The primary focus of this book is accent which Lester argues is one of the major aspects of rhythm. The central question is not whether a note or event (rest point in time) is accented but how it is accented. This change of focus allows for the first time a thorough investigation into the factors that give rise to accent the relative importance of these factors in creating accentuation the way accents are perceived the way meter arises and the limits of metric organization on higher levels of structure.
Like many texts on musical analysis, FORMS IN TONAL MUSIC equips students to critically examine a wide range of compositions and forms. However, Green's text takes students a step further by enabling them to approach musical works unencumbered by preconceived notions of what characteristics the text should or should not have. Providing specific help on every aspect of musical analysis, this text uses many of the compositions found in Charles Burkhart's ANTHOLOGY FOR MUSICAL ANALYSIS, but it allows students the freedom to explore works that they already own.
In this book, the authors develop a theoretical framework based on a Gestalt approach, viewing rhythmic experience in terms of pattern perception or groupings. Musical examples of increasing complexity are used to provide training in the analysis, performance, and writing of rhythm.
Materials and Techniques of Post-Tonal Music, Fifth Edition provides the most comprehensive introduction to post-tonal music and its analysis available. Covering music from the end of the nineteenth century through the beginning of the twenty-first, it offers students a clear guide to understanding the diverse and innovative compositional strategies that emerged in the post-tonal era, from Impressionism to computer music. This updated fifth edition features: chapters revised throughout to include new examples from recent music and insights from the latest scholarship; the introduction of several new concepts and topics, including parsimonius voice-leading, scalar transformations, the New Complexity, and set theory in less chromatic contexts; expanded discussions of spectralism and electronic music; timelines in each chapter, grounding the music discussed in its chronological context; a companion website that provides students with links to recordings of musical examples discussed in the text and provides instructors with an instructor’s manual that covers all of the exercises in each chapter. Offering accessible explanations of complex concepts, Materials and Techniques of Post-Tonal Music, Fifth Edition is an essential text for all students of post-tonal music theory.
A theoretical study of classical and romantic music from Haydn to Wagner. Explores the process by which a relatively small and regular rhythmic unit is transformed into a larger and less regular one. Expands on the work of contemporary Austrian theorist, Heinrich Schenker. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Organized Time is the first attempt to unite theories of harmony, rhythm and meter, and form under a common idea of structured time. Building off of recent advances in music theory in essential subfields-rhythmic theory, tonal structure, and the theory of musical form--author Jason Yust demonstrates that tonal music exhibits similar hierarchical organization in each of these dimensions. Yust develops a network model for temporal structure with an application of mathematical graph theory, which leads ultimately to musical applications of a multi-dimensional polytope called the associahedron. A wealth of analytical examples includes not only the familiar tonal canon-J.S. Bach, Mozart, Schumann--but also lesser known masters of the musical Enlightenment such as C.P.E. and J.C. Bach, Boccherini, and Johann Gottlieb Graun. Yust's approach has wide-ranging ramifications across music theory, enabling new approaches to musical closure, hypermeter, formal function, syncopation, and rhythmic dissonance, as well as historical observations about the development of sonata form and the innovations of Haydn and Beethoven. Making a forceful argument for the independence of musical modalities and for a multivalent approach to music analysis, Organized Time establishes the aesthetic importance of structural disjunction, the conflict of structure in different modalities, in numerous analytical contexts.
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.
