman (a few musical terms and score examples, but no long paragraphs of technical jargon), and completely non-confrontational. It is both a biography of Schoenberg's life and a look at his major works, showing how and why his style evolved over time.
 
#138 ·
Any other reasons you might like this book? The author, perhaps? Tah hah!

Yes, I've got this one, and it is an excellent read. It goes quite carefully and methodically through each work. As far as Shawn's speculations about Schoenberg hearing his works "tonally," that is worth pondering, but might ultimately distract us from hearing serial music on its own terms.
The photos of Schoenberg's charts and mechanical "wheels" are quite interesting.
 
#140 ·
#141 ·
History:
Allan Atlas - Renaissance Music (in the Norton Introductions series), more colorful and modern than Reese's, though nowhere near as detailed.
Oliver Strunk - Source Readings in Music History (massive and addictive anthology of primary sources on musical thought from Plato to Pravda)
Paul Griffiths - Modern Music and After

Composers in their own words:
Morton Feldman - Give My Regards to 8th Street
Arnold Schönberg - Style and Idea
 
#142 ·
Probably the best contemporary book on Schubert is, as recommended earlier, Brian Newbold's, "Schubert: Life & Music". For those who might wish for a shorter but complete bio, there are books by Peter Clive & Eliz. McKay. Ms. McKay's book contains good information of Schubert's Choral & Opera works. While Rey Longyear's book on Romantic period is an excellent explanation and survey of the period, Charles Rosen's book on Romantic Style is an revealing study of the musical process of the period { the book focuses on three composers}. Schoenberg's Style and idea is full of insights about music of the "second" Vienna period and much more {A really fine article on Brahms}. I've noticed that Irving Kolodin's book "The Continuity of Music" has been suggested. It is a fine book about a subject that is not much covered. If I could make a wish, It would be for a really complete discussion of the life and mmusic of Bela Bartok!! Thank you for the opportunity to "sound off".
 
#144 · (Edited)
Chamber music makes up a large chunk of my music collection. There are several important surveys that I didn't see mentioned in the earlier pages. These are a pair of studies that complement one another well since they approach the topic from two different methods.

Mark Radice, Chamber Music: An Essential History (University of Michigan Press, 2012)., 384 pp., $40 paperback. This is really a state-of-the-art historical survey. Clear, surveys the key repertoire and essential composers, sets developments in their historical context (e.g. the rise of amateur music-making and the publishing industry in the late 18th century). Essential reading is chapter 2: "The Crystallization of Genres during the Golden Age of Chamber Music." Fine chapters on Beethoven, Schubert, fin-de-siecle French salon culture, Schoenberg, and at the close chapters on Shostakovich and then Ligeti and Husa. The closing chapter examines a miscellany of 20th century masterpieces: Stravinsky's Octet (1923), Varese's Octandre (1923), Bartok's Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion (1937), Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1941), Boulez's Le marteau san maître (1954), Reich's Violin Phase (1967), Crumb's Black Angels (1970), Wen-Chung's Echoes from the Gorge (1989). In its appendix it does list more contemporary works, but it could use a new closing chapter on chamber music in the early 21st century.



James M. Keller, Chamber Music: A Listener's Guide (Oxford University Press, 2011). 520 pp., $40 list as a hardcover (but $30 on Amazon); paperback to be released in November, $20. Where Radice's survey is historical in its narrative, tracing broad trends, this focuses on individual composers and specifically individual works. It's arranged alphabetically, with 3-4 pages on each of the major masterpieces of chamber music. Menahem Pressler who played for decades in the acclaimed Beaux Arts Trio has reviewed it in glowing terms: "Even after a career spent immersed in chamber music, I gained new and fascinating insights from James Keller's essays. This is a book that enlightens professionals as well as general music-lovers." That's a pretty good indicator of its value.



I have a special interest in string quartets and will post some further recommendations on them soon.
 
#145 ·
#146 ·
Interesting new study of Olivier Messiaen:

Stephen Schloesser, Visions of Amen: The Early Life and Music of Olivier Messiaen
Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2014
Published July 24, 2014
594 pp. ISBN 978-0802807625. Hardcover, $50.



Blurb on it:
French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) is probably best known for his Quartet for the End of Time, premiered in a German prisoner-of-war camp in 1941. However, Messiaen was a remarkably complex, intelligent person with a sometimes tragic domestic life who composed a wide range of music. This book explores the enormous web of influences in the early part of Messiaen's long life.

The first section of the book provides an intellectual biography of Messiaen's early life in order to make his (difficult) music more accessible to the general listener. The second section offers an analysis of and thematic commentaries on Messiaen's pivotal work for two pianos, Visions of Amen, composed in 1943. Schloesser's analysis includes timing indications corresponding to a downloadable performance of the work by accomplished pianists Stèphane Lemelin and Hyesook Kim.
 
#147 · (Edited)
Andrew Shenton, ed.
Cambridge Companion to Arvo Pärt
series: Cambridge Companions to Music
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012



The Cambridge Companions to Music series has been one of the most consistent and high quality collection of handbooks on composers, instruments, and genres. This is one of the more recent volumes and one of the best. The best previous book-length scholarly study of Arvo Pärt's music was Paul Hillier's excellent Arvo Pärt in the Oxford Composers series from 1997. Hillier was a uniquely qualified author since he has led performances and fine recordings of many of Pärt's works. But Pärt has been unusually prolific in the years since 1997, and Hillier's work is now getting badly out of date. Shenton, who edited a fine study of Messiaen (Messiaen the Theologian, Ashgate, 2011), has brought together a variety of experts for this volume. Especially recommended is the essay by Leopold Brauneiss, "Musical Archtypes: The Basic Elements of the Tintinnabuli Style," pp. 49-75; and Robert Sholl, "Arvo Pärt and Spirituality," pp. 140-158.
 
#149 ·
I like the biographies of Victor Seroff.
He was born in Georgia (the country) before the Russian Revolution which happened when he was about 17. He left the country and studied piano in Vienna, living in various parts of Europe before moving the the USA where he settled down to a concert career for a while. He eventually took to journalism and became a music critic and writer on musical subjects.
In the 1940's he wrote a biography of Dmitri Shostakovich who was at the time in besieged Leningrad and only 31 years old. Seroff was obviously concerned that a composer he admired greatly was in grave danger and completed his research into Shostakovitch's background and early career quickly, publishing the book in 1943.

After Prokofiev died in 1953, Seroff wrote his biography too. In it he sources the background and early life of Prokofiev from writings by his mother and first wife.
He went on to write about Liszt, Rachmaninov (who he knew personally) and Ravel amongst others.

He writes very engagingly and with great sympathy for his subjects Also with great understanding of their musical lives - thanks to his background and training.

You can generally pick his books up very cheap from online second hand stores.

Glasses Chin Coat Publication Font
 
#150 ·
Three more books:

The Mozart Companion - a symposium by leading Mozart scholars, edited by H.C. Robbins Landon

Mozart and His Piano Concertos by Cuthbert Girdlestone

Composers On Composers by John Holmes consisting of quoted statements of composers' opinions on other composers.
 
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