Patrik Enander wrote:

>I haven't read any books about music, composer biographies, memoirs
>etc.  So I want to know if you can share with me a book about music,
>irrespectively of genre, that has given you a lot of pleasure.

The Barzun biography of Berlioz.  It comes it two basic forms: one with
musicial analysis, one without.

Michael Kennedy's biography of Elgar, 3rd edition.  Not as thorough as
Jerrold Northrop Moore's venerable classic, Elgar:  A Creative Life, but
easier to take in for the casual reader.

Norman Leybrecht's Maestro Myth is fun and irritating.

Carl Vigland's (sp) In Concert is an account of a year with the Boston
Symphony.  It is interesting for its (quite prejudiced) look at some
personnel problems in the BSO, among other things.  Not a definitive
picture but fun for orchestra mavens.

Both the John Culshaw books (his bio and Ring Resounding).

A real sleeper are two works by, of all people, James Cain.  Career in C
Major and Serenade (and forget the movie they made out of that).  Cain, the
son of a singer, wnated to be one himself, but his mother convinced him not
to bother.  These two works were evidently his musical outlet, and they're
very fine, especially the first one.

Willa Cather wrote a fine story about a boy addicted to classical music.
I'm sorry to say I can't remember the title, but you can find it in a
collection of her stories.  If you're scanning, the boy's name is Paul.

Theodore Dreiser wrote a novel about a young girl who was involved with a
singer.  I read it so long ago, I forget much beyond that, but I enjoyed
it.  It was Jennie Gebhardt (sp), I think.

Gerontius, by James Patterson (not sure if that's his complete name) deals
with Elgar's trip to Brazil after his wife died.  Not much is known about
that trip, so this is a fictional speculation.  The book was well reviewed,
but I didn't care for it much.

Solo Variations by Cassandra Garbus is a modern novel about a failing New
York free-lance oboist.  It's readable, but very whiny and self indulgent.
There is some insight into the world of freelancing but not enough.  Would
that there were more and less pining and sell absorption.  And you
shouldn't have much trouble guessing who the main character's teacher is.

Winter Fire (bad title) by Robert Trotter.  It's a fictionalized account
of a German captain who meets Sibelius and learns of the great man's Eighth
Symphony.  Part war novel part book about music, it actually works, though
I wish the ending were more imaginative and that some supernatural elements
weren't allowed to creep in, essentially breaking the spell rather than
creating one.

Roger Hecht