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Christmas Gift Ideas for Readers
If there is an avid reader in your life you are looking to buy a Christmas present for, look no further! Here are our recommendations for some of the best gifts for book lovers, including composer biographies, children's books, and music history and reference books; something for every literary taste.
This beautifully-illustrated story brings to life all that is wonderful about the violin. Children can follow violinist, Lilu, as she prepares for her concert performances and uncovers more about the violin. Discover how the instrument is made, how it is played and its role within the orchestra. Get swept up in the magic of the music as Lilu rehearses for a performance. This multi-sensory experience includes suggestions for music to listen to and download from the London Symphony Orchestra. Browse the full series here.
Available Format: Book
Ever since Alfred Brendel bid farewell to the concert stage after six decades of performing, he has been passing on his insight and experience in the form of lectures, readings and master-classes. This reader distils his musical and linguistic eloquence, and will prove invaluable to anyone with an interest in the technique, history and repertoire of the piano. Erudite, witty, enlightening and deeply personal: rarely has the instrument been described in such an entertaining and intelligent fashion.
Available Format: Book
The song form has captivated audiences and performers for centuries, from the music of the troubadours and the Christian liturgy, classical composers such as Bach and Schumann, up to Britten, Berio, and the rise of popular music. Choosing twelve key works, this book offers a personal tour through this vital tradition, from John Dowland’s Flow My Tears to George Gershwin’s Summertime, detailing who wrote and sang these joyful masterpieces, and what they mean to singers and audiences today.
Available Format: Book
This book charts the cultural and musical evolution of the soprano from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first. Through extensive cross-cultural research and detailed musical analysis, it traces the profound effects of social change, religion, philosophy, psychology, socio-economics, fashion, sexuality, race and technology on the soprano as a musical and cultural phenomenon. Referencing hundreds of works of music, literature, theatre, painting, and cinema, it includes multi-disciplinary discussions of everything from the effect of the corset to the politics of body-imagery.
Available Format: Book
Refiner's Fire: The Academy of Ancient Music and The Historical Performance Revolution
Richard Bratby | Elliott & Thompson | Hardback
When Christopher Hogwood and Peter Wadland founded the Academy of Ancient Music in 1973, their mission was to create Britain’s first orchestra devoted to recording baroque and classical music on period instruments. They went on to change the musical world. This book tells the story of this trailblazing orchestra and the people who shaped it: fifty years of innovation, exploration and musical adventure, from the pioneering days of the early 1970s to new directions in the twenty-first century.
Available Format: Book
The Pursuit of Musick: Musical Life in Original Writings & Art c1200-1770
Andrew Parrott | Clink Street Publishing | Paperback
This encyclopedic and generously illustrated anthology of original written sources explores some 600 years of musical activity in Europe, from the first troubadours to the emergence of the pianoforte. Throughout, it presents an extraordinary treasure trove of material documenting myriad ways in which our recent ancestors engaged with music. Arranged in three main parts (Society, Ideas, Performance), its principal chapters are supplemented by shorter ones exploring related and intriguing byways.
Available Format: Book
This book resurrects the forgotten voices of four women: Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell, and Doreen Carwithen. In their time, these women were celebrities, composing some of the century's most popular music, but today they are ghostly presences, surviving only as footnotes to male contemporaries. This biography recounts their lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrates their musical masterpieces.
Available Format: Book
Human beings have always made music; it is common to all cultures across the world. But how has it changed over the millennia? This book explores the extraordinary history of music in all its forms, from our earliest ancestors to today’s mass-produced songs. Looking to Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa, it reveals how musicians have been brought together by trade and migration, and examines the vast impact of colonialism.
Available Format: Book
Song and Self: A Singer's Reflections on Music and Performance
Ian Bostridge | Faber & Faber | Hardback
Like so many performers, Ian Bostridge spent much of 2020 and 2021 unable to take part in live music. This enforced silence allowed him to explore the backstories of some of the many works he has performed, by composers such as Monteverdi, Schumann, Ravel, and Britten. He explores questions such as what it means for audiences when a singer inhabits these roles, and the extent to which a performer's own identity subtracts from or adds to the identities inherent in the works.
Available Format: Book
Written with effervescent charm, this book reveals the fascinating musical and social history behind our favourite Christmas carols. From the Annunciation to Epiphany, the episodes of the Christmas story link the tales behind twenty-seven carols from a variety of traditions and places of origin: those that come from folk song; those we owe to Victorian moralists, and those that are, in fact, French. This rich musical treat gives us an unique insight into our Yuletide traditions and customs.
Available Format: Book
As a singing therapist, teacher, and performer, Julia Hollander is in an unique position to consider singing's importance to our well-being, charting its extraordinary influence on all aspects of our spiritual, emotional and physical lives. In so many walks of life, people of all ages and backgrounds are waking up to the joys of singing and its power to give hope and connection in a fragmented world. This book offers explanations for why this should be, and inspiration to anyone who loves to sing.
Available Format: Book
Now a leading international composer and a singer-songwriter, Errollyn Wallen is as much at home in jazz and pop as in the classical world. Part memoir, Becoming a Composer offers an intriguing glimpse into the mind and motivation of a composer and covers aspects of Wallen's sometimes troubled childhood, and her experiences of growing up as a black composer in the UK. It includes a collection of observations, diaries following the progress of new works and essays and seeks to shed light on the way a composer sees and hears the world.
Available Format: Book
Mozart in Italy: Coming of Age in the Land of Opera Mozart in Italy: Coming of Age in the Land of Opera
Jane Glover | Picador | Hardback
At thirteen years old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who had captured the hearts of northern Europe, but his father Leopold was determined to conquer Italy also. Together, they made three visits there, travelling from the theatres and salons of Milan to the church-filled streets of Rome, to Naples, poorer than the prosperous north, and to Venice, the birthplace of public opera. All the while Mozart was absorbing Italian culture, language, style and art, and honing his craft.
Available Format: Book
In 1940 Sergei Rachmaninoff, living in exile in America, broke his creative silence and composed a swan song to his Russian homeland. What happened in those final haunted years and how did he come to write his farewell masterpiece, the Symphonic Dances? Using a wide range of sources, including important newly-translated texts, this book conjures impressions of this enigmatic figure, his friends and the world he encountered.
Available Format: Book
Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone system was once considered the future of music itself. Today, however, leading orchestras rarely play his works, and his name is met with apathy, if not antipathy. This account restores Schoenberg to his rightful place in the canon, revealing him as one of the twentieth century’s most influential composers. It shows how Schoenberg, synthesising Wagnerian excess with Brahmsian restraint, created a shock wave that never quite subsided, and argues that his compositions must be confronted by anyone interested in Western music.
Available Format: Book
A selection of essays celebrating Ralph Vaughan Williams's life-long involvement with English folk song and music, as collector, editor, arranger, and composer. Many of the essays were first presented at the English Folk Dance and Song Society Conference of 2022.
Available Format: Book
This major new biography takes a detailed look into Schubert’s life, from his early years at the Austrian Stadtkonvikt to the harrowing battle with syphilis that led to his death at the age of thirty-one. Drawing on extensive archival research in Vienna and the Czech Republic, and reconsidering the meaning of some of his best-known works, it provides a fuller account than ever before of Schubert’s extraordinary achievement and incredible courage.
Available Format: Book
Having served with distinction in the Great War, in which he was both injured and gassed, Arthur Bliss set the musical world alight with ultra-modern works, and before long became the most performed British composer abroad. He served as Director of Music at the BBC from 1942–4, and was appointed Master of the Queen’s Music. Bliss stated that the only way to get to know him was through his music. Paul Spicer takes this as his starting point for a pioneering biography which underlines the importance of a reappraisal of the composer’s music.
Available Format: Book
Ellena Taylor - Sheet Music and Books Manager
