A Portland Baroque Reading List

PBO Board Chairman and historian, William Willingham, offers a stellar reading list for anyone interested in Baroque music, performance practice, or Mozart:

Schulenberg, David.  Music of the Baroque (New York, Oxford U. Press, 2001)
A good introduction to Baroque Music if a bit on the text book side in approach.

Kenyon, Nicholas, ed. Authenticity and Early Music (New York, Oxford, U. Press, 1988)
A good guide to period performance practice

Lawson, Colin and Robin Stowell.  The Historical Performance of Music (Cambridge, Cambridge U. Press, 1999)
Another, more academic survey of period performance practice

Johnson, Paul.  Mozart:  A Life (New York, Viking Press, 2013)
A short introduction.

Rushton, Julian.  Mozart (New York, Oxford, U. Press, 2006)
Another short introduction.

Solomon, Maynard.  Mozart:  A Life (New York, Harper Collins, 1995)
The classic psychological interpretation, especially of the relationship between father and son.

Gutman, Robert.  Mozart:  A Cultural Biography (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1999)
Well- balanced approach that pays attention to Mozart’s historical context.

Halliwell, Ruth.  The Mozart Family (Oxford, Oxford U. Press, 1998)
One of my all-time favorite books.  Emphasizes the women in Mozart’s life, specially his sister, Nannerl and his wife Constanze.  Like the Gutman book, it is especially good at describing the historical context of the times in which Mozart lived and worked.

Wolff, Christoph.  Mozart and the Gateway to his Fortune:  Serving the Emperor, 1788-1791 (New York, Norton, 2012) This is a fantastic book, full of new insights about Mozart’s last four years that avoids reading the present into the past.