To kick off the holiday season (and all that free time you’ll have sitting in front of the stocking-spangled fireplace), I’ve just updated the list for your Christmas-reading pleasure (see bottom of the list for update specifics). Keep the suggestions coming, and have a merrily musicological Christmas!
More Must-Reads
Published by Zachary Wallmark
During the Challenge I was graduate student in musicology at UCLA (completed 2014). I am currently Assistant Professor of Music History at SMU in Dallas, TX, where I teach courses on cultural musicology, opera history, music perception and cognition, popular music, and research methods. My monograph project, "Nothing but Noise: Timbre and Musical Meaning at the Edge," is under contract with Oxford University Press. View all posts by Zachary Wallmark
The Taruskin Challenge 
I’ve just been re-reading Andrew Thomson’s book The Life and Times of Charles-Marie Widor (Oxford University Press, 1987), which, amazingly enough, was the first Widor biography in English (though John Near since then has written a great deal about the origins of Widor’s compositions). Everything Thomson produces is superbly written and researched; this (surprisingly short) study is no exception.
R. J. Stove and others may be pleased to learn that John Near is coming out with a life-and-works study of Widor, much more detailed than Thomson’s (fine) study from 23 years ago.
Widor: A Life beyond the Toccata
It will be released February 2011 by University of Rochester Press, in the Eastman Studies in Music series, which I edit.
Details at:
http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=13483
Good news indeed. I’m delighted to hear about this book. Must see if I can review it somewhere, once it appears.
The Life and Times It has been a revelation for me
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