New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - April 2025
Welcome to our latest selection of new music publications, including biographies of composer Gustav Mahler and choreographer Martha Graham, a book telling the story of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, a new paperback edition of Robert Philip's A Little History of Music, a guide to JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, an analysis of Beethoven's violin sonatas, two books on medieval music, a new edition of Kofi Agawu's classic text on musical semiotics, and an exploration of the music of Duke Ellington.
Gustav Mahler’s status as an icon of fin-de-siècle Viennese music is assured, yet he remains an ambiguous, provocative figure. He was a composer who challenged musical form and style but identified with German Enlightenment and Romantic culture. He was a Jewish conductor who reached the pinnacle of his profession in antisemitic Vienna. This book, reflecting the latest research, constructs a fresh interpretation of Mahler’s music in relation to his life.
Available Format: Book
In 1943, German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Almost fifty women and girls were assembled to play marching music to other inmates - forced labourers who left each morning and returned, exhausted and often broken, at the end of the day - and give weekly concerts for Nazi officers. For almost all of the musicians, being in the orchestra saved their lives. This book tells their astonishing story with sensitivity and care.
Available Format: Book
Music excites and moves us perhaps more than any other art form. From a Neanderthal’s bone flute to the festivals of Glastonbury and Coachella, human beings have always made and enjoyed music. Covering a remarkable range, including Indian raga, Javanese gamelan, medieval chant, jazz and K-pop, this book (now available in paperback) celebrates the wonder of music, and why it is treasured across the world.
Available Format: Book
Part of the American Bach Society Guides for the introduction of Bach's most important works and collections to a wider audience, this book presents the context, history, and music of The Well-Tempered Clavier based on the latest musicological research. Avoiding musical notation and explaining necessary technical terminology, it appeals to those who desire an introduction to the collection or a refresher on its salient characteristics.
Available Format: Book
This book provides new readings of the ten Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin, many of which have been given surprisingly little attention by scholars to date. The analyses in this book engage with postmodern concerns such as hermeneutics, intertextuality, gender, humour, narratology, and human interest, revealing characteristics within these sonatas that have been slow to come to light.
Available Format: Book
One of the greatest choreographers ever to live, Martha Graham pioneered a revolutionary dance technique - primal, dynamic, and rooted in the emotional life of the body - that upended traditional vocabulary and shaped generations of dancers and choreographers across the globe. This book draws on more than a decade of research to deliver the definitive portrait of this titan, portraying the artist in all her passionate complexity.
Available Format: Book
Minstrels and Minstrelsy in Late Medieval England
Richard Rastall & Andrew Taylor; Boydell & Brewer; Paperback
Minstrels were a common sight and sound in the late Middle Ages. Aristocrats, knights and ladies heard them on great occasions (such as Edward I's wedding feast for his daughter Elizabeth in 1296); town-dwellers saw them in civic processions; even in the countryside people heard them at weddings and other celebrations. But who were the minstrels, and what did they do? This book brings to bear the available evidence to enrich our view of the minstrel in late medieval society.
Available Format: Book
The Cambridge History of Medieval Music: Volume 2
Mark Everist & Thomas Forrest Kelly (editors); Cambridge University Press; Paperback
Spanning a millennium of musical history, this monumental volume brings together nearly forty leading authorities to survey the music of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. All of the major aspects of medieval music are considered, making use of the latest research to discuss everything from the earliest genres of chant and the music of the liturgy, to the riches of the vernacular song of the trouvères and troubadours.
Available Format: Book
Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music
Kofi Agawu; Princeton University Press; Paperback
Of all the repertories of Western Art music, none is as explicitly listener-oriented as that of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet few attempts to analyse the so-called Classic Style have embraced the semiotic implications of this fact. Now in a new edition, this classic text proposes a listener-oriented theory of Classic instrumental music (including Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven).
Available Format: Book
A Tone Parallel to Duke Ellington: The Man in the Music
Jack Chambers; University Press of Mississippi; Paperback
This insightful new volume explores Duke Ellington’s music thematically, situating his music in the context in which it was created. Each chapter features its own playlist as a guide to the music discussed, and, in some cases, fuller listings in case readers might want to pursue a topic further. The early chapters cover topics that occupied Ellington through much of his career, whilst later chapters cover more specific themes, some of them from Ellington's last decades, which are less well studied.
Available Format: Book
James Longstaffe - Head of Retail
