Customer Reviews

A Dictionary of Musical Themes

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Highly trained, fully employed classical musician whose musical discipline calls for the Big Rep. Refer to this volume constantly. It needs to be reissued, updated, etc. There is a companion volume of 8,000 Opera and Song themes by the authors equally as valuable. This type of reference is desperately needed by the working musical public. There are theme books for certain composers, and there are things like the Schwann and discography books, but nothing like this. Yes, there are certain omissions, but it is probably as comprehensive as it could be without weighing a ton or being completely unmanageable. God bless the authors, they performed a most valuable service.

Fabulous, could not get along without it. Unique index. Got my copy when I was 12 and loved every page. This is where I learned what music was worth listening to and searching out the unfamiliar. Ws the basis for my first catalog of my records. On short list of essential music books, worth every cent. And best of all, it was written by lawyers, believe it or not. Copyright lawyers needed an easy reference to check on music piracy and here it is. The companion book on vocal music is just as good.

The concept is terrific - to have at your disposal a way of identifying those famous classical music melodies that you know so well, but can't quite place.... And if you can sing it, you can identify it from the letter-sequences of notes provided. Great.

But there's nothing much in this book later than mid 1950s - which is a real pity. Classical music did not stop then, and I hope this great book will get the up-dating it deserves, one day soon.

This disctionary contains all the famous musical themes you've heard on CD, radio or even at the concerts that seem to stay in your mind but you can never remember the name of the piece or the composer. Well this disctionary allows you to find the origin of those lingering notes in your mind and is great when you can find it by the index at the back through the pitches and keys. Although the idea was brilliant, the book does fall short because of copyright reasons. Many of the works couldn't be published because of copyright. Otherwise this is a brilliant collection to your music library.

Do you want to identify the main themes of a well-known composition? Look it up here! Do you have a composition running through your mind which you can't identify? Look it up here! Did you tune in late on a classical radio station and wish to identify the composition which is being played? Look it up here!

I had to pay [$$'s] for this book because there were only 2 copies left. The other copy was [$$$'s]. Any music book publishers reading this review, will you please, please, PLEASE do us all a favor by re-publishing this book!

This seller wrote the most complete, accurate and precise description I have yet seen. The book was exactly as described. It arrived, well-packaged, in a short amount of time. The five stars are well-deserved.

I originally ordered this book to identify a theme by Chopin. I have found it and I am practicing it on the piano. I know that even 10,000 themes from the classical repertoire have to be discriminatory and that I won't find everything, but I am confident that this will be a useful reference work. I have not found anything like it in Italy.