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Tags: classical music

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  An Equal Music

  by Vikram Seth

  The author of the international bestseller A Suitable Boy returns with a powerful and deeply romantic tale of two gifted musicians.  Michael Holme is a violinist, a member of the successful Maggiore Quartet.  He has long been haunted, though, by memories of the pianist he loved and left ten years earlier, Julia McNicholl.  Now Julia, married and the mother of a small child, unexpectedly reenters his life and the... (more)
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  The Rest Is Noise

  Listening to the Twentieth Century

  by Alex Ross

  The scandal over modern music has not died down. While paintings by Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock sell for a hundred million dollars or more, shocking musical works from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring onward still send ripples of unease through audiences. At the same time, the influence of modern music can be felt everywhere. Avant-garde sounds populate the soundtracks of Hollywood thrillers. Minimalist music... (more)
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  The Cello Suites

  J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece

  by Eric Siblin

  “This is one of the most extraordinary, clever, beautiful, and impeccably researched books I have read in years. A fascinating story deftly told—and, for me at least, ideally read with Bach’s thirty-six moevements playing softly in the background; a recipe for literary rapture.”—Simon Winchester, author of the New York Times best-seller The Professor and the Madman “The quest was part Homer but also part George... (more)
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  Beethoven's Hair

  An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved

  by Russell Martin

  Ludwig van Beethoven lay dying in 1827, a young musician named Ferdinand Hiller came to pay his respects to the great composer. In those days, it was customary to snip a lock of hair as a keepsake, and this Hiller did a day after Beethoven's death. By the time he was buried, Beethoven's head had been nearly shorn by the many people who similarly had wanted a lasting memento of the great man. Such was his powerful... (more)
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  The Gift of Music

  Great Composers and Their Influence

  by Jane Stuart Smith

  The Gift of Music integrates the lives, philosophies, and music of the great composers, including Bach, Handel, Haydn and Mozart. Readers will be placed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as observers, not historians, as they explore the lives of these great men. This third edition has been expanded and revised.
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  Penguin Lives

  Mozart

  by Peter Gay

  A biography of the greatest musical mind in Western history Mozart’s unshakable hold on the public’s consciousness can only be strengthened by historian and biographer Peter Gay’s concise and deft look at the genius’s life. Mozart traces the development of the man whose life was a whirlwind of achievement, and the composer who pushed every instrument to its limit and every genre of classical music... (more)
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  Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers

  by Patrick Kavanaugh

  This is a compelling and inspiring look at spiritual beliefs that influenced some of the world's greatest composers, now revised and expanded with eight additional composers.
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  Musicophilia

  Tales of Music and the Brain

  by Oliver Sacks

  Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat.  But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does — humans are a musical species. Oliver Sacks’s compassionate, compelling tales of... (more)
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  For Dummies

  Classical Music for Dummies

  by David Pogue, Scott Speck

  The more you know about classical music, the more you love it. Now, thanks to Classical Music For Dummies , you can achieve a whole new level of insight into both the composers and the compositions that have made classical music one of the great accomplishments of humankind. Classical Music For Dummies doesn't assume that you have a degree in musicology -- or even that you took a course in music... (more)
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  La Corda d'Oro: Book 2

  La Corda d'Oro, Volume 2

  by Yuki Kure

  Every few years, the prestigious Seiso Academy holds a prominent musical competition, and only the very best students at the Academy are allowed to participate. All students at the Academy are eligible to apply, but only students from the music department actually make it to the competition...until now. Kahoko is a normal student in the general education department with absolutely no musical skill, but all that... (more)
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  La Corda d'Oro: Book 1

  La Corda d'Oro, Volume 1

  by Yuki Kure

  Every few years, the prestigious Seisho Academy holds a prominent musical competition, and only the very best students at the Academy are allowed to participate. Though all are eligible to apply, only students from the music department actually make it to the competition...until now. Kahoko is a normal student in the general education department with absolutely no musical skill, but all that changes when she... (more)
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  The Unconsoled

  by Kazuo Ishiguro

  Only the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day could have created this daring and stunningly inventive new novel. The Unconsoled gives readers what is at once a riveting psychological mystery, an acute satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study of a man whose public self has taken on a life of its own. "Ishiguro writes with his characteristic grace and off-beat pungency."--Los... (more)
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  Piano

  The Making of a Steinway Concert Grand

  by James Barron

  An alluring exploration of the people and the legendary craftsmanship behind a single Steinway piano Like no other instrument, a grand piano melds engineering feats with the magical sounds of great music: the thunder of a full-throated bass, the bright, delicate trill of the upper treble. Alone among the big piano companies, Steinway still crafts all of its pianos largely by hand, imbuing each one with the... (more)
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  The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824

  by Harvey Sachs

  “All men become brothers . . . Be embraced, ye millions!”   The Ninth Symphony, a symbol of freedom and joy, was Beethoven’s mightiest attempt to help humanity find its way from darkness to light, from chaos to peace. Yet the work was born in a repressive era, with terrified Bourbons, Hapsburgs, and Romanovs using every means at their disposal to squelch populist rumblings in the wake of the French Revolution and... (more)
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  Piano Lessons

  by Anna Goldsworthy

  In this remarkable memoir, Anna Goldsworthy recalls her first steps towards a life in music, from childhood piano lessons with a local jazz muso to international success as a concert pianist. As she discovers passion and ambition, and confronts doubt and disappointment, she learns about much more than tone and technique. This is a story of the getting of wisdom, tender and bittersweet. With wit and affection,... (more)
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  The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection : The 350 Essential Works

  by Theodore Libbey

  In his informed and indispensable guide, National Public Radio's Ted Libbey takes listeners by the hand through the classical repertory to build a music library. Now, five years after its original publication - with five years of new performances to consider, new releases to review. reissues to re-evaluate - Mr. Libbey has completely revised and updated the book. While sticking to the essential 300 works,... (more)
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  La Corda d'Oro: Book 3

  La Corda d'Oro, Volume 3

  by Yuki Kure

  The first round of the music competition is about to begin, and Kyoko's accompanist reveals her plot to get Kyoko disqualified! Unsettled by this betrayal, Kyoko can't truly enjoy the music, even when Ryotaro gallantly steps in as her new accompanist. Kyoko's performance is mediocre, but Ryotaro so impresses Lili that he soon finds himself added as a second-round contestant. Will Kyoko and Ryotaro's budding... (more)
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  A Romance on Three Legs

  Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano

  by Katie Hafner

  A grand tale of obsession about the brilliant Glenn Gould and the unique, temperamental instrument he came to love beyond all others, by a top New York Times writer. Glenn Gould was one of the most complex, brilliant artists of the twentieth century, a musician famous for bizarre habits: he wore a hat and gloves even on the warmest summer day; refused to shake hands for fear of germs or damaged fingers; hummed... (more)
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  Mysteries of Beethoven's Hair

  by Russell Martin

  Russell Martin, author of Beethoven's Hair, and his wife, Lydia Nibley, tell the story of how a lock of Ludwig von Beethoven's hair, clipped from the composer's head on his deathbed in Germany in 1827, ended up in Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943 and was later sold at auction in London in 1994. Learn about this incredible journey through history and the mysteries revealed about Beethoven's deafness and death.... (more)
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  Chopin in Paris

  The Life and Times of the Romantic Composer

  by Tad Szulc

  First time in paperback: The acclaimed biography of Chopin focusing on his 18 years in Paris at the center of a dazzling circle that included Hugo, Balzac, Stendhal, Delacroix, Liszt, Berlioz, and George Sand Born in Poland in 1810, Chopin emigrated to Vienna at age eighteen-and then to Paris, where from 1831 to 1849 he would spend almost half of his brief and tumultuous life. In Paris his extraordinary powers... (more)