Classical music
The Pursuit of Musick, Andrew Parrott
The Language of the Spirit, Jan Swafford
The Classical Style: An Opera (Of Sorts)
Every Good Boy Does Fine, Jeremy Denk
The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross
Still Songs: Music In and Around the Poetry of Paul Celan, Alex Englund
Time’s Echo, Jeremy Eichler
Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music, Renée L. Packer and Mary J. Leach
Conversations, Steve Reich
The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey: Delirium and Form, Jeffrey Arlo Brown
Opera
A Mad Love, Vivien Schweitzer
The Opera House
Wagnerism, Alex Ross
On Late Style, Edward Said
The Queen’s Throat, Wayne Koestenbaum
Opera as Drama, Joseph Kerman
Mad Scenes and Exit Arias, Heidi Waleson
The Impossible Art, Matthew Aucoin
“Einstein on the Beach”: How One Opera Changed Everything, Mark Swed
Deviant Opera, Alex Englund
The Inner Voice, Renee Fleming
The Rise of the New, Vivien Schweitzer and Fred Cohn (Opera America)
The 2010s: A Decade of Change, Heidi Waleson (Opera America)
The American Singer: 1970 to 2020, Fred Cohn (Opera America)
Haus of Shmizzay
Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera, Lucy Caplan
A New Philosophy of Opera, Yuval Sharon
Jazz
Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination, Brent Hayes Edwards
Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, Nate Chinen
In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, Fred Moten
Musical theater
Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy
Mainly On Directing, Arthur Laurents
The Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim
Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies, Ted Chapin
Dance
Edges of Ailey, Adrienne Edwards et al
Popular music
Hava Nagila: The Movie
A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Taylor Mac
“It’s so dramatic, I love it” – @alexjarmy
The Hidden Costs of Streaming Music, Alex Ross
Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South, Regina N. Bradley
Art of the future
Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy, Ben Davis