The books on classical music that you won’t find anywhere else…
In preparation – August 2012
Truth and Music
The Complete Writings from Music & Musicians, 1957-85
Edited by Mark Doran
In this collection of almost sixty articles, written for the magazine Music and Musicians between 1957 and 1985, Hans Keller tackles some of the fundamental questions about the nature of music: what makes music great, what constitutes an outstanding performance, and why we listeners respond as we do.
hb. 300 pp.
Martinů's Letters Home
Five Decades of Correspondence with Family and Friends
Edited by Iša Popelka
Translated by Ralph Slayton
Martinů left his native Czechoslovakia to study in Paris; the Second World War drove him into exile and the advent of communism kept him there. These 121 letters written to family and friends back home testify to his enduring love for the country he had to leave behind.
hb. 250 pp.
In preparation – June 2012
Ludvig Irgens-Jensen
The Life and Music of a Norwegian Composer
Ludvig Irgens-Jensen (1894–1969) is one of Norway’s greatest composer, whose noble and dignified music deserves to be far better known abroad; this book, which examines his works in a biographical framework, is an important step in that process. A CD of his music accompanies the book.
hb. 400 pp.
Composing in Words
William Alwyn on his Art
Edited by Andrew Palmer
William Alwyn was as fine a craftsman in words as he was in notes; this collection of his writings, featuring ‘Ariel to Miranda’, the diary he kept while he was composing his Third Symphony, also contains fascinating reminiscences of British music life, not least of Elgar as a conductor, and a passionate defence of Puccini.
hb. 300 pp. 26 b/w
Stravinsky the Music-Maker
Writings, Prints and Drawings
Foreword by Hugh Wood
Edited by Martin Anderson
The first part of this book, by husband-and-wife team Hans Keller and Milein Cosman, collects all of Keller’s writings on Stravinsky; Part Two presents Cosman’s vibrant drawings and lithographs of Stravinsky conducting. An introduction by Hugh Wood underlines the importance of the Keller-Cosman partnership in British musical life in the second half of the twentieth century.
hb. 242 pp.
Comrades in Art
The Correspondence of Ronald Stevenson and Percy Grainger, 1957-61, with Interviews, Essays and other Writings on Grainger by Ronald Stevenson
Edited by Teresa R. Balough
Percy Grainger and Ronald Stevenson were two kindred spirits – both virtuoso pianists with an interest in world music and a love of Whitman’s poetry. This book presents their complete correspondence and Stevenson’s later writings on Grainger.
hb. 300 pp. 45 b/w
Martinů and the Symphony
This first full-scale examination of Martinů’s orchestral style ever to be written also analyses each of the six symphonies and other major orchestral works, assessing them as individual works and seeing them in his output as a whole.
hb. 550 pp. 9 half-tones; 199 music exx.
Shostakovich Reconsidered
With an overture by Vladimir Ashkenazy
Shostakovich Reconsidered, which examines the veracity of the composer’s memoirs, Testimony, establishes beyond any doubt the enormous courage of one of the giants of the age.
hb. pb. 791 pp. 16 b/w
Vaughan Williams and the Symphony
Lionel Pike traces the hidden complexities in the Symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams, revealing a structural integrity generally overlooked which confirms ‘RVW’ as one of the symphonic giants of twentieth-century music.
hb. 352 pp. 143 music exx.
Adolf Busch
The Life of an Honest Musician
Volume 1: 1891–1939
Volume 2: 1939–1952; Appendices 1–12
Includes two CDs: Busch the Performer; Busch the Composer
Adolf Busch (1891–1952) was the outstanding German violinist of the twentieth century, whose principled refusal to play in Nazi Germany disrupted his career. This monumental two-volume biography documents Busch’s life against the backdrop of his times, complementing the text with two CDs: ‘Busch as Performer’ and ‘Busch as Composer’.
hb. 1432 pp. 145 & 87 b/w
Havergal Brian on Music
Volume Two: European and American Music in his Time
Edited by Malcolm MacDonald
This second volume selected from Havergal Brian’s huge journalistic output presents his writings on the European masters of his day, among them Strauss, Mahler, Berg, Busoni and many more, revealing that Brian understood their music like few of his contemporaries.
hb. 458 pp.
Whom the Gods Love
The Life and Music of George Butterworth
Forward by Vernon Handley
This is the first full-length study of the life and music of the composer George Butterworth (1885–1916), whose career was cut short by a sniper’s bullet at the Somme.
hb. pb. 204 pp. 26 b/w; 47 music exx.
Ronald Stevenson
The Man and His Music
Edited by Colin Scott-Sutherland
Foreword by Lord Menuhin
Ronald Stevenson is one of Britain’s leading composers, and almost certainly its most prolific. This collection of essays covers virtually all of Stevenson's enormous output and features contributions from leading authorities.
hb. 507 pp. 67 b/w; 79 music exx.
Szymanowski on Music
Selected Writings of Karol Szymanowski
Edited and Translated by Alistair Wightman
This first comprehensive selection of Szymanowski's writings to be published in English contains all the most important of the composer’s essays and interviews, examining questions of education, musical nationalism, criticism and more; it is preceded by an extensive biographical introduction.
hb. pb. 390 pp. 15 b/w
‘And do you also play the violin?’
Foreword by Sir Yehudi Menuhin
Carl F. Flesch grew up in the Berlin of the 1920s and early ’30s surrounded by some of the most famous musicians of the day. This is his account of the men and women behind the famous names.
hb. pb. 382 pp. 99 b/w
The Harmonious Musick of John Jenkins
Volume One: The Fantasias for Viols
This is the first in a two-volume study of Jenkins and his music. After an extensive biographical introduction, it concerns itself with the superb consorts for viols which dominate the early part of Jenkins’ career.
hb. pb. 359 pp. 9 b/w; 148 music exx.
George Enescu
His Life and Music
Preface by Sir Yehudi Menuhin
George Enescu (1881–1955) is one of the neglected giants of modern music; this, the first full-length study of Enescu to be written in the West, charts his development as a composer in a biographical framework.
hb. 320 pp. 58 b/w; 26 music exx.
The Villa-Lobos Letters
Translated and Edited by Lisa M. Peppercorn
With a Reminiscence of Villa-Lobos by Ralph Gustafson
The Villa-Lobos Letters assembles for the first time the complete surviving correspondence of the outstanding Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959), one of the most colourful figures in twentieth-century music.
hb. pb. 212 pp. 40 b/w
Schubert and the Symphony
A New Perspective
Schubert and the Symphony is the first full-length study in any language of Schubert’s career as a symphonist. Brian Newbould examines each Symphony for its individuality and shows its relationship to Schubert’s symphonic œuvre as a whole.
hb. pb. 317 pp. 10 b/w; 101 music exx.
Pfitzner's Palestrina
The ‘Musical Legend’ and its Background
Preface by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Owen Toller discusses the music and the dramatic structure of Pfitzner’s ‘musical legend’ Palestrina in detail, and presents a comprehensive introduction to the background material in the many diverse fields the opera encompasses.
hb. pb. 310 pp. 23 b/w; 89 music exx.
Music, Closed Societies and Football
First published as 1975 (1984 minus 9)
With the ‘Prague Sketchbook’ of Milein Cosman
This is a passionate defence of individualism. ‘Our age has given up the will to win’, Keller writes, ‘It is this threatening loss my book is about’. Begins with a telling injunction (‘Thinkers of the World, Disunite!’), it contains ‘Vienna, 1938’, Keller’s moving story of his arrest in, and escape from, Nazi Vienna.
hb. 288 pp. 11 b/w
Havergal Brian on Music
Volume One: British Music
Edited and introduced by Malcolm MacDonald
Best known as a prolific composer of symphonies, Havergal Brian was also one of the most prolific and insightful music journalists of his day, and this first collection of his writings, selected from his vast journalistic output, brings personal insights into and reminiscences of the British music scene in the first decades of the twentieth century.
hb. pb. 438 pp. 35 music exx.
The Music of E. J. Moeran
Preface by Vernon Handley
Geoffrey Self examines Moeran’s output chronologically, from his early piano and chamber music and tone-poems to the late masterpieces of the Cello Concerto and Cello Sonata.
hb. pb. 288 pp. 26 b/w; 100 music exx.
Experiencing Music
A Composer's Notes
Translated, Edited, and Introduced by Paul Rapoport
With a Foreword by Robert Simpson
In Experiencing Music Holmboe discusses many issues facing the composer, performer and listener, giving especial attention to the most basic questions about musical experience.
hb. pb. 142 pp. 14 b/w
Klemperer on Music
Shavings from a Musician's Workbench
Preface by Pierre Boulez
Edited by Martin Anderson
Illustrations by Cosman, Topolski, Kirchner and 16 others
Klemperer writes here about musicians he knew and worked with, dwelling with especial interest and respect on Gustav Mahler, whose personal recommendation was vital in the early successes of Klemperer’s career. An appendix documents Klemperer’s own compositions.
hb. pb. 246 pp. 53 b/w
The Music of Franz Schmidt
Volume 1: The Orchestral Music
With Personal Recollections by Hans Keller and the Autobiographical Sketch by Franz Schmidt
A major step in the rediscovery of one of the towering composers of the twentieth century, this first in a series of three brings to Schmidt’s orchestral music – chiefly his four magnificent symphonies – the scholarship it so richly merits.
hb. pb. 190 pp. 17 b/w; 109 music exx.
Dallapiccola on Opera
Selected Writings, Volume One
Foreword by Antal Doráti
Translated and Edited by Rudy Shackelford
Hans Werner Henze called Luigi Dallapiccola ‘a rare example of a very complete humanitarian artist’. This collection of his writings on opera – including works by Mozart, Verdi, Berg and Dallapiccola himself – reveal his enduring importance as critic as well as composer.
hb. pb. 291 pp. 18 b/w; 40 music exx.
The Music of Aaron Copland
Preface by André Previn
With a talk on the piano music between Aaron Copland and Leo Smit
Butterworth’s chronological survey of Copland’s entire output charts the composer’s evolution from radical youth to Grand Old Man of American music.
hb. pb. 262 pp. 34 b/w; 164 music exx.
Beethoven: The Sonatas for Piano and Violin
Thoughts on their Interpretation
With a Preface by The Amadeus Quartet, a Postscript by Günter Ludwig, and an Appendix by Paul Rolland Translated by Horace and Anna Rosenberg
This book, by one of the violin’s most influential teachers, presents a detailed analysis of the complete Beethoven Sonatas for violin and piano, offering the performer insights gained from decades of experience.
hb. pb. 219 pp. 17 b/w; 205 music exx.
Boult on Music
Words from a Lifetime's Communication
Foreward by Bernard Shore
Introduction by Vernon Handley
Edited by Martin Anderson
Writings by Sir Adrian Boult, one of Britain’s best-loved musicians, on composers, including such classics as Schubert and his own contemporaries, among them Elgar and Vaughan Williams, on conducting colleagues, among them Nikisch, Toscanini and Furtwängler, on other musicians, such as Menuhin and Glenn Miller, and on conducting itself.
hb. pb. 197 pp. 6 music exx.
The Proms and Natural Justice
A Plan for Renewal
With a Forward by Sir Adrian Boult
Dr Robert Simpson, one of Britain's finest composers and for nearly thirty years a BBC music producer, scrutinises the methods by which the BBC plans the annual Promenade Concerts.
pb. 72 pp.
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