Not sure what to get the music-loving reader in your life as a Christmas present? Then look no further! Here are our gift suggestions from books published within the past twelve months, including composer and artist biographies, and publications about music history, opera, music theatre, song, and popular music; something for every literary taste.
Books on Composers & Performers
John Williams: A Composer's Life
Tim Greiving; Oxford University Press; Hardback
This first biography of one of the most important film composers of all time offers an engaging account of a man whose body of work is well-known but whose personal life has remained very private. Seeking to understand what drove Williams's musical productivity, it delves deeply into his decades-long career, uncovering countless new revelations. Featuring exclusive interviews with Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, George Miller, Mia Farrow, Hans Zimmer, Yo-Yo Ma, session musicians, family members, friends, and Williams himself, it presents the definitive portrait of a beloved but famously private doyen of twentieth-century culture.
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The Rolling Year: Listening to the Seasons with Vivaldi
Hannah French; Faber & Faber; Hardback
Vivaldi's famous set of violin concertos was published 300 years ago, but the themes it contains continue to reveal new truths to listeners today. Through the rich imagery of each concerto and its accompanying poetry, this book uncovers the detail of Vivaldi's personal and creative life. In conversation with musicians and experts in health, nature, food, wine, and science, it helps bring a new perspective to the music through shared experiences of the joys and fears of the seasons. To spend a year in the company of Vivaldi is to witness the sounds of both ancient festivals and the beauty and brutality of the natural world - a rolling year that enhances our sensory experience of the seasons today.
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Myra Hess: National Treasure
Jessica Duchen; Kahn & Averill; Hardback
Throughout World War II, Myra Hess ran lunchtime concerts at London's National Gallery, proving music's power to support the human spirit in the darkest of times. This biography, the first in nearly five decades, follows her transformation from rebellious young musician into inimitably powerful woman and national heroine. It offers previously unpublished extracts from her correspondence and post-war American tour diaries, full of insights into her collaborations with musicians including Arturo Toscanini, Pablo Casals, Bruno Walter and Kathleen Ferrier.
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Gustav Mahler (Critical Lives)
Stephen Downes; Reaktion Books; Paperback
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.
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Maurice Ravel (Critical Lives)
Emily Kilpatrick; Reaktion Books; Paperback
This biography, published for the 150th anniversary of Ravel's birth, describes his journey from Parisian apprentice to global musical icon. Drawing on fresh research, it reveals Ravel as both a daring provocateur and a reflective elder, his lifelong quest for originality driven by his deep love of history and literature. Set against a background of cultural and political upheaval, Ravel's story unfolds through his battles with the artistic establishment, his creative resilience after wartime losses and the tragic incapacitation of his final years. The result is an intimate portrait of a composer whose music continues to enchant audiences worldwide.
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Korngold in America: Music, Myth, and Hollywood
Ben Winters; Oxford University Press; Paperback
This book offers new ways of listening to the film scores and post-Hollywood concert works of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a Viennese-raised Austro-Hungarian composer who left Europe for Hollywood in the mid-1930s to write for Warner Bros. Drawing on previously unpublished archival materials, it reveals his relationships with studio processes and staff, highlights aspects of his compositional practice, and traces the way in which he adapted his skills as a musical dramatist and experienced opera composer to the demands of film.
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Edward Elgar and Adrian Boult
Nigel Simeone; Boydell & Brewer; Hardback
Edward Elgar and Adrian Boult first met in 1904 and they saw each other frequently over the next thirty years. This book documents how Boult's interpretations of Elgar's music evolved, drawing on a variety of sources including Boult's annotated scores as well as his broadcasts and commercial recordings. The text is complemented by appendices including a chronology of performances and a discography, providing invaluable information for anyone interested in this fascinating composer-conductor relationship.
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Mahler's Symphonic World: Music for the Age of Uncertainty
Karol Berger; University of Chicago Press; Hardback
Between 1888 and 1909, Gustav Mahler completed nine symphonies and the orchestral song cycle Das Lied von der Erde; his tenth symphony was left incomplete at his death in 1911. This book provocatively suggests that over his lifetime, the composer pursued a single vision and a single, ideal symphony that strived to capture his personal outlook on human existence. It traces recurring plotlines and imagery, and discloses the works’ multiple inter-relationships as well as their cohesiveness around a central idea.
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Berlioz the Critic: Selected Writings from 1837 to 1850
Julian Rushton (editor); University of Rochester Press; Hardback
Hector Berlioz combined writing music with lively and informed music criticism. This collection of articles, engagingly translated by Roger Nichols, covers the middle years of his critical career. In the selected articles he discusses Paris performances of early and modern music, including new operas and revivals, and concerts at the Paris Conservatoire. The essays demonstrate the composer's concern with innovation in the design of musical instruments and assess the quality of performing venues.
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The Purcell Compendium
Peter Holman & Bryan White; Boydell & Brewer; Hardback
Since the tercentenary of Purcell's death in 1995, research into him and the musical culture of Restoration England has developed rapidly. This book is largely taken up with A-Z dictionary entries, preceded by an up-to-date biography and followed by a work-list and bibliography. Important threads are devoted to people associated with Purcell, including earlier composers who influenced him; his fellow composers; his pupils and followers; those who provided him with texts to set; his patrons and employers; copyists, publishers and instrument makers associated with him; and those contemporaries who wrote about him.
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Margaret Bonds (Composers Across Cultures)
John Michael Cooper; Oxford University Press; Hardback
Composer, pianist, teacher, and social-justice activist Margaret Bonds fought against racism, sexism, and economic injustice throughout her career, amassing a portfolio of social-justice compositions unrivalled in eloquence and originality. Examining her published and unpublished music, this book offers a fresh portrait, showing how the confluence of natural genius, matrilineal and racial pride, faith, and support from the community of African American artists, intellectuals, and institutions enabled Margaret Bonds to become one of the most extraordinary figures in all of twentieth-century music.
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Books on Music History
A History of the World in 50 Pieces: The Classical Music That Shapes Us
Tom Service; BBC Books; Hardback
As a form of expression, music has been passed down through oral tradition, musical notation, and recordings in a chain of connection that spans the globe, across the millennia. An official BBC Radio 3 publication, this book follows that chain, collating fifty pieces that reflect our changing politics, social structures and technological development, and how composers, musicians, and listeners have shaped those currents of history. From Bach to Beethoven, Songlines to Saariaho, Hildegard of Bingen to the Happy Birthday song, it offers a fresh take on pieces that many of us think we know, and many more we might not.
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Music’s Odyssey: An Invitation to Western Classical Music
Robin Holloway; Allen Lane; Hardback
A triumphant journey through the history of Western classical music and its great composers, this book offers an invitation to the glorious long voyage of music for all those who seek to deepen their enjoyment and love without getting caught up in musicology and technicalities. Not historical, but broadly chronological and thematic, from the earliest adventures in notation up to the present day – it presents some fourteen centuries of continuity and interruptions, revolutions and renewals, complements and contrasts, via many detailed descriptions of individual composers and individual pieces.
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The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival
Anne Sebba; Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Hardback
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.
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Letters for the Ages: Great Musicians
James Drake & Edward Smyth (editors); Bloomsbury; Hardback
For tens of thousands of years, across various civilisations, our species has been creating music. But what is behind the human fascination with music? This volume explores that question through the personal correspondence of history’s most brilliant musical talent, ranging from Hildegard of Bingen to Amy Winehouse. Spanning from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries, the letters assembled in this collection combine to delve into musicians’ personal relationship with music and the creative process behind their greatest works of art.
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Mark Kermode's Surround Sound: The Stories of Movie Music
Mark Kermode & Jenny Nelson; Picador; Hardback
Celebrating the emotional connection that audiences form with film music, film critic Mark Kermode and radio producer Jenny Nelson explore the evolution of film scoring from silent films to the present day, examining how what we hear has an impact on what we see. Including interviews with extraordinary talents from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood to Oscar-winning composers Rachel Portman and Howard Shore, and the stories behind iconic soundtracks such as Jocelyn Pook’s Eyes Wide Shut, Michael Kamen’s Brazil and Vangelis’s Blade Runner, this book is a thrilling take on how great scores are brought to life on the silver screen.
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Petroc Trelawny's Classical Music Puzzle Book
Puzzles by Gareth Moore & Laura Jayne Ayres; Ivy Press; Paperback
Written by the renowned BBC broadcaster Petroc Trelawny, with puzzles by Dr Gareth Moore and Laura Jayne Ayres, this stylish and entertaining book is the perfect blend of classical music knowledge and puzzle-solving fun. Inside, readers will find a beautifully-designed collection of puzzles, quizzes and curious facts covering composers, concert halls, iconic works, and much more. Whether you're a seasoned concert-goer or simply enjoy listening to Radio 3 or Classic FM, this book is packed with detail, charm, and challenge.
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The Madman's Orchestra: The Greatest Curiosities from the History of Music
Edward Brooke-Hitching; Simon & Schuster; Hardback
From the bestselling author and former BBC QI Elf comes a fascinating journey through the entire history of music, which lifts the curtain on its strangest episodes, and takes us on a backstage tour of surprising and eccentric stories. From the musical secrets of prehistoric monuments to the future of compositions by artificial intelligence, it uncovers the most curious tales, madcap musicians, and unusual instruments lost in time.
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The Power of Music: How Music Connects Us All
Sheku Kanneh-Mason; Viking; Hardback
From winning the prestigious BBC Young Musician Award to performing at Harry and Meghan’s wedding, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason knows and feels the transformative power of music as much as any musician alive. In this book, he explores the experiences and values that led him here, from a childhood of football practice and family music sessions, to his work today in the world’s finest concert halls and in the less privileged communities that surround them. In doing so, he shows us that classical music is for everyone, not just an elite few.
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Books on Opera, Musicals, & Song
The Voice of the Century: Kirsten Flagstad
Ingeborg Solbrekken; Indiana University Press; Paperback
In 1935, the Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad made her United States debut in a live radio broadcast that went across the country and made her an overnight success. She went on to become one of the best-known singers of the twentieth century. Yet during and after the Second World War, a campaign to discredit her was launched by officials in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, and she was unjustly accused of harbouring Nazi sympathies, of singing to Hitler, and of profiting from the war. This biography looks into the darkest corners of Norwegian intelligence history and the scandals that jeopardised the police's credibility.
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The Letters of Frank Loesser
Dominic Broomfield-McHugh & Cliff Eisen (editors); Yale University Press; Hardback
Most famous for Guys and Dolls, Frank Loesser was one of the most influential figures of the Golden Age of Broadway, as well as a successful producer and businessman who maintained a wide and rich correspondence. From Richard Rodgers and Ira Gershwin to Sammy Davis Jr. and Marlon Brando, his milieu included the great creatives of the day. Clever, funny, and original, Loesser's letters shed light on his creative process, his cultural Jewishness, and his keen business sense and relationship with the musical profession.
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Making Mary Poppins: The Sherman Brothers, Walt Disney, and the Creation of a Classic Film
Todd James Pierce; WW Norton & Co; Hardback
When two relatively unknown songwriters walked onto the Walt Disney Studios lot to pitch a song for Annette Funicello, they had no idea that they would end up meeting Disney himself or that a few months later they would be developing the songs for the studio’s biggest live-action film ever. This book details the process from conception through to production, including the challenges faced in dealing with author P. L. Travers. While the Shermans and their songs are at the heart of the book, there are also anecdotes about the casting of the film, the innovative special effects and the relationship between Mary Poppins and the larger Disney world.
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The Musicals of Cole Porter: Broadway, Hollywood, Television
Bernard F. Dick; University Press of Mississippi; Hardback
Cole Porter remains one of America’s most popular composer-songwriters, known for the many urbane, witty, romantic songs he wrote for stage musicals and Hollywood films. This book presents a critical study of his Broadway and movie musicals, and his one foray into live television, Aladdin, covering the period from his first failure, See America First (1916), to the moderately successful Silk Stockings (1955), which ended his Broadway career. It discusses in detail the various literary sources and cultural reference points that inspired the lyrics to Porter’s numbers.
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Lyrical Diary: Lieder from Franz Schubert to Wolfgang Rihm
Christian Gerhaher; Faber & Faber; Hardback
One of the most important singers of our time writes vividly of his performing life and the experiences that he has had in over thirty years with the great works of Lieder, from Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte via Schubert's great cycles, Schumann's varied Lieder, and art songs from Gustav Mahler to Othmar Schoeck and Wolfgang Rihm. He reflects on what these Lieder mean, what makes each of them unique, and how they should be performed. Full of absorbing insights into music and language, this is an essential addition to the canon of writing on singing.
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Gifts for Popular Music Lovers
World Countdown: August 1966 - July 1967 (Limited Edition)
Richard Morton Jack; Lansdowne Books; Hardback
World Countdown was an enigmatic music newspaper that appeared fortnightly in California between August 1966 and July 1969, offering a vivid window into the rapid evolution of the Californian music scene. Created with the blessing of founding editor Charles Royal’s family, this book contains high-quality reproductions of every page from its remarkable first year: sixteen issues spanning the end of The Beatles’ performing career and the full flowering of underground rock with the Monterey International Pop Festival.
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Pressing News: British Music As It Happened 1962-1972 (Limited Edition)
Richard Morton Jack; Lansdowne Books; Hardback
A huge number of new records came out in the UK every week in the 1960s and 70s, many of them accompanied by press releases. These offered important and fascinating information but were almost all discarded, meaning that very few have survived. The product of decades of painstaking collecting and research, this limited edition book reproduces 125 of them, accompanied by a wealth of supporting imagery from music magazines, the underground press and local and national newspapers.
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