Historia de la musica occidental/ History of Western Music (Alianza Musica) (Spanish Edition) Book

This is simply a marvellous book. The book itself is beautifully printed and bound; on the cover is a gorgeous work by the impressionist painter Renoir, and on the inside awaits crisp, glossy pages lined in full-colour and laid out in a simple and classy theme, which is so often not the case with textbooks. (For comparison, the only textbooks I own which are comparable in their physical beauty are Kandel's Principles of Neural Science and Molecular Biology of the Cell, both also the standard works of general reference in their own fields). I love the attention to detail; asides taking the form of colour-coded boxes include 'source reading' as a recurrent feature, providing a taste of the criticism and praise of musical works in their own time; historical background an artworks appropriate to each musical period are given just the right treatment. I wonder how the authors were able to sustain the overall harmony of this massive effort...

In short, this is truly the musical equivalent of a Taschen art title (I own their very beautiful collection of Leonardo da Vinci's works).