Many composers wrote program notes for their compositions. Schoenberg wrote program notes for the performances of his own music. He saw this as a way of communicating directly to the listener. Richard Wagner wrote program notes to his own compositions.
Program notes provide added insight into the composition, composer, and its history to your audience. While you are researching and writing your notes you may learn some interesting facts about the composer and their music.
Irvine's Writing about Music by
(Amadeus). This thorough revision of a classic handbook is designed primarily as a guide for students writing papers or theses on musical subjects, but is useful for anyone writing about music for publication. It deals with the mechanics of scholarly writing, citation and documentation, as well as the nuts and bolts of punctuation and abbreviation. But it is also a sensible guide to good writing. In this edition, Mark A. Radice has taken into account all the technological changes that have transformed writing and publishing while preserving Irvine's voice. He has also added a new section on incorporating music examples in a written text.
Irvine's Writing about Music by
An E-Book of the print version that the library has in the music collection.
Music in Words by
Music in Words is a compact guide to researching and writing about music, addressing all the issues that anyone who writes about music--from students to professional musicians and critics--may confront when putting together anything from brief program notes to a lengthy thesis. The book is awriting guide and a reference manual in one: the first part, a "how to" section, offers a clear explanation of the purpose of music research and how it is to be done, including basic introductions to the most necessary tools for musical inquiry (with special emphasis on strategic use of theinternet), and how they can be accessed and used. The second part is a compendium of information on style and sources for quick reference, including a straightforward presentation of the purpose and use of citation and reference systems as they are applied to and in music. As a whole, the volumegives readers a clear picture of how to write about music at different levels and for different purposes in a handy, thoroughly cross-referenced format.This American edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded, and features an extensive section on writing for the Internet and new sections on writing for jazz, popular music, world musics, and ethnography. Additionally, a companion website presents a broad range of writing samples and links tokey resources
Writing about Music by
Where do you place the hyphen in "Beethoven" if it breaks between two lines? How do you cite John Coltrane's album A Love Supreme? Is it "premiere" or "première"? The answers and much more can be found in this definitive resource for authors, students, editors, concert producers--anyone who deals with music in print. Extending the principles devised for the classical repertoires, this revised and expanded edition now includes examples from world music, rock, jazz, popular music, and cinema. This essential volume covers some of the thorniest issues of musical discourse: how to go about describing musical works and procedures in prose, the rules for citations in notes and bibliography, and proper preparation of such materials as musical examples, tables, and illustrations. One section discusses program notes, while others explain the requirements for submitting manuscripts and electronic files, and outline best practices for student writers. An appendix lists common problem words. Updates include greatly simplified citations of Internet locators, the recognition of multiple platforms, and the expectation of paperless transmission and storage of work. Cited as the authority by The Chicago Manual of Style, this classic handbook is the go-to source for anyone writing about music.
Lexicon of Musical Invective by 
The Book of Musical Anecdotes by
Here is one of the most enjoyable and illuminating books ever published for the music lover, a feast of delightful anecdotes that reveal the all-too-human side of the great composers and performers.There are stories of appetites (Handel eating dinner for three), embarrassments (Brahms falling asleep as Liszt plays), oddities (Bruckner's dog being trained to howl at Wagner), and devotions (a lovely admirer disrobing in tribute to Puccini). There are memorable accounts of Stravinsky telling Proust how much he hates Beethoven, of Tchaikovsky's first bewildering telephone call, of Dvorak's strange love of pigeons, and of Verdi's intricate maneuvering to keep the now-famous melody of La donna e mobile top secret.There is also wonderful trivia (Beethoven loved to cat bread soup made with ten raw eggs), along with eccentric strategies (Verdi, disturbed by the sound of street organs playing arias from his operas, hired them all for a season and kept them locked in a room). There are examples of musicians munificent generosity (Haydn called Mozart the greatest composer known to me, either in person or by name), and scathing dismissal (Have you heard any Stockhausen? the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham was asked. No, he replied, but I believe I have trodden in some).Collected from thousands of books, articles, and unpublished manuscripts (with historical sources provided in extensive notes), these anecdotes appear in their original form, throwing fresh light on familiar figures in the musical hall of fame. For browsing, reading, research and amusement, this book is a grand entertainment for concert-goers, record-buyers, operamanes, gossips and music lovers everywhere.
The Rest Is Noise by
The scandal over modern music has not died down. While paintings by Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock sell for a hundred million dollars or more, shocking musical works from Stravinsky'sRite of Springonward still send ripples of unease through audiences. At the same time, the influence of modern music can be felt everywhere. Avant-garde sounds populate the soundtracks of Hollywood thrillers. Minimalist music has had a huge effect on rock, pop, and dance music from the Velvet Underground onward. Alex Ross, the brilliant music critic forThe New Yorker, shines a bright light on this secret world, and shows how it has pervaded every corner of twentieth century life. The Rest Is Noisetakes the reader inside the labyrinth of modern sound. It tells of maverick personalities who have resisted the cult of the classical past, struggled against the indifference of a wide public, and defied the will of dictators. Whether they have charmed audiences with the purest beauty or battered them with the purest noise, composers have always been exuberantly of the present, defying the stereotype of classical music as a dying art. Ross, in this sweeping and dramatic narrative, takes us from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties, from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics, of dramatic new technologies, of hot and cold wars, of experiments, revolutions, riots, and friendships forged and broken. In the tradition of Simon Schama'sThe Embarrassment of Richesand Louis Menand'sThe Metaphysical Club, the end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music.