Great music history/theory narratives?

[Josh Levine]

Hey,

I am wondering if anybody has any recs for good historical music novels/theory books that describe the evolution in more of a narrative form. Thanks for your suggestions.

[SincereCorgi]

That's an interesting question... most good music writing I've run into have been interesting rather than entertaining, and the current academic style is to hold back from turning history into a narrative with heroes and villains and problems to be solved. But, having said that, some music books I've enjoyed a lot are:

*the writings of Charles Rosen on 18th century chamber music
*Blish's "They All Played Ragtime"
*Shapiro/Hentoffs "Hear Me Talkin' To Ya"
*the music criticism of Robert Schumann
*Mann's 'Doctor Faustus'
*the Swafford Brahms biography (his Ives biography is good, too)
*"Lou Harrison: Composing a World"

None of these are precisely what you're asking for, though. I usually like reading music biographies, because you can get a lot of good anecdote and historical context and there's a focus to the whole thing that you lose in histories of whole genres or periods. (Also nice: box sets of complete works are getting so cheap that you can buy, say, a complete Beethoven box and the Solomon Beethoven biography and listen to every piece as it's mentioned.) I'm curious to see what ends up in this thread.

[Josh Levine]

Any other thoughts on this? It doesn't have to specifically cover ALL of music...