I’ve been paying some bills for the past couple for the past couple of days and haven’t had a chance to update much.  While I’m still catching up, why don’t we do a followup to our great music fiction list–the essential non-fiction books about music.  Perhaps, we could have a beginner’s or popular  list and an advanced list.  Who’s got something?  

26 thoughts on “Non-Fiction, Anyone”
  1. Robin Holloway. On Music: Essays and Diversions 1963-2003.

    Andrew Porter’s “Musical Events” columns for The New Yorker, collected in five volumes that take us up to 1986. They’re a portrait of an age, and an invaluable research tool. Lots and lots of new music is covered. Very well then, what about his succeeding years on the magazine? There must be a university press somewhere …

    Roger Nichols. The Harlequin Years.

    Chris Villars, ed. Morton Feldman Talks.

    Alec Wilder. American Popular Song.

    Alan Blyth, ed. Song on Record.

    On jazz: Gunther Schuller, Gary Giddins, Whitney Balliett.

    Michael Oliver’s reviews (uncollected) in Gramophone magazine.

    Paul Griffiths on practically anything.

    Virgil Thomson’s reviews for the Herald-Tribune 1940-1954, collected in three volumes.

    Michael Steinberg’s in-the-footsteps-of-Tovey volumes for OUP on the symphony, concerto, choral music. Plus (uncollected, and for how long?) the reviews he wrote for the Boston Globe berween 1964 and 1976. Learned, funny, imaginative, scorching — they had everything.

    Harry Halbreich. Arthur Honegger.

    Writings on music by Paul Bowles, Lionel Salter, Hilary Finch, Bayan Northcott, Klaus George Roy, Richard Taruskin, David Hamilton, David Schiff, Joseph Horowitz.

    Aldous Huxley as music critic? See Vol. 1 of his Complete Essays (Ivan Dee)

    And so to bed.

  2. With the exception of stuff that is more theoretical than anything else (eg, New Music Resources, Genesis of a Music, and some of Schoenberg’s more music theory-oriented writings), most of what I and others suggested should be readable by anyone. I think most of the best stuff that has been mentioned should be accessible regardless of one’s ability to read music. The Feldman, for example, has very little (too little, to my regret) notation in it.

    It’s sort of how I have books on astrophysics and ellipsoids by S. Chandrasekhar, who was one of my gods. I can’t understand the math, since it was written for people with PhDs in this area, but he wrote so well that the beauty of the science comes out and it’s a pleasure to look at from time to time. Same thing with good books on composers and new music in general—the elegance of the art is there, and it’s the words, not the notation, that can transmit this to anyone.

  3. For a lover of classical music whose abilities to read musical scores is pretty minimal–a position I suspect a lot of people who don’t play an instrument are in–where would you (collective ‘you’ referring to those who have contributed to this thread so far) draw the line between books that are accessible to such a person and ones that are not?

  4. Actually, it’s my suspicion that Mr. GANN is John Adams. They both love Nancarrow, they both worship Ives, neither of them thinks John Adams was ever a real minimalist… and haven’t you noticed, you never see them together…?

  5. Hey Seth:

    Bitter Music and Experimental Music are both great books. I’ll second that emotion! The same with Oceans of Sound. Toop’s other book Exotica is good but not great. Both volumes of Bang’s writings should be essential reading, well to me anyway! Also Curtis Sach’s Wellspring of Music is also pretty groovy. Honourable Mention also to All Yesterday’s Parties: The Velvet Underground In Print 1966-1971.

  6. I’ll second:
    Bailey – Improvisation
    Duckworth – Talking Music
    Ives – Essays before a Sonata

    Surprised nobody’s mentioned yet:
    Harry Partch – Bitter Music
    Nyman – Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond

    Few others coming to mind, YMMV:
    Douglas Kahn – Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts
    WIRE Magazine – Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music
    Andrew Jones – Plunderphonics, ‘Pataphysics & Pop Mechanics
    Christoph Cox & Daniel Warner (ed.) – Audio Culture
    Zorn (ed.) – Arcana: Musicians on Music & Arcana II

    And a must for any touring musician: Eugene Chadbourne – I Hate The Man Who Runs This Bar

  7. I’ll occasionally go for a couple of days where David Toop’s “Ocean of Sound” becomes like a bible. It happens once a year or so. And every time I reread it, I have completely different reactions and connections to it. I guess that’s the point.

    Sounds right to me. That’s exactly my experience with the Berio Two Interviews.

  8. Like I’ve written before (and despite the fact that he himself claims to be Max Reger) I think Mr. Rieper is John Adams. That, IMO, would tend to support the journalistic suspicions of the gentleman from the great state of New York.

  9. My books aren’t fiction. Every time my name is mentioned in this forum, “Graham Rieper” instantly writes in to insult me. It’s been going on for years, as regular as clockwork. He must be someone I wrote a negative review of once, and he’s been seething, and obsessing about me, and vowing revenge – but since he hides behind a pseudonym, who would know?

  10. I’ll occasionally go for a couple of days where David Toop’s “Ocean of Sound” becomes like a bible. It happens once a year or so. And every time I reread it, I have completely different reactions and connections to it. I guess that’s the point.

  11. Reflections of an American Composer by Arthur Berger
    Virgil Thomson by Virgil Thomson
    Music Reviewed 1939-1954 by Virgil Thomson
    The State of Music by Virgil Thomson
    Music for Words by Virgil Thomson
    Virgil Thomson by Kathleen Hoover and John Cage
    Judith Tick’s biography of Ruth Crawford
    Mark the Music by Eric A. Gordon
    National Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams
    Stravinsky and the Russian Tradition by Richard Taruskin
    Twentieth Century Music by Peter Yates
    Vision and Resonance by John Hollander (really a book about poetry, but useful for anybody interested in the problems of setting words to music)
    The Romantic Generation by Charles Rosen
    The Classical Style by Charles Rosen
    Music of Three Seasons by Andrew Porter (and the subsequent books of New Yorker Reviews)
    Form and Feeling by Suzanne Langer
    Words About Music by Milton Babbitt
    The Sing Era by Gunther Schuller
    Silence by John Cage
    The Dyer’s Hand by W. H. Auden (another poetry book, but…)

  12. The Rough Guide’s introduction to classical music is really quite good, even for non-beginners. It’s written with the same informal, straight-up tone as the travel guidebooks and include a good number of 20th century composers.

    For non-beginners, I recommend:
    Essays and Lectures on Music
    Essay on Musical Analysis
    Musician Talks
    all by Sir Donald Francis Tovey

    For its pure comic relief, Tovey’s Companion to Beethoven piano sonatas (bar-by-bar analysis) is hard to beat.

  13. The Tradition of Western Music by Gerald Abraham
    Slavonic and Romantic Music by Gerald Abraham
    A History of Musical Style by Richard L. Crocker
    Opera as Drama by Joseph Kerman
    The Language of Modern Music by Donald Mitchell
    The Composer’s Voice by Edward T. Cone
    How Musical Is Man by John Blacking
    A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography by Egon Wellesz

    *

    Last night, I started reading Michael Steinberg and Larry Rothe’s new, general reader-oriented For the Love of Music…

  14. Recently finished: The Singing Neanderthals by Steven Mithen

    Completely guess-work, but still brilliant.

  15. Alex, I could keep going on as well—I thought of the Cage and Schoenberg’s Style and Idea after posting, and will undoubtedly think of others on the drive home.

    Graham, does Kyle know it’s part fiction? I wasn’t aware it was fiction, but what do I know.

    NP: Young: The Well-Tuned Piano (CD, not the DVD)

  16. “I would also most definitely include Kyle\’s books on Music Downtown…”

    …which is at least part fiction.

  17. Bernstein’s Joy of Music and Infinite Variety of Music are still great books for beginners. I also recommend Maynard Solomon’s Mozart, Allen Shawn’s Schoenberg, and Elizabeth Wilson’s Shostakovich: A Life Remembered in that category.

    More advanced books:

    Charles Rosen, The Classical Style
    Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero
    Berlioz Memoirs
    ETA Hoffmann, Writings on Music
    Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler
    Schoenberg, Style and Idea
    Auner, A Schoenberg Reader
    Ives, Essays Before a Sonata
    Feldman, Give My Regards to 8th Street
    Cage, Silence
    Reich, Writings on Music
    Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions
    Craft, Conversations with Stravinsky
    Glenn Watkins, Pyramids at the Louvre
    Wilfred Mellers, Music in a New Found Land
    Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz
    Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
    Bob Dylan, Chronicles

    but I could keep going….

  18. Stockhausen: On Music and On a Cosmic Music
    Derek Bailey: Improvisation
    Cage: Silence
    Charles Ives: Essay before a Sonata
    LeRoi Jones: Blues People and Black Music
    Graham Lock: Forces in Motion
    Lewis Porter: John Coltrane
    Joel Chadabe: Electronic Music
    Ekkehard Jost: Free Jazz
    Hazrat Inayat Khan: The Mysticism of Sound/Music/The Music of Life
    William Duckworth-Talking Music
    A.B. Spellman: Four Jazz Lives

  19. Steve Reich: Writings About Music
    Philip Glass (and some ghostwriter I cannot recall): Music by Philip Glass (an ego trip, to be sure, but has some interesting tidbits about his music)
    Harry Partch: Genesis of a Music (my bible)
    Henry Cowell: New Music Resources (the bible I wish I owned)
    Rene Leibowitz: Schoenberg and His School (a polemic, to be sure, but worth reading)
    Alban Berg: Letters to His Wife
    Morton Feldman: Give My Regards to Eighth Street (one of my all-time favorites)

    I would also most definitely include Kyle\’s books on Music Downtown and his Nancarrow book if I owned them–I\’ve perused parts of the nancarrow book on Amazon; does that count? Also Ross W. Duffi: How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) (it\’s on my Amazon wish list)

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