The future of music books?

naxos-ibook-1Books have been around for thousands of years. They’re a great place to put words. Their batteries don’t run out, you don’t need anything else in order to use them, they can last for hundreds of years and nobody tells you to put them away just before the plane takes off.

Books about music, though, can be a bit frustrating It has been said many times that writing about music is a bit like dancing about architecture. I don’t really think this is either true or particularly helpful* but words alone can struggle to describe the sound of great music.

I’m no choreographer, but clearly a ballet about buildings could benefit greatly from good set design. That’s not usually an option when you’re writing a book about music, but with the help of an iPad, some imaginative computer programming and some Naxos recordings, we’ve got something pretty close.

Download any of our latest books from the iBookstore to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, and you’ll see play buttons alongside the text, allowing you to listen to full-length tracks as you read about the music.

beethoven-his-life-and-musicWe’ve got full-length biographies of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Mahler, Haydn, Chopin and Liszt as well as shorter portraits or Shostakovich and Rodrigo as well as bite-sized profiles of Kraus and Vanhal. The Beethoven bio reached the top of the chart in the  iBookstore’s Music category, and is one of their top picks for the year in their 2011 iTunes Rewind promotion. Check them out today.

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*How is anything like dancing about architecture? How is writing about music any more futile than writing about anything else?

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