This Month's Topic: Music - Books About Music and Musicians, Sheet Music, Memorabilia
Offering a carefully curated selection of books for your consideration!
You will also find links to catalogs of additional books on a wide range of subjects.
The books you want... from booksellers you can trust!
The Flyleaf: IOBA Newsletter
July 2017
This Month: Music - Books About Music and Musicians, Sheet Music, etc.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and  
on which it is impossible to be silent.
Victor Hugo

This month we bring you books about music, about musicians, and fascinating material including a musical score of a Sinfonie by Beethoven, letters from Haydn and Verdi, letters from Mozart and his family, an annotated libretto score, and a dictionary of wind instrument makers and inventors.

We have books from Russian authors, books about Russian composers, books about Scottish music,  and one about Scottish influence on music in Appalachia. Look for working man's music and even Issac Asimov's Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan - a science fiction author writing on the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan and the works they jointly created. (We couldn't have made that up!)

And for fun, we've got a great book to teach you how to play the ukulele. You DID want to learn how to play one, didn't you?

Enjoy! 

Sinfonie: Beethoven 
Sinfonie mit Schluss-Chor über Schillers Ode: "An die Freude"
by Ludwig van Beethoven

Publisher: B. Schotts Söhnen; A. Schott
Place of Publication: Mainz und Paris; Antwerpen (1826)
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover

"The actual first performance of the Symphony was on May 7, 1824, at the Kärnthnerthor Theatre, Vienna, at a concert given by Beethoven, in compliance with a request addressed to him by all the principal musicians both professional and amateur, of that city... His deafness had by this time become total, but that did not keep him out of the orchestra. He stood by the side of Umlauf, the conductor, to indicate the times of the various movements. The house was tolerably full, though not crowded, and his reception was all that his warmest friends could desire. To use Schindler's expression, it was 'more than Imperial.' Three successive bursts of applause were the rule for the Imperial Family, and he had five! After the fifth the Commissary of Police interfered and called for silence! ... A great deal of emotion was naturally enough visible in the orchestra; and we hear of such eminent players as Mayseder and Böhm even weeping.

At the close of the performance an incident occurred which must have brought the tears to many an eye in the room. The master, though placed in the midst of this confluence of music, heard nothing of it at all and was not even sensible of the applause of the audience at the end of his great work, but continued standing with his back to the audience, and beating the time, till Fräulein Ungher, who had sung the contralto part, turned him, or induced him to turn round and face the people, who were still clapping their hands." Available here.
Belles Lettres  
Autograph letter signed to French music publisher Jean-Georges Sieber by Joseph Haydn

 
With this letter, the affaire Tost, to which Haydn had previously referred in a letter to Artaria... [September 22, 1788], becomes even more mysterious. Tost had with him Symphonies Nos. 88, 89 and six Quartets (known as Opp. 54 and 55). Haydn never denied Tost's rights to these works, and obviously expected Tost to sell them, as the end of the present letter shows. But how the two Symphonies suddenly became four is most unclear.

Available here. 
Autograph working draft of an unpublished letter to the publisher Giulio Ricordi by Giuseppe Verdi  

 
The majority of the text of this document is unpublished (not included in the Carteggio Verdi-Ricordi). Only the text of the postscript is known, which Verdi sent to Ricordi as a telegram on January 11, 1880, two days after writing the present,m somewhat heated, draft. Verdi was characteristically quite involved in the business aspects of his art. The present document, relative to some of the most important works in the composer's oeuvre, lends important insight into his detailed and often somewhat heated dealings with his publisher Ricordi. Dated Genoa, January 9, 1880. Unsigned. Available here. 
Letters of Mozart 
Letters Of Mozart And His Family In Three Volumes by Emily Anderson

Publisher: Macmillan & Co
Place of Publication: London (1938)
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover

Frontispiece in each volume, 2 facsimiles in each of volumes 1 and 2, 1 facsimile in volume 3, 40 numbered illustrations in the three volumes. Blue cloth boards, blocked in gilt on spines. Text block in each volume clean, bright and unmarked except for a neatly inked inscription dated 1938 to front free endpaper Volume 1, and name to Volumes 2 and 3.
Available here.
Dramma per Musica
Idomeneo Re di Creta o sia Ilia e Idamante Drama Eroico in tre atti... prezzo 48 fr. [Full score] by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Publisher: Chez N. Simrock
Place of Pubication: Bonn (1806)
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover

The score order is unusual in that the timpani are at the head of the system, followed by the winds in order of decreasing loudness - trumpets, horns, clarinets, flutes, oboes; the strings at the bottom of the system appear in the usual layout, i.e., by range. There is no separate staff for the bassoons, which simply doubled the string bass. An overture and 32 numbers, including 2 ballets.
Available here.
Libretto Score  
The Truth About Windmills: Signed Association Copy of Original Score by Alec Wilder

Publisher: S.N.
Date of Publication: 1973
Signed by the Author

The Truth About Windmills was an opera Alec Wilder arranged in 1973, based on a libretto by Arnold Sundgaard which had previously been rejected by Schirmer. Interestingly, Wilder also insisted that the premiere of the opera be presented in Avon, New York - a suitably rural location, and the setting of his earlier Children's Plea for Peace. Available here.
From Russia with ...      
Katerina Izmailova
by Dmitri Shostakovich, N. S. Leskov,  Alexandre Preis


 
Publisher: Gosudarstvennoe Musykalnoe Izdatelstvo/State Music Publishers
Place of Publication: Moskva/Moscow (1965)
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition

Leskov's novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is the source of the libretto. A love affair with a stable hand and the planned murder of Katerina's husband turns the wheels of the plot.

Available here
Chowanschtschina [Khovanshchina; The Khovansky Affair]  
by Modest Mussorgsky, Dmitri Shostakovich,  V. V. Stasov  
 
Publisher: Gosudarstvennoe Musykalnoe Izdatelstvo/State Music Publishers
Place of Publication: Moskva/Moscow (1963)
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition

The term Khovanshchina means the 'Khovansky affair,' or the intrigues of Ivan Khovansky, the leader of the Muscovite Streltsi (musketeers). Musorgsky's opera is not, however, an account of this historical event alone. Rather, it combines three great historical facts in a single fictional plot. Though Musorgsky's invention, the story refers back to real events and characters; its purpose was to reveal the historical essence that lay concealed behind the events in question.  Available here.  
Connections - Scotland and Appalachia      
English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians
by Olive Dame Campbell, Cecil J. Sharp   
    
 
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons / The Knickerbocker Press
Place of Publication: New York NY (1917)
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition

Map showing the position of the Southern Appalachians is present opposite title page -- the area spans Maryland, Virginia & West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Includes a wonderful bibliography of important works on folk music.  Available here.  
Songs and Ballads of Scotland 
by  Hamish MacCunn    
 
 
Publisher: Paterson and Sons
Place of Publication: Edinburgh (1891)
Binding: Hardcover

In issuing an entirely new edition of Scotch songs and ballads, the publishers beg to draw special attention to several old melodies, which have not previously been brought so prominently as they deserve before the musical public; with these they have incorporated a selection of well-known standard lyrics and a few Gaelic airs, the whole forming a complete collection of gems of national Scottish music. Available here. 
The Harp of Renfrewshire: a Collection of Songs and Other Poetical Pieces by William Motherwell
Publisher: Alex. Gardner
Place of publication: Paisley Scotland (1873)
Binding: Hardcover

A collection of Scottish songs, local ballads, and poetry by poet and journalist Robert Motherwell.

Available here.
The New Langwill Index: A Dictionary of Musical Wind-Instrument Makers and Inventors by William Waterhouse  
Publisher: Tony Bingham
Place of Publication: London (1993)
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Signed by the Author

Makers are listed alphabetically, with biographical and locational information listed for most, and makers' marks reproduced where applicable. Herbert Heyde provides a foreword on makers' marks, and this edition also includes an introductory history of Langwill's index, notes on methods and principles, a guide to abbreviations, an index of makers' workplaces, a list of cited collections and libraries, a glossary, an immense bibliography, and a historical map of central Europe showing workplaces of 17th, 18th, and 19th-century wind instrument makers. Available here.
Working Man's Music   
ARBEJDER SANGBOGEN      
Collected by Arbejdernes Oplysningforbund

Publisher: Forlaget Fremad
Place of Publication: Copenhagen (1947)
Binding: Hardcover

Collection of the lyrics of workers' songs. Text in Danish.

Available here.    
Lumbering Songs from the Northern Woods by  Edith Fowke 
 
 
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Place of Publication: Austin, TX, and London (1970)
Binding: Hardcover

Collection of sixty-five songs, recorded from former shantyboys, is unique, being the first in this field to exclude the more general songs popular in the bunkhouse. Available here. 
Stravinsky, et al.    
Igor Stravinsky - the Composer in the Recording Studio
by Igor Stravinsky, Philip Stuart 

 
Publisher: Greenwood Press
Place of Publication: Westport CT (1991)
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Printing
 
The most thorough discography of the works and recordings of Igor Stravinsky to date as well as a chronicle of the composer's recording career. As the first discography to list all of Stravinsky's recorded compositions, including concert and broadcast performances, both pre- and post-World War II, as well as all LP issues, this volume displays the wide range of Stravinsky's talent. Available here. 
Stravinsky and Balanchine: A Journey of Invention            
by Charles M. Joseph
 
Publisher: Yale University Press
Place of Publication: New Haven CT (2002)
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition 
  
Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine, among the most influential artists of the twentieth century, together created the music and movement for many ballet masterpieces. This engrossing book is the first full-length study of one of the greatest artistic collaborations in history.

Available here.
 
Orchestral History 
Philharmonic: A History of New York's Orchestra
By Howard Shanet

Publisher: Doubleday
Place of Publication: New York NY (1975)
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition

Howard Shanet is Associate Professor of Music at Columbia University and Conductor of the University Orchestra, which, under his guidance, has gained a reputation for the daring and unconventional programs it offers the public. He has been guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic in its Young People's Series, the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, the CBS Symphony, and orchestras in Holland, Israel and elsewhere. Before that, he was assistant conductor to Leonard Bernstein and to the late Serge Koussevitzky. Available Here.
Remembrance
Remembering Horowitz: 125 Pianists Recall a Legend
by David Dubal  
     
Publisher: Schirmer Books
Place of Publication: New York NY (1993)
Binding: Hardcover  
Edition: First Edition

Available here.  
Reverberations: The Memoirs of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau    
by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau  

Publisher: Fromm International
Place of Publication: New York NY (1989) 
Binding: Hardcover  
Edition: First Edition

One of the most recorded vocal artists of all time, opera singer and interpreter of lieder, shares his musical insights, assessments of his contemporaries, and how he has dealt with triumph and tragedy.  Available here.  
The Sleeping Beauty (with Print and 3 CDs) by Imaurn Ebong     

Publisher: Glitterati Incorporated
Place of Publication: New York NY (2002)
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: Limited Edition


Available Here.
What Fun!  
Asimov's Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan by Isaac Asimov, William Schwenck Gilbert 
 
 
Publisher:
Doubleday  
Place of Publication: New York NY (1988)
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Printing

Lucid, authoritative, and thoroughly entertaining, Asimov's Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan offers a fresh and illuminating interpretation of the artists' fourteen famous operettas. Here, Dr. Asimov skillfully guides the reader through every word, reference, and innuendo that needs clarification. With enthusiasm and insight, he identifies all the major characters, describes specific settings, and brings to light pertinent background information, such as when and where each play opened, how it was received by critics and audiences at the time, how its title was derived, and more. Available here.  
Reggae Scrapbook (with DVD)   
by Roger Steffens and Peter Simon   

 
Publisher: Insight Editions
Place of Publication: San Rafael CA (2007)  
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First Printing

Reggae scholar and Beat magazine founder Roger Steffens traces reggae's history and roots, in a chronological format, illustrated with striking photographs in both black and white and full color by reggae enthusiast Peter Simon (Carly's brother).
Available here
An Over Abundance of Goodness    
Who knew that our list of books about music would grow and grow? Rather than let any of them fall off this month's list, we're offering links to those that we just couldn't stuff into the July Flyleaf. Check them ALL out!

Great Day Coming: Folk Music and the American Left by R. Serge Denisoff: This book examines the use of folk music by the American Left, especially the Communist party, during the thirties and forties.
Where Love is Deep: The Writings of Shin'ichi Suzuki by Shin'ichi Suzuki: A classic book in which the famous music teacher explains the philosophy and method of talent education, and gives many practical examples.
The Road to Music by Nicolas Slonimsky: A book for children about music by this Russian-born composer, pianist, conductor and author of many influential books about music...
Peterson Ukulele Method by J. Kalani Peterson: An absolutely new and original method of self-instruction for the ukulele...
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