This list provides an overview of books concerning general aspects of music history, or specific examinations of periods, places, or styles.

We welcome feedback, suggestions, additions, and corrections to this information.

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Concise History of Western Music. Barbara Russano Hanning, Donald Jay Grout. W.W. Norton & Company. 1998, 2006. ISBN 0393928039 (hardcover).

Based on the definitive two-volume Grout/Palisca A History of Western Music (see next two entries), Concise History of Western Music offers a wealth of information in a convenient form accessible to all music lovers and features lush illustrations, music examples, and contemporary accounts from musicians through the ages. The Third Edition has been revised and reorganized to provide a more streamlined narrative that emphasizes a core repertory, social and historical context, and performance practice. This comprehensive revision features new pedagogy and multimedia resources.

A History of Western Music. Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. W.W. Norton & Company. 1996. ISBN 0393969045 (hardcover).

Fifth Edition.

A History of Western Music: Anthology of Western Music II Vol 2. Claude V. Palisca. W.W. Norton & Company. 1993. ISBN 0393991822 (hardcover).

Norton Introductions to Music History

Source Readings in Music History: Greek Views of Music Vol 1. W. Oliver Strunk (Editor), et al. W.W. Norton & Company. 1997. ISBN 0393966941 (paperback).

Anthology of Medieval Music. Richard H. Hoppin. W.W. Norton & Company. 1978. ISBN 0393090906 (hardcover), 0393090809 (paperback).

Anthology of Renaissance Music: Music of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Allan W. Atlas (Editor). W.W. Norton & Company. 1998. ISBN 0393971694, (hardcover), 0393971708 (paperback).

Source Readings in Music History: The Renaissance Vol 2. Oliver Strunk (Editor), et al. W.W. Norton & Company. 1966. ISBN 0393037525 (hardcover), 0393096815 (paperback).

Anthology of Classical Music. Philip G. Downs (Editor). W.W. Norton & Company. 1992. ISBN 0393952096 (paperback).

Romantic Music: A History of Musical Style in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Leon Plantinga. W.W. Norton & Company. 1984. ISBN 0393951960 (hardcover).

Twentieth-Century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America. Robert P. Morgan. W.W. Norton & Company. 1991. ISBN 039395272X (hardcover).

Anthology of Twentieth-Century Music. Robert P. Morgan. W.W. Norton & Company. 1992. ISBN 0393952843 (paperback).

Source Readings in Music History from Classical Antiquity Through the Romantic Era. W. Oliver Strunk, Leo Treitler. W.W. Norton & Company. 1950. ISBN 0393097420 (hardcover).

History of Song. Denis Stevens. W.W. Norton & Company. 1970. ISBN 0393005364 (paperback).

A History of Musical Style. Richard L. Crocker. Dover Publications, Inc. 1986. ISBN 0486250296 (paperback).

Clear, systematic presentation of the evolution of musical style from Gregorian Chant (a.d. 700) to mid-twentieth century atonal music. Excellent volume for music students, scholars, layman emphasizes the continuity of basic musical principles with detailed coverage of major period styles, composers. Over 140 musical examples and a detailed bliography.

Music in Western Civilization. Paul Henry Lang. W.W. Norton & Company. 1940, 1997. ISBN 0393040747 (hardcover).

This widely celebrated history of Western music, first published in 1941, has been updated with a new foreword by Leon Botstein. The vast scope of this 1100-page volume begins with the music of ancient Greece and ends with that of the first two decades of the 20^th century.

The Vintage Guide to Classical Music. Jan Swafford. Vintage Books. 1993. ISBN 0679728058 (paperback).

A readable and comprehensive guide to enjoying over five hundred years of classical music – from Gregorian chants, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Wolfgang Mozart to Johannes Brahms, Igor Stravinsky, John Cage, and beyond. The Vintage Guide to Classical Music is a lively – and opinionated – musical history and an insider's key to the personalities, epochs, and genres of the Western classical tradition. Among its features are: chronologically arranged essays on nearly 100 composers, from Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377) to Aaron Copland (1900-1990), that combine biography with detailed analyses of the major works while assessing their role in the social, cultural, and political climate of their times; informative sidebars that clarify broader topics such as melody, polyphony, atonality, and the impact of the early-music movement; a glossary of musical terms, from a cappella to woodwinds; a step-by-step guide to building a great classical music library.

The Oxford Companion to Music. Percy Alfred Scholes. Oxford University Press. 1970. ISBN 0193113066 (hardcover).

Single volume, 10^th edition. This is the most famous of all one-volume musical encyclopedias. It contains over a million words on all aspects of music, lucidly and entertainingly presented, and nearly a thousand illustrations.

The New Oxford Companion to Music. Percy Alfred Scholes, Denis Arnold (photographer). Oxford University Press. 1988. ISBN 0193113163 (paperback).

2017-page, 2-volume set. This complete encyclopedia encompasses music of all kinds from ancient times to the present day. Written by a team of 90 expert contributors, these 6,600 articles cover composers, and individual works; musical instruments; opera; music of different countries; Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Jazz, and popular music; definitions of musical terms; rudiments and thoery of music; and standard forms and genres.

The Symphonic Repertoire, A. Peter Brown. Indiana University Press

This series is the most exhaustive study available of the symphony in the Western tradition. The four releases in the series share a brilliance of detail including complete analyses of each symphony, details of first performances, and rich bibliographic resources. Moreover, A. Peter Brown discusses formal and technical detail in a comparative way, placing each work in the context not only of its composer, but of time and place. Brown synthesizes an enormous amount of scholarly literature in a wide range of languages, presents current overviews of the status of research, discusses important former or remaining problems of attribution, illuminates the style of specific works and their contexts, and samples early writings on their reception. [Volume 1 has not yet appeared in print.]

Volume 2: The First Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. ISBN 025333487X (paperback).

Volume II considers some of the best-known and most universally-admired symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, who created what Brown designates as the first golden age of the Viennese symphony during the late 18^th and first three decades of the 19th century. The last two dozen symphonies by Haydn, half dozen by Mozart, and three by Schubert, together with Beethoven's nine symphonies became established in the repertoire and provided a standard against which every other symphony would be measured. Most significantly, they imparted a prestige to the genre that was only occasionally rivaled by other cyclic compositions. More than 170 symphonies from this repertoire are described and analyzed in The First Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony, the first volume of the series to appear in print.

Volume 3A: The European Symphony from ca. 1800 to ca. 1930: Germany and the Nordic Countries. ISBN 0253348013 (hardcover).

The third volume takes as its topic the European symphony ca. 1800-ca. 1930 and is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the symphonies of Germany and the Nordic countries and discusses in great detail the symphonies of Weber, Spohr, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Lindblad, Berwald, Svendsen, Gade, Nielsen, Sibelius, Berlioz, Liszt, Raff, and Strauss.

Volume 3B: The European Symphony from ca. 1800 to ca. 1930: Great Britain, Russia, and France. ISBN 0253348978 (hardcover).

The second part of the third volume continues the geographical tour of the mid-19th-to early-20th-century symphony begun in Vol. 3A. Brown discusses works from England, Russia, and France – including those by Potter, Bennett, Stanford, Elgar, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Gounod, Bizet, Franck, Dukas, and many others, in the process uncovering a rich world of previously under-appreciated masterpieces. A single source provides a detailed analysis of stylistic traits and background material on the composition and performances of these masterpieces.

Volume 4: The Second Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony: Brahms, Bruckner, Dvořák, Mahler, and Selected Contemporaries. ISBN 0253334888 (hardcover).

Although during the mid-19th century the geographic center of the symphony in the Germanic territories moved west and north from Vienna to Leipzig, during the last third of the century it returned to the old Austrian lands with the works of Brahms, Bruckner, Dvořák, and Mahler. After nearly a half century in hibernation, the sleeping Viennese giant awoke to what some viewed as a reincarnation of Beethoven with the first hearing of Brahms's Symphony #1, which was premiered at Vienna in December 1876. Even though Bruckner had composed some gigantic symphonies prior to Brahms's first contribution, their full impact was not felt until the composer's complete texts became available after World War II. Although Dvořák was often viewed as a nationalist composer, in his symphonic writing his primary influences were Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms. For both Bruckner and Mahler, the symphony constituted the heart of their output; for Brahms and Dvořák, it occupied a less central place. Yet for all of them, the key figure of the past remained Beethoven. The symphonies of these four composers, together with the works of Goldmark, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Smetana, Fibich, Janáček, and others covering the period from roughly 1860 to 1930.

History of Opera (Norton/Grove Handbooks in Music), Stanley Sadie (Editor). W.W. Norton & Company. 1990. ISBN 0393028100 (hardcover).

This comprehensive survey of opera, organized by century, considerably supplements the coverage of the genre in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. The four main sections - Baroque, Pre-Classical and Classical, Nineteenth Century, and Twentieth Century - that follow Stanley Sadie's introductory essay on the nature of opera, are devoted to national developments within the chronological framework; between these are a series of "entr'actes" designed to place opera in a broader social and cultural perspective and to convey something of the nature of the world of opera and its changing milieu.

Music in Late Renaissance & Early Baroque Italy. Amadeus Press. 1992. ISBN 0713467304 (hardcover).

This study of Italian music in the 16^th and early 17^th centuries proposes new ways of thinking about styles and genres, performance practices and the social and political context of the period. The book includes evidence drawn from contemporary documents and copious musical examples. In studying the vocal and instrumental music of Italy during this period, the author takes the perspective that music was an essentially political phenomenon, conditioned by social and cultural constraints

Masterpieces of Music Before 1750: An Anthology of Musical Examples from Gregorian Chant to J.S. Bach. Carl Parrish (Editor). W.W. Norton & Company. 1950 & Norton 2001. ISBN 0486418812 (paperback).

Outstanding collection of musical examples – chants, motets, chansons, madrigals, more – illustrating the general course of musical style from the early Middle Ages to the mid-18^th century. Works by Lassus, Josquin des Prez, Schütz, Handel, Bach, many others. Notes identify place of composition in history of music and suggest useful methods of analysis.

French Baroque Music: From Beaujoyeulx to Rameau. James R. Anthony. Amadeus Press. ISBN 1574670212 (hardcover).

The vibrant era between 1581 and 1733 in France saw the development of the court ballet, the birth of the tragedie lyrique and other operatic forms, and the prodigious musical activity of such figures as Lully, Marin Marais, Delalande, Couperin, and Rameau. This was the first definitive study of French music of the Baroque era and remains the only comprehensive survey of the vast musical output of 17^th and 18^th- century France. Completely revised and expanded, this new edition incorporates research of the past two decades and includes a wealth of quotations from early writers on the subject. The book provides an overview of French music of the period, exploring music of the stage and of the altar and includes chapters on music for lute, guitar, and keyboard; instrumental music; and vocal chamber music. A revised author's preface considers the present state of research in the area of French Baroque music. Finally, a new and expanded index and an updated bibliography listing more than 1,300 works make this book a superb resource for scholars as well as laymen. This widely-acclaimed volume was first published by W.W. Norton in 1974.

Classical Music: The Era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Philip G. Downs. W.W. Norton & Company. 1992. ISBN 039395191X (hardcover).

In this, the fourth volume in the Norton Introduction to Music History series, Philip Downs traces the rise and decline of the "Classical" style from the birth of Haydn (1732) to the death of Beethoven (1827). He demonstrates the enormous diversity and constant change that characterized every aspect of music during this period. By dividing his text into twenty-year spans, Downs is able to trace the development of musical style. Within each span he looks at the social conditions and daily life of the musician, and the aesthetics and audience preferences in structures, performing combinations and styles. The lesser composers, or Kleinmeister, are observed, since they are the most accurate mirrors of their times. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven receive full biographical scrutiny at each stage of their development. Copious music examples and abundant illustrations are also provided.

The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. Charles Rosen. W.W. Norton & Company. 1997. ISBN 0393040208 (hardcover), 0393317129 (paperback), 0393006530 (first edition paperback)

This is a revised and enlarged version of Charles Rosen's landmark 1970 work on the compositions by the trio of musical geniuses who formed the Viennese Classical School and forever changed the face of music. Along with clarifications, expansions, and new insights into the composers and their music. Rosen's book includes musical examples, includes a compact disc containing two of the Beethoven piano sonatas analyzed in the book.

French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism: 1789-1830. Jean Mongredien, et al. Amadeus Press. 1996. ISBN 1574670115 (hardcover).

Covering the period between the Revolution and the appearance of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, the author discovers an era that produced no masterpieces but set the stage for the flowering of Romanticism.

Beethoven in German Politics (1870-1889). David B. Dennis. Yale University Press. 1996. ISBN 0300063997

Focus on the image of Beethoven after his death.

The Romantic Generation. Charles Rosen. Harvard University Press. 1995. ISBN 0674779339 (hardcover), 0674779347 (paperback).

A comprehensive introduction to the great composers whose styles were developed during the late 1820s and early 1830s - Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, and others.

American Music in the Twentieth Century. Kyle Gann. Schirmer. 1997. ISBN 002864655X (hardcover).

Examines the characteristic sounds of the diverse movements in American art music from Charles Ives to the present day and sketches the changing social and cultural contexts of American concert music through the study of representative works of music and key individuals. Read the Classical Net Review of this book.

From Parry to Britten: British Music in Letters, 1900-1945. Lewis Foreman. Amadeus Press. 1988. ISBN 0931340039 (hardcover).

Scots Musical Museum, 1787-1803. James Johnson, Robert Burns. Amadeus Press. 1991. ISBN 0931340292 (paperback).

Authentic Singing, Being the History and Practice of the Art of Singing and Teaching. Edward V. Foreman. Pro Musica Press. 2001. ISBN 1887117121 (paperback).

As the title indicates, this two-volume history covers the vocal waterfront, including sections on history, pedagogy, ornamentation, solfeggi and vocalizzi.

The Cleveland Orchestra Story: "Second to None". Donald Rosenberg. Gray & Company, Publishers. September 25, 2000. ISBN 1886228248 (hardcover).

The Cleveland Orchestra is widely acclaimed as one of the world's top three orchestras – and has been ever since George Szell first took the ensemble to such heights in the 1950s. But it wasn't always so. How did this late-blooming Midwestern ensemble rise amid the gritty surroundings of Big Industry to become a titan in the world of Big Art? Donald Rosenberg, classical music critic for The Plain Dealer, takes a close look at the phenomenon in the first book about the Cleveland Orchestra in 30 years. It tells the complete story behind one of the world's most successful arts institutions. Classical music fans who want to understand the forces that drive a major symphony orchestra will find it a fascinating read.

The Future of Modern Music: A Philosophical Exploration of Modernist Music in the 20^th Century and Beyond. James McHard. American Book Publishing. 2001. ISBN 1930586248 (paperback). NEW 3^rd Edition pub. 2008: ISBN 0977819515 (paperback).

A selective survey of the major pioneering composers of the 20^th century, this resource focuses on the development of the new emphases in music creation, including tone color and density - elements which prior to 1900 had been subordinated in their treatment and given secondary importance compared to melody and harmony. In addition to presenting general biographies and a list of each of the 123 featured composer's most prominent works, this sourcebook examines the philosophies and the aesthetic considerations behind the new techniques involved in these primary treatments of density and timbre. From Claude Debussy, Gustav Mahler, and Karlheinz Stockhausen to Julio Estrada, Luigi Russolo, and Otomo Yoshihide, this review provides a means of understanding and appreciating the music predominant in the repertoires of most major, modern-day orchestras.

The Book of Musical Anecdotes. Norman Lebrecht (Editor). Free Press (Macmillan). 1985. ISBN 0029187109 (paperback).

Arranged chronologically by composer or performer. Begins with a very short biography. Alphabetic list in front of book. Very detailed index. Extracts from the literature on music, with good footnotes and bibliographic information.

Mozart's Death - Mozart's Requiem. Brendan Cormican. Amadeus Trust (Belfast). 1991. ISBN 0951035703 (hardcover).

Examines the various murder theories and medical records from the Vienna archives and provides more information on the Requiem commission. Web pictures at http://www.angelfire.com/bc2/mozart.