(Part 3) Best books about classical music according to redditors

There are a lot of courses. Any specific topics you're interested in?

Edit: I'll just list a few anyway that I've used in classes (this may not reflect all professors' choices for the same subjects).

Tonal Harmony: Kostka-Payne - Tonal Harmony

Counterpoint 1: A Berklee book by the late professor Rick Applin. Some also use this Fux translation/adaptation

Counterpoint 2: Bach Inventions & Sinfonias (any edition, really)

"Advanced" Counterpoint: The Well-Tempered Clavier (again, any edition)

Early Twentieth-Century Harmony: Persichetti - Twentieth-Century Harmony

Post-Tonal Theory/Analysis: Straus - Intro to Post-Tonal Theory

Instrumentation/Orchestration: Adler - The Study of Orchestration &
Casella/Mortari - The Technique of Contemporary Orchestration

Western Music History - Burkholder/Paiisca - A History of Western Music (8th or 9th edition)

Conducting 1 - Notion Conducting

Conducting 2 Notion + Stravinsky's Petrushka

Berklee's own (jazz-based) core harmony and ear-training curricula use Berklee textbooks written by professors which, as someone else mentioned, come unbound and shrink-wrapped at the bookstore. You can find older (PDF) versions of the Berklee harmony textbooks here. Of course this list only represents explicit book choices - there are a lot of excerpt-readings, and there's a lot of instruction that isn't found in these books even in the associated courses.

> If you're physically attractive.

But I'm not really that. By all means I'm not that (conventionally) handsome. I'm average at best, but that doesn't fucking matter. I am genuine. 3 years ago I wasn't. Aside from a medically induced drought for over half a year I had no issues getting women into bed, be it from dates or just clubbing.

What changed 3 years ago? I changed a lot about my life, dragged myself into a situation where I actually liked myself and started listening to what women actually want (which, shocker, is not that different from what guys want. Sex, drugs and classical music!)

Gutes Buch über Weihnachtslieder, wenn dich sowas interessiert. Kulturgeschichte, Kontext, auch alternative Texte wie dieser sind drin.

An easy choice would be the women composers from each era who reached success during their lifetime but faded from memory as history wore on. There's a book that covers a few of them, and a few Google searches will turn up even more.

Easy Contemporary Pieces for Solo Piano

Peter Schubert - Modal Counterpoint: Renaissance Style

Renaissance and medieval music is historically the domain of musicology, so a lot of sources are going to come from that side of scholarship. Leo Treitler, Willi Apel and so forth.

Some more modern sources:

Cristle Collins Judd - Reading Renaissance Music Theory: Hearing with the Eyes

Also this volume edited by Judd, Tonal Structures in Early Music

Anna Maria Busse Berger - Medieval Music and the Art of Memory

Towards Tonality: Aspects of Baroque Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christensen

Jessie Ann Owens - Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600

/u/65TwinReverbRI already brought up Knud Jeppesen's counterpoint book.

The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory is indispensible. Also from the standpoint of history of theory (though with an 18th century focus) is Joel Lester - Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century.

This thesis might be of interest to you.

Susan McClary's work is fantastic: Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form, Feminine Endings.

>I'm particularly interested in the cadences, actually; there was one Early Music Sources video that talked about how different voices would do different types of melodic cadences.

Hardly comprehensive, but be sure to read Nicolas Meeùs' article on cadences. He takes a Schenkerian approach to cantizans/altizans/tenorizans/bassizans formulae. They're beautiful Schenker graphs too.

I hope the Swedish version of a community college is okay? Because I study classical composition at the moment, in preparation for my future studies at college, to become an orchestral conductor. I think that to be able to understand music, you need to know how it's built and why it sounds like it does. And what better way to do that than to study the score of one of my favourite symphonies? None, I tell you!

(And remember: Used is always fine!)

There's a book called Solos for the Double Bass Player which is an Oscar Zimmerman edited collection. It's got a few good early pieces, and some pieces for you to grow into.

When I was going to school I used it quite a lot in my first year, and every time I play Bottesini's "Elegy" in orchestral tuning, I can conveniently just give my accompanist that book, because it has the accompaniment in the right key. It's a good buy for that reason alone, frankly.

Other fun starters are around - "The Elephant" from Carnival of the Animals is a great early piece that allows you to focus on musicality without a huge level of technical difficulty.

If you want a growing challenge, Dragonetti's 12 Waltzes for Double Bass solo are super idiomatic to the instrument, but have a good level of technical challenge in addition to their musicality.

As for high level pieces, some people worship the Cello Suites. I differ, and think they sound very bad on the bass (and that's me using my most politically correct language on the subject). However, they do present a useful technical exercise if one really is determined to play them. They require a lot of extended technique and creative fingering choices, so they're good for making you "think with Portals". As an alternative I would recommend the Weinberg Solo Bass Sonata (which is written in the style of the Suites, but not the harmonic language) or the Fryba Suite in the Olden Style. Both were actually written for the bass, and are much more musically rewarding to complete.

My Recommendation? Start with the Elephant. if you find it too easy, buy the Zimmerman book. Once you get bored with that book, try out the 12 Waltzes, then branch out from there.

From the title, I believe I have it (etudes by glass), but I bought it on amazon. This set? http://www.amazon.com/Philip-Glass-Complete-Piano-Etudes/dp/1783058048/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457478782&sr=8-2&keywords=philip+glass+etudes

Boyd's book is pretty standard, LINK HERE

A lot has already been said that needed to be said, but I want to add that little bits of writing everyday goes a long way. Like training for a long race, building up your creative stamina bit by bit will give you a lot of ability when sitting down to write.

There aren't a whole lot of inspiring books on composition, but reading books by composers (ex Schoenberg, Hindemeth, Messaien, etc...) will give you an interesting insight into their creative process. I'd also recommend The Muse that Sings which is a nice collection of interviews from major living composers who talk about their processes as well.

Other than that, learn theory/form, analyze a lot of music that you like, and learn instrumentation. The rest will be up to you.

ABRSM Sight reading exam specimen books for grade 1 to 8 are great source. Start with grade 1 and do a page every week. Then grade 2 etc. Take it slowly and try playing other simple stuff too. This is the skill that takes time and practice and a lot around pattern recognition (metre, rhythm, chords, scaly passages, fingering), you can't learn overnight. Just like learning walking - it took you years of constant practice :)

This book is a great source of grade 1-5 pieces which are excellent for both sight reading practice and learning too, it has served me very well over the years: Für Elise - The 100 most beautiful classical Piano Pieces - Pianissimo series - piano https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/3795758912/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ehpCyb2WPN6DA

Book wise, the two things I could not be without, both for initially learning technique and also revisiting as well are the Whitehouse Scale and Arpeggio Album (UK|US) and then also the Feuillard Daily Exercises (UK|US) (both Schott published).
Record yourself playing and watch it back, don't be afraid to use a metronome and a tuner.

Personally I'm looking in to learning to draw right now, but the approach is very similar for effective learning, focus on technical skills as they are the base to build off. Style is great to develop, but without the technique there to support it you could be building fundamentally poor habits. Things like bow control are honestly easier to understand when being observed, but Scales and Arpeggios will help you understand basic shapes you should form for each key helping you to not fear key signatures with more sharps and flats.

Feuillard is key to building all technical habits. The book is split in to 5 sections so you can focus on one part at a time, and once you've built up your skills can then mix and match exercises from each section to make sure you keep on top of everything. The book helps build a solid left hand, good transitions between hand positions, smoother bow control and for the bolder also working on thumb position technique.

It's imperative you have the cello tuned properly when you play, and from early on be relentless on ensuring you are in tune, so if necessary go very slowly and use a tuner to check each note is right before moving ahead. This will help train your ear to pick out when a note is not only out of tune, but better understand whether you are flat (under) or sharp (over). A good way to mix this would be using a tuner while you approach the first exercises in Feuillard as they focus on smaller shapes such as moving between two close notes. There are a great many free apps out there for smartphones that can help with tuning (personally use insTuner on iOS).

The other side to understand would be rhythm. Again, a good thing to revisit even if you have musical history elsewhere as it never hurts to check. Metronomes are an essential tool for learning in my opinion. When approaching a new piece of music it is best to ignore style initially to focus on accuracy. Once you know the music then you can play with how you want to present it, but until then, keeping a steady and consistent pace is a good habit to build. Again, many great free apps for this, (personally using Metronome by Soundbrenner on iOS). I'd personally recommend focusing on note accuracy before rhythm as a priority to ensure that what you're playing is correct before adding the pressure of time constraints through keeping tempo.

I started learning when I was 6, and for 10 years of learning through teachers my schools had there was a focus only on learning the music for each graded exam and barely any focus on the scales and arpeggios part and worse still no real focus on understanding technique beyond the music I would be examined with. It wasn't until 10 years later, well after finishing the graded system and getting a private teacher that I was completely pulled apart for my lack of technical understanding and foundation. From here I was told I had to get the two books I mentioned at the start and they formed the basis of not only my practice at home, but also each lesson I had with them. I noticed a rapid change in what I could do as a cellist though, seeing sight reading become incredibly more simple having the shapes and sounds already in my head. The movements and habits you build speed up your learning process everywhere else too, so technique always and first.

Lastly, even if you don't pursue a teacher right now, still get others opinions on how you are progressing, even if that means putting a recording of yourself and sharing it with other cellists to receive feedback. I've seen others do that here and until you build enough knowledge to be able to check yourself effectively, it's always good to get another's opinions on where you are at in case you subconsciously have been maybe avoiding improving on one skill or maybe even just need to return to another.

Hope that helps.

EDIT:
If you want a good selection of music to learn alongside technical development, baroque music in general is perfect for that given the way music and harmony was approached during that era of music, but I'd recommend the Bach Six Suites for Cello (Barenreiter BA 320 UK|US).

I have an old (1947) copy of The Concert Companion which is quite well written. Information on hundreds of pieces, though there might be similar books out there that are more updated. Here's a link to some on Amazon.

I would go for this- also has both versions:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Waltzes-Posthumous-Chopin-National-27/dp/839203659X

I have a book of Scottish folk song tabs by Sam Muir which I love. The publisher also has Irish and English ones in the series. Here’s the Irish one: Irish Folk Tunes For Ukulele: 36 Traditional Pieces W/ Cd https://www.amazon.com/dp/1847613608/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_R2TCCbA8P76Q8

I don’t know how it is for beginners but there are some beginner friendly ones in the Scottish one, so hopefully it’s the same!

I'm also a little beyond the 1 year mark. I use the Faber books with my teacher, and they have many graded pieces that are interesting yet challenging. I highly recommend buying these two books and working on them with your teacher:

http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Sonatinas-Developing-Original-Keyboard/dp/1616771135/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1459214456&sr=1-4&keywords=faber+sonatina

http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Literature-Developing-Original-Keyboard/dp/1616772824/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1459214509&sr=1-6&keywords=faber+music+literature

You can also get the Book 3s of the same title for more repertoire. There is such a variety of classical genres and periods in these books that you can really find meaningful and authentic works that both stretch your ability while also providing authentic sounding music.

would any of these be adequate?

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Not online, but this is how I am learning.

I don't think you'll likely find a book just about micropolyphony. Although it is sort of a type of counterpoint, it's not representative of a style or movement of composing in the same way that renaissance or baroque counterpoint is, so there's not as extensive a practice of it to write about. There's Ligeti and his works, and a few other composers that have done some similar things.

There is an article about micropolyphony called 'Micropolyphony:Motivations and Justifications Behind a Concept
Introduced by György Ligeti' which is maybe worth a read.

Paul Griffiths's book on Ligeti has a discussion of Atmospheres and micropolyphony.

Richard Steinitz's book Gyorgy Ligeti: Music of the Imagination also has a discussion of micropolyphony.

The best thing to do is probably to try and get a look at the score to Atmospheres by Ligeti. You'll learn a lot by just perusing the score.

You could also look into the term 'heterophony', which is not a million miles away from micropolyphony.