Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #145769 in Books
• Published on: 1979-04-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Review
"Unlike other texts, your book makes clear in few words what creating music involves--step-by-step with clear illustrations. The numbered steps with simple illustrations cannot be found in any other text."

"Your text can be used for all levels of theory and composition, including Twentieth Century Techniques, and thus represents a significant monetary savings for the student."

Customer Reviews

What you must know before you buy this!
If you are using this book in a class then your teacher will guide you through it, BUT--if you are using this book to review music theory you must know a few things. 1) ALL the exercises in this book come out of the Burkhart Anthology, so you must purchase that as well. 2)There are no answers supplied for ANYof the exercises. 3) This book covers the analytical form of music (types of phrases, binary and ternary forms), it is assumed you are skilled in complex chord and harmonic analysis already. Overall, the book is fairly clear and well-organized and uses plenty of musical examples.

used this text in undergrad GREAT!
I used this text in my undergradaute study of music and find it to be useful even today. Greens' explanations along with exerpts and examples makes form in music an interesting facet. It is for those who are ready to dive into form and analysis head first. I would not recommend it to a beginner with little or no hard-core theory knowledge.

A fine text to help students develop skills in analysis of tonal music
This is not a book on form in the old sense of the term. That is, it is not a collection of terms for students to use as decals to stick on pieces as they learn them. Green aims to provide the student with skills that aid him or her to understand what the piece is about. What is that the piece says about itself? This is important because every piece, especially the masterworks, takes its own approach to form and for every rule provided, you can find many exceptions. The problem with the label approach is that music, thankfully, is not so standardized that you can say for a certainty how a given piece of a certain type is going to behave.

Yes, Green does use the standard terms, but only as a means of generalization. He is very good at pointing out the range of behaviors one might expect within a given form. He also provides historical notes that discuss how certain composers or historical periods used certain materials in their compositions.

Again, the goal here is to help students to develop a set of tools and intuitions so he or she can look at any (tonal) piece of music and be able to analyze what is going on within the piece. The labels only help the student if they allow the student to look more deeply and directly at the music. However, if the analysis stops with the application of a label the student will actually have been harmed. Remember, most labels are developed after a sufficient body of music has been written to codify a form. So, the living composers often wrote the music without the benefit of the terms we often use to describe their work.

While the book has many fine musical examples and recommended exercises, the teacher may wish to supplement them with examples of her own in order to provide supplementary examples of the principles discussed in the text. I believe the student gets a better idea of how music works through multiple and varied examples from the literature. The more well-chosen examples the student hears the better.