Here are 100 books that Great Composers fans have personally recommended if you like
Great Composers.
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I have loved music since childhood. I grew up on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. My loving, hard-working parents gave my three brothers and me the best life possible. I began singing at our little Chewton Christian Church when asked to do so. Piano lessons began, and for 12 years, my sweet teacher, Joann Thurston, taught me piano, but I realized my true love was singing. She always allowed me to sing as well as play the piano. I attended Westminister College, majoring in elementary education with a music minor. Following graduation, my first job was teaching music to 1500 schoolchildren in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Children must have fun while being introduced to classical music. This book introduces children to classical music and the magical keyboard. As Rowan Baker suggests it is important to first have the child listen to an excerpt of the original instrumental piece before playing the melody on the keyboard.
Jessica Tickles illustrations are delightful and a child’s attention is drawn to them as the original piece is played. I believe the magical keyboard is a jumping-off place for more stimulating activities while teaching classical music to young children.
From the The Story Orchestra series, a beautifully illustrated first piano sound book! Press the keys to learn 8 famous classical tunes from the story books.
While other books in the series play famous pieces of classical music, in this new Story Orchestra title, young readers can now play the tunes themselves!
Color and shape codes correspond to the 14 keys, so kids can learn easy 8-bar, one-finger melodies, so even the youngest child can learn to play music with this simple method. For best results, playing readers the original piece first is recommended so children can familiarise themselves…
An engaging picture book for children that celebrates what it means to be American!
What does it mean to be American? Does it mean you like apple pie or fireworks? Not exactly. This patriotic picture book is perfect for Memorial Day, Independence Day, Election Day, or any day you want…
I have loved music since childhood. I grew up on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. My loving, hard-working parents gave my three brothers and me the best life possible. I began singing at our little Chewton Christian Church when asked to do so. Piano lessons began, and for 12 years, my sweet teacher, Joann Thurston, taught me piano, but I realized my true love was singing. She always allowed me to sing as well as play the piano. I attended Westminister College, majoring in elementary education with a music minor. Following graduation, my first job was teaching music to 1500 schoolchildren in Blacksburg, Virginia.
George Gershwin is brought to life as we read this book. Prior to Rhapsody in Blue being played by our hometown orchestra, I took the liberty of paraphrasing this entire book and showing pictures on the big screen, which engaged the audience. They truly loved it!
Suzanne Slade has a delightful way of expressing the feelings of George. He heard music in everything. Perhaps we could take a lesson from George and pay more attention to our surroundings. George heard music while roller skating down the street. He heard melodies in the clatter and noise of New York’s bustling street. What new and exciting adventure will you discover if you only STOP, Look Around, and LISTEN?
George Gershwin heard music all the time--at home, at school, even on New York City's busy streets. Classical, ragtime, blues, and jazz--George's head was filled with a whole lot of razzmatazz! With rhythmic swirls of words and pictures, author Suzanne Slade and illustrator Stacy Innerst beautifully reveal just how brilliantly Gershwin combined various kinds of music to create his masterpiece, Rhapsody in Blue, a surprising and whirlwind composition of notes, sounds, and one long wail of a clarinet. Includes author's note, timeline, and bibliography.
I have loved music since childhood. I grew up on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. My loving, hard-working parents gave my three brothers and me the best life possible. I began singing at our little Chewton Christian Church when asked to do so. Piano lessons began, and for 12 years, my sweet teacher, Joann Thurston, taught me piano, but I realized my true love was singing. She always allowed me to sing as well as play the piano. I attended Westminister College, majoring in elementary education with a music minor. Following graduation, my first job was teaching music to 1500 schoolchildren in Blacksburg, Virginia.
The author, Mike Venezia, believes in having fun. If you want to introduce children to composers and music, make it fun for them. While reading the delightful, imaginative story about Aaron Copland play compositions such as Rodeo, Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Fanfare for the Common Man.
Mike Venezia has a very interesting, engaging way of introducing art, inventions, and period photography. Visual images bring his numerous children’s classical music books alive. He makes his composers become real people, like you and me.
Since losing his mom, thirteen-year-old Jack Wilson has spent most of his time seeing just how much trouble he can get away with so that he feels like a winner at something. But he takes his mischief too far and is faced with the possibility of unbearable consequences. He…
I have loved music since childhood. I grew up on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. My loving, hard-working parents gave my three brothers and me the best life possible. I began singing at our little Chewton Christian Church when asked to do so. Piano lessons began, and for 12 years, my sweet teacher, Joann Thurston, taught me piano, but I realized my true love was singing. She always allowed me to sing as well as play the piano. I attended Westminister College, majoring in elementary education with a music minor. Following graduation, my first job was teaching music to 1500 schoolchildren in Blacksburg, Virginia.
I believe in starting things early! Children can latch onto creative ideas oh so quickly. Don’t ever think they cannot understand and love Shakespeare. Like most all things, if presented in a creative, interesting, stimulating way, children jump right into the ebb and flow of a story and are carried away as they engage their imagination.
Lois Burdett presents Shakespeare in such a compelling way. Children want to dress and pretend to become Romeo, Juliet, Lady and Lord Capulet, and the Montagues. Engage your children today in this delightful book with drawings created by children.
For more than 20 years, Lois Burdett has been introducing Shakespeare to primary school pupils. Working with her students, many as young as seven, she makes Shakespeare's plays come wonderfully alive for young eyes and ears. The texts are rewritten as simple rhyming verse and illustrated by her pupils' own lively colour illustrations of the characters and the action. Her books and workshops for teachers have captured the attention and imagination of parents, educators, and lovers of Shakespeare around the world.
Ever since childhood, I’ve wondered about people who led inventive, innovative lives. How did they get their inspiration? Where did their ideas come from? How did they take that inspiration and change the world? I found information, but not the answers I was looking for, at the library. When I became an elementary library teacher, new forms of biographies – beautiful picture book biographies about people of all kinds – became available. My students loved them and so did I, and I became inspired to write for children. I’m excited that my first two picture book biographies, which received starred reviews, are out in the world – with more coming your way!
I love this energetic book about experimental composer Charles Ives for its liveliness, beautiful language, and glorious sounds! It’s also an important example of staying true to yourself and following your own path.
Before he became a composer, young Charles Ives’s life was full of noise–glorious noise! Influenced by his father, a music educator and bandleader, Ives experimented with sound. Like John Cage, he faced ridicule and criticism, and faced roadblocks to having his music performed.
The extraordinary story of the composer Charles Ives.
"Sometimes little Charlie lay in his crib just listening. He heard his mother’s long dress as she moved around his room. He heard big clocks and little clocks. He heard wagons and horse hooves. He heard dogs and crickets and the church bell next door."
Charlie listened all through his boyhood, and as he grew into a man, he found he wanted to re-create in music the sounds that he heard every day. But others couldn’t hear what Charlie heard. They didn’t hear it as music – only as noise. In this…
I am the former Principal bassist with the Cincinnati Symphony and am currently active as a soloist, educator, and author of three books on the mind, body, and spirit of music. My first book is about the mind, The Inner Game of Music, followed by The Mastery of Music on the human spirit of over 120 great musicians and Bringing Music to Life exploring physical skills of communication of all artists, actors, and dancers. I hope to inspire artists of all disciplines, that our performances come from our hearts and souls and not the technical form of dance, music, or words. Performers express feelings and use this gift to spread inspiration and joy to the world.
The Listening Book is about rediscovering the power of listening as an instrument of self-discovery and personal transformation. By exploring our capacity for listening to sounds of music, nature, and one’s own breathing, we can awaken and release our full creative powers. Mathieu guides the reader to hearing the connections between all sounds of music and everyday life. It is insightful and surprising to notice what is around us at any moment of the day and apply this heightened awareness to understanding and connecting with music listening or performance. This awareness can be neglected but applicable to connecting our inner soul with the outside world and to life. Brilliant illuminations from a genius composer, musician and teacher W.A. Mathieu.
The Listening Book is about rediscovering the power of listening as an instrument of self-discovery and personal transformation. By exploring our capacity for listening to sounds and for making music, we can awaken and release our full creative powers. Mathieu offers suggestions and encouragement on many aspects of music-making, and provides playful exercises to help readers appreciate the connection between sound, music, and everyday life.
A gay retelling of the classic fairy tale--a scrumptious love story featuring ungrateful stepsiblings, a bake-off, and a fairy godfather.
Cinderelliot is stuck at home taking care of his ungrateful stepsister and stepbrother. When Prince Samuel announces a kingdom-wide competition to join the royal staff as his baker, the stepsiblings…
I am a Polish-born Canadian author of historical fiction. In my Polish life, Russia was a looming presence, the empire next door which, in 1795, wiped Poland from the map of Europe for over a century. In my Canadian life Russia has acquired a more universal significance as a cultural and political powerhouse rooted in the fertile territory between East and West, becoming an inspiration for several novels. The Winter Palace and Empress of the Night re-imagined the life of a Prussian princess who became more Russian than the Russians and turned out to be the greatest empress Russia has ever had. The Chosen Maiden told the story of a Polish-Russian dancer Bronia Nijinska who, having grown up in the shadow of her genius brother, managed to forge her own artistic path at a time of tragic upheavals which kept destroying her world.
Having studied cello in Soviet Russia in the 1960s, Elizabeth Wilson used her extensive musical contacts to produce this unique study of Dmitri Shostakovich, one of the most innovative composers of the 20th century. Prompted by Wilson’s queries, family members, friends, fellow musicians, and other artists offered their recollections that might have otherwise been lost. Gathered together these testimonies offer a gripping picture of Shostakovich as an artist and a man. They describe his extraordinary successes and his struggles for survival and dignity during the brutal Stalinist purges and horrors of World War II. One of the most moving testimonies sheds light on the creation and the first performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.7 which, in the world of music, became a symbol of resistance to fascism and all forms of totalitarianism anywhere.
Shostakovich: A Life Remembered is a unique study of the great composer Dmitri Shostakovich, based on reminiscences from his contemporaries. Elizabeth Wilson covers the composer's life from his early successes to his struggles under the Stalinist regime, and his international recognition as one of the leading composers of the twentieth century. She builds up a detailed picture of Shostakovich's creative processes, how he was perceived by contemporaries, and of the increased contrast between his private life and public image as his fame increased. This new edition, produced to coincide with the centenary of Shostakovich's birth, draws on many new writings…
I am an award-winning composer, author, and educator. Since 1990 I have had the privilege of teaching others about music through my concerts, children’s books, academic books, lessons, and online courses.
In the Once Upon a Masterpiece series, author Anna Harwell Celenza tells the stories behind various classical music masterpieces. She does so in an engaging way for children ages 6-9. I love how she is a musicologist and uses documented evidence to tell the story behind the piece. The illustrations incorporate folk art and symbols from the composer’s country. The author includes multiple links so that readers can listen to each masterpiece.
When his friend Victor suddenly dies, composer Mussorgsky is deeply saddened. But, with the help of his friends, and through his own music, Modest finds a way to keep Victor's spirit alive.
Readers of all ages will enjoy the inspirational story behind the composition of Pictures at an Exhibition. Bright, colorful illustrations incorporate elements of Russian folk art and traditional symbols. View pages from artist JoAnn Kitchel's notebook for explanations of the symbols and see her pencil-sketch research of the Russian culture.
I am an award-winning composer, author, and educator. Since 1990 I have had the privilege of teaching others about music through my concerts, children’s books, academic books, lessons, and online courses.
This book is from a series of books entitled Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Composers, which features many different composers. The books are easy to read and will be enjoyed by both younger readers and older readers alike. The cartoon-style artwork may look silly, but the material is informative. Music education would not be complete without some information on the composers who wrote the music. A great series!
Real Princesses Change the World
by
Carrie A. Pearson,
Real Princesses Change the World is an inspirational and diverse picture book that highlights 11 contemporary real-life princesses and four heirs apparent from around the world.
Have you heard of a STEM-aligned real-life princess who is an engineer and product developer? Or a princess who is a computer expert? An…
I've been a working journalist for 50 years, and as a child of TV, especially in the 1960s, I grew up with some of the most memorable TV themes ever written. I started writing about TV in the 1980s, and since moving to Los Angeles in 1986, have used every opportunity to meet and interview all of my favorite composers of movie and TV music. The result is this book, which looks at the history of TV themes and, in a larger sense, music written for TV generally. Every genre of TV, from crime to sitcoms, westerns to adventure, has had fun, often compelling, and truly memorable music, and I've tried to celebrate it here.
Bernard Herrmann is revered as one of the movies' greatest composers.
Imagine starting your Hollywood career with music for Citizen Kane!
He enjoyed a very productive 10-year relationship with director Alfred Hitchcock, which produced such masterpieces as Vertigo, Psycho, and North by Northwest; he also worked with Francois Truffaut on Fahrenheit 451, composed the original Twilight Zone theme, and capped his career with music for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
Yet he could be cantankerous and difficult, antagonizing both friends and colleagues with his temperamental behavior and insistence upon the highest standards of music and drama.
I love the fact that Smith writes as well about the music as he does about the composer, and the reader walks away knowing lots about both.
No composer contributed more to film than Bernard Herrmann, who in over 40 scores enriched the work of such directors as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, and Martin Scorsese. In this first major biography of the composer, Steven C. Smith explores the interrelationships between Herrmann's music and his turbulent personal life, using much previously unpublished information to illustrate Herrmann's often outrageous behavior, his working methods, and why his music has had such lasting impact. From his first film ("Citizen Kane") to his last ("Taxi Driver"), Herrmann was a master of evoking psychological nuance and dramatic tension through music, often…
