Thread: Music Books - A Quick Reference

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 really love this book. I read it years ago, but still go back to it from time to time. I think what I like the most is the humility and humanity of the author. By the end of the book, you feel like the author is a personal friend.

I have been on a bit of a Dvorak binge lately. I just finishede this book and I liked it alot. Of course, I like all of David Hurwitz books.

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Dvorak: Romantic Music's Most Versatile Genius by David Hurwitz

Bios:

Lewis Lockwood's "Beethoven: The Music and the Life" is the Beethoven biography to have if you're only going to have one.

Performance Practice:

Erich Leinsdorf's "The Composer's Advocate" is a fascinating but characteristically curmudgeonly compendium of the sort of arcana that he thinks conductors should think about.

General writing about specific pieces:

Along with Tovey's and Michael Steinberg's program notes, any of Andrew Porter's six volumes of collected music essays from The New Yorker are fascinating (and scholarly) reading.

If you can read in French, I recommend Francis Pagnon's book about Wagner's music. It's really good.

You'll never listen to Wagner the same again.

Has anyone purchased a "Study score," particularly one published under the name Sikorski? I am looking at a study score right now for an orchestral work. Before I dish out the money for it, I want to be confident that it will be the entire orchestral score, with all parts/instruments/voices, and not a piano-type double-clef score or sketches. Anyone familiar with this publisher?

'bout to rip this thread a new arsehole, all the following are under 'theory and comp':

time and rhythm in north indian rag music - martin claytin
solkattu manual - david nelson
composing the music of africa - malcom floyd
mande music - eric charry
gamelan gong kebyar, the art of 20th century balinese gamelan - michael tenzer
composing for japanese instruments - minoru miki (well, this one may go in the instrument specific section, it's an instrumentation manual)

also, there are a crapload of them and he's not even halfway done, but peter lawrence alexander has the professional orchestration series

Originally Posted by Rondo

Has anyone purchased a "Study score," particularly one published under the name Sikorski? I am looking at a study score right now for an orchestral work. Before I dish out the money for it, I want to be confident that it will be the entire orchestral score, with all parts/instruments/voices, and not a piano-type double-clef score or sketches. Anyone familiar with this publisher?

I buy scores from Sikorski regularly, but they have full scores as well as reductions. I think a study score should be the full thing.

Music appreciation
Deryck Cooke: The Language of Music

Composer specific
Hector Berlioz: Memoirs

Theory and Composition
Hector Berlioz: Treatise on Orchestration

Other
Ferruccio Busoni/Claude Debussy/Charles Ives: Three Classics in the Aesthetics of Music
Hector Berlioz: Evenings with the Orchestra

I have three small books that might be of interest. Hope I'm not repeating what has already been posted. They are:

a] Conversations with Menuhin - by David Dubal. Publ.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ)

b] The Wordsworth Dictionary of Musical Quotations - by Derek Watson. Publ.: Wordsworth Reference

c] A Dictionary of Musical Quotations - by Ian Crofton & Donald Fraser. Publ.: Schirmer Books

A few of the most rewarding books on music I have read:

Theodor Adorno, Quasi una fantasia

Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music

Christopher H. Gibbs, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Schubert

Kenneth Hamilton, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance

Robin Stowell, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet

Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography

William Weber, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms (NOTE: This one is a pretty dry read, but its thesis is fascinating and well-supported)

Robert Winter & Robert Martin, The Beethoven Quartet Companion

In addition to Stowell's book on the string quartet, my I suggest Paul Griffiths' The String Quartet.

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

It doesn't really inspire confidence that they seem to have put the wrong Bach on the cover...

Originally Posted by StevenOBrien

It doesn't really inspire confidence that they seem to have put the wrong Bach on the cover...

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean?

Please enlighten me!

Originally Posted by lou

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean?

Please enlighten me!

In the cover is Johann Christian Bach and not Johann Sebastian Bach.

I read all that thread seraching a book of symphonies' description.
I'd like to buy "The Symphony: A Listener's Guide [Paperback]
Michael Steinberg" (in this thread is recommended several times)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Symphony-A.../dp/0195126653


Is it really a book where I can read what the Mahler's and Beethoven's symphonies (for exemple) descrives movement per movement?
Is there some book better? Or a book where the greatest symphonies and concertos are together in the same book?
thanks