Music Archives

The latest in Yale's Musical Instrument series winds from ancient animal horns to the lurs of Bronze Age Denmark - and thence eventually to its modern brassy descendants.

The Horn

Renato Meucci

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£35.00

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A multi-faceted portrait of the most overlooked of the Fab Four.

George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle

Philip Norman

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£25.00

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A Pulitzer Prize-winner's essays on musical greats who flourished again later in life: Leonard Cohen, Aretha Franklin, Patti Smith and many more. These are judicious and vivid portraits, som... read more

Holding the Note: Writing On Music

David Remnick

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£22.00

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Lifts the curtain on the maestro of later C20th American musical theatre. Some illustrations.

Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy

Stephen M. Silverman

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£30.00

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Glitzy memoir from the only act in history to have a No.1 album in six consecutive decades.

My Name is Barbra

Barbra Streisand

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From London in the Swinging Sixties to a hippie retreat in the Outer Hebrides: she and her partner travelled – slowly – by horse and wagon. She gave up music, disillusioned with the pop ... read more

Wayward: Just Another Life to Live

Vashti Bunyan

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£9.99

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The women who got - and kept - the Stones rolling.

Parachute Women: Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, Anita ...

Elizabeth Winder

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The first biography of one of the great codebreakers: she played a key role in both world wars, and also deciphered the letters of both Beethoven and Mozart.

Queen of Codes: The Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain’s Gre ...

Jackie Ui Chionna

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He left Russia in 1917, taking his compositions and melancholy genius to America and Switzerland, where he reinvented himself as a virtuoso pianist.

Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile

Fiona Maddocks

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During lockdown, the great tenor turned his attention to some of the stories and ideas behind the song cycles that he was unable to perform.

Song & Self: A Singer’s Reflections on Music and Performanc ...

Ian Bostridge

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In the excellent Yale series, a lively introduction to music around the world from Neanderthal trumpeting to the present.

A Little History of Music

Robert Philip

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£15.99

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A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance ...

Hanif Abdurraqib

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£10.99

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A lively account of a long and rich life from Broadway royalty.

Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers ...

Mary Rodgers

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A group biography of four magnificent and prodigiously talented women composers who, though famous in their lifetimes for their works, are now ghosts in the canon. All were born between 1858... read more

Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World

Leah Broad

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Fascinating portrait of what it takes to be a conductor, by a very successful one.

In Good Hands: The Making of a Modern Conductor

Alice Farnham

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Shinichi Suzuki was a violinist who became more famous as an educator and philosopher; his ideas of language acquisition revolutionised musical training. He also did much to erode occidental... read more

Suzuki: The Man and His Dream to Teach the Children of the World ...

Eri Hotta

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An entertaining and affecting memoir of the great pianist's youth and early training, which began in a suburb of post-war Liverpool. Told with candour and simplicity.

Enough: Scenes from Childhood

Stephen Hough

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Uses Beethoven's music to tell the story of his life; a zestful account, told in short chapters though a hundred pieces of music and recommended recordings.

Why Beethoven: A Phenomenon in 100 Pieces

Norman Lebrecht

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A biography of the American lyricist, librettist and theatrical producer.

Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical ...

Laurie Winer

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365 photographs taken by a great musician and writer: fragments of daily life, be it a book, a view, her boots, her travels...

A Book of Days

Patti Smith

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£25.00

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An exhilarating romp through some epic first performances: the Sex Pistols, kabuki theatre, Renaissance Florence, Paris with the Ballets Russes, etc.

Astonish Me!: First Nights That Changed the World

Dominic Dromgoole

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Stoppard's libretto for André Previn's Penelope - a monodrama by Odysseus's wife - first performed in 2019 by Renée Fleming, Uma Thurman and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Penelope

Tom Stoppard

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£8.99

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The first violinist of the Takacs Quartet ruminates on the work of Bartók, Britten, Dvořák and Elgar in relation to ideas of home, exile, nostalgia and place, the hope and even dread of r... read more

Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home

Edward Dusinberre

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In 1815 both composers were setting poems to music in what became known as their 'late style'.

From the Ruins of Enlightenment: Beethoven and Schubert in Their Solit ...

Richard Kramer

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A short biography of Thomas Linley, the Georgian prodigy who was celebrated - with Mozart - by Burney as "the most promising geniusses of the age". But he died very young.

Tommasino: The Enigma of the English Mozart

Tony Scotland

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From C.P.E. Bach, Haydn and Romantic Sturm und Drang to Chopin, Berlioz and Wagner. Walsh's recent book on Debussy was excellent.

The Beloved Vision: Music in the Romantic Age

Stephen Walsh

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The autobiography of the lead singer of U2.

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

Bono

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Dylan's first book of new writing since 2004 comprises over 60 essays on music and musicians. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.

The Philosophy of Modern Song

Bob Dylan

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Sex & drugs & rock'n'roll as manager of The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, Wham!, Sinéad O'Connor and others.

Sour Mouth, Sweet Bottom: Lessons from a Dissolute Life ...

Simon Napier-Bell

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The late lamented drummer of the Rolling Stones, who died just over a year ago. He was also a jazz fiend, playing and recording with several other musicians. His deadpan demeanour set off hi... read more

Charlie’s Good Tonight: The Authorised Biography of Charlie Watt ...

Paul Sexton

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One of a handful of new titles in this small but extremely pleasing series - engaging, thoughtful, beautifully illustrated and designed.

Acoustics: The Art of Sound

Steve Marshall

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£6.95

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The Life of Music: New Adventures in the Western Classical Tradition ...

Nicholas Kenyon

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£11.99

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Why Patti Smith Matters

Caryn Rose

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£9.99

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A memoir of the making of a pianist, and the significance of classical music nowadays.

Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons ...

Jeremy Denk

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The ambitions of the youngest member of a musical family are thwarted by having to play the triangle... But help appears in the form of a cat-ghost, Maestro Gus, who is a magical teacher. A ... read more

Piano Fingers

Caroline Magerl

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What They Heard: How The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Bob Dylan Listene ...

Luke Meddings

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Alma Mahler

Sasho Dimoski

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Handel in London: The Making of a Genius

Jane Glover

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Opera for Everybody: The Story of English National Opera ...

Susie Gilbert

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Hoffnungs Little Ones

Gerard Hoffnung

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£6.95

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From London in the Swinging Sixties to a hippie retreat in the Outer Hebrides: she and her partner travelled - slowly - by horse and wagon. She gave up music, disillusioned with the pop indu... read more

Wayward: Just Another Life to Live

Vashti Bunyan

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Nellie Melba, the diva from Queensland who transfixed the world for three decades in the roles of Violetta, Juliette, Rosina, Mimi and co... She was adored by gossip columnists and honoured ... read more

Nellie

Robert Wainwright

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The legendary Russian pianist, friend of Pasternak and other greats, who fell from grace to live precariously on the fringes of Soviet society. EW is the author of fine biographies of Shosta... read more

Playing with Fire: The Story of Maria Yudina, Pianist in Stalin’ ...

Elizabeth Wilson

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Leipzig, 1726: a chorister is taken in by the Bach family, and JSB writes the St Matthew Passion.

The Great Passion

James Runcie

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Acute and wide-ranging, these disparate glimpses come together (ha!) to make up a picture not only of the 'Fab Four' but of the new and colourful 1960s' world that they helped to usher in. ... read more

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

Craig Brown

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A short but extremely useful guide to help those without prior knowledge of classical music discover ways into wonders that can seem intimidating or closed.

Perfect Pitch: 100 Pieces of Classical Music

Tim Bouverie

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From the origins of music to the C21st: techniques, instruments, composers and venues...

Five Straight Lines: A History of Music

Andrew Gant

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No one better than this world-renowned cellist to provide a companion to these wonderful pieces.

The Bach Cello Suites: A Companion

Steven Isserlis

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Uses biographical snippets to expand our understanding of the music and show how Mozart was reacting to contemporary culture as well as creating it.

Mozart in Motion: His Work and His World in Pieces

Patrick Mackie

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Her life and career - both tragically too short - through pics and recollections of those who knew her.

Amy Winehouse: Beyond Black

Naomi Parry

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Wolf set the works of thirty-six poets to music. Here the genial professor of lieder at the Royal College of Music translates the poems, introduces the poets and Wolf's connections with them... read more

The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf: Life, Letters, Lieder ...

Richard Stokes

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A revised edition to include his recent films.

Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh

Mike Leigh

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£25.00

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The Eighth: Mahler and the World in 1910

Stephen Johnson

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£10.99

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Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces

Laura Tunbridge

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£9.99

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A provocative account of her well-lived life that exposes the profound misogyny of the music industry.

Why Marianne Faithfull Matters

Tanya Pearson

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Raised in Nazi Germany, at 18, Wulff Scherchen was Britten's muse and lover. When the composer went to the USA during the war, Wulff was interned as an enemy alien and transported to Canada,... read more

WULFF: Britten’s Young Apollo

Tony Scotland

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£24.00

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By one of the founders of Echo & the Bunnymen.

Bunnyman: A Memoir

Will Sergeant

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From the late C18th to the present, by a concert pianist of renown. Lucid and fascinating. From Yale.

The Piano: A History in 100 Pieces

Susan Tomes

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This magnificent book - which takes its title from a remark of the singer Josephine Baker - gives us the cultural landscape of black genius from the mid C20th to the present. We are in extr... read more

A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance ...

Hanif Abdurraqib

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Argues that role of the unruly, the socially outcast, the revolutionary, the disreputable etc have consistently been overlooked in the history of music, which has in effect been bowdlerised... read more

Music: A Subversive History

Ted Gioia

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£14.99

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