- Analog Days
- Trevor Pinch
- Frank Trocco
- Tracing the development of the Moog synthesizer from its initial conception to its ascension to stardom in Switched-On Bach, from its contribution to the San Francisco psychedelic sound, to its wholesale adoption by the worlds of film and advertising, Analog Days conveys the excitement, uncertainties, and unexpected consequences of a new technology that would provide the soundtrack for a critical chapter of our cultural history.
- Hardcover 2002 / Paperback 2004
- Arnold Schoenberg's Journey
- Allen Shawn
- Proposing that Arnold Schoenberg has been more discussed than heard, more tolerated than loved, Allen Shawn puts aside ultimate judgments about Schoenberg's place in music history to explore the composer's fascinating world in a series of linked essays--"soundings"--that are both searching and wonderfully suggestive. Approaching Schoenberg primarily from the listener's point of view, Shawn plunges into the details of some of Schoenberg's works while at the same time providing a broad overview of his involvements in music, painting, and the history through which he lived.
- Paperback 2003
- Bach
- Christoph Wolff
- Hardcover 1991 / Paperback
- Bach and the Patterns of Invention
- Laurence Dreyfus
- In this major new interpretation of the music of J.S. Bach, we gain a striking picture of the composer as a unique critic of his age. By reading Bach's music "against the grain" of contemporaries, Laurence Dreyfus explains how Bach's approach to musical invention posed a fundamental challenge to Baroque aesthetics.
- Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 2004
- Bach's Continuo Group
- Laurence Dreyfus
- Paperback 1990
- Ballads and Sea-Songs of Newfoundland
- Elizabeth Bristol Greenleaf
- Grace Yarrow Mansfield
- Hardcover 1933
- Beethoven
- Lewis Lockwood
- Hardcover 1992
- Beethoven Essays
- Maynard Solomon
- Hardcover 1988 / Paperback 1990
- Beethoven Essays
- Lewis Lockwood, Editor
- Phyllis Benjamin, Editor
- Hardcover 1984
- Berlioz
- D. Kern Holoman
- For three decades, beginning with the Symphonie fantastique composed in 1830, Berlioz and his music embodied the élan and exuberance of the Romantic era. This captivating and sumptuously illustrated biography is not only a complete account of Berlioz's life, but an acute analysis of his compositions and description of his work as conductor and critic, as well as a vivid picture of his musical world. D. Kern Holoman paints a full-length portrait of Berlioz: his personal and family life, his intellectual development and pursuits, his methods of composing (Berlioz at his work table, so to speak), the aim and style of his music criticism and travel writing, his innovations in staging and conducting performances, and his interaction with other composers.
- Hardcover 1989
- Born in Flames
- Howard Hampton
- Twenty years as an outsider scouring the underbelly of American culture has made Howard Hampton a uniquely hardnosed guide to the heart of pop darkness. Bridging the fatalistic, intensely charged space between Apocalypse Now Redux and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," his writing breaks down barriers of ignorance and arrogance that have segregated art forms from each other and from the world at large. Born in Flames is a headlong plunge into the passions and disruptive power of art.
- Hardcover 2007 / Paperback 2008
- Brahms and the German Spirit
- Daniel Beller-McKenna
- Beller-McKenna counters music historians's reluctance to address Brahms's Germanness, wary perhaps of fascist implications. He gives an account of the intertwining of nationalism, politics, and religion that underlies major works, and enriches both our understanding of his art and German culture.
- Hardcover 2004
- The Century of Bach & Mozart
- Edited by Thomas Forrest Kelly
- Edited by Sean Gallagher
- For many today Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stand as towering representatives of European music of the eighteenth century, composers whose works reflect intellectual, religious, and aesthetic trends of the period. This collection of essays by leading authorities in the field offers a variety of new perspectives on the two composers, as well as some of their important contemporaries, Haydn in particular.
- Hardcover 2008
- Chopin at the Boundaries
- Jeffrey Kallberg
- The complex status of Chopin in our culture--he was a native Pole and adopted Frenchman, and a male composer writing in "feminine" genres--is the subject of Jeffrey Kallberg's absorbing book. Combining social history, literary theory, musicology, and feminist thought, this is the first book to situate Chopin's music within the construct of his somewhat marginal sexual identity.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1998
- Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century
- Joel Lester
- Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century is the most comprehensive account ever given of the theory behind the music of Baroque and Classical composers, from Bach to Beethoven. While giving preeminent theorists their due in this panoramic survey of musical thought, Joel Lester also examines the works of more than one hundred seventeenth- and eighteenth century writers to show how prominent theories were received and applied in actual teaching situations. Beginning with the influence of Zarlino and seventeenth-century theorists, Lester then focuses on central traditions emerging from definitive works in the early eighteenth century. Lester's historic overview is leavened throughout with accounts of individual composers grappling with theoretical issues.
- Paperback
- Dancing in the Street
- Suzanne E. Smith
- Detroit in the 1960s was a city with a pulse: people were marching in step with Martin Luther King, Jr.; dancing in the street with Martha and the Vandellas; facing off with city police. Through it all, Motown provided the beat. This book tells the story of Motown--as both musical style and entrepreneurial phenomenon--and of its intrinsic relationship to the politics and culture of Motor Town, USA. Here we see Motown's music not as the mere soundtrack for its historical moment but as an active agent in the civil rights movement and the politics of the time.
- Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2001
- Dead Elvis
- Greil Marcus
- As he listens in on the public conversation that recreates Elvis after death, Marcus tracks the path of Presley's resurrection. He grafts together scattered fragments of the eclectic dialogue--snatches of movies and music, books and newspapers, photographs, posters, cartoons--and amazes us with not only what America has been saying as it raises its late king, but also what this strange obsession with a dead Elvis can tell us about America itself.
- Paperback 1999
- Folk-Songs of the South
- Edited by John Harrington Cox
- Hardcover 1925
- Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't
- Scott Saul
- In the long decade between the mid-fifties and the late sixties, jazz was changing more than its sound. The age of Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, and Charles Mingus's The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady was a time when jazz became both newly militant and newly seductive, its example powerfully shaping the social dramas of the Civil Rights movement, the Black Power movement, and the counterculture. Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't is the first book to tell the broader story of this period in jazz--and American--history.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2005
- Grown Up All Wrong
- Robert Christgau
- Two generations of American music lovers have grown up listening with Robert Christgau, attuned to his inimitable blend of judgment, acuity, passion, erudition, wit, and caveat emptor. His writings, collected here, constitute a virtual encyclopedia of popular music over the past fifty years, ranging from the 1950s singer-songwriter tradition through hip-hop, alternative, and beyond. With unfailing style and grace, Christgau negotiates the straits of great music and thorny politics, and commerce.
- Hardcover 1998 / Paperback 2000
- Handel as Orpheus
- Ellen T. Harris
- Handel wrote over 100 cantatas, compositions for voice and instruments that describe the joy and pain of love. In the first comprehensive study of the cantatas, Harris investigates their place in Handel's life as well as their extraordinary beauty. This work brings greater understanding of Handel's development as a composer and new insight into the role of sexuality in artistic expression.
- Hardcover 2002 / Paperback 2004
- Haydn and the Classical Variation
- Elaine R. Sisman
- Hardcover
- I-VI
- John Cage
- Mixed 1990 / Mixed
- In the Fascist Bathroom
- Greil Marcus
- Was punk just another moment in music history? Greil Marcus, author of the renowned Lipstick Traces, delves into the after-life of punk as a much richer phenomenon--a form of artistic and social rebellion that continually erupts into popular culture. In more than seventy short pieces written over fifteen years, he traces the uncompromising strands of punk from Johnny Rotten to Elvis Costello, Sonic Youth, even Bruce Springsteen.
- Paperback 1999
- Inside Beethoven's Quartets
- Lewis Lockwood
- Joel Smirnoff
- Ronald Copes
- Samuel Rhodes
- Joel Krosnick
- The string quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven have rewarded the engagement of scholars, performers, and audiences for almost two hundred years. This book and its accompanying recording invite you to experience three of these profound and beautiful works of music from the inside, with a renowned Beethoven scholar and the Julliand Quartet as your guides.
- Mixed 2008
- Keyboard Music from the Andreas Bach Book and the Möller Manuscript
- Robert Hill, Editor
- Foreword by Christoph Wolff
- Paperback 1991
- The King's Theatre Collection
- Morris S. Levy
- John Milton Ward
- With over 1,400 entries and 33 illustrations, this volume provides a window into the historical significance of the King's Theatre to the cultural life of London and abroad, and will appeal to musicologists, historians, theater scholars, and librarians interested in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opera and ballet.
- Paperback 2006
- The King's Theatre Collection
- Morris S. Levy
- John Milton Ward
- The John Milton and Ruth Neils Ward Collection of the Harvard Theatre Collection is comprised of thousands of books, scores, librettos, playbills, illustrations, and ephemera relating to public performances that incorporate music and dance in an essential way. With over 1,600 entries and 40 color illustrations, this volume provides a window into the historical significance of the King's Theatre to the cultural life of London and abroad.
- Paperback 2006
- Late Idyll
- Reinhold Brinkmann
- Peter Palmer, Translator
- In this elegant book, premier musicologist Reinhold Brinkmann guides us through Brahms's "Second Symphony," examining musical ideas in all their compositional facets and placing them in the context of major trends in the intellectual history of late nineteenth-century Europe.
- Paperback 1997 / Hardcover
- The Letters of Franz Liszt to Olga von Meyendorff, 1871-1886
- Franz Liszt
- Translated by William R. Tyler
- Introduction and notes by Edward N. Waters
- Hardcover 1979
- Magic Circles
- Devin McKinney
- Delving into concerts and interviews, films and music, outtakes and bootlegs, Devin McKinney brings to bear the insights of history, aesthetics, sociology, psychology, and mythology to account for the depth and resonance of the Beatles' impact. His book is also a uniquely multifaceted appreciation of the group's artistic achievement, exploring their music as both timeless expression and visceral response to their historical moment.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2004
- Motives for Allusion
- Christopher Alan Reynolds
- When a critic pointed out to Brahms that the finale theme in his First Symphony was remarkably similar to the Ode to Joy theme in Beethoven's Ninth, he is said to have replied: "Yes indeed, and what's really remarkable is that every jackass notices this at once." Not every musical borrowing is quite so obvious; but the listener who does perceive one is always left wondering: what does the similarity mean? In this illuminating book Christopher Reynolds gives us answers to that complex question. He identifies specific borrowings or allusions in a wide range of nineteenth-century music and shows the kinds of things composers do with borrowed musical ideas.
- Hardcover 2003
- Mozart
- Alan Tyson
- The results and implications of Alan Tyson's work on Mozart have had a profound impact on virtually every aspect of research on this composer: biography, chronology of compositions, working methods, stylistic analysis. This book assembles his major articles, previously scattered through magazines, journals, and festschrifts, plus two unpublished pieces, into a treasure trove for musicologists and music lovers. Tyson's style is clear and elegant, and the originality of his work and the soundness of his inferences make this book a pleasure.
- Hardcover 1987 / Paperback 1990
- Music Manuscripts at Harvard
- Barbara Wolff
- A catalogue of music manuscripts from the 14th to the 20th centuries in the Houghton Library and the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library. Includes descriptions of works by Bach, Liszt, Mahler, Mozart, Purcell, Schoenberg, Schubert, Strauss, Wagner, and many others.
- Paperback 2005
- Music and Imagination
- Aaron Copland
- Hardcover 1952 / Paperback
- On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs
- Dorothy Scarborough
- Hardcover 1925
- Opera
- Linda Hutcheon
- Michael Hutcheon
- Our modern narratives of science and technology can only go so far in teaching us about the death that we must all finally face. Might opera, an art form steeped in death, teach us how to die, as this provocative work suggests? In Opera: The Art of Dying a physician and a literary theorist bring together scientific and humanistic perspectives on the lessons on living and dying that this extravagant and seemingly artificial art imparts.
- Hardcover 2004
- The Operas of Alessandro Scarlatti, Volume IX, La Statira
- Alessandro Scarlatti, By (composer) Composer of music
- William C. Holmes, Editor
- Paperback 1985
- The Operas of Alessandro Scarlatti, Volume V, Massimo Puppieno
- Alessandro Scarlatti, By (composer) Composer of music
- Edited by Colin Slim
- Paperback 1979
- The Operas of Alessandro Scarlatti, Volume VI, La Caduta dé Decemviri
- Alessandro Scarlatti, By (composer) Composer of music
- Edited by Hermine Weigel Williams
- Paperback 1980
- The Operas of Alessandro Scarlatti, Volume VII, Gli Equivoci nel Sembiante
- Alessandro Scarlatti, By (composer) Composer of music
- Edited by Frank A. D'Accone
- Paperback 1982
- The Operas of Alessandro Scarlatti, Volume VIII, Tigrane
- Alessandro Scarlatti, By (composer) Composer of music
- Edited by Michael Collins
- Paperback 1983
- Orientations
- Pierre Boulez
- Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Editor
- Martin Cooper, Translator
- Hardcover 1986 / Paperback 1990
- Performing Rites
- Simon Frith
- In Performing Rites, one of the most influential writers on popular music asks what we talk about when we talk about music. Instead of dismissing emotional response and personal taste as inaccessible to the academic critic, Simon Frith takes these forms of engagement as his subject--and discloses their place at the very center of the aesthetics that structure our culture and color our lives.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1998
- Pierre Boulez
- Dominiqu Jameux
- Susan Bradshaw, Translator
- Hardcover
- Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons
- Igor Stravinsky
- Hardcover 1970 / Paperback 1993
- Pyramids at the Louvre
- Glenn Watkins
- Hardcover
- A Right to Sing the Blues
- Jeffrey Melnick
- "Black-Jewish relations," Jeffrey Melnick argues, has mostly been a way for American Jews to talk about their ambivalent racial status, a narrative collectively constructed at critical moments, when particular conflicts demand an explanation. Remarkably flexible, this narrative can organize diffuse materials into a coherent story that has a powerful hold on our imagination. Melnick elaborates this idea through an in-depth look at Jewish songwriters, composers, and perfomers who made "Black" music in the first few decades of this century.
- Hardcover 1999 / Paperback 2001
- Robert Schumann
- Jon W. Finson
- Arguably no other nineteenth-century German composer was as literate or as finely attuned to setting verse as Robert Schumann. Finson challenges long-standing assumptions about Schumann's Lieder, engaging traditionally held interpretations. Arranged in part thematically, rather than merely by strict compositional chronology, this book speaks to the heart of Schumann's music.
- Hardcover 2008
- The Romantic Generation
- Charles Rosen
- What Charles Rosen's celebrated book The Classical Style did for music of the Classical period, this highly praised volume does for the Romantic era. An exhilarating exploration of the musical language, forms, and styles of the Romantic period, it captures the spirit that enlivened a generation of composers and musicians, and in doing so it conveys the very sense of Romantic music.
- Hardcover 1995 / Paperback 1998
- The Sex Revolts
- Simon Reynolds
- Joy Press
- The first book to look at rock rebellion through the lens of gender, The Sex Revolts captures the paradox at rock's dark heart--the music is often most thrilling when it is most misogynistic and macho. And, looking at music made by female artists, the authors ask: must it always be this way? Provocative and passionately argued, the book walks the edgy line between a rock fan's excitement and a critic's awareness of the music's murky undercurrents.
- Paperback 1996 / Hardcover
- The String Quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven
- Christoph Wolff
- Hardcover 1981
- Swing Changes
- David W. Stowe
- Bands were playing, people were dancing, the music business was booming. It was the big-band era, and swing was giving a new shape and sound to American culture. Swing Changes looks at New Deal America through its music and shows us how the contradictions and tensions within swing--over race, politics, its own cultural status, the role of women--mirrored those played out in the larger society. Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, newspapers, magazines, recordings, photographs, literature, and films, Swing Changes offers a vibrant picture of American society at a pivotal time, and a new perspective on music as a cultural force.
- Paperback 1996 / Hardcover 1998
- Thematic Catalogue of the Works of Giovanni Battista Sammartini
- Newell Jenkins
- Bathia Churgin
- Hardcover 1976
- This Is Pop
- Eric Weisbard
- About the vast and diverse topic of pop music, scholars and critics, journalists and musicians have much to say, but rarely to each other. A crossover venture begun at Seattle's Experience Music Project, this book captures the academic and the critical, the musical and the literary in an impromptu dialogue that suggests the breadth and vitality of pop inquiry today. Robert Christgau and Gary Giddins, pivotal critics, encounter Simon Frith and Robert Walser, pioneers in the study of popular music. Musicians Carrie Brownstein and Sarah Dougher, both active in the riot grrl scene of the Pacific Northwest, examine how audience responses affect their craft. John Darnielle, of the Mountain Goats attends to the web postings of hair metal fans. This Is Pop illustrates what can happen when the best of scholarship, criticism, and pop's inherent unruliness intersect.
- Paperback 2004 / Hardcover 2004
- Wagner Handbook
- Ulrich Muller, Editor
- Peter Wapnewski, Editor
- John Deathridge, Translation Editor
- Hardcover
- When We Were Good
- Robert S. Cantwell
- When We Were Good traces the many and varied cultural influences on the folk revival of the late fifties and sixties. In his capacious analysis of the ideologies, traditions, and personalities that created an extraordinary moment in American popular culture, Cantwell explores the idea of folk at the deepest level. Taking up some of the more obdurate problems in cultural studies--racial identity, art and politics, regional allegiances, class differences--he shows how the folk revival was a search for authentic democracy, with compelling lessons for our own time.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1997