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A concentrated study of Johann Sebastian Bach's creative output and greatest pieces, capturing the essence of his art. 

 Along Comes the Association is the story of how Russ Giguere and his fellow band members in the legendary and influential pop group The Association came together to create unparalleled music, unique to the time and place, and never again to be repeated. 

Daniel J. Levitin's astounding debut best seller, This Is Your Brain on Music, enthralled and delighted audiences as it transformed our understanding of how music gets in our heads and stays there. Now in his second New York Times best seller, his genius for combining science and art reveals how music shaped humanity across cultures and throughout history. 

The story of Stax Records unfolds like a Greek tragedy. A white brother and sister build a record company that becomes a monument to racial harmony in 1960’s segregated south Memphis. Their success is startling, and Stax soon defines an international sound. Then, after losses both business and personal, the siblings part, and the brother allies with a visionary African-American partner. Under integrated leadership, Stax explodes as a national player until, Icarus-like, they fall from great heights to a tragic demise.

Maximum Volume offers a glimpse into the mind, the music, and the man behind the sound of the Beatles. George Martin's working-class childhood and musical influences profoundly shaped his early career in the BBC's Classical Music department and as head of the EMI Group's Parlophone Records. Out of them flowed the genius behind his seven years producing the Beatles' incredible body of work, including such albums as Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Abbey Road.

Simon Critchley first encountered David Bowie in the early '70s, when the singer appeared on Britain's most-watched music show, Top of the Pops. His performance of "Starman" mesmerized Critchley: it was "so sexual, so knowing, so strange". Two days later Critchley's mum bought a copy of the single; she liked both the song and the performer's bright orange hair (she had previously been a hairdresser). The seed of a lifelong love affair was thus planted in the mind of her son, aged 12.

From Gregorian Chant to Henryk Gorecki, the first living classical composer to get into the pop album charts, here is the fascinating story of over a thousand years of Western classical music and the composers who have sought to express in music the deepest of human feelings and emotions. Also available: The History of Opera.

The life of Franz Schubert has been a gift to romantically inclined biographers: the beautiful, brilliant, modest boy who sprang to fully fledged genius at the age of sixteen; the quintessential ‘artist in a garret’, entirely consumed by his art and living a hand-to-mouth existence in Vienna (home of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven); the gentle, cheerful, convivial young man who prized friendship almost as highly as music itself; the unworldly poet from whom great music poured like water from a fountain; the unrecognized master who died almost penniless at the age of 31.

Tune In is the first volume of All These Years - a highly-anticipated, groundbreaking biographical trilogy by the world's leading Beatles historian. Mark Lewisohn uses his unprecedented archival access and hundreds of new interviews to construct the full story of the lives and work of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.

Felix Mendelssohn was a child prodigy to rival Mozart and achieved great fame during his lifetime, fêted across Europe, and composing in the widest possible range of musical genres. However, his music has also been denigrated for its elegance, charm and symmetry. This insightful biography explores the breadth of his achievements, the complexities of his privileged upbringing, and the reasons for the fluctuating nature of his reputation. Musical excerpts include the Violin Concerto, String Octet and Elijah, as well as his choral works, symphonies, sonatas and songs.

Brilliant, short-lived, incredibly prolific—Schubert is one of the most intriguing figures in music history. While his music attracts a wide audience, much of his private life remains shrouded in mystery, and significant portions of his work have been overlooked. In this major new biography, Lorraine Byrne Bodley takes a detailed look into Schubert's life, from his early years at the Stadtkonvikt to the harrowing battle with syphilis that led to his death at the age of thirty-one.

Songs that sell the most copies become hits, but some of those hits become something more—iconic recordings that not only inspire a generation but also change the direction of music. In Anatomy of 55 More Songs, based on his column for the Wall Street Journal, music journalist and historian Marc Myers tells the story behind fifty-five rock, pop, R&B, country, and soul-gospel hits through intimate interviews with the artists who wrote and recorded them.

This is the impassioned and exhilarating story of the composers who dared to challenge the conventional world of classical music in the twentieth century. Traversing the globe from Ethiopia and the Philippines to Mexico, Jerusalem, Russia and beyond, journalist, critic and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Kate Molleson tells the stories of ten figures who altered the course of musical history, only to be side-lined and denied recognition during an era that systemically favoured certain sounds—and people—over others.

La nueva música clásica es una exploración personal y profunda sobre el rock: la revolución musical que comenzó en los años cincuenta con el rock ’n’ roll, le dio la vuelta al mundo en los sesenta montada en los hombros de los Beatles y transformó para siempre la música popular con las experimentaciones del movimiento hippie, más los que le siguieron.

One hundred and sixty-five million years ago saw the birth of rhythm. Sixty-six million years ago was the first melody. Forty thousand years ago Homo sapiens created the first musical instrument. Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to this music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet music is an overlooked part of our origin story.

When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, the literary world was up in arms. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter in his 70s, who wouldn't even deign to make a victory speech? In Why Dylan Matters, Harvard professor Richard F. Thomas answers that question with magisterial erudition.

In this collection of musical portraits, jazz pianist and radio host Marian McPartland pays sparkling tribute to such beloved and legendary figures as Benny Goodman, Bill Evans, Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, Alec Wilder, Mary Lou Williams, and others.

Pete Crighton came of age in the early/mid 1980s in the shadow of HIV/AIDS. Growing up in Toronto, he was terrified that his friends and schoolmates would find out that he was “different” at a time when being gay felt like a death sentence. His only comfort was music, the songs a balm to his painful adolescence. Struggling to make sense of his sexuality and fear of the disease stifled Crighton as a sexual being. Instead of exploring sex, he began curating a massive music library.

Cello is a group biography that weaves together four narratives of cellists who suffered various forms of persecution, injury, and misfortune. Interwoven with their remarkable and often moving stories are a series of interludes that offer a foil to the group biographies. These examine the themes explored in the narratives from different perspectives, drawing together essay-like musings, historical research, personal experience, and the author’s many interviews and encounters with contemporary cellists.

When Miranda Sawyer interviewed Liam Gallagher in 1994, his gag wishing Damon Albarn would die of AIDS became front-page news all over the world. This fascinating pop history, exploring the moment British music suddenly meant everything, explains why. Picking out twenty key songs, delving into the surprising stories behind them and their unlikely creators, UNCOMMON PEOPLE takes us back to when Jarvis Cocker became a national hero, films like Trainspotting were international hits, rave became what everybody did - and it felt like the revolution was happening.