Keten & stompen
met Louis Andriessen, componist en vriend

Prometheus, 2023

Inspiratie wantrouw ik ten zeerste. Otto Ketting, een componistenleven.
Prometheus, 2022

Hier rust Schönberger. Notities over muziek
Plantage, 2021

Emanuel Overbeeke in De nieuwe muze, 2021, nr. 4:
‘Schönberger writes as a poet'


Els van Swol opnwww.8weekly.nl:

'... 54 catching, accessible and somewhat philosophical notes on changes in his musical taste…'

Maarten Steenmeijer, NBD Biblion:
'A treat to read.'

Het Gebroken Oor (The Broken Ear)
Meulenhoff, 2005 and 2007 (revised edition) Russian translation: see De kunst van het kruitverschieten

Rudy Kousbroek in PZC:
'Elmer Schönberger's essay - his Huizinga Lecture from December 2005, published in [the reissue of] Het Gebroken Oor - is in fact something of a miracle. [...] a unique and brilliant text in a unique and brilliant book.'

Ger Groot in NRC-Handelsblad:
'[...] Schönberger is unsurpassed in making contemporaries accessible.'

Anthony Fiumara in Trouw:
'Swimming against the stream of evolution, his essays always approach listening as the equivalent of breathing, [and] music as pure oxygen.'

Margriet de Moor in the preface to Het Gebroken Oor:
'I read a lot about music. I know of absolutely no one but Elmer Schönberger who can describe music equally to any old novelist.'

 


De kunst van het kruitverschieten
(The art of shooting your bolt)
De Bezige Bij, 1998
Russian translation: Iskusstvo zhech' porokh . Translated by Irina Leskovskaja. Ivan Limbach, 2007 (also contains Histoire d'Oor and excerpts from Het Gebroken Oor ).


Emanuel Overbeeke in Mens en Melodie:
'His essays could also be [written] by a poet, due to the maximum of ideas using a minimum of words.'
 
Histoire d'Oor (Story of O...)
Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 1993
Russian translation: seeDe kunst van het kruitverschieten


Peter Wesly in Vrij Nederland:
'In my review I claimed that after Vestdijk, no one writes about music better than Elmer Schönberger in Histoire d'Oor . Having had a sniff through Vestdijk on music, I'll scrap that "after Vestdijk".'
   
De vrouw met de hamer & andere componisten
(The lady with the hammer & other composers)

De Bezige Bij, 1992

Roland de Beer in De Volkskrant:
...That is the greatest measure of Schönberger's narrative talent: whether you agree with him or not is of nominal relevance.'

Willem Jan Otten in Tirade:
''Where this prose thrives, no musicologist-prose survives.'

   

De wellustige tandarts & andere componisten
(The voluptuous dentist & other composers)
De Bezige Bij, 1985

Roland de Beer in De Volkskrant:
'Scintillating display from a counter-academic academic.'

Anton Haakman in Vrij Nederland:
'His portrait on the back flap offers a glimpse of the lining of his sport jacket. Brand: "New Man".'

See also the Digitale Bibliotheek

   



Het apollinisch uurwerk. Over Stravinsky
English translation: The Apollonian Clockwork. On Stravinsky. Translated by Jeff Hamburg (Oxford University Press, 1989; Amsterdam University Press, 2006)
Russian translation: Chasy Apollona. O Stravinskom. Translated by Irina Leskovskaya (Institut PRO ARTE- Akademicheskiy Proekt, 2003)
Italian translation: L’orlogio apollineo. Su Stravinsky. Traduzione di Valeria Gorla (Il Saggiatore 2017)

Robert Craft:
'The Apollonian Clockwork
is an exhilarating account of a search, external and internal, for Stravinsky, both as a composer and as a man. (...) The most ingenious, sharply observed, and original book likely to be writeen about the composer for a long time.'

Richard Taruskin:
'The one book about Stravinsky Stravinsky would have liked.'

Paul Griffiths:
'What The Apollonian Clockwork has been devised to tell us is, of course, how Stravinsky ticks, and its methods are appropriately the Stravinskian ones of detachment, inspection and reconstitution.'

   
Ik lach bij het zien (I laugh to see)
author: Wilhelm Schön (pseudonym of Willem Jan Otten & Elmer Schönberger) co-author: Willem Jan Otten
De Harmonie, 1982

Gerrit Komrij in NRC Handelsblad:
'If Wilhelm Schön's subject had not been opera, but tulip bulbs or combating corns and callouses on rattlesnakes, I'd have read it with equal pleasure.'

   
De bevrijding van de klank. (The liberation of sound)
Texts by and about Varèse.
Compiled and edited by Elmer Schönberger
Stichting ASKO, 1984


Rudolf Escher: Debussy. Actueel verleden.
(Rudolf Escher: Debussy. Current history)

Compiled and edited by Dirk Jacob Hamoen &   Elmer Schönberger
Uitgeverij Frits Knuf, 1985


Ssst!
New ensembles for new music.
Editors: Elmer Schönberger and others
Uitgeverij International Theatre & Film Books, 1996