Hello everyone,

I would like to start a post about music books. This way, we can share our favourites, allow others to learn more about music, give beginner musicians a guideline of what to read, and we can inform people that music theory does not bite.

If at all possible, I would appreciate this thread being made permanent ("stickied" in forum lingo) so this can be a quick reference guide.

For starters, I will list off a few categories of music books. As time goes by, this list will be updated to reflect additional resources and categories.

Additionally, each category will be divided into three levels: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Thus, readers will be able to pick out what they'd like to read at the appriopriate level so they can get the most out of music. As they move up the ladder, the categorisation will help them into deciding what to read next.

If anyone has any comments or suggestions, please let me know! I look forward to enjoying music with everyone!

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Rudiments/Introductory Theory :

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory - http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiot...d_i=0028643771

Harmony :

History :

Analysis :

Piano Technique & Guidebooks :

Sibelius Books!

1. A "must have" for Sibelius lovers is Andrew Barnett's new book simply titled Sibelius.
   
   It sets itself apart from other Sibelius biographies in that it discusses every single piece or "performable fragment" ever written by Jean Sibelius.
   
   Check it out here: CLICK!
   
   
2. Otherwise, the "standard" Sibelius biography is the 4 volume colossus by Erik Tawaststjerna, English Translation by Robert Layton.
   
   
3. For technical books about Sibelius, it doesn't get any better than Symphonic Unity: The Development of Formal Thinking in the Symphonies of Sibelius by Veijo Murtomaki .

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Ok ... We'll try it as a "sticky" - as long as the contents remain in reference format.

If the thread becomes a conversational debate over which composer is better than the other, we may revert to a normal thread.

I rather like the idea of this being a great reference for the community here.

Kh

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History of Western Music, Donald Grout - it's an old standard.

dj

http://www.musictheory.net - a good introduction to theory

Posting on a "sticky"... I'd better give a broadly useful recommendation-

I can't imagine that any active listener would regret reading Michael Steinberg's The Symphony. The book contains wide coverage of much of the symphony repertoire. The section on Mahler is more useful than certain entire books on the subject. The cycles of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms and Sibelius get fully treated. Furthermore, Haydn from Symphony 92 on, Mozart from Symphony 35 on, and Bruckner from Symphony 4 on are also well-covered.

Robert Simpson's Analysis of Bruckner's symphonies. A must read.

Hmm, thank you Gustav. I'll have to put that on my list.

As a college music student, I've been stockpiling and using various books for research and papers. Without making a huge bibliography, I'd like to contribute the following, which are by no means the only essentials, but are still excellent sources:

Beginner's Reference

-Kerman's and Tomlinson's Listen (my old music appreciation textbook; it's easy to read).

-Machlis's and Forney's The Enjoyment of Music (like a junior version of Grout's textbook).

-Alexander Waugh's Classical Music: A New Way of Listening.

-Frederic Grunfeld's Music (a simple and watered down music text, but a fine introduction)

General Reference

-Richard Hoppin's Medieval Music. (for the advanced).

-Gustav Reese's Music in the Renaissance. (the major Renaissance source, but also for the advanced).

-Claude Palisca's Baroque Music (accessible and short).

-Manfred Bukofzer's Music in the Baroque Era.

-Reinhard Pauly's Music in the Classic Period.

-Rey Longyear's Nineteenth-Century Romanticism in Music (excellent background information on 19th century European culture).

-Leon Plantinga's Romantic Music.

-Eric Salzman's Twentieth-Century Music: An Introduction.

-William Austin's Music in the 20th Century.

History of Genres

-William Newman's trilogy: The Sonata in the Baroque Era, The Sonata in the Classical Era, and The Sonata Since Beethoven.

-Michael Roeder's A History of the Concerto.

-Homer Ulrich's Chamber Music: The Growth and Practice of an Intimate Art. (very old and a little difficult to read, but still edifying).

Piano

-Robert Rimm's The Composer-Pianists: Hamelin and the Eight (nice information about Medtner, Feinberg and Sorabji not usually mentioned in other books).

-David Dubal's The Art of the Piano (almost like a New Grove's Dictionary of Pianists and Pianist-Composers).

-Harold Schonberg's The Great Pianists: From Mozart to the Present (although some facts Schonberg alleges are sketchy and suspicious, it is a good comprehensive survey).

-John Gillespie's Five Centuries of Keyboard Music.

Fun Reading

-R. Allen Lott's From Paris to Peoria: How European Virtuosos Brought Classical Music to the American Heartland. (for the pianophile)

-Harold Schonberg's The Virtuosi.

-Wilhelm von Lenz's The Great Piano Virtuosos of Our Time: A Classic Account of Studies with Liszt, Chopin, Tausig and Henselt. (as fishy as Lenz's recollections are, most of them are close to the truth and provide wonderful anecdotes).

-Beethoven: Impressions by his Contemporaries. (everyone from Ries to Rossini and Weber to Wieck discuss the master).

-James Gaines' Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment.

-Norman Lebrecht's The Book of Musical Anecdotes. (a must have)

-Irving Kolodin's The Continuity of Music.

-Aaron Copland's What to Listen for in Music.

-Leonard Bernstein's The Joy of Music.

-Nicolas Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective. (read about your favorite symphony being trashed).

-Norman's and Shrifte's Letters of Composers.

-Schumann on Music: A Selection from the Writings. (outstanding insight and critiques of music by Chopin and Liszt, and also works from composers you've might not heard of).

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread. It's always great to reference books and biographies to keep in mind.

I'm looking for a great biography on Schubert, so if anyone has any suggestions, that would be great!

And last, but not least, welcome back to the board, Hexameron! We've missed your contributions.

Thanks for the welcome back, ChamberNut (love the young Brahms avatar, btw).

There are a couple "big" Schubert biographies, but the only one I can think of off the top of my head is by Brian Newbould. He seems to be the Schubert scholar today and has written many books on him, including an exhaustive biography.

Gettin some good lists going... but I wonder, a technical thing about editing posts in this forum...

It seems you can't edit your own posts once someone has posted after you. Which means that "greensky" can't go back and edit all of our contributions into his own post, to keep the list nice and organized at the top.

Is there anything admin can do about this to enable that feature?

It would be a great reference if all of our contributions were organized by vertciel at the top, rather than as a running commentary...

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I believe I have this one David. Just haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

Welcome back, Hex.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the list! There are many works here which will benefit anyone interested in music.

@ Kurkikohtaus: I agree with you. I am currently trying to work something out so I can get an organised list of recommended music resources. Scrolling through pages of posts to get others' recommendations is certainly tedious and inconvenient.

I look forward to further posts!