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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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#63 ·
The Music Instinct - how music works and why we can't do without it - by Philip Ball
My friend Philip Ball has come out with yet another superb book. This one about music.
On Tuesday I went to the Royal Institution where he was lecturing on the subject of his book and very fascinating it was too.
The lecture hall and gallery were sold out and we ended up sitting on the steps as we were a bit late. Anyway I managed to catch up with what we had missed by listening to the audio recording which is conveniently included on the Royal Institution website

There are more great reviews in today's papers. Here are a couple:

The Independent on Sunday


The Observer

Philip is repeating the lecture at the Royal Institution on 27 February and then more lectures around the country in March.

Here's a link to Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Instinct-Works-Cant-without/dp/1847920888/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1
 
#76 ·
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.
 
#64 ·
Hello all!

Obviously I am new here, but I am not new to music and all it's wonders. I know this thread has been dormant for a while, but I'm hoping to get a reply or two about some books I'm looking into. I read through the thread but never saw anything about either. One was mentioned at the beginning but not connected anywhere:

1. Tonal Harmony by Kostka/Payne
2. Harmony and Voice Leading by Aldwell/Schacter

I've been through collegiate theory but I am wanting to keep my "skills" up to par and continue to learn and further those so-called "skills". Lol.

Any comments about these books or perhaps other books I should look into would be great!

Hope to meet you all in the forums!

Ty
 
#65 ·
Can anyone recommend any really detailed analyses of Mozart's piano concerti or string quartets - I have come across those by Hutchings, Girdlestone and a little BBC guide, all of which are useful. The Mozart companions are not very detailed.

I don't know whether Tovey covers these.

Does Tovey have a successor?

Also interested in similar on Bach, eg his concerti.
 
#66 ·
For anyone who doesn't know, The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is the largest single reference work for classical music - some 22 enormous volumes. It also exists in an online version as part of Oxford Music Online, though I'm not sure if a university student ID is required to access it.
 
#67 ·
Harold C. Schonberg's "The Great Conductors" is the companion to his book on the great pianists, and a goldmine of information about such giants of the podium as Toscanini,Stokowski,Karajan, Klemperer, Beecham, Walter, Szell, Bernstein, and others.
It also offers a fascinating discussion of how the art and profession of conducting evolved.
As it was written in the 60s, it lacks information about many important conductors who have since emerged, but that is no reason not to get it.

"The Compleat Conductor" (author's spelling) by composer/conductor and polymath
Gunther Schuller is a fascinating if at times exasperating critical evaluation of an enormous number of recordings by many,many different conductors past and present of symphonies by Beethoven,Brahms, SchumannTchaikovsky and other orchestral works such as Till Eulenspiegel,the second suite from Daphnis and Chloe, etc.
Schuller painstakingly notes deviations from the composer's written instructions,or careful observance of them, and trashes many great conductors their supposed failure to be faithful to the score. He often gets bogged down in splitting hairs, and is often too rigidly literal in judging the performances, but it's an absorbing,if often disturbing read.
 
#70 ·
Elgarian,

It sounds like you know a lot about mozart biographies. What do you think about solomon's biography? It's the only one I've ever read, but I found it very poignant and touching. A lot of the book seems to focus on mozart's/father as the emotional driving force behind who he was. I've heard its well researched as well.

I understand that solomon also wrote a strong beethoven bio? Any thoughts on that?
 
#72 ·
I think that best one volume book about Beethoven is "Beethoven" by Maynard Solomon. Of course, there is bit of "Psyco Babble" but not enough to detract from the very high quality of the book. A must have is "Music and Society Since 1815" by Henry Raynnor. If you are interested in the Musical world of the 19th century this a most interesting read. the correct spelling is of course Raynor.
 
#75 ·
Has anyone mentioned the following?:

Charles Rosen - The Classical Style
Samuel Adler - A Guide to Orchestration
Paul Griffiths - Modern Music

These are books I can't recommend strongly enough.
 
#81 ·
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.
 
#84 ·
#86 ·
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)
 
#87 ·
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).
 
#89 ·
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.
 
#90 · (Edited by Moderator)
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
 
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