Books about music

[Thropplenoggin]

As a biography, Solomon's is the most readable and absorbing that I've read (I'd certainly recommend it to Mozza-sceptics) and the passages of analysis support his overall conception of the composer, which explores and explodes many of thye myths about the composer that accrued in the 19th Century. Solomon is, it's true, more concerned with the effect that the Music has on the listener than with investigating how the Music came to be written, but this leads to passages such as this:

It is profoundly discomforting to be drawn by the power of the Music into empathetic collusion with murders, kidnappers, tyrants, seducers, rapists and mysogynists.
[ ... ] we often encounter in them a dysjunction between type and Music, a revelation of unexpected ambiguities and apparently misplaced feelings. [ ... ] As they slip away into the timeless dimension where Arias are sung, these characters strip away the limitations of their types; and when they re-emerge onto the stage, it is as though they are stepping from that timeless world into the "real" world of adventitious character. We are asked for the moment to forget their limitations and to forgive their sins - disturbing prospects that stir unaccustomed emotional responses in us. The Music upsets our composure, especially when it shows us redemptive qualities in scoundrels, desperate rage in an ordinarily accommodating manservant, the compulsion of an innocent to confess to a crime she never committed.

... if this sort of writing appeals, then the rest of the book is for you.

And it's more up-to-date (published in 1995) than the (splendid) Mozart Companion, but to get more recent discoveries you might wish to invest in this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cambridge-Companion-Mozart-Companions-Music/dp/0521001927/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382264937&sr=1-1&keywords=cambridge+companion+to+mozart#reader_0521001927

... although (as with most volumes in this series) the diversity of writers means that some chapters are more reliable (and better written) than others.

More readable (IMO) - andless of a strain on the wallet - is Robbins Landon's The Mozart Essays:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mozart-Essays-H-Robbins-Landon/dp/0500016534/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382265160&sr=1-1&keywords=h+c+Robbins+landon%2C+mozart+essays

... and I wouldn't be without:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mozart-Vienn...zart+in+vienna

That's precisely how I like my prose - pleasingly florid, figurative, literary. Thanks for the quote. I shall be investing forthwith.

[mercia]

probably under the heading of 'layman's guides', I find my BBC Proms Guides very useful. In four volumes each edited by Nicholas Kenyon - Great Concertos, Great Choral Works, Great Symphonies, Great Orchestral Works - all the mainstream repertoire covered, I suppose they started life as proms programme notes. (faber & faber)

[Anna]

I also have Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Geoffrey Skelton) and Inside Out (Nick Mason) which is a history of Pink Floyd. From the ridiculous to the sublime!

[vinteuil]

Christopher Page : The Christian West and its Singers
Richard Sherr : A Josquin Companion
Christopher Wolff : JS Bach
Alfred Dürr : The Cantatas of JS Bach
Ralph Kirkpatrick : Scarlatti
W Dean Sutcliffe : The Keyboard Sonatas of Scarlatti
Cuthbert Girdlestone : Rameau
Wilfrid Mellers : François Couperin
Patrick Barbier : The Age of the Castrati
Charles Osborne : The Operas of Mozart
David Cairns : Berlioz
Hector Berlioz : Mémoires
Bruce Haynes : The End of Early Music










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[umslopogaas]

I find Chambers Music Quotations, compiled by Derek Watson (my edition was published in 1991) to be indispensable.

I very much enjoyed Music Ho! by Constant Lambert (1934) and also The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross (2007).

One to avoid - at least, I found it unreadable - is Wagner's Ring and its Symbols: the Music and the Myth, by Robert Donington. Apparently it makes some sort of sense if you understand Jungian psychology, but I fear I dont. My largely unread copy has sat on my shelves for as long as I can remember.

I also have a lot of books on individual composers. I usually have just one on each composer, except for Wagner and Shostakovich, where I have several: both controversial figures, in different ways.

The Rough Guides, to Classical Music and to Opera, are excellent and not at all rough. I've found the opera one particularly good: the one on classical music is also good, but a bit superficial, there's just not enough room to pack everything in to a book of that size.

[Petrushka]

One to avoid - at least, I found it unreadable - is Wagner's Ring and its Symbols: the Music and the Myth, by Robert Donington. Apparently it makes some sort of sense if you understand Jungian psychology, but I fear I dont. My largely unread copy has sat on my shelves for as long as I can remember.

I have to say that I didn't find it at all unreadable even though I knew pretty well nothing about Jungian psychology. It's a fascinating point of view on the Ring and the music examples were particularly enlightening.

[verismissimo]

The doggiest dogeared dogofabook around here...

That's the spirit, Jayne. On that basis, mine is undoubtedly the brief Mozart book by Stanley Sadie from 1965. Almost unusable. Scribbled all over. Out nearly every week.

[LeMartinPecheur]

One book I'd strongly recommend as a guide (and map) of worldwide C20 music: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pimlico-Dict...ico+dictionary

The title is a little deceptive in that it's not one alphabetical listing - it's divided up into countries, and opens with an essay on that country's C20 music that has a good shot at mentioning all its significant composers, at least briefly. Then follows an alphabetical section for the major ones, with reasoned arguments about what is distinctive and excellent in their music. Each entry concludes with a short list of particularly recommended works. Some of Morris's judgments may raise a few eyebrows. He doesn't think much of Robert Simpson, for example, though he does afford him a detailed discussion. Only one recommended work though, the 3rd symph.(*)

Just to give a sample of what you can expect to be covered in detail, the list of Czech Republic composers so treated is Eben, Fiser, Foerster, Haba, Hanus, Janacek, Jirasek, Kalabis, Kapr, Kopolent, Krejci, Martinu, Novak, Slavicky, Suk and Valek. (OK, Roehre may find this a bit thin but I reckon it'll give most of us some new names to explore...)

NB I picked Czech Republic just to give a reasonably short list. Was going to do UK or US but RSI loomed!

(*) Part of his critique of Simpson to give a flavour: "It is not enough for a string quartet merely to have an impressive logic of construction, especially in the tradition that Simpson has followed; it must also have an emotional impact and a significant content, and in these the music of Simpson, for all its earnest build-ups into climaxes, is simply lacking." Have to say that this pretty well sums up my own reaction to Simpson - so far at least - after 40 yrs of trying.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Part of his critique of Simpson to give a flavour: "It is not enough for a string quartet merely to have an impressive logic of construction, especially in the tradition that Simpson has followed; it must also have an emotional impact and a significant content, and in these the music of Simpson, for all its earnest build-ups into climaxes, is simply lacking."

Simpson on Mark Morris:

"Who?"

[LeMartinPecheur]

Simpson on Mark Morris:

"Who?"

A cheap shot fhg and unworthy of you IMHO. Is no one who isn't equally famous permitted to express criticism of an artist?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A cheap shot fhg and unworthy of you IMHO. Is no one who isn't equally famous permitted to express criticism of an artist?

Having emoticoned that, it might be termed "criticism" if it were based on demonstrable fact(s) rather than superficial opinion. "Simply lacking" "emotional impact and a significant content"? Pah! It is Mr Morris who is "simply lacking" here.

[amateur51]

Any (constructive ) thoughts on Modern Music And After by Paul Griffiths (3rd edition)?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Music-After-Paul-Griffiths/dp/019974050X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382297856&sr=1-1&keywords=Paul+Griffiths

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Any (constructive ) thoughts on Modern Music And After by Paul Griffiths (3rd edition)?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Music...Paul+Griffiths

One of the very best overview-introductions to non-mainstream Music of the Western Classical Tradition in the second half of the Twentieth Century. (£1433.46 plus P&P would have to be "Very Good Condition", though! )

[amateur51]

One of the very best overview-introductions to non-mainstream Music of the Western Classical Tradition in the second half of the Twentieth Century. (£1433.46 plus P&P would have to be "Very Good Condition", though! )

Thanks for this ferney - I was thinking more of the £18+ volume, m'self

[AmpH]

The excellent little BBC Music Guides are fondly remembered - Haydn Symphonies ( HC Robbins Langdon ), RVW Symphonies ( Hugh Ottaway ), Schumann Piano Music ( Joan Chissell ) and Szymanowski ( Christopher Palmer ) amongst many others are still much valued and on the shelves.

If there has ever been a better introduction to Mahler and his music than Deryck Cookes' small book then I haven't read it and the texts and translations of ' Das Lied ... ' etc etc contained therein have often proved very usefull. Sometimes the best insights come in the small packages.

Christoph Wolff's ' Bach : The Learned Musician ' was a delightful present from a friend some years ago and provides real insights into Bach the man and so complements the many books available on his music well.

' Fairest Isle , BBC Radio 3 Book of British Music ' edited by David Fraser was a £1 purchase in a Guildford charity shop a couple of years back and provides a brief but surprisingly informative and well illustrated historical journey for those, like me, who are particularly interested in the subject.

If I am interested in older recordings of Choral Music, I often still reach for ' Choral Music on Record ' edited by the late Alan Blyth, where excellent discussion of recordings ( up to the late 1980's ) from Monteverdi to Britten, Stravinsky and Janacek can be found from a distinguished collection of writers. Well worth perusing for the excellent discography alone.

On a rather different track, for those ( like me ) who have always had ( and hopefully retain ! ) a ' soulful ' disposition, David Nowell's ' Too Darn Soulful ( The Story of Northern Soul ) and especially Peter Guralnick's ' Sweet Soul Music ' are quite wonderful.

Happy days ..........