Composers and songwriters

SCHUMANN: THE FACES & THE MASKS is a groundbreaking account of a major composer whose life and works have been the subject of intense controversy ever since his attempted suicide and early death in an insane asylum.

Robert Schumann was far ahead of his time, not least in his attitude to children and young people; his 'Advice for Young Musicians', originally created to accompany his famous 'Album for the Young', remains as relevant today as when it was written.

The Importance of Music to Girls tells the story of the adventures that music leads us into - getting drunk, falling in love, cutting our hair, wanting to change the world - as well as the darker side of the adolescent years: loneliness, bullying, getting arrested.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS 2018What was I fighting for?

The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise is the extraordinary story, in her own words, of Brix Smith Start.

Mike Love is a founding member, lyricist and vocalist of The Beach Boys, considered to be the most popular American band in history, with 13 Gold Albums, 55 top-100 singles, and four #1 hits.

Rapturous in its ability to depict the creative process, Words Without Music allows readers to experience that sublime moment of creative fusion when life merges with art.

There were many reasons Moby was never going to make it as a DJ and musician in the New York club scene of the late 1980s and early 90s.

From his celebrated early childhood, Mozart has been caught up in myths: the superhuman prodigy, the adult who was still a child, the neglect, the pauper's grave.

Love it or loathe it, few would disagree that the music of Harrison Birtwistle stands amongst the most assured, original and challenging music ever to have been produced by a British composer.

'They are not for you but for a later age!

In this book Richard Ayoade - actor, writer, director, and amateur dentist - reflects on his cinematic legacy as only he can: in conversation with himself.

Norman Del Mar (1919-1994) was universally recognised as a leading authority on the music of Richard Strauss, and his masterly three-volume study of his life and works remains a classic.

Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band.

Erik Tawaststjerna embarked on his monumental and acclaimed study of Jean Sibelius's life and music in 1960 and it occupied him for over a quarter of a century.

Elgar's Third Symphony has long been one of the great unknowns of twentieth-century music.

Conversations with Igor Stravinsky is the first of the celebrated series of conversation books in which Stravinsky, prompted by Robert Craft, reviewed his long and remarkable life.

'Anyone with the smallest interest in composition - not just concertos but novels, buildings, lives, you name it, should read this absorbing, spiky, dazzling book.

First published in English in 1980, this important early memoir of Gustav Mahler is by Natalie Bauer-Lechner (1858-1921), a viola player and close and devoted friend of Mahler until his marriage to Alma Schindler in 1902.

In 1997 the 50-year-old playwright David Hare decided to visit the 50-year-old state of Israel and write a play - Via Dolorosa - about the conflict.

Sunday Times Classical Music Book of the Year'Magisterial, warm, and engaging .

The extraordinary group of Russian composers who came together in St Petersburg in the 1860s - long known as 'The Mighty Handful', but, as the moguchaya kuchka, better translated as 'the great little heap' - gave rise to one of the most fascinating and colourful stories in all musical history.

Brigid Brophy first published her passionate, profoundly original Mozart the Dramatist in 1964, revisiting it subsequently in 1988.

First published in 1936, Calvocoressi's and Abraham's study was the first complete account of its subject to appear in any language, including Russian, and was based on a large amount of original first-hand research.

SUNDAY TIMES MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEARROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEARMOJO BOOK OF THE YEARIn 1975, Viv Albertine was obsessed with music but it never occurred to her she could be in a band as she couldn't play an instrument and she'd never seen a girl play electric guitar.

In our time, Bernard Leach has done for pottery what Henry Moore has done for scuplture.

This enthralling play considers the relationship between the private life and public work of the composer Leos Janacek, the passion he felt for a married woman nearly forty years his junior, and his final surge of creative energy.

Arguably the most important popular British composer of the 20th century, John Barry (1933-2011) enjoyed a career that spanned over fifty years, in which time he won five Academy Awards for pictures includingBorn Free, Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves.

When, in 2000, the National Theatre published its poll of the hundred best plays of the 20th century, David Hare had written five of them.

The Time by the Sea is about Ronald Blythe's life in Aldeburgh during the 1950s.

John Bridcut, author of the acclaimed 'Britten's Children', has included significant fresh material which will make the book indispensable for Britten aficionados as well as for those who are discovering the composer's music for the first time.

Andre de Toth's remarkable, eccentric and utterly compelling memoir opens amidst the enchanted cafe society of pre-war Budapest.

Gustav Holst was a leading figure in the new age of English music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

First published in 1978 The Ordeal of Ivor Gurney is a moving and extraordinary account of a tragic genius penned by the composer Michael Hurd.

Re-issued to coincide with the centenary of Messiaen's birth, The Messiaen Companion was the first major study to appear after the composer's death in April 1992.

Best remembered for his operas and his War Requiem, Benjamin Britten's radical politics and his sexuality have also ensured that he remains a controversial public figure.

Gustav Mahler is the most influential symphonist of the twentieth century.

In May 1939 Britten and Pears disembarked at Montreal at the start of their American visit, which was to be a period of intense musical activity and new personal relationships.

A decade after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had given way to an era of retrenchment and repression, 1824 became a watershed year.

Joseph Haydn is one of the greatest and most innovative of all composers, yet in some ways he is still curiously misunderstood.

Volume 2 opens at the the outbreak of the First World War and at the time of Janacek's lowest ebb.

Why is Mozart the best known and most popular of all the great Western classical composers?

The music of J.

Shostakovich: A Life Remembered is a unique study of the great composer, drawn from the reminiscences and reflections of his contemporaries.

John Tyrrell's biography of the Leos Janacek is the culmination of a life's work in the field.

An illuminating study of the life and work of Gyorgy Ligeti, one of the best-loved and most original composers of our time.

For over a century the Wagners have presided over the Bayreuth Festival, playing host to many of the greatest and ghastliest figures in the arts and politics amidst family in-fighting and political controversy.

'Sometimes I liken the creative act to that of being a good gardener.

A century after his death, Gustav Mahler is the most important composer of modern times.

John Bridcut, author of the acclaimed 'Britten's Children', will include significant fresh material which will make the book indispensable for Britten aficionados as well as for those who are discovering the composer's music for the first time.