Carl Dahlhaus was without doubt the premier musicologist of the postwar generation, a giant whose recent death was mourned the world over. Translated here for the first time, this fundamental work on the development of tonality shows his complete mastery of the theory of harmony. In it Dahlhaus explains the modern concepts of harmony and tonality, reviewing in the process the important theories of Rameau, Sechter, Ftis, Riemann, and Schenker. He contrasts the familiar premises of chordal composition with the lesser known precepts of intervallic composition, the basis for polyphonic music in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Numerous quotations from theoretical treatises document how early music was driven forward not by progressions of chords but by simple progressions of intervals.Exactly when did composers transform intervallic composition into chordal composition? Modality into tonality? Dahlhaus provides extensive analyses of motets by Josquin, frottole by Cara and Tromboncino, and madrigals by Monteverdi to demonstrate how, and to what degree, such questions can be answered. In his bold speculations, in his magisterial summaries, in his command of eight centuries of music and writings on music, and in his deep understanding of European history and culture, Carl Dahlhaus sets a standard that will seldom be equalled.Originally published in 1990.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Tonality and Transformation is a groundbreaking study in the analysis of tonal music. Focusing on the listener's experience, author Steven Rings employs transformational music theory to illuminate diverse aspects of tonal hearing - from the infusion of sounding pitches with familiar tonal qualities to sensations of directedness and attraction. In the process, Rings introduces a host of new analytical techniques for the study of the tonal repertory, demonstrating their application in vivid interpretive set pieces on music from Bach to Mahler. The analyses place the book's novel techniques in dialogue with existing tonal methodologies, such as Schenkerian theory, avoiding partisan debate in favor of a methodologically careful, pluralistic approach. Rings also engages neo-Riemannian theory-a popular branch of transformational thought focused on chromatic harmony-reanimating its basic operations with tonal dynamism and bringing them into closer rapprochement with traditional tonal concepts. Written in a direct and engaging style, with lively prose and plain-English descriptions of all technical ideas, Tonality and Transformation balances theoretical substance with accessibility: it will appeal to both specialists and non-specialists. It is a particularly attractive volume for those new to transformational theory: in addition to its original theoretical content, the book offers an excellent introduction to transformational thought, including a chapter that outlines the theory's conceptual foundations and formal apparatus, as well as a glossary of common technical terms. A contribution to our understanding of tonal phenomenology and a landmark in the analytical application of transformational techniques, Tonality and Transformation is an indispensible work of music theory.

Almost two decades after the appearance of most of the classical texts on the theory, this fresh introduction offers a reassessment of the main fields, methods and results today. Viewed as a branch of pure mathematics, the theory of finite graphs is developed as a coherent subject in its own right, with its own unifying questions and methods. The book thus seeks to complement, not replace, the existing, more algorithmic treatments, and can be used at various levels. It contains all the standard material for a first undergraduate course, complete with detailed proofs and numerous illustrations. While, for graduates, the text offers proofs of several more advanced results, most of which appear in a book for the first time. These proofs are described with as much care and detail as their simpler counterparts, often with an informal discussion of their underlying ideas complementing their rigorous step-by-step account. Finally, to the professional mathematician, the book affords an overview of graph theory as it stands today: with its typical questions and methods, its classic results, and some of those developments that have made it such an exciting area in recent years.

Product Description: In A Dance of Polar Opposites: The Continuing Transformation of Our Musical Language, the renowned American composer George Rochberg distilled a lifetime of insights about Western music across some three hundred years. Rochberg describes how the asymmetrical tonal language of the late eighteenth century--the era of Haydn and Mozart--evolved through the gradual incursion of symmetry into a system based on the juxtaposition of tonal and atonal, asymmetrical and symmetrical--as seen in notable composers such as Webern, Prokofiev, and Rochberg himself...read more

Product Description: L'Occidente fu sempre attratto dalla Cina, ma la mitica "Terra di Mezzo" rimase un mondo sconosciuto, favoloso e irraggiungibile fino all'inizio del Seicento, quando il gesuita Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) penetrò in quell'immenso Paese, facendo conoscere alla Cina la civiltà europea...read more

Product Description: Musicology, having been transmitted as a compilation of disparate events and disciplines, has long necessitated a 'magic bullet', a 'unified field theory' so to speak, that can interpret the steady metamorphosis of Western art music from late medieval modality to twentieth-century atonality within a single theoretical construct...read more

Product Description: This Student Workbook accompanies The Complete Musician: An Integrated Approach to Tonal Theory, Analysis, and Listening, Second Edition. The second of two volumes, it provides 104 separate assignments that accompany chapters 24-37 of the textbook...read more

This instructor's manual accompanies "The Complete Musician: An Integrated Approach to Tonal Theory, Analysis, and Listening". It includes teaching strategies, suggestions for course organization, dictation exercises and solutions to the workbook exercises.

Product Description: Bringing together the analytical, aural, and tactile activities that comprise a tonal theory curriculum, The Complete Musician, Second Edition, relies on a diverse repertoire and innovative exercises to explicitly connect theory (writing and analysis), skills (singing, playing, and dictation), and music-making outside the theory class...read more

Product Description: This book re-theorizes Wagner's post-Opera and Drama tonal language in the linguistic terms in which the composer himself conceived and executed the "Ring of the Nibelung and Parsifal". Topics include Wagner's lexical use of key; the composition of semantics from tonal lexicality and orthodox tonal syntax; the cognitive structure of tonal language [TL] semantics, the linguistic coordination of words and keys; Wagner's concept of Tonal Households and the alignment of TL syntax with poetically specified protagonists, objects, and dramatic situations; key characteristics and TL Lexemes as public cultural linguistic properties; the virtual spatiality of TL syntax and semantics; TL spatiality and spatialized emotions; and tonal cartography...read more

Product Description: A wide range of music -- from Bach to Mozart and Brahms -- is marked by its use of some form of what is generally called "tonality": the tendency of music to focus melodically on some stable pitch or tonic and for its harmony to use functional triads...read more

Product Description: On organs, harmonicas, and music synthesizers, the old quarter-comma meantone tuning system yields chords which are more beautiful than those of the equal temperament favoured today. That is true not only for music of the 16th and 17th centuries, (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: The concept of key characteristics - the association of a mood or meaning with an individual key -has long been a controversial matter. Taking an historical approach, this book aims to further a better understanding of what the various keysmeant to, and how they were used by, composers in different eras...read more