The best thing ever written about music in our language

If I had a teenage child with a passion for serious music, I would not hesitate to give him or her Essays in Musical Analysis by Donald Francis Tovey. This is a formidable work. The first volume is on symphonies, the second on symphonies, variations and orchestral polyphony, the third on concertos, the fourth on illustrative music and the final volume on vocal music. There is also an index volume which includes a valuable glossary, and the general introduction provides a dazzlingly clear explanation of such basic concepts as key, tonic, dominant, tonality and sonata form. There are copious musical illustrations throughout. You say a teenager is not going to wade through six volumes of uncompromising gravity. Not true. I discovered Tovey for myself in the school library when I was 15, and read him virtually all through. It provided me with the basis of my musical education, and much of what he said lodges in my mind to this day.