Composers On Music: Eight Centuries of Writings Edited by Josiah Fisk
It’s heartening to hear Mozart’s whinging —or his flippant bashing of all Italians. When a great composer of the past gives advice to a developing composer, it may as well have been written for us. We can eavesdrop on Brahms’ conversation with his friend Joachim, where he gives helpful advice on composing variations. He says that the bass of the theme is the real theme (by this he means the harmonic structure, not the sounding bass line). These anecdotes, and many more, remind us that these are people. And so are we.
Books on Form
What to Listen for in Music by Aaron Copland
Copland here is writing for the musical layman. Though he has vastly over-estimated the musical aptitude of the general public. This may be the only book in existence where a great composer writes about music and music composition in a thorough, down to earth way. Consider this a roadmap for the developing composer.
Analyzing Classical Form: An Approach for the Classroom by William Caplin
If meritocracy were to prevail, then this book would become the standard for studying form.
Stockhausen on Music
Stockhausen claims to have received his musical training in the Sirius Star System. This explains a lot. Aside from the culture shock, his ideas on form are quite erudite. Sometimes a counter example can be quite instructive.
Thoroughbass Theory and Counterpoint
Essay on the True Art of Keyboard Playing by Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach
Its hard to overstate the impact of this book on me. Bach’s formulation of dissonance and appoggiatura are essential to my musical worldview and the understanding of thoroughbass is profoundly transformative to a composer’s technique.
Thoroughbass Accompaniment According to Johann David Heinichen by George J. Buelow
Heinichen teaches the same thoroughbass concepts, though from the vantage of the theatrical style. All of the rigor of Bach’s learned thoroughbass technique (contrapuntally oriented) is replaced with the licenses and freedom of the theatrical style. One particularly exciting part of the Heinichen text is his concept of an eventually resolving dissonance. This is an essential insight that unlocks all kinds of elaborations of cadences, dissonances, and appoggiaturas.
As an honorary mention, Improvising Fugue: A Method for Keyboard Artists by John J. Mortensen. I’m still not quite sure what to think of this book. I don’t really value the idea of improvising counterpoint, in general. It seems to me that all improvisation is just learning to vary models on some level, and model-based writing often goes against my musical nature, which is quite form-oriented. But, J.S. Bach seemed to put great value in this idea of spontaneous counterpoint. Maybe I will grow to love it as I spend more time with it?
Books on Harmony
Modern Harmony, Its Explanation and Application by A. Eaglefield Hull
I find most harmony books objectionable. This book can be seen as a 1A to Vincent Persichetti’s 1B. Hull’s book feels much more accurate in its musical worldview than does the Persichetti. I would recommend studying these two books on advanced harmony only after a few years of thoroughbass and chorale harmonization study.
Books on Orchestration
Principles of Orchestration by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
All orchestration flows downstream from Risky-Korsakov. Though he never finished this book, it has never been surpassed as a resource on how to orchestrate.
Textures and Timbres: An Orchestrator’s Handbook by Henry Brant
Though Henry Brant never makes this claim, this book is a following through of the concepts from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Principles of Orchestration to their completion. Brant takes a rigorous approach by ensuring that every instrumental combination is perfectly balanced and that proper timbral separation occurs for every orchestral texture in the book.
How to Write for Percussion by Samuel Z. Solomon
The percussion section came into its own in the 20th century. The percussion ensemble is no longer an accessory to the orchestra and should be treated as such.
Books on Rhythm
Principles of Rhythm by Paul Creston
This book is fascinating. It makes many fine distinctions about rhythm and introduces a system of five rhythmic structures that are incredibly inspiring for compositional use, especially when combined with his Elements of Rhythm that he introduces in the first chapter.
A Strange Book
Talks With Great Composers by Arthur M. Abell
The claims of this book are dubious, though intriguing. A music critic by the name of Arthur M. Abell, claims to have had profound conversions of a spiritual and esoteric nature with great composers like Brahms and Richard Strauss, and that Brahms forced Abell to conceal the details of these conversations until fifty years after his death. The cult-like references in this book are quite strange, but esotericism, faux-religiosity, and generally loose-morals seem to have been a major occupation for people in the late 19th century. I put this book here because I found the section where Strauss describes his composition process to be pretty compelling (where he talks about extending a two bar block to a four bar block, and so on…), which wouldn’t necessarily be something that a random music critic would say. They would likely invent a more exciting answer. Maybe there’s something of value in this book, I’m not sure? As a fun aside, Christopher Lee on the Occult.
Literature
Essays & Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson was a profound influence on the artists of the 20th century. Most weren’t aware of it.
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Many call Don Quixote the greatest novel ever written… a colossal understatement.
The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Robert Frost
I’m not really a literary person. I like the poems in this anthology, but I don’t love them. What attracts me to this book is Harold Bloom’s excellent preamble, The Art of Reading Poetry. It helped me better understand concepts like metaphor and irony, which are applicable to all arts, music included.