Awards,
Books of the Year - Finalists 2022
In anticipation of our upcoming Presto Music Awards, we have compiled our selection of book titles all in the running as potential winners. With so many informative and enjoyable reads, all of the books in our shortlist deserve recognition. The finalists range from biographies about popular composers and artists, to analytical and educational music history books; the range of contenders span the classical music book genre.
Find our full selection of finalists here.
Finalists
The Captain's Apprentice: Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Story of a Folk Song
Caroline Davison; Chatto & Windus; Hardback
In January 1905 the young Vaughan Williams visited King's Lynn, Norfolk, and heard an old fisherman perform 'The Captain's Apprentice', a brutal tale of torture sung to the most beautiful tune he had ever heard. With this transformational moment at its heart, this book traces the contrasting lives of the well-to-do composer and a forgotten King's Lynn cabin boy who died at sea, bringing fresh perspectives on Edwardian folk-song.
Available Format: Book
Drawing upon both recent scholarship and newly-accessible scores and correspondence, this book interweaves an exploration of Vaughan Williams's life - including new insights about his early career, military service in the Great War, and relationships with the women he loved and married - with chapters surveying his enormous body of music, spanning hymn tunes to operas, keyboard etudes to solo concerti, wind band music for amateurs to perhaps the finest symphonic cycle of the twentieth century.
Available Format: Book
From 1918 onwards, Adrian Boult became one of Vaughan Williams's most important interpreters, giving the world premieres of the Pastoral, Fourth and Sixth Symphonies. As this book shows, Boult's scores include numerous annotations derived from conversations and correspondence with Vaughan Williams. The evidence of these scores is considered alongside extensive correspondence between the pair, Boult's private diaries, and other relevant documents including contemporary press reports.
Available Format: Book
The Listening Service: 101 Journeys through the Musical Universe
Tom Service; Faber & Faber; Hardback
Based on his critically-acclaimed BBC Radio 3 programme, in which he takes an idea on a mind-expanding walk through the musical landscape, Tom Service celebrates the multi-dimensional power of music. With 101 short, thematically-grouped chapters, the book will open ears and imaginations to find answers to the questions we all have about why and how music - from Toots and the Maytals and J S Bach, Gustav Mahler and Miley Cyrus, to Anna Meredith and Mozart - works its magic over us.
Available Format: Book
Awarded the Legion d'Honneur by the French government in 2006 for his services to French culture, acclaimed writer and broadcaster Roger Nichols invites the reader to accompany him on his journey through the turbulent and fertile period in French music from Berlioz to Boulez. In compiling his collection of articles, interviews, radio plays and talks, Nichols begins with Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and ends with his obituary of Pierre Boulez.
Available Format: Book
The Northern Silence: Journeys in Nordic Music and Culture
Andrew Mellor; Yale University Press; Hardback
From Reykjavik to Rovaniemi, this book examines Nordic music's performers, the attitude of its audiences, and the sound of its composers past and present, celebrating some of the most remarkable music ever written along the way. Drawing on a range of genres and firsthand encounters, it reveals that our fascination with Nordic societies and our love for Nordic music might be more intertwined than first thought.
Available Format: Book
This accessible guide considers the development of the symphony from a number of different perspectives: analytical, historical, and critical. Exploring important milestones, touchpoints, events, key works, and the composers that surround the genre, it also includes a composer timeline, detailed case studies and comprehensive music examples. This handy and informative book is ideal for GCSE, A-Level, and undergraduate music students, as well as anyone wanting to study and learn more about the genre.
Available Format: Book
There are few compositions with such an engaging and convoluted story as Janáček’s Jenůfa. This book provides a great deal of new information which has come to light as a result of the research for the critical edition of the score, taking the reader back to the origins of the work as well as discussing the most important productions which were given during Janáček’s lifetime. It includes a large number of documents and photographs, many of which are published here for the first time.
Available Format: Book
When Richard Wagner first met Minna Planer in 1834, he was an unknown conductor, she a popular actress. Their marriage was ultimately destroyed by Wagner's passion for Mathilde Wesendonck. In 1858, he and Minna separated, although they remained married until Minna's death in 1866. This acclaimed biography, translated into English by Chris Walton, reveals Minna as a self-assured woman and artist who played a crucial role in the creative life of her husband.
Available Format: Book
Nellie Melba is remembered as a squarish, late middle-aged woman dressed in furs and large hats, an imperious Dame whose voice ruled the world for three decades and inspired a peach and raspberry dessert. But she had to battle social expectations and misogyny that would have preferred her to stay a housewife in outback Queensland. This biography presents a different portrait of the great diva, celebrating both her musical contributions and her rich and colourful personal life.
Available Format: Book
This book recasts Franz Liszt as a composer of poetic feeling rather than just a purveyor of technical brilliance, through a vivid exploration of his most beloved pieces and the literature that inspired them, from Petrarch's love poetry to the sensibilities of Byron, Senancour, Goethe, and others. It shows how Liszt created a new concept of musical expression in his piano works, comparable to the emotional and dramatic power of the opera and novel.
Available Format: Book
Unquestionably one of the most popular composers of classical music, Sergei Rachmaninoff has not always been so admired by critics. Detractors have long perceived him as part of an outdated Romantic tradition from a bygone Russian world. This book re-situates Rachmaninoff in the context of his time, bringing together the composer and his music within the remarkably dynamic era in which he lived and worked.
Available Format: Book
Everyone loves Romantic music: the sweet melody of a Schubert song, the heroine dying for love in an Italian opera, the swooning orchestration of a Tchaikovsky symphony. But as this book points out, there is infinitely more to Romantic music than meets the eye. With a narrative beginning in the eighteenth century with CPE Bach, Haydn, and the Sturm und Drang movement, the book offers an entertaining account of this whole phase in music history, told with passion but also with the precision and clarity of detail for which the author is widely admired.
Available Format: Book
Ellena Taylor - Sheet Music and Books Manager
