Read any good books lately?

[tc]

I've been looking for books/writings that involve classical music.

Among fiction books, I've read:

-'Body & Soul'- Frank Conroy

-'The Soloist'- Mark Salzman

-'Canone Inverso'- Paolo Maurensig

-and I plan to read 'An Equal Music' by Vikram Seth

But what I love most are books that focus on the joy of making music. Ones I've read are:

-'Friends & Fiddlers'- Catherine Drinker Bowen

-'For the Love of It'- Wayne Booth

-'Indivisible by Four'- Arnold Steinhardt

-'Strung Out- My life as an amateur violist' at Chris Naze's website:

http://home.cdsnet.net/~naze/strung/strung.htm

-and I'm currently reading- 'Quintet- Five Journeys Towards Musical Fufillment' by David Blum

Since I've seen some of these titles mentioned by other posters here, I thought I'd ask for recommendations - anyone?

[This message has been edited by tc (edited 09-11-2000).]

[mitch]

Try the novels "An Evening of Brahms" by Richard Sennett and maybe "Disturbances in the Field" by Lynn Sharon Schwartz.

[Meadow]

I've just finished reading:

Non-fiction:

21st Century Violinists

Isaac Stern: My first 79 years

Teaching Genius: Dorothy Delay and the making of a musician

Fiction:

Accordian Crimes, by E. Annie Proulx

An Equal Music, Vikram Seth

The Page Turner, David Leavitt

The Drowning People, Richard Mason

The Fiddler and the Ferrett, Douglas Boyd.

...A wide range in the "quality" of the writing, but all enjoyable nevertheless.

Read half of Music and Silence by Rose Tremain a few months ago and can't bring myself to finish it. What an appalling, overhyped book that one is. More soft porn than music...

[Scott Bailey]

Just finished "Music and the Mind" by Anthony Storr. It's a wonderful series of essays arguing that music and art in general are not accessories to life, but necessities of human culture.

Still reading "The Classical Style" by Charles Rosen, a thoughtful and erudite exploration of the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.

And if anyone here hasn't read it, I like to recommend Aaron Copeland's "What to Listen for in Music" as often as I can.

For those of you who enjoy Irish music, there's "The Irish Session Guide" (practical and funny) and "Last Night's Fun" (not strictly about music, but a good read).

Cheers.

[GuinnessHunter]

Well....lessee. In the category of "hey, didn't they make a movie like this?"-Antonietta by John Hersey

In the category of "Huh???"

Violin by Anne Rice

In the category of "Hey, this is pretty neat and cool!" Basically Bach by Herbert Kupferberg

(hey, most of my reading is fairly serious!)

Actually, I have another book called "Conversations With Menuhin" that is fairly interesting. Definitely not light reading. Just got Papa Mozart's book on violin teaching through Interlibrary loan today. (course, I could be spending my time studying my Latin.....but why bother)

William

[double dad]

The best musically-related book I ever read was in the library at UW-Madison: a biography of Liszt, annotated in the margins in pencil by Liszt himself!

Well, okay, i know it wasn't really Liszt, but whoever did it had a great sense of humor and you felt that perhaps Liszt was guiding the pen....

The book "Paganini" by John Sugden makes a great read; Paganini's real life rivals any fiction...

[Andrew Hall]

Yesterday I went into a "remaindered" book shop looking for something light to read on the omnibus. Bought a copy of Andre Previn's book "No Minor Chords" (1991). The book is subtitled "My days in Hollywood" and mainly consists of anecdotes about people in the Hollywood film industry between 1946 and 1964. For all that, it is quite amusing. There are some interesting anecdotes and personal observations about Heifetz.

The highlight of the book so far (I haven't quite finished it)was Previn's story about Shostokovich. Encouraged by Szigeti to play chamber music, Previn became a member of a trio. The members of the trio were having a heated discussion about tempi in one of Shostokovich's works, and were questioning the metronome markings on their versions of the score. One bright spark suggested that the argument should be settled by ringing up Shostokavich himself. (This was in the early 1950's when telephoning Moscow from the United States was a difficult and suspect enterprise.) Eventually, they managed to arrange a connection with Shostokovich (with interpreter)and the composer suggested a number of changes to the metronome markings. Afterwards, it occurred to Previn that the conversation may have sounded to someone listening in as being in some sort of code (eg "17 after "A" a quarter equals 75")and might get the members of the trio into strife.

One story aboutt Heifetz - Louis B Mayer, went to a concert given by Heifetz at the Hollywood Bowl. He mentioned it next day to Previn (who went to the same concert)and remarked that Heifetz would never be successful while he played such wierd music.

Heifetz had performed the Sibelius Concerto.

I have also read "Equal Music". After the hype, the book left me with a dissatisfied feeling. I found it difficult to empathise with the principal male character.

This did not deter me from buying the CD's of the music mentioned in the book - the music is much more appealing to me than the book.

[This message has been edited by Andrew Hall (edited 09-14-2000).]

[BrooklynFiddler]

While not light reading, Physics of the Violin by Cremen is absolutley fascinating.

Although I had the mathematical skills to more fully appreciate the mathematics in my college days, the book can be appreciated by skipping the math and reading the text.

If the early masters had known how complicated these acoustic amplifiers are, they never would have attempted to devise them! The physics of the bridge alone knocked my socks off!

BF

[Sebastian]

No.

[vieuxtemps]

There's a book whose title includes "Musical Invective." I bought it a few weeks ago, and I can't even remember the whole title! But that's enough for you to search B&N/Amazon...

It's a bunch of harsh criticisms of great composers and their great works, from Beethoven on. It includes the famous Hanslick criticism of the Tchaik ("...music that stinks to the ear"), plus some hilariously caustic words about Liszt, Berlioz (Roman Carnival Overture=drunk baboon), Berg, and lots of others. And it has an introduction/foreward by Peter Schickele.

-V

[Lydia Leong]

The Lexicon of Musical Invective. Nicholas Slonimsky -- his books seem to be coming back into print, which is great.

[violak]

I actually just finished, "An Equal Music" by Seth. It's really good. In fact, I'm buying a copy for the violinists and cellist in my quartet.

There's also been a recording made of all the pieces featured in the book-- 2 whole cds! You can pick it up at cdnow-- I'm anxiously awaiting mine to arrive in the mail.

~k

[Marie Brown]

This fine thread has been around Maestronet longer than I have.

Having just run into a copy of Conroy's "Body and Soul", I now have it as my Obsession d'Jour. Highly recommended reading.

See? No highjacking today.

[Jack Rushing]

Just finished " Stradivari's Genius " by Toby Faber. A wonderful book. Not too much about the classical music

itself, but a lot about the musicians who played it.

[BillW]

I recently finished J.S. Bach: A Life in Music by Peter Williams. It complements Christoph Wolff's biography of six or seven years ago, J.S. Bach: The Learned Composer. Williams takes as his starting point the Obituary by Agricola and C.P.E. Bach that was published a few years after Bach's death and dissects it, trying to add context to the bald statements in the Obituary in light of our knowledge of Bach and the environment in which he worked. One of the book's strong points is that it asks more questions than it answers. It also discusses the music in more detail than the Wolff biography (although Wolff wrote in the preface that he would have more to say about the music in a subsequent book). I highly recommend it to anyone who has a consuming interest in Bach's life and music (and who doesn't?).

[Steve_W]

Thanks Marie for bringing this thread back to the top again. Here are 3 of my favorites--they're older and I doubt any are still in print but copies of all 3 are available through abebooks.com:

Travels With My Cello - Julian Lloyd Weber--this guy is a heck of a raconteur; very entertaining reading!

Music Talks: Conversations with Musicians - Helen Epstein (this one has nice articles on Dorothy DeLay, the Juilliard Quartet, and Yo-yo Ma, among others)

Quartet: A Profile of the Guarneri Quartet - Helen Drees Ruttencutter (an expansion of an article that appeared in the New Yorker around 1978-9; really great writing.)

PS, I agree absolutely with the recommendation of Body and Soul. I found a beat-up paperback copy several years ago and have read it at least a half-dozen times (and had to replace it with another copy). Definitely one of my favorites, even if it is about a pianist!

[Marie Brown]

James R. Gaines' "Evening in the Palace of Reason" is another excellent Bach book. It juxtaposes Bach's life story with that of Frederick the Great of Prussia, whose wicked-minded challenge resulted in the creation of "A Musical Offering", wherein JSB used contrapuntal code to tell off ol' F the G of P, who of course didn't get it.

[BobH]

Anyone read "Fiddler's Moll", by Diana Menuhin?