Announcement, Introducing Presto Books

We are very pleased and proud to be able to announce a significant development for our website, namely a new department dedicated to books about music.

In this new department you will find over 35,000 books on every aspect of music, including biographies, history & reference books covering all genres and styles, academic textbooks on music theory & analysis, and books on music education. You can read in more detail about the new department below, or visit it now to see what's on offer.

Our new department (which you can access from the drop-down menu on any page on our website, as shown in the image above) offers books on all genres of music; to help you browse we have broken them up into four main groups:

Biographies

In our biography section you will find books about particular classical composers & performers, rock & pop artists, and jazz, blues, world, and folk musicians.

Music History

From this menu you can find books about the history of music: as well as titles covering all periods of Western classical music from antiquity right up to the present day, you can also browse specific genres of music, such as opera & song, dance, film music & musicals, jazz & blues, and so on.

Reference

This section contains music dictionaries and encyclopedias, as well as academic textbooks relating to music theory, analysis, aesthetics, harmony & counterpoint, orchestration, and books on conducting technique. You will also find books about musical instruments and ensembles, as well as publications on recorded sound, the music industry, and music software.

Education

Here we offer a range of music education books, from early years and primary school right up to secondary education and beyond, including textbooks and workbooks for GCSE and A-level music, and books on music therapy.

As well as the various categories listed above, you can also browse by author or publisher, or if you know what you are looking for then of course our search function works in exactly the same way as it does in our other departments of classical recordings and sheet music.

Furthermore, when on a search results page you can use the filters down the left-hand side, which will allow you to refine your results by category or enable you to select only paperback or hardback editions.

A new feature we have introduced to both our Books and Sheet Music departments is the ability to browse by series, so if you wish to view, for instance, all of the Cambridge Companions to Music, or all volumes in Oxford University Press's Master Musicians series, then all you have to do is to click on the links to be found at the bottom of the relevant publisher page. These links can also be found on the "Explore" tab of any product included in that series.

Finally, you can browse new & forthcoming publications by selecting the relevant option at the top right of the menu bar (search results can also be filtered for new and/or future titles).