Andrew Ford has written ten books, most recently The Song Remains the Same, co-written with Anni Heino.
Books
The Song Remains the Same: 800 Years of Love Songs, Laments and Lullabies (with Anni Heino), La Trobe University Press/Black Inc. 2019
The Memory of Music, Black Inc. 2017
Earth Dances: Music in search of the primitive, Black Inc. 2015
Try Whistling This: Writings about music, Black Inc. 2013
The Sound of Pictures, Black Inc. 2010
Talking to Kinky and Karlheinz – 170 musicians get vocal on The Music Show, ABC Books 2008 (ed. Anni Heino)
In Defence of Classical Music, ABC Books 2005
Speaking in Tongues – the songs of Van Morrison (with Martin Buzacott), ABC Books 2005
Undue Noise, ABC Books 2002
Illegal Harmonies, Black Inc. 2011; ABC Books 2002; Hale & Iremonger 1997
Composer to composer, Hale & Iremonger 1997; Allen & Unwin 1993 (Australia) Quartet 1993 (UK)
Articles
Articles published in the Inside Story magazine include:
Close listening (16 October 2021 – listening hard, reading closely)
Wrapped in sound (17 September 2021 – seeing music)
Why not appreciate a Bartók . . . and a Parry? (10 August 2021 – Gerald Finzi’s letters)
A kind of therapy (15 July – Martha Marlow’s Medicine Man)
Toora loo rye ay (8 June 2021 – the music of Wakefield)
Not singing, but being a singer (14 May 2021 – the New Romantics, from to Eurythmics to Human League)
Stravinsky’s fingerprints (8 April 2021)
Sounds of silence (15 March 2021 – what we heard under lockdown)
Now he sang, now he sobbed (19 February 2021 – Chick Corea RIP)
Light and shade (9 February 2021 – music about the climate emergency)
In the Boulangerie (9 December 2020 – Nadia Boulanger)
The sorrows of young Joni (19 November 2020 – Joni Mitchell’s early recordings)
Captive keyboard (4 October 2020 – new music for harpsichord – Mahan Esfahani’s Musique?)
The sun also rises (9 September 2020 – Oliver Craske’s biography of Ravi Shankar)
Collapsing Britten’s triangle (14 August 2020 -Cathy Milliken’s Two Step)
Are we there yet? (3 July 2020 – Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways)
God bless America (5 June 2020 – Irving Berlin and Woody Guthrie)
The new chamber music (20 May 2020 – concerts from living rooms)
Crisis with no soundtrack (25 April 2020 – why do Australian governments undervalue the arts?)
Listening to the news (14 April 2020 – art trying to keep up with events)
Why Beethoven? (12 March 2020)
Genre bending (20 February 2020 – Marriage Story and the songs of Sondheim)
Johnny Cash’s comma (4 December 2019 – in praise of late-career singers)
The music in people’s lives (11 November 2019 – working with amateur musicians)
Give our regards to Broadway (18 October 2019 – New York City in song)
Roger Smalley’s fingerprints (9 September 2019)
Un cabaret supérieur (9 April 2019 – Robyn Archer)
Music’s peripatetic polymath (4 March 2019 – André Previn)
A servant of the music (11 February 2019 – Gerald English)
The dance of God (7 December 2018 – Bach)
Welcome to my anxiety (2 November 2018 – on composing and self-doubt)
The prolific old age of Elliott Carter (5 October 2018)
Trusting Aretha (10 September 2018 – Aretha Franklin)
A Question of Style (20 August 2018 – Calvin Bowman)
Magic Numbers (10 July 2018 – Sally Greenaway)
Strange Worlds (12 June 2018 – Gavin Bryars and Brian Ferneyhough))
Out of the Shadows (8 May 2018 – Peggy Seeger)
Hearing Voices (9 April 2018 – on Nick Coleman’s book Voices)
The talent of Lili Boulanger (7 March 2018)
More Melbourne Recital Centre than Bird’s Basement (13 February 2018 – jazz meets poetry, and Andrea Keller’s work)
The destiny of Eileen Joyce (27 December 2017)
Wild conjecture (11 December 2017 – Geoffrey Lancaster’s Mozart recordings)
The play is the thing (14 November 2017 – on Elena Kats-Chernin’s work)
Who, and what, is a composer (24 October 2017)
The audacity of authenticity (19 August 2017 – what makes a composer courageous)
Rock of ages (27 July 2017 – rock music has become a body of work)
Memory lane (7 July 2017 – we go to classical music, but pop music comes to us)
Tragic performers (15 June 2017)
Blueprints for listening (11 May 2017 – Is reading music elitist?)
Rhiannon Giddens and the folk arts (10 April 2017 – on drawing inspiration from folk music)
Abandonment postponed (7 March 2017 – on finishing a composition)
At the borders of the public domain (16 February 2017)
The clarity of Maurizio Pollini (12 January 2017)
The uses of music (5 December 2016)
A little knowledge (7 November 2016 – the supposed Englishness of Elgar)
What we talk about when we talk about music (17 October 2016)
Haydn and the powdered wig (7 September 2016 – on the unimportance of style)
It’s too late to stop Van Morrison (9 August 2016)
Schwarzkopf and the Nazis (5 July 2016 – on reconciling an artist’s views with her work)
Cruel beauty (2 June 2016 – on music’s paradoxical limit)
The baritone’s party piece (10 May 2016 – Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies)
Raising the standards (6 April 2016 – jazz standards; Bill Frisell)
On interpreting and being interpreted (2 March 2016)
Heroes (6 February 2016 – Boulez & Bowie)
In praise of ‘The Divorce’ (13 January 2016 – Kats-Chernin’s The Divorce)
Listening to the Zeitgeist (8 December 2015 – recent books)
Anthems of late capitalism (27 October 2015 – James Bond songs)
Serious about singing (6 October 2015 – music education)
Everyone was a bird (8 September 2015 – composers and birdsong)
The art of funding (13 July 2015)
Boulez at 90 (11 June 2015)
Jack Body in transit (13 May 2015)
Joni, Bob and Van (8 April 2015 – Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison)
The collegial composer (10 March 2015 – on accepting advice and working with musicians)
On authenticity and Philip Glass (5 February 2015)
In praise of serendipity (8 January 2015)
A transcendence that can’t be explained away (11 September 2014 – John Adams)
Peter Sculthorpe, a composer in Australia (11 August 2014)
When the bough breaks (6 July 2014 – lullabies)
Look what they’ve done to my song (10 June 2014 – vocalists rewriting lyrics)
The composer as critic (14 May 2014)
Amplified intimacy (7 April 2014 – microphone as the most important instrument in pop)
Messiaen’s Children (4 March 2014)
Too much talent (Leonard Bernstein, 11 February 2014)
Imagining the future of music (15 January 2014)
The Beatles and the Beeb (11 December 2013)
Adding to the ambience (wallpaper music, 13 November 2013)
What the composer owes the writer (on combining words and music, 10 October 2013)
The composer who hasn’t let go (Wagner, 15 September 2013)
Not shaving to Schoenberg (12 August 2013)
Works in progress (Boulez & Dutilleux, 14 July 2013)
Monique di Mattina in New Orleans (12 June 2013)
Benjamin Britten’s voice (16 May 2013)
Margaret Thatcher and the moral neutrality of art (April 2013)
Watching the audience (WOMADelaide, March 2013)
Well-made music (life and work of Lennox Berkeley, February 2013)
The sparkle of the miniature (life and work of Peggy Glanville-Hicks, December 2012)
More than the sum of their parts (the song cycle and Paul Kelly, October 2012)
The symbiotic relationship (composers and players, October 2012)
The eloquence of the compact disc (Eloquence label, September 2012)
Musical paranoia (music as the target of political and religious fundamentalists (August 2012)
Getting personal (composer and his piano, June 2012)
Why We Need Music (May 2012)
Tim Stevens’s undertow (CD review, April 2012)
Misinterpretations (Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ and John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ March 2012)
The Art of Relevance (November 2011)
Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (October 2011)
Fresh Ears (Bach and babies, September 2011)
Shall They Overcome? (protest songs, July 2011)
Dark Pop (June 2011)
The New Trend (Bossa nova, May 2011)
Black Dyke Days (March 2011)
Less is more (Sondheim, December 2010)