Music Archives

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

Nicholas Kenyon

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Why Patti Smith Matters

Caryn Rose

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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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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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The Eighth: Mahler and the World in 1910

Stephen Johnson

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Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces

Laura Tunbridge

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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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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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A personal exploration of Indian classical music, its improvisations that flower from well-established short sequences of notes, its subtle evocations of feeling. By a fine writer and vocali... read more

Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music

Amit Chaudhuri

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A global history of music - we've had rhythm for 165 million years so, in the words of Baloo, get with the beat! Ambitious and brilliantly achieved.

The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth – A Radio 4 Book o ...

Michael Spitzer

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Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar

Oliver Craske

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1966: The Year the Decade Exploded

Jon Savage

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In My Own Time: An Autobiography

Humphrey Burton

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A novel based on letters from the 1930s between the pianist Vladimir Horowitz and a student, revealing a gay relationship that remained secret from everyone including VH's wife (Toscanini's ... read more

The Piano Student

Lea Singer

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For old rockers and die-hards who simply refuse to gather moss... and, no doubt, for hipsters: an illustrated history of contemporary culture, through the prism of Rolling Stone magazine's c... read more

Rolling Stone: The Illustrated Portraits

Gus Wenner

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It's only six years since his magisterial biography of Beethoven, which seemed a lifetime's work. To do the same so quickly for Mozart seems nothing short of miraculous. NB due for publicati... read more

Mozart: The Reign of Love

Jan Swafford

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A massive work tracing Wagner's immense influence, not only through his adoption by the Nazis but through a gallery of others, from Baudelaire and Woolf to Philip K Dick and 'Apocalypse Now'... read more

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music

Alex Ross

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Lucid, perceptive, passionate: Rosen emerges, not surprisingly, as a musician and scholar of breadth and sensitivity.

The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking: Conversations about Art and P ...

Charles Rosen

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Published by Yale, this is a fascinating and original exploration of the influence of the newly popular guitar on the Romantics and on culture in the early C19th.

The Guitar in Georgian England: A Social and Musical History ...

Christopher Page

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The 1970s NME critic got bored with pop and discovered that the most radical music of all was classical. This is a personal and entertainingly idiosyncratic history of music.

A Sound Mind: How I Fell in Love with Classical Music (and Decided to ...

Paul Morley

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An exploration of the political aspects of Beethoven's music.

Beethoven

William Kinderman

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£28.00

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There are seven exceptionally talented siblings in this family of musicians, and they went to a state comprehensive in Nottingham before all moving to the Royal Academy of Music. This is the... read more

House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons

Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason

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Bowie's biographer charts the movement through 100+ interviews with those who lived it and wore the flounces.

Sweet Dreams: From Club Culture to Style Culture, the Story of the New ...

Dylan Jones

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