100 books like The Book of World-Famous Music

No one can say exactly when Rock ’n’ Roll was born, including biographer, novelist, poet, and recently deceased journalist Nick Tosches, but he provides enough background musings to take us on a wild ride through American musical history.

His book reveals twisted roots indeed, some that provided me with reference material regarding a connection between minstrelsy and one of the most popular Christmas tunes of all time. And a country song breaks loose from the genre corral and into the world of pop music when it is made into one of the best-known ballads ever by a singing politician.

Howard Goodall is one of those authors who explains things incredibly clearly.

I found this book an eye-opener, a way into a deeper understanding of music, and a book to have by my side, to dip into whenever I needed to get an idea straight of understand a concept. Because he writes in such an accessible manner, the complexity of music becomes clearer. There are eye-opening facts, historical stories, and facts alongside well written and informative passages.    

I was fortunate enough to be able to share a pint with Malachy McCourt some time ago at The Plough & the Stars in Philadelphia where he was promoting this book.

A delightfully true Irishman, he was full of fatalist humor and irony, bringing to mind the famous quote by G.K. Chesterton from his epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse:

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

And “Danny Boy” is truly a sad song, but there is one enormous flaw regarding its Irishness: it was written by an Englishman who never set foot in Ireland. Frederick Wetherly, a barrister by day, and a lyricist by night, was asked by his sister-in-law to put words to a beautiful tune she had heard. He did, and the song became an enormous hit.… show more.

The Twelve Days of Christmas–an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, perched in a pear tree. It is open to interpretation as to exactly what this exotic piece of holiday music actually means, but Reverend Mark Lawson-Jones gives us an entertaining and educated guess: the French word for partridge was misheard by English ears giving us “pear tree.”

And that is one of an assortment of Christmas tunes whose backgrounds are brought to light in this fascinating book devoted to uncovering some of the oldest and dearest songs of the season.

It also brings into perspective the social aspects and traditions inherent in the time period from where the songs originated.

Yes, the title is spelled correctly. I’ve known Stanley Booth from our days in Memphis. He has written about The Rolling Stones, B. B. King, Al Green, and Keith Richards. Keith wrote that “The interesting thing about music to me is that music has always seemed streaks ahead of any other Art form or any other form of social expression.” It has never been said any better.

Stanley Booth’s Rythm Oil contains studies of numerous, forgotten musicians and singers. It is a study of remote history. Stanley Booth doesn’t write with ink. He writes with grit.

David Berkeley, a singer/songwriter, wrote this book of short stories, each one connected because the minor characters in one story are the major characters in another. David wrote a song for each story from the character’s point of view. The music album is called Cardboard Boat and you can find it on his homepage.

If you want to delve into how music functions in the human mind and how it helps support communities and groups, then Anthony Storr’s is the book for you. Eminent psychiatrist, Oxford professor, and proficient pianist and violist, Storr (author of Churchill's Black Dog) uses his deep knowledge of philosophy, psychology, and religion to address questions like “Where does music come from?”, “Is music a common language for all humanity?” “How does music trigger emotions?” “Are our encounters with music in any way comparable with encountering persons?” Drawing on the work of Jung, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, Storr argues that music, like religion, is a feature of all human cultures. Like religion, it offers solace and comfort from the hardships of life.

However, music is not universal—different cultures develop their own musical traditions and conventions, just as they develop different political systems and different languages. What is universal, and this… show more.

Carol Clerk was something of a rock star in her own right: a major force in music writing, Clerk’s tough, witty voice continues to resound years after her untimely passing. Her biography of countercultural hippy icons Hawkwind is fascinating, and she weaves together the voices, memories, tales, and travails with effortless brio. Like Nina Antonia, she had a kinship with the musicians she wrote about, garnering stories with ease because they trusted her, and rightly so.

This is actually not one book but a five-volume (!) series of books which contains some of the best writing on classical music I’ve ever come across.

Taruskin, who passed away recently, was a legendary musicologist. In his writings, he managed to combine analytic writing that addresses his colleagues with unbelievably sharp and insightful writing that I, as a classical music fan who is not a pro, enjoy tremendously.

Taruskin loved picking intellectual fights, and this sort of combative energy is gripping. In this series, there are major story arcs like the interplay between “oral” and “literate” traditions or the role of nationalism in 19th-century music. I liked how Tarsukin switches smoothly between a close analysis of a piece and a discussion of how it relates to the wider culture.

As a professional record producer turned neuroscientist, Daniel Levitan drew me in with his yin-yang mind. Was the intersection of creativity and science really navigable? Could he dispel the notion, at last, that inspiration is beamed down from a cloud? And how did a guy who worked with Stevie Wonder and Rosanne Cash get to be such a nerd?

I lapped up his explanations about musical ideas traveling along neurons and brain chemicals and how it’s possible that physical sound waves elicit an emotional response. I also realized that science and art are not so opposite.

I think people who make music recognize it as an experiment with variables and environmental factors and failures along the way, and that we’ll celebrate when we solve it, and that then the questions will change.