The challenge, in twentieth-century music, to the normative status of triadic tonality is one of the most far-reaching and extreme revolutions that the history of music has known. In his classic work, Twelve-Tone Tonality, George Perle argues that the seemingly disparate styles of post-triadic music in fact share common structural elements. According to Perle, these elements collectively imply a new tonality as "natural" and coherent as the major-minor tonality that was the basis of a common musical language in the past. His book describes the foundational assumptions of this post-diatonic tonality and illustrates its compositional functions with numerous musical examples. The second edition of Twelve-Tone Tonality is enlarged by eleven new chapters. Some of these are "postscripts" to earlier chapters, clarifying, elucidating, and expanding upon concepts discussed in the original edition. Others discuss new developments in the theory and practice of twelve-tone tonality, including voice-leading implications of the system and dissonance treatment. Errors discovered in the original edition have been corrected. - Jacket flap.

Most histories of American music have ignored the presence of twelve-tone music before and during the Second World War, and virtually all have ignored its presence after 1970, even though so many major composers continued (and continue) to compose serially. This book provides a comprehensive history of twelve-tone music in America, and compels a revised picture of American music since 1925 as a dynamic steady-state within which twelve-tone serialism has long been, and still remains, a persistent presence: a vigorous and unbroken tradition for more than eighty years. Straus outlines how, instead of a rigid orthodoxy, American twelve-tone music is actually a flexible, loosely-knit cultural practice. The book provides close readings of thirty-seven American twelve-tone works by composers including Copland, Babbitt, Stravinsky and Carter, among many others, who represent a typically American diversity of background and life circumstances, and strips away the many myths surrounding twelve-tone music in America.

Jack Boss presents detailed analyses of Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone pieces, bringing the composer's 'musical idea' - problem, elaboration, solution - to life.

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.

Contemporary Harmony: Romanticism Through the Twelve-Tone Row is by Ludmila Ulehla. The understanding of the musical techniques of composition cannot be reduced to a handbook of simplified rules. Music is complex and ever changing. It is the purpose of this book to trace the path of musical growth from the late Romantic period to the serial techniques of the contemporary composer. Through the detailed analysis of the musical characteristics that dominate a specific style of writing, a graduated plan is organized and presented here in the form of explanations and exercises. A new analytical method substitutes for the diatonic figured bass and makes exercises and the analysis of non-diatonic literature more manageable. The explanations describing each technique are thorough. They are designed to help the teacher and the student see the many extenuating circumstances that affect a particular analytical decision. More important than a dogmatic decision on a particular key center or a root tone, for example, is the understanding of why such an underdeterminate condition may exist.

Portrays Schoenberg's atonal music as successions of motives and pitch-class sets that flesh out 'musical idea' and 'basic image' frameworks.

The Pianist's Dictionary is a handy and practical reference dictionary aimed specifically at pianists, teachers, students, and concertgoers. Prepared by Maurice Hinson and Wesley Roberts, this revised and expanded edition is a compendium of information gleaned from a combined century of piano teaching. Users will find helpful and clear definitions of musical and pianistic terms, performance directions, composers, pianists, famous piano pieces, and piano makers. The authors' succinct entries make The Pianist's Dictionary the perfect reference for compiling program and liner notes, studying scores, and learning and teaching the instrument.

Harmony Through Melody:The Interaction of Melody, Counterpoint, and Harmony in Western Music, Second Editionoffers a robust, composition-based approach to tonal music theory, ranging from early modality to recent film and popular music. Charles Horton, David A. Byrne, and Lawrence Ritchey develop techniques and strategies for exploring the fundamental interaction of melody and counterpoint with harmony, and provide students with opportunities to creatively express what they have learned in the writing and analysis of short passages and complete pieces in historical styles. This second edition contains additional examples from the standard literature, film music, and popular song, and features new assignments involving late nineteenth-century chromatic practice. The textbook present a step-by-step method for the composition and analysis of short passages and complete pieces, with more than 1400 musical examples drawn from a variety of styles and genres, plus classroom-tested examples for study and suggested assignments at the end of each chapter. The second edition has an online companion website (textbooks.rowman.com/horton2e) featuring: A student workbook with more than 260 assignments for individual work and classroom use Audio links to 315 newly-recorded live performances of model compositions and fully realized settings An instructor’s manual with guidelines for evaluation of assignments, additional repertoire for in-class analysis and assignments, sample syllabi, and other useful information is also available. Please email [email protected] for more information.

Understanding Post-Tonal Music is a student-centered textbook that explores the compositional and musical processes of twentieth-century post-tonal music. Intended for undergraduate or general graduate courses on the theory and analysis of twentieth-century music, this book will increase the accessibility of post-tonal music by providing students with tools for understanding pitch organization, rhythm and meter, form, texture, and aesthetics. By presenting the music first and then deriving the theory, Understanding Post-Tonal Music leads students to greater understanding and appreciation of this challenging and important repertoire. The updated second edition includes new "Explorations" features that guide students to engage with pieces through listening and a process of exploration, discovery, and discussion; a new chapter covering electronic, computer, and spectral musics; and additional coverage of music from the twenty-first century and recent trends. The text has been revised throughout to enhance clarity, both by streamlining the prose and by providing a visual format more accessible to the student.