Books/Readings about Music

• General Reading: I read many general books about music as well as biographies of individual composers, but found that "Music in Western Civilization" by Paul Henry Lang the absolute must-read to any serious music lovers.

• College Textbooks on music history/appreciation/etc. I read quite a few in the early days, but I don't think I have a discriminating taste in this type of books. I found them useful as a starting point, works much better, at least for me, than the various guides/companions/etc. mentioned below.

• See also my Shostakovich readings.

References/Dictionaries

• The Grove Dictionary set is truly valuable to all music lovers, but not very affordable. I had the "B" volume from the older set (volume 1/10 of the 5th edition, 1954) for a long time and treasured it, particularly during my "to B" period (not the "not to B" period later, although I got truly interested in the first great "B" much later). Fortunately, our local Half Price Books (Dallas) have (still have them, last I checked! so, if you want to grab some, act fast) quite a few volumes from the 1980 sets (the "New" Grove, in paperback, or 1995 edition), selling for much lower than the list price: $8/volume. I got all I can, but still missing about 1/3 of the volumes, although I have all my B's, S's, W's, M's etc.

• As for regular, 1 volume, dictionaries, I like the Random House one, quite comprehensive yet handy. A good complement to it is the Larousse Encyclopedia/Dictionary, which is organized by topic/period instead of alphabetically, -- something in between a book and a dictionary, and with nice pictures. Some other popular dictionaries are too small to be comprehensive.

• Of course, there are also many "Guides", "Companions", etc., with some having the works/composers/recordings ranked, while the majority only having them listed. They could be fun to browse, especially if the composers are classified by caste, such as immortals, demi-god, etc. However, it is impossible to find one that matches your individual taste, and what's more, for most of them, music history stopped a little bit past 1900. As a result, I refer to them less and less often these days. For starters, I'd say that a college textbook on music history/appreciation works much better (see above).

Films/Cartoons about Music

• Both the original Fantasia and the new Fantasia 2000 are a lot of fun to watch. However, a particular favorite of the family is Allegro Non Troppo, the home edited version, with just the musical but not the somewhat distracting narratives.

• Among the opera and music films (not strict performances on tape/LD/DVD, as discussed in my performance and recording page), I enjoy Francisco Rossi's Carmen with Domingo and Mignes-Johnson a lot. The lip-sync Eugene Onegin on Decca/London is quite interesting (better than the similarly formatted one by Bolshoi/Mosfilm). The Zaffrelli opera films, La Traviata, Otello, are nice too, -- I like them better than some by others such as Butterfly and Rigoletto from the early 1980's.