The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory PDF Download

Author: Thomas Christensen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316025489
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1033

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Book Description
The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory is the first comprehensive history of Western music theory to be published in the English language. A collaborative project by leading music theorists and historians, the volume traces the rich panorama of music-theoretical thought from the Ancient Greeks to the present day. Recognizing the variety and complexity of music theory as an historical subject, the volume has been organized within a flexible framework. Some chapters are defined chronologically within a restricted historical domain, whilst others are defined conceptually and span longer historical periods. Together the thirty-one chapters present a synthetic overview of the fascinating and complex subject that is historical music theory. Richly enhanced with illustrations, graphics, examples and cross-citations as well as being thoroughly indexed and supplemented by comprehensive bibliographies of the most important primary and secondary literature, this book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars alike.

Author: David Carson Berry
Publisher: Pendragon Press
ISBN: 9781576470954
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 610

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Book Description
To the growing list of Pendragon Press publications devoted to the work of Heinrich Schenker, we wish to announce the addition of this much-needed bibliography. The author, a student of Allen Forte, has created a work useful to a wide range of researchers music theorists, musicologists, music librarians and teachers. The Guide is the largest Schenkerian reference work ever published. At nearly 600 pages, it contains 3600 entries (2200 principal, 1400 secondary) representing the work of 1475 authors. Fifteen broad groupings encompass seventy topical headings, many of which are divided and subdivided again, resulting in a total of 271 headings under which entries are collected.

Author: William Rothstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197609686
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 601

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Book Description
Though studying opera often requires attention to aesthetics, libretti, staging, singers, compositional history, and performance history, the music itself is central. This book examines operatic music by five Italian composers--Rossini, Bellini, Mercadante, Donizetti, and Verdi--and one non-Italian, Meyerbeer, during the period from Rossini's first international successes to Italian unification. Detailed analyses of form, rhythm, melody, and harmony reveal concepts of musical structure different from those usually discussed by music theorists, calling into question the notion of a common practice. Taking an eclectic analytical approach, author William Rothstein uses ideas originating in several centuries, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first, to argue that operatic music can be heard not only as passionate vocality but also in terms of musical forms, pitch structures, and rhythmic patterns--that is, as carefully crafted music worth theoretical attention. Although no single theory accounts for everything, Rothstein's analysis shows how certain recurring principles define a distinctively Italian practice, one that left its mark on the German repertoire more familiar to music theorists.

Author: Alexander Rehding
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521820738
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Generally acknowledged as the most important German musicologist of his age, Hugo Riemann (1849-1919) shaped the ideas of generations of music scholars, not least because his work coincided with the institutionalisation of academic musicology around the turn of the last century. This influence, however, belies the contentious idea at the heart of his musical thought, an idea he defended for most of his career - harmonic dualism. By situating Riemann's musical thought within turn-of-the-century discourses about the natural sciences, German nationhood and modern technology, this book reconstructs the cultural context in which Riemann's ideas not only 'made sense' but advanced an understanding of the tonal tradition as both natural and German. Riemann's musical thought - from his considerations of acoustical properties to his aesthetic and music-historical views - thus regains the coherence and cultural urgency that it once possessed.

Author: Berthold Hoeckner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069122756X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Programming the Absolute discusses the notorious opposition between absolute and program music as a true dialectic that lies at the heart of nineteenth-century German music. Beginning with Beethoven, Berthold Hoeckner traces the aesthetic problem of musical meaning in works by Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, Mahler, and Schoenberg, whose private messages and public predicaments are emblematic for the cultural legacy of this rich repertory. After Romanticism had elevated music as a language "beyond" language, the ineffable spurred an unprecedented proliferation of musical analysis and criticism. Taking his cue from Adorno, Hoeckner develops the idea of a "hermeneutics of a moment," which holds that musical meaning crystallizes only momentarily--in a particular passage, a progression, even a single note. And such moments can signify as little as a fleeting personal memory or as much as the whole of German music. Although absolute music emerged with a matrix of values--the integrity of the subject, the aesthetic autonomy of art, and the intrinsic worth of high culture--that are highly contested in musicology today, Hoeckner argues that we should not completely discard the ideal of a music that continues to offer moments of transcendence and liberation. Passionately and artfully written, Hoeckner's quest for an "essayistic musicology" displays an original intelligence willing to take interpretive risks. It is a provocative contribution to our knowledge about some of Europe's most important music--and to contemporary controversies over how music should be understood and experienced.

Author: Jack Moser Douthett
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 9781580462662
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Essays in diatonic set theory, transformation theory, and neo-Riemannian theory -- the newest and most exciting fields in music theory today. The essays in Music Theory and Mathematics: Chords, Collections, and Transformations define the state of mathematically oriented music theory at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The volume includes essays in diatonic set theory, transformation theory, and neo-Riemannian theory -- the newest and most exciting fields in music theory today. The essays constitute a close-knit body of work -- a family in the sense of tracing their descentfrom a few key breakthroughs by John Clough, David Lewin, and Richard Cohn in the 1980s and 1990s. They are integrated by the ongoing dialogue they conduct with one another. The editors are Jack Douthett, a mathematician and music theorist who collaborated extensively with Clough; Martha M. Hyde, a distinguished scholar of twentieth-century music; and Charles J. Smith, a specialist in tonal theory. The contributors are all prominent scholars, teaching at institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Indiana University, and the University at Buffalo. Six of them (Clampitt, Clough, Cohn, Douthett, Hook, and Smith) have received the Society for Music Theory's prestigious PublicationAward, and one (Hyde) has received the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. The collection includes the last paper written by Clough before his death, as well as the last paper written by David Lewin, an important music theorist also recently deceased. Contributors: David Clampitt, John Clough, Richard Cohn, Jack Douthett, Nora Engebretsen, Julian Hook, Martha Hyde, Timothy Johnson, Jon Kochavi, David Lewin, Charles J. Smith, and Stephen Soderberg.

Author: John Williamson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521008785
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This Companion provides an overview of the composer Anton Bruckner (1824-1896). Sixteen chapters by leading scholars investigate aspects of his life and works and consider the manner in which critical appreciation has changed in the twentieth century. The first section deals with Bruckner's Austrian background, investigating the historical circumstances in which he worked, his upbringing in Upper Austria, and his career in Vienna. A number of misunderstandings are dealt with in the light of recent research. The remainder of the book covers Bruckner's career as church musician and symphonist, with a chapter on the neglected secular vocal music. Religious, aesthetic, formal, harmonic, and instrumental aspects are considered, while one chapter confronts the problem of the editions of the symphonies. Two concluding chapters discuss the symphonies in performance, and the history of Bruckner-reception with particular reference to German Nationalism, the Third Reich and the appropriation of Bruckner by the Nazis.

Author: Richard Cohn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199773211
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Music theorists have long believed that 19th-century triadic progressions idiomatically extend the diatonic syntax of 18th-century classical tonality, and have accordingly unified the two repertories under a single mode of representation. Post-structuralist musicologists have challenged this belief, advancing the view that many romantic triadic progressions exceed the reach of classical syntax and are mobilized as the result of a transgressive, anti-syntactic impulse. In Audacious Euphony, author Richard Cohn takes both of these views to task, arguing that romantic harmony operates under syntactic principles distinct from those that underlie classical tonality, but no less susceptible to systematic definition. Charting this alternative triadic syntax, Cohn reconceives what consonant triads are, and how they relate to one another. In doing so, he shows that major and minor triads have two distinct natures: one based on their acoustic properties, and the other on their ability to voice-lead smoothly to each other in the chromatic universe. Whereas their acoustic nature underlies the diatonic tonality of the classical tradition, their voice-leading properties are optimized by the pan-triadic progressions characteristic of the 19th century. Audacious Euphony develops a set of inter-related maps that organize intuitions about triadic proximity as seen through the lens of voice-leading proximity, using various geometries related to the 19th-century Tonnetz. This model leads to cogent analyses both of particular compositions and of historical trends across the long nineteenth century. Essential reading for music theorists, Audacious Euphony is also a valuable resource for music historians, performers and composers.

Author: Bozhidar Chapkanov
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1648898130
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
'Transformational analysis in practice' is a Must-Have for everyone working in the field or aspiring to develop their music-analytical and theoretical skills in transformational theory. This co-authored book puts together a plethora of analytical studies, diverse both in the repertoires covered and the methodologies employed. It is a much-needed anthology in this sub-field of music analysis, which has been developing and growing in recent years, reaching ever wider outlets in English-speaking countries and beyond, from dedicated conference panels to YouTube videos. The book is divided into four parts based on the repertoires under discussion. Part I encompasses four analytical studies on familiar composers from the European Romanticism of the nineteenth century. Part II analyzes the music of less familiar composers from Brazil and Turkey. Part III offers four contrasting ways to adapt the analytical capabilities of neo-Riemannian theory to the post-tonal music of the twentieth century. Catering to the interests of jazz performers and researchers, as well as those into popular music production, Part IV offers transformational analytical approaches to both notated and improvised jazz, emphasizing John Coltrane’s performance. Providing an invaluable synthesis of a wide range of analytical studies, this book will be an essential companion for many musicology students, as well as for performers and composers.

Author: Julian Horton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351549960
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 583

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Book Description
The collection of essays in this volume offer an overview of Schubertian reception, interpretation and analysis. Part I surveys the issue of Schubert‘s alterity concentrating on his history and biography. Following on from the overarching dualities of Schubert explored in the first section, Part II focuses on interpretative strategies and hermeneutic positions. Part III assesses the diversity of theoretical approaches concerning Schubert‘s handling of harmony and tonality whereas the last two parts address the reception of his instrumental music and song. This volume highlights the complexity and diversity of Schubertian scholarship as well as the overarching concerns raised by discrete fields of research in this area.