A Dictionary of Musical Themes [Hardcover]

Harold Barlow (Author), Sam Morganstern (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Reprint Services Corp (August 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0781292662
• ISBN-13: 978-0781292665
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 7.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,849,644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for all music teachers and serious music listeners., March 8, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Dictionary of Musical Themes (Hardcover)

This book has been an integral part of my professional library for over 30 years. In fact my original copy has a $5.95 price on the dust jacket!!

The themes for many major orchestral pieces are indexed in two different ways: themes are arranged in the book by composer, then by title so it is easy to find a specific work if you know the composer. The second indexing is in the back of the book. If you know a theme but are not sure what it is, simply transpose to the key of c major (or a minor or related mode) and look up by letter names.....

For example CDEFGABC yields one entry yields 19 themes that begin with an ascending major scale....each entry includes a theme number and can easily be located in the front part of the book.

For any serious classical music listener, classical music disc jockey or music teacher, this book is a tremendous resource and should be a basic part of your library.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable reference for musicologist or musical neophyte., November 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Dictionary of Musical Themes (Hardcover)

If my house were burning down around me and I could grab only one item on my way out, it would be a momentary tossup between this book and my wedding album, but (alas) the wedding album would lose. Once you get used to this book (and your friends find out you have it), you'll be consulting it frequently, and can expect to get phone calls from all over the world asking you to identify a musical theme from two or three badly sung or whistled notes. One can access this musical database either by a composer's name, or by the name of a work, or by transposing a theme's sequence of notes into C major or C minor and looking up the theme in an alphabetical index.

One word of warning. With the exception of about 2/3 of one page (denoted Page xiv at the front) added almost as an afterthought, the 1975 edition is absolutely identical to the original (1948) edition. No new information of any kind has been added. I made the mistake of buying the 1975 edition (already owning the 1948 edition) and was horrified to discover that I now own two copies of the same material.

If you've ever been haunted by a theme running around in your head, or heard in passing on your favorite classical FM station, this book is for you. Once you own it, you won't be able to do without it.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cures "what's-that-tune-itis", February 25, 2003

By 

David A. Beamer (Clawson, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Dictionary of Musical Themes: The Music of More Than 10,000 Themes (Hardcover)

If you can transpose a melody you hear into C major (or C minor, as the case may be), and you are any kind of semi-serious classical musician, GET THIS BOOK. My copy is almost 30 years old, and the binding is coming apart from frequent use. When you get a tune in your head, or hear one on the radio, and you can't quite place it ("let's see, that sounds like Mozart, but it could be Haydn..."), just brush off your music dictation skills, write down the theme in C, go to the back of the book, and look it up. "Dictionary" is not quite the right term for this work -- it's more like a Bartlett's.

OK, perhaps it's not absolutely indispensable. But it has prevented a few cases of temporary insanity ("Aaaarrggghhhhh -- what was that piece they just played?!?"). Yes, the book needs to be updated with 20th century material. (The tonal stuff, anyway -- Copland, Prokofiev, Vaughan Williams, etc.) And in addition to their companion volume of opera tunes, there would probably be a market for an additional volume for "pop" stuff -- Broadway show tunes, Tin Pan Alley, etc. But this is probably the oldest book I have that I still refer to on a regular basis, and with the large collection of books I have, that's saying a lot.