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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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#92 ·
Dvorak by David Hurwitz

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.

Forehead Chin Hairstyle Publication Book


Dvorak: Romantic Music's Most Versatile Genius by David Hurwitz
 
#93 ·
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.
 
#95 ·
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?
 
#97 ·
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.
 
#96 · (Edited)
'bout to rip this thread a new ********, 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
 
#98 ·
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
 
#99 ·
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
 
#100 · (Edited)
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
 
#105 ·
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-Listeners-Guide/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
 
#114 ·
Steinberg's books -- all three of them -- are wonderful reads. They are compilations of many of the concert program notes he wrote for the various orchestras he was associated with (Boston, Minneapolis, San Francisco). They contain a wealth of information, lovingly put together and entertainingly written. Get them.
 
#111 · (Edited)
If if hasn't been mentioned here before, Alan Walker's 3 part biography on Liszt is a Monumental work in this genre, and highly recommend.

Above all, it's actually fun to read.

I do remember an anecdote jotted down by one of his companions that he was traveling with on his first tour of England. It went that one night Liszt was so drunk he couldn't even stand straight yet was able to wake up the next morning bright and early (this was toward the end of his tour) and give "one of the best performances of the tour", the author stated.

We all know that some Liszt stories are embellished, so take it with a grain of salt, but Walker's accounting of Liszt's life is full of these sorts of little jems.
 
#113 ·
"Tuning In" by Scott R. Wilkinson
"Harmonograph" by Anthony Ashton
"The Just Intonation Primer" by David B. Doty
 
#115 ·
I just spotted a used copy of "An Introduction to Schenker Analysis" which I plan to go back & get.
 
#117 ·
Font Publication Book Material property Book cover


Here it is, by Alan Forte, America's top music theorist (at Yale).
 
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#119 ·
Book Font Publication Book cover Rectangle


Good book; I never had it in hardcover until now. Well worth the 3 or 4 dollars.
 
#121 ·
I would like to bring to the attention of all a delightful book I just finished reading that I borrowed from the library. Maybe yours has a copy? It was an easy read of less than 300 pages and kept me thoroughly entertained. I also learned a lot about Denmark during WWII. Published in 2000, so probably nothing new to learn about Beethoven.

As Ludwig van Beethoven lay dying in 1827, a young musician named Ferdinand Hiller came to pay his respects to the great composer. In those days, it was customary to snip a lock of hair as a keepsake, and this Hiller did a day after Beethoven's death. By the time he was buried, Beethoven's head had been nearly shorn by the many people who similarly had wanted a lasting memento of the great man. Such was his powerful effect on all those who had heard his music.

For a century, the lock of hair was a treasured Hiller family relic, and perhaps was destined to end up sequestered in a bank vault, until it somehow found its way to the town of Gilleleje, in Nazi-occupied Denmark, during the darkest days of the Second World War. There, it was given to a local doctor, Kay Fremming, who was deeply involved in the effort to help save hundreds of hunted and frightened Jews. Who gave him the hair, and why? And what was the fate of those refugees, holed up in the attic of Gilleleje's church?

After Fremming's death, his daughter assumed ownership of the lock, and eventually consigned it for sale at Sotheby's, where two American Beethoven enthusiasts, Ira Brilliant and Che Guevara, purchased it in 1994. Subsequently, they and others instituted a series of complex forensic tests in the hope of finding the probable causes of the composer's chronically bad health, his deafness, and the final demise that Ferdinand Hiller had witnessed all those years ago. The results, revealed for the first time here, are startling, and are the most compelling explanation yet offered for why one of the foremost musicians the world has ever known was forced to spend much of his life in silence.

In Beethoven's Hair, Russell Martin has created a rich historical treasure hunt, an Indiana Jones-like tale of false leads, amazing breakthroughs, and incredible revelations. This unique and fascinating book is a moving testament to the power of music, the lure of relics, the heroism of the Resistance movement, and the brilliance of molecular science.

An astonishing tale of one lock of hair and its amazing travels--from nineteenth-century Vienna to twenty-first-century America.
 
#123 ·
Here's my latest Theory infatuation.

Handwriting Font Rectangle Magenta Writing
 
#125 ·
I've GOT to get this one! This is the description:

Arnold Schoenberg: Notes, Sets, Forms (Music in the Twentieth Century) by Silvina Milstein

In this thought provoking study, Silvina Milstein proposes a reconstruction of Schoenberg's conception of compositional process in his twelve-tone works, which challenges the prevalent view that this music is to be appropriately understood exclusively in terms of the new method. Her claim that in Schoenberg we encounter hierarchical pitch relations operating in a twelve-tone context is supported by in-depth musical analysis and the commentary on the sketch material, which shows tonal considerations to be a primary concern and even an important criterion in the composition of the set itself. The core of the book consists of detailed analytical studies; yet its heavy reliance on factors outside the score places this work beyond the boundaries of textual analysis into the field of this history of musical ideas.
 
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