Thread: Music Books - A Quick Reference

Originally Posted by 52paul

The Music Instinct - how music works and why we can't do without it - by Philip Ball

I have just finished reading this book and found it extremely informative. Ball uses examples from all genres of music to explore how music works in the brain and perhaps, why the brain requires music. It was a bit scholarly but that will be my excuse to read it more in depth in the future. I can see this being an excellent reference book from which a student could pick a research topic to explore more thoroughly.

I highly recommend this book.

I think Ernst Krenek's Music Here and Now can be added to Music Appreciation & Survey Texts.

The Joy of Music/Bernstein Hexameron


Always has been and always will be one of my favorites!

Bought a copy of this last night, at our local Borders Books going out of business sale.

Not bad for $5

Way to go, lou!

Originally Posted by lou

Bought a copy of this last night, at our local Borders Books going out of business sale.

Not bad for $5

I received that book as a gift several years ago. It's OK, but the author was a complete beginner himself when he undertook the project.

In addition to recommended books, I'd like to see a list of books to avoid. I bought a used copy of the Third Ear Guide To Classical Music, and I don't like the way it's laid out. No bold type for the titles of recordings, so all of the text blends together to make things more difficult to pick out.

Originally Posted by lou

Bought a copy of this last night, at our local Borders Books going out of business sale.

Not bad for $5

My daughter got this book for a college course several years ago and left it with me when she moved. I'm just finishing the last couple of chapters this week.

Being OCD, this is the kind of thing I love, even when I don't agree with it. After all, the guy leaves my two favorites, Nielsen and Elgar, out of the Top 50, and doesn't even give Barber an honorable mention.

But, I did learn a lot of stuff I didn't know. I found the late chapters on Couperin and Borodin fascinating and I've determined to get to know their music better.

I don't know if anyone has said much about the BBC Music Guides, but I am finding the one on Schumann's Piano Music to be fascinating. I've read books on Schumann before, but this small guide contains more new information per page than anything I can remember reading.

I just finished "Music In The Western World: A History in Documents"



If anyone would care to have my used copy, just PM me your mailing address and I'll send it along. My girlfriend says no more books on the shelf, so I'd like to see it go to a good home.

Here is the Amazon page for the book http://www.amazon.com/Music-Western-...7853164&sr=1-1

Woops! U.S. only for the above offer, please.

under theory and composition put two books from norden hugo: foundation studies in fugue, and technique of canon. some of the best theory books ever. don't forget alexander publishing's professional orchestration series, 140 bucks will get you a year's worth of orch studies (pdfs, spectratone, and the sound files)

Too many posts have gone by for me to see if anyone has mentioned this book but it is a must for absolute beginners in understanding what we are listening to and for. Note I said "we". That means me. Probably most of you are far beyond this stage but I got a lot out of it.

"What to Listen for in Music" by Aaron Copland with Foreward and Epilogue by Alan Rich (icing on the cake).

Classical Music for Dummies is very good for beginners, good CD examples included (EMI). Many positive reviews.



Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Musi...6756722&sr=8-1

In a quick review of previous posts, I did not see two of my favorite books about individual composers:

1. "Charles Ives Remembered: an Oral History", edited by Vivan Perlis. In which Ives is revealed to be as quirky and cranky in his personal life as he was in his music.

2. "Testimony" by Dmitri Shostakovich. Not really a pleasant book to read, but like the Ives book the music really reflects the personality of the composer. By turns, angry, quarrelsome, obsessive, paranoid, petty with a few brief moments of joy or triumph, the book is like reading a verbal equivalent of one of his quartets.

Hi

This easy-to-read blueprint for pedal harpists by Sylvia Woods includes the pedal diagrams for the a lot of frequently acclimated glissandos: 6th, accessory 7th, abeyant 4, beneath 7th, augmented, and accomplished tone. Several accessible pedal configurations are listed for abounding of the glisses, so you may accept the one you like the complete of best, and the one that is easiest to get in and out of with the atomic pedal changes.

thanks