Ray Bay wrote: >We are hoping that some of you can list your favorite five or ten books on >classical music... They could be on a composer or a period or philosophy. Johann Sebastian Bach, the learned musician. Christoph Wolff Humphrey Carpenter: Benjamin Britten (biography) Thayer's Life of Beethoven The New Harvard Dictionary of Music McGhee, Rigg and Klausner: Singing Early Music Kerala Snyder: Dietrich Buxtehude (biography) Handbook to Bach's Sacred Cantata Texts: Melvin P. Unger The Music of Benjamin Britten: Peter Evans Bach: Essays on his Life and Music: Christoph Wolff Can't Help Singing, the autobiography of Eileen Farrell The Pianist: Wladislow Spilzman Indivisible by Four, the story of the Guarneri String Quartet: Arnold Steinhardt To name just a very few. Nota bene the variety from fun reads to very scholarly. Quite intentional. Kevin Sutton