Ex libris

This is a list of books on music which I made at the request of some students. Perhaps some of its contents will never appear on the syllabus for one of my courses. It is something more personal than that: books which have made a deep impression on me in one way or another and changed me directly as a musician.

There are books here about performance and interpretation, analysis, composition, musicians’ lives, as well as books on related topics such as theatre and literature. I haven’t arranged them by topic because I wanted to avoid at all costs the impression that this list is in any sense complete or required. Of course it isn’t: the sole criterion was the sense of depth the book gave me. I’d be very curious to see similar lists made by other musicians.

You can view or download a PDF version of the list by clicking here (124 K, two pages). Open with Acrobat 4 or higher.

Andriessen, Loius & Elmer Schönberger, The Apollonian Clockwork: about Stravinsky, transl. Jeff Hamburg, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989

Barthes, Roland, Image, Music, Text, essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath, New York, Hill & Wang, c. 1977

—, A Lover’s Discourse: fragments, trans. Richard Howard, New York, Hill & Wang, 1978

—, Mythologies, selected & trans. Annette Lavers, New York, Noonday Press, c. 1972

Berlioz, Hector, Memoirs of Hector Berlioz from 1803 to 1865, trans. Rachel Holmes & Eleanor Holmes, annotated and rev. Ernest Newman, New York, 1966

Blum, David, Casals and the Art of Interpretation, Berkeley & Los Angeles (ca), University of California Press, 1st California Paperback edn, 1980

— & the Guarneri Quartet, The Art of Quartet Playing, Cornell University Press, 1987

Brook, Peter, The Empty Space, New York, Atheneum, 1968

—, The Shifting Point: 1946–1987, New York, Harper & Row, c. 1987

Craft, Robert, Stravinsky: chronicle of a friendship, Nashville & London, Vanderbilt University Press, rev. & expanded edn, 1994

Dreyfus, Laurence, Bach and the Patterns of Invention, Cambridge (MA) and London, Harvard University Press, 1996

Dronke, Philip, The Medieval Lyric, Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn, 1977

Gould, Glenn, The Glenn Gould Reader, ed. with an introduction by Tim Page, New York, Knopf, 1984

Herder, Ronald, Tonal/Atonal: progressive ear training, singing and dictation studies in diatonic, chromatic and atonal music, New York, Continuo Music Press, 1973

Horowitz, Joseph, Conversations with Arrau, New York, Knopf, 1982

Iznaola, Ricardo, The Art of Practising, Heidelberg, Chanterelle Verlag, 1994

Jonas, Oswald, Introduction to the Theory of Heinrich Schenker: the nature of the musical work of art, trans. & ed. John Rothgeb, New York, Longman, c. 1982

Keller, Hans, 1975 (1984 minus 9), London, Dobson, 1977 [later reprinted as Music, Closed Societies and Football]

—, Criticism, ed. with an introduction by Julian Hogg, London, Faber, 1987

—, Essays on music, edited by Christopher Wintle with Bayan Northcott & Irene Samuel, Cambridge University Press, 1994

—, Functional Analysis: the unity of contrasting themes; complete edition of the analytical scores, ed. Gerold Gruber, Peter Lang Publishing, 2001

—, The Great Haydn Quartets: their interpretation, London, J.M. Dent, 1986

—, The Jerusalem Diary: music, society and politics, 1977 and 1979, edited by Christopher Wintle and Fiona Williams. London: The Hans Keller Trust in association with Plumbago Books, 2001

— & Milein Cosman, Stravinsky Seen and Heard, New York, Da Capo Press, 1986

Kirkpatrick, Ralph, Interpreting Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier: a performer’s discourse of method, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1984

Lendvai, Ernö, Béla Bartók: an analysis of his music, London, Kahn & Averill, rev. reprint, 1979

Messiaen, Olivier, The Technique of my Musical Language, trans. John Satterfield, Paris, A. Leduc, 1956

Nichols, Roger, Debussy Remembered, Portland (OR), Amadeus Press, 1992

Ratner, Leonard. Classic Music: Expression, Form and Style, New York, Schirmer, 1980

Rosen, Charles, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, New York, Viking Press, 1971

—, The Romantic Generation, London, Harper Collins, 1996

Schenker, Heinrich, Five graphic music analyses (Fünf Urlinie-Tafeln), introduction & glossary by Felix Salzer, New York, Dover Publications, 1969

—, Free composition (Der freie Satz), vol. iii of New Musical Theories and Fantasies, trans. & ed. Ernst Oster, New York, Longman, c.1979

Schiff, David, The Music of Elliott Carter, London, Eulenburg Books; New York, Da Capo Press, 1983

Schoenberg, Arnold, Fundamentals of Musical Composition, ed. Gerald Strang, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1967

Schnabel, Artur, My Life and Music & Reflections on Music, with a foreword by Robert Mayer and an introduction by Edward Crankshaw, Gerrards Cross, Smythe, 1970

Segovia, Andrés, Andrés Segovia: an autobiography of the years 1893–1920, trans. W.F. O’Brien, New York, Macmillan, c. 1976

Stanislavsky, Constantin, An Actor Prepares, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, New York, Theatre Arts Books, 1978

Stravinsky, Igor & Robert Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, London, Faber, 1959

—, Dialogues, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982

—, Expositions and Developments, Garden City (NY), Doubleday, 1962

—, Memories and Commentaries, Berkeley, University of California Press, c.1960

—, Retrospectives and Conclusions, New York, A.A. Knopf, 1969

—, Themes and Episodes, New York, A.A. Knopf, 1966

Tovey, Donald Francis, The Main Stream of Music and Other Essays, collected with an introduction by Hubert J. Foss, New York, Oxford University Press, 1949

Vishnevskaya, Galina, Galina: a Russian story, trans. Guy Daniels, San Diego, New York, London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984

Wolff, Konrad, Schnabel’s Interpretation of Piano Music, New York, W.W. Norton, 1979