An invaluable introduction to the art and craft of musical composition from a distinguished teacher and composer This essential introduction to the art and craft of musical composition is designed to familiarize beginning composers with principles and techniques applicable to a broad range of musical styles, from concert pieces to film scores and video game music. The first of its kind to utilize a style-neutral approach, in addition to presenting the commonly known classical forms, this book offers invaluable general guidance on developing and connecting musical ideas, building to a climax, and other fundamental formal principles. It is designed for both classroom use and independent study.

Why do we feel justified in using adjectives such as romantic, erotic, heroic, melancholic, and a hundred others when speaking about music? How do we locate these meanings within particular musical styles? These are questions that have occupied Derek Scott's thoughts and driven his critical musicological research for many years. In this selection of essays, dating from 1995-2010, he returns time and again to examining how conventions of representation arise and how they become established. Among the themes of the collection are social class, ideology, national identity, imperialism, Orientalism, race, the sacred and profane, modernity and postmodernity, and the vexed relationship of art and entertainment. A wide variety of musical styles is discussed, ranging from jazz and popular song to the symphonic repertoire and opera.

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.

An accessible scientific explanation for the traditional rules of voice leading, including an account of why listeners find some musical textures more pleasing than others. Voice leading is the musical art of combining sounds over time. In this book, David Huron offers an accessible account of the cognitive and perceptual foundations for this practice. Drawing on decades of scientific research, including his own award-winning work, Huron offers explanations for many practices and phenomena, including the perceptual dominance of the highest voice, chordal-tone doubling, direct octaves, embellishing tones, and the musical feeling of sounds “leading” somewhere. Huron shows how traditional rules of voice leading align almost perfectly with modern scientific accounts of auditory perception. He also reviews pertinent research establishing the role of learning and enculturation in auditory and musical perception. Voice leading has long been taught with reference to Baroque chorale-style part-writing, yet there exist many more musical styles and practices. The traditional emphasis on Baroque part-writing understandably leaves many musicians wondering why they are taught such an archaic and narrow practice in an age of stylistic diversity. Huron explains how and why Baroque voice leading continues to warrant its central pedagogical status. Expanding beyond choral-style writing, Huron shows how established perceptual principles can be used to compose, analyze, and critically understand any kind of acoustical texture from tune-and-accompaniment songs and symphonic orchestration to jazz combo arranging and abstract electroacoustic music. Finally, he offers a psychological explanation for why certain kinds of musical textures are more likely to be experienced by listeners as pleasing.

This first book in English on the French composer André Jolivet (1905–1974) investigates his music, life and influence. A pupil of Varèse and colleague of Messiaen in La Jeune France, Jolivet is a major figure in French music of the twentieth century. His music combines innovative language with spirituality, summarised in his self-declared axiom to ‘restore music’s ancient original meaning when it was the magic and incantatory expression of the sacred in human communities’. The book’s contextual introduction is followed by contributions, edited by Caroline Rae, from leading international scholars including the composer’s daughter Christine Jolivet-Erlih. These assess Jolivet’s output and activities from the 1920s through to his last works, exploring creative process, aesthetic, his relationship with the exotic and influences from literature. They also examine, for the first time, the significance of Jolivet’s involvement with the visual arts and his activities as conductor, teacher and critic. A chronology of Jolivet’s life and works with details of first performances provides valuable overview and reference. This fascinating and comprehensive volume is an indispensable source for research into French music and culture of the twentieth century.

Leonard Meyer proposes a theory of style and style change that relates the choices made by composers to the constraints of psychology, cultural context, and musical traditions. He explores why, out of the abundance of compositional possibilities, composers choose to replicate some patterns and neglect others. Meyer devotes the latter part of his book to a sketch-history of nineteenth-century music. He shows explicitly how the beliefs and attitudes of Romanticism influenced the choices of composers from Beethoven to Mahler and into our own time. "A monumental work. . . . Most authors concede the relation of music to its cultural milieu, but few have probed so deeply in demonstrating this interaction."—Choice "Probes the foundations of musical research precisely at the joints where theory and history fold into one another."—Kevin Korsyn, Journal of American Musicological Society "A remarkably rich and multifaceted, yet unified argument. . . . No one else could have brought off this immense project with anything like Meyer's command."—Robert P. Morgan, Music Perception "Anyone who attempts to deal with Romanticism in scholarly depth must bring to the task not only musical and historical expertise but unquenchable optimism. Because Leonard B. Meyer has those qualities in abundance, he has been able to offer fresh insight into the Romantic concept."—Donal Henahan, New York Times

Ideas and Styles in the Western Musical Tradition, Fourth Edition, explores the conceptual frameworks that have shaped musical development from antiquity to the present. In a lively narrative that prompts readers to think both critically and creatively, Douglass Seaton uses historical documents from thinkers, artists, and musicians to add rich detail to the compelling story of Western music. This brief and accessible narrative of music history features numerous works of art, literature, and music that immerse students in the historical and intellectual contexts of musical styles. The thoroughly updated and revised fourth edition offers: · New pedagogy including chapter-opening summaries and outlines; marginal cues to identify key ideas in each paragraph; and extended excerpts from key historical texts · Increased and balanced coverage of women's roles in music history, ranging from discussions of key composers and performers like Isabella d'Este and Fanny Hensel to women's important roles as patrons · A custom score anthology drawn from the Oxford History of Western Music offers students full scores and analysis for key works from the text · A more user-friendly design makes it easier for students to quickly locate key information · Updates to the narrative throughout, including the most recent research findings along with updates to the reception of key works