Want to know what books Giles Swayne recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Giles Swayne's favorite book recommendations of all time.
1
Stephen Walsh's magisterial, engagingly written two-volume Stravinsky is the most detailed and extensive work available on the life of the man widely regarded as the greatest composer of the twentieth century. This second volume takes up the composer's story in 1934, in a Europe growing ever more chaotic in the lead-up to World War II. Walsh follows Stravinsky's emigration to the United States, where he courted Hollywood, associated with writers and artists including Aldous Huxley, W.H. Auden, and George Balanchine, began a career as a conductor and recording artist, and composed a... more Stephen Walsh's magisterial, engagingly written two-volume Stravinsky is the most detailed and extensive work available on the life of the man widely regarded as the greatest composer of the twentieth century. This second volume takes up the composer's story in 1934, in a Europe growing ever more chaotic in the lead-up to World War II. Walsh follows Stravinsky's emigration to the United States, where he courted Hollywood, associated with writers and artists including Aldous Huxley, W.H. Auden, and George Balanchine, began a career as a conductor and recording artist, and composed a string of masterpieces that changed the course of twentieth-century music. Stravinsky: The Second Exile takes full account of Russian-language sources, including much correspondence, made available since the composer's death and since the fall of the Soviet Union, and is the first work to thoroughly assess the authenticity of many of the writings published under Stravinsky's name. less 
Giles SwayneThat’s what the biography sheds a rather interesting light on: that Stravinsky wasn’t this great powerful omniscient figure, but, wonderful composer that he was, he was subject to all the usual difficulties. Even more so because he’d lived through these two world wars and a revolution, and was actually in quite a shaky state when he arrived in America. He had to rebuild his career, really. (Source)
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2
Conversations with Igor Stravinsky is the first of the celebrated series of conversation books in which Stravinsky, prompted by Robert Craft, reviewed his long and remarkable life. The composer brings the Imperial Russia of his childhood vividly into focus, at the same time scanning what were at the time the brave new horizons of Boulez and Stockhausen with extraordinary acuity.
Stravinsky answers searching questions about his musical development and recalls his association with Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet. There are sympathetic and extraordinarily illuminating... more Conversations with Igor Stravinsky is the first of the celebrated series of conversation books in which Stravinsky, prompted by Robert Craft, reviewed his long and remarkable life. The composer brings the Imperial Russia of his childhood vividly into focus, at the same time scanning what were at the time the brave new horizons of Boulez and Stockhausen with extraordinary acuity.
Stravinsky answers searching questions about his musical development and recalls his association with Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet. There are sympathetic and extraordinarily illuminating reminiscences of such composers as Debussy and Ravel ('the only musicians who immediately understood Le Sacre du Printemps'), while mischievous squibs are directed at others, most notably perhaps against Richard Strauss, all of whose operas Stravinsky wished 'to admit ... to whichever purgatory punishes triumphant banality'.
The conversations are by no means confined to musical subjects, ranging uninhibitedly across all the arts: Stravinsky gives unforgettable sketches of Ibsen, Rodin, Proust, Giacometti, Dylan Thomas and T S Eliot.
'The conversations between Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft are unique in musical history. The penetration of Craft's questions and the patience and detail of Stravinsky's answers combine to produce an intimate picture of a man who has sometimes puzzled, often delighted, and always intrigued ...' The Sunday Times less Giles SwayneThese were very controversial at the time. They were conversations between Stravinsky and his, if you like, musical secretary, Robert Craft: an American conductor and musicologist who became his sort of right hand – some would say his evil genius. Stravinsky had been exiled from Russia, exiled from France by the First World War and then again by the Occupation, and he arrived in America in 1945... (Source)
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3
Ludwig van Beethoven, Emily Anderson | 4.25
Giles SwayneBeethoven had much more guilt than Mozart. It’s astonishing because between Mozart’s death and Beethoven’s it’s only 36 years, but the Napoleonic wars, the weakening of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the rise of the individual as opposed to the class meant that the whole zeitgeist had changed. Beethoven lived at exactly the time when individual, personal feelings, and the personal experience,... (Source)
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4
This study has been revised to include new finds about the composition dates of several Mozart works. A new bibliography and a collation with the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe edition of letters, edited by O.E.Deutsch, W.A.Bauer and J.H.Eibl: Baerenreiter, 1962-75 is also included. more This study has been revised to include new finds about the composition dates of several Mozart works. A new bibliography and a collation with the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe edition of letters, edited by O.E.Deutsch, W.A.Bauer and J.H.Eibl: Baerenreiter, 1962-75 is also included. less Giles SwayneThese are Mozart’s complete letters, with selected replies from his father and sister, and occasionally his friends, or his wife. Mozart was an infant prodigy, of course, who spent most of his early life on the road with his ambitious father Leopold, performing, so the earliest letters are mostly to his mother or sister. The first part of the book is letters from his father which are all entirely... (Source)
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5
Based on ten years of research and containing the first-ever chronology of Johann Sebastian Bach’s compositions, Julian Shuckburgh’s vivid biography is an impassioned, controversial, and personal portrait of the man who composed some of the most sublime music ever written, in spite of—or perhaps because of—a life blighted by tragedy. more Based on ten years of research and containing the first-ever chronology of Johann Sebastian Bach’s compositions, Julian Shuckburgh’s vivid biography is an impassioned, controversial, and personal portrait of the man who composed some of the most sublime music ever written, in spite of—or perhaps because of—a life blighted by tragedy. less Giles SwayneThis just came out. Most biographies of Bach have been tremendously hagiographical and, broadly speaking, treated him as if he was God. Julian Shuckburgh’s approach is to treat him like any composer now, as it were: to study him in his living conditions, in his contracts and his disagreements with his employers – which were constant. The interesting thing about Bach is that he was actually, in... (Source)
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