Books

I would like to mention wonderful, funny reminiscences like Gary Graffman's I Really Should Be Practicing, Arthur Rubinstein's My Young Years and My Many Years, Oscar Levant's A Smattering of Ignorance and The Memoirs of an Amnesiac, or fine biographies such as David Dubal's Evenings with Horowitz, Remembering Horowitz, and Reflections from the Keyboard, as well as Joseph Horowitz's fine books The Ivory Trade and Toscanini, and Harold Schonberg's exciting works, which first intrigued me with music, The Great Pianists, The Lives of the Great Composers, The Glorious Ones, The Great Conductors, and Horowitz, but I have limited myself to books essential to the text at hand.

    Angilette, Elizabeth: Philosopher at the Keyboard: Glenn Gould, The Scarecrow Press, Inc., Metuchen, New Jersey, 1992.

    Badal, James: Recording the Classics: Maestros, Music, & Technology, Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, 1996.

    Bazzana, Kevin: Glenn Gould: The Performer in the Work, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997.

    Berendt, Joachim-Ernst: The World Is Sound, Nada Brahma: Music and the Landscape of Consciousness, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, 1983.

    Bernstein, Leonard: The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts , 1976.

    Burton, William Westbrook: Conversations about Bernstein, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995. Much firsthand commentary on Bernstein's destruction by the critics and on the validity of his slow tempi.

    Epstein, Helen: Music Talks: Conversations with Musicians, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1987.

    Friedrich, Otto: Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations, Random House, New York, 1989.

    Gould, Glenn: Selected Letters, Roberts, John, and Guertin, Ghyslaine, Eds., Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1992.

    Gould, Glenn: Variations, By Himself and His Friends, McGreevy, John, ed., Doubleday Canada Limited, Toronto, 1983.

    Hofstadter, Douglas: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Basic Books, New York, 1979. Slow going, and worth every second.

    Kazdin, Andrew: Glenn Gould at Work: Creative Lying, E. P. Dutton, New York 1989. A fascinating confession of how Gould masterminded his own recordings.

    Lebrecht, Norman: Who Killed Classical Music?: Maestros, Managers, and Corporate Politics, Birch Lane Press/ Carol Publishing Group, Secaucus, New Jersey, 1997.

    Nabokov, Vladimir: Speak Memory, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, Revised Edition, 1966. Nabokov discusses synesthesia, or audition colorée, although he has proclaimed himself tone-deaf, mainly I suspect to evade comment on modernist composers, such as his cousin, Nicholas Nabokov. The most brilliant autobiography ever written. Each paragraph contains as much of old Russia in it as all of Dr. Zhivago.

    Mach, Elyse: Great Pianists Speak for Themselves, Volume 1, Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1980.

    Mach, Elyse: Great Pianists Speak for Themselves, Volume 2, Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1988.

    Marcus, Adele: Great Pianists Speak, Paganiniana Publications/ T.F.H. Publications, Neptune, New Jersey, 1979.

    Mohr, Franz: My Life with the Great Pianists: Horowitz, Cliburn, Rubinstein & Others, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1992.

    Newman, William S.: Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing His Piano Music His Way, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1988.

    Niecks, Frederick: Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician, 2 vols., London, 1888.

    Page, Tim, ed.: The Glenn Gould Reader, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1984.

    Payzant, Geoffrey: Glenn Gould, Music and Mind, Van Nostrand Reinhold, Toronto, 1978.

    Eleanor Perényi: Liszt: The Artist as Romantic Hero, Atlantic - Little, Brown, Boston, 1974. A witty incursion into the entire age.

    Peyser, Joan: Bernstein, A Biography, 1987, Revised and Updated, Billboard Books, New York, 1998. Peyser maintains that Tom Cothran supplied the bulk of the ideas for Bernstein's Norton Lectures, and discusses how Bernstein's harassment by the critical establishment vitiated his creative life.

    Howard Pollack: Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man, Henry Holt, New York, 1999.

    Paul Roberts: Images: The Piano Music of Claude Debussy, Amadeus, Portland, Oregon, 1996.

    Paul Roberts has both recorded and written about Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau so incisively that I must agree entirely with him, and can only urge you to read his book. Roberts quotes the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch as saying: Nature is not only that which is visible to the eye - it also presents the inner picture of the soul - the pictures on the reverse side of the eye. I would add to this Goethe's paintings which he meant to be stared at, and then, when the eyes were closed, the real picture would appear as a retinal image. Roberts sees as well that Debussy's reflections are not on the surface, but deep within the water, deep within us. If the pianist cannot decompose the piece the way Monet does light, then the depths have been sacrificed to mere sheen. As well, Roberts discusses synesthesia, colored hearing and Impressionism, essential to the understanding of Debussy.

    Schafer, R. Murray: The Tuning of the World, Alfred A. Knopf/Random House, New York,1977.

    Sherman, Russell: Piano Pieces, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 1996. Brilliant discourses on the role each finger plays in pianism.

    Sullivan, Anita T.: The Seventh Dragon: The Riddle of Equal Temperament, Metamorphous Press, Lake Oswego, Oregon, 1985.

    Theroux, Alexander: The Primary Colors: Three Essays, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1994. Discusses synesthesia, that is, colored hearing.

    Theroux, Alexander: The Secondary Colors, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1996.

    Vallas, Léon: The Theories of Claude Debussy, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1967.

    Walker, Alan: Franz Liszt, 3 vols., Alfred A, Knopf, New York, 1983 - 1996.

    Walker, Alan, ed.: Franz Liszt: The Man & His Music, Taplinger Publishing Company, New York, 1970.

    Walker, Alan, ed.: The Chopin Companion, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1973.

    Wilde, Oscar: Intentions (1891), from The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Authorized Edition, Ross, Robert ed., Bigelow, Brown & Co., New York, 1909. If you're going to read one book in your life....