Music Library | Piano Lessons London

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📖 “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero

📖 “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
Neil Gaiman, Coraline

📖 “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
Groucho Marx

📖 “... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

📖 “A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
C.S. Lewis

📖 “In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
Mark Twain

📖 “Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
Stephen King

📖 “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

📖 “So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books.”
Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

📖 “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
Joseph Brodsky

📖 “What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
Neil Gaiman, American Gods

📖 “Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...”
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

📖 “A house without books is like a room without windows.”
Horace Mann

📖 “Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.”
Hermann Hesse

📖 “We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.”
Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

📖 “So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”
Roald Dahl, Matilda

📖 “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You

📖 “A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.”
Astrid Lindgren

📖 “Speed does not constitute virtuosity, nor does the ability to unravel the somewhat intricate keyboard puzzles of Bach and Brahms make in itself fine piano playing. The mind of the artist must be cultured; in fact, quite as cultured as that of the composer who conceived the music. Culture comes from the observation of many things: Nature, architecture, science, machinery, sculpture, history, men and women, and poetry. I advise aspiring music students to read a great deal of poetry."
Teresa Carreno in James Francis Cooke's Great Pianists on Piano Playing

📖 "Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend." Beethoven

Library for pupils

📖 “I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.” Roald Dahl

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Over ten years ago, I started acquiring books which would be of interest for pupils - children as well as adults - in order to create a lending library. Now there are general introductory books for people who know very little about music as well as various more specific categories of books about theory, instruments, composers, musical eras, history, philosophy, aesthetics and many other things. My collection of academic and other books on music etc is also available for pupils.

Borrowing books is free and fines do not exist but there is a library book in which pupils and teacher sign when books are taken out and returned.

The financial organisation of the studio does not allow offering pupils free access to subscription services such as Naxos, Oxford Music etc but pupils are encouraged to explore these options individually.

Since the inception of the project a remarkably insignificant quantity of books has been withheld by pupils who refused to return items to the library and so the project continues in the hope that these occurrences remain in the minority.

Library Catalogue

A certain proportion of the music-related books is catalogued on LibraryThing.

Selection of Latest Additions

📚 PreTime Piano: Popular: Primer Level (PreTime Piano Series)

📚 PreTime Piano Jazz & Blues.: Primer Level (PreTime Piano Series)

📚 Chee-Hwa Tan Piano Safari: A Child's Garden of Verses

📚 Beatrice Quoniam Pianissimo - The Pianist's Repertory for Beginners (Le répertoire du pianiste pour les premières années

📚 Khoury, Marielle Purcell: First Discovery Music (First Discovery in Music (ABRSM))

📚 Clary, Mildred Handel: First Discovery Music (First Discovery in Music (ABRSM))

📚 de Bouchet, Paul Schubert: First Discovery Music (First Discovery in Music (ABRSM))

📚 de Bouchet, Paul Bach: First Discovery Music (First Discovery in Music (ABRSM))

📚 Beaumont, Oliver Vivaldi: First Discovery Music (First Discovery in Music (ABRSM))

📚 Henley, Darren Famous Composers (Naxos)

📚 Henley, Darren More Famous Composers (Naxos)

📚 Ameriks, Karl The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism

📚 The Impressionists Handbook. The great works and the world that inspired them

📚 Immanuel Kant Die drei Kritiken - Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Kritik der Urteilskraft

📚 Maureen Cox Harmony is fun in a nutshell (2015)

📚 Emile Jaques Dalcroze The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze

📚 Henry Giroux On Critical Pedagogy

📚 Johann Gottlieb Fichte Die Wissenschaftslehre: Zweiter Vortrag im Jahre 1804 vom 16. April - 8. Juni

📚 David Crombie Piano

📚 The Music of Life: Bartolomeo Cristofori & the Invention of the Piano by Elizabeth Busch and Marjorie Priceman

📚 DK Art A Children's Encyclopedia

📚 Oliver Condy Symphonies for the Soul - Classical Music to Cure any Ailment

📚 Anton Rubinstein Album for Piano

📚 Rubinstein, Anton Music and Its Masters (Classic Reprint)

📚 At the Piano With Women Composers (edited by Maurice Hinson)

📚 Catherine Weill Chopin (First Discovery: Music) (First Discovery in Music (ABRSM))

📚 Walcker, Yann Beethoven: First Discovery Music (First Discovery in Music (ABRSM))

📚 Yann Walcker Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (First Discovery: Music) (First Discovery in Music (ABRSM))

📚 O'Brien, Eileen Usborne Introduction to Music (Internet-linked)

📚 Roger Scruton Music As an Art

Latest update in February 2023

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