Hmm …

… 50 Must-Read Fiction And Nonfiction Books About Music. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

How about Jacques Barzun or David Cairns on Berlioz? Or Michael Kennedy on Richard Strauss. Or Terry Teachout on Louis Armstrong? 

Speaking of the last, here  is my review of Pops. And here is an example of what I mean:

The thread running through this “epic journey from squalor to immortality” is the music — and the marvel of Teachout’s book is the way in which his descriptions of that music illuminate the life. Here’s what he has to say about Armstrong’s 1933 recording of Harold Arlen’s “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues”:

… Armstrong, in a departure from his customary practice on ballads, dispenses almost entirely with Arlen’s melody, substituting instead a series of rhythmically free phrases that lead upward to a high B-flat. Four times he falls off from that shining note — and then comes the fifth fall, at the bottom of which he changes course and swoops gracefully upward to a full-throated D … Armstrong seems to have broken through to a realm of abstract lyricism that transcends ordinary human emotion. Only then does he condescend to ease back into the vicinity of the tune, returning the bedazzled listener to the everyday world.

Post bumped.