The Art of French piano music: Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Chabrier. Yale University Press (London), published May 2009 (click here for the book’s US listing).
Named “2009 Book of the Year” by International Piano; other citations include an “Outstanding” rosette in International Record Review and “Editor’s Choice” in Classical Music.
- Debussy in proportion. A musical analysis. Cambridge University Press, 1983 (paperback 1986).
This book traces the sophisticated and intricate patterns of symmetry and Golden Section that underlie the forms of Debussy’s major works, including structures based on the associated Fibonacci and Lucas number sequences.
“Roy Howat’s book represents the most important advance in unravelling the mysteries of Debussy’s music that there has ever been” – Robert Orledge in Music & Letters
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Translated by Roy Howat
Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Inside and around Chopin’s 24 Preludes Opus 28, translated by Roy Howat. Mallorca: Museo Frederic Chopin y George Sand, 2025. (French original: Autour des 24 Préludes de Frédéric Chopin, same publisher, 2019)
Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin, pianist and teacher; edited and co-translated by Roy Howat (with co-translators Naomi Shohet and Krysia Osostowicz, from the original French volume Chopin vu par ses élèves). Cambridge UP, 1986 (paperback 1988) ‘…indispensable to the serious student of Chopin’ – Notes, Journal of the Music Library Association. View on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk.
Book chapters by Roy Howat (in English)
‘Between and beyond the perforations in Debussy’s Welte rolls’ and ‘Debussy’s Welte roll of La plus que lente’, Chapters 3 & 15 in Claude Debussy: seine Klavieraufnahmen, ed. Tihomir Popović & Peter Mutter. Hofheim am Taunus: Wolke Verlag, 2023: 62–91, 356–72. Open access: https://www.wolke-verlag.de/musikbuecher/tihomir-popovic-claude-debussy-die-klavieraufnahmen/
‘Fauré the practical interpreter’, in Fauré Studies, ed. Stephen Rumph & Carlo Caballero. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2021: 170–91
‘Debussy’s En blanc et noir and « le souci des proportions »’, in Créer, jouer, transmettre la musique, de la Troisième République à nos jours ; pour Myriam Chimènes. Études réunies, éditées et présentées par Anne Piéjus et Alexandra Laederich avec la collaboration éditoriale de Sophie Debouverie. Paris: Centre de documentation Claude Debussy, 2019: 223–43 (ISBN 978-2-9568421-0-1)
‘The Œuvres complètes de Claude Debussy thirty years on’, in Debussy’s Resonance, ed. Michel Duchesneau, François De Médicis & Steven Huebner. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2018: 38–56 (ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-525-0; ISSN: 1071-9989)
(with Emily Kilpatrick): ‘Editorial Adventures in the Songs of Gabriel Fauré’, Proceedings of the 8th International Congress of Voice Teachers, July 10–14, 2013, Brisbane, Australia, ed. Diane Hughes and Jean Callaghan: 119–31 (published only in electronic format). (ISBN 978-0-9922713-0-5)
‘Inside rather than under the composer’s skin: another tilt at being authentic’, in Perspectives on the Performance of French Piano Music, ed. Scott McCarrey & Lesley Wright. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014: 11–28 (ISBN 978-1-409-40064-6 hbk; 978-1-472-42355-9 e-PDF; 978-1-472-42356-6 e-PUB)
‘Russian imprints in Debussy’s piano music’, in Rethinking Debussy, ed. Elliott Antokoletz & Marianne Wheeldon. New York: OUP, 2011: 31–51 (ISBN 978-0-19-975564-6)
‘Modernisation: from Chabrier and Fauré and Chabrier to Debussy and Ravel’; in French music since Berlioz, ed. Caroline Potter and Richard Langham Smith, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006, pp. 197–221.
‘Performance as research and vice versa’; in Music research: new directions for a new century, ed. Michael Ewans, Rosalind Halton and John A. Phillips. ISBN 1-904303-35-8. Amersham: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2004, pp. 1–14.
‘Reading between the lines of tempo and rhythm in the B-flat Sonata, D. 960’; in Schubert the Progressive, ed. Brian Newbould. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, pp. 117–137.
‘Keyboard’; in ABRSM Performer’s Guide to Romantic Music, ed. Anthony Burton. London: Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, 2002, pp. 29–42.
‘Ravel and the piano’; in The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, ed. Deborah Mawer. Cambridge UP, 2000, pp. 71–96 & 271–273.
‘Architecture as drama in late Schubert’; in Schubert Studies, ed. Brian Newbould. London: Scholar Press (now Ashgate), 1998, pp. 168–192. View on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk.
‘Debussy’s piano music: sources and performance’; in Debussy Studies, ed. Richard Langham Smith. Cambridge UP, 1996, pp. 78–107. View on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk.
‘What do we perform?’ – in The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation, ed. John Rink. Cambridge UP, 1995, pp. 3–20. View on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk.
‘Debussy and the Orient’; in Recovering the Orient, ed. Andrew Gerstle & Anthony Milner. Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994, pp. 45–81.
‘Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion’; in The Bartók Companion, ed. Malcolm Gillies. London: Faber, 1993, pp. 315–330. View on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk
‘Chopin’s influence on the fin-de-siècle and beyond’; in The Cambridge Companion to Chopin, ed. Jim Samson. Cambridge UP, 1992, pp. 246–279 & 325–327. View on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk
For chapters in other languages click on the appropriate side bar