Product Description

For undergraduate/graduate-level courses in Twentieth-Century Techniques, and Post-Tonal Theory and Analysis taken by music majors. A primer--rather than a survey--this text offers exceptionally clear, simple explanations of basic theoretical concepts for the post-tonal music of the twentieth century. Emphasizing hands-on contact with the music--through playing, singing, listening, and analyzing--it provides six chapters on theory, each illustrated with musical examples and fully worked-out analyses, all drawn largely from the "classical" pre-war repertoire by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Berg, and Webern.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #392256 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From the Publisher
A discussion of atonal, twelve-tone, and centric music.

From the Back Cover

Designed for a course in twenty-first-century techniques and analysis, this text offers a clear, comprehensive introduction to the basic concepts of post-tonal theory. Each concept is clearly explained and richly illustrated with examples from the musical literature. The text contains model analyses as well as carefully graduated exercises that involve playing, singing, composing, and analyzing.

The third edition stays abreast of recent theoretical developments by including discussions of transformational networks and graphs, contour theory, atonal voice leading, triadic post-tonality (including neotonality), inversional symmetry, and interval cycles. As a result, this text is not only a primer of basic concepts but also an introduction to the current state of post-tonal theory, with its rich array of theoretical concepts and analytical tools.

The third edition also features a wide range of composers and musical styles. Although the "classical" prewar repertoire of music by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Webern, and Berg still comprises the musical core, theoretical concepts are now also illustrated with music by Adams, Babbitt, Berio, Boulez, Britten, Cage, Carter, Cowell, Crawford, Crumb, Debussy, Feldman, Glass, Gubaidulina, Ives, Ligeti, Messiaen, Musgrave, Reich, Ruggles, Sessions, Shostakovich, Stockhausen, Varese, Wolpe, Wuorinen, and Zwillich.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Compared to tonal theory, now in its fourth century of development, post-tonal theory is in its infancy. But in the past three decades, it has shown itself to be an infant of prodigious growth and surprising power. A broad consensus has emerged among music theorists regarding the basic musical elements of post-tonal music—pitch, interval, motive, harmony, collection—and this book reports that consensus to a general audience of musicians and students of music. Like books on scales, triads, and simple harmonic progressions in tonal music, this book introduces basic theoretical concepts for the post-tonal music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Beyond basic concepts, the third edition of this book also contains information on many of the most recent developments in post-tonal theory, including expanded or new coverage of the following topics:

• Transformational networks and graphs
• Contour theory
• Composing-out
• Atonal voice leading
• Atonal pitch space
• Triadic post-tonality (including voice-leading parsimony)
• Inversional symmetry and inversional axes
• Interval cycles
• Diatonic, whole-tone, octatonic, and hexatonic collections

As a result, this book is not only a primer of basic concepts but also an introduction to the current state of post-tonal theory, with its rich array of theoretical concepts and analytical tools.

Although this book can make no pretense to comprehensiveness either, either chronologically or theoretically—there is just too much great music and fascinating theory out there—this third edition explores a much wider range of composers and musical styles than its predecessors. Although the "classical" prewar repertoire of music by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bart6k, Webern, and Berg still comprises the musical core, theoretical concepts are now also illustrated with music by Adams, Babbitt, Berio, Boulez, Britten, Cage, Carter, Cowell, Crawford, Crumb, Debussy, Feldman, Glass, Gubaidulina, Ives, Ligeti, Messiaen, Musgrave, Reich, Ruggles, Sessions, Shostakovich, Stockhausen, Varese, Wolpe, Wuorinen, and Zwilich.

As with the previous editions of this book, I received invaluable advice from many friends and colleagues based on their teaching experience. I am grateful to Wayne Alpern, Jonathan Bernard, Claire Boge, Ricardo Bordini, Scott Brickman, Michael Buckler, Uri Burstein, James Carr, Patrick Fairfield, Michael Friedmann, Edward Gollin, Dave Headlam, Gary Karpinski, Rosemary Killam, Bruce Quaglia, Daniel Mathers, Carolyn Mullin, Catherine Nolan, Jay Rahn, Nancy Rogers, Steven Rosenhaus, Art Samplaski, Paul Sheehan, Stephen Slottow, David Smyth, Harvey Stokes, Dmitri Tymoczko, and Joyce Yip. My thanks go also to Chris Johnson and Laura Lawrie at Prentice Hall for their expert editorial work at every stage. Michael Berry provided additional editorial assistance. Closer to home, in matters both tangible and intangible, Sally Goldfarb has offered continuing guidance and support beyond my ability to describe or repay. Adam and Michael helped, too.

Joseph N. Straus
Graduate Center
City University of New York

Customer Reviews

from the trenches
This is simply the best introduction to musical set theory in print, and one of the most pedagogically sound theory texts available for any topic. Straus writes exceedingly well, and his organization and pacing are excellent. This is not "watered-down Allen Forte," it is a humane spin on rather abstract musical concepts in language musicians can understand. Forte's and Perle's works are invaluable to the discipline, but their books are almost unreadable.

Straus's revised edition expands the repertoire only minimally (more could be done here), but the new exercises (particularly the composition sections) are an excellent addition. An average undergraduate class can make it through the text in a single semester with plenty of time left -- about four or five weeks -- to cover additional repertoire and topics.

Dr. O

Uninformed reviewers
Reviewers of such a book as Intro. to Post-Tonal Theory should know a bit about set-class theory before trying to discredit Straus's work. "A Reader"'s review (titled "Inaccurate") is itself blatantly wrong. Set [0,3,4,5,8,10,11], this reviewer proposes, does not yield prime form if one applies Straus's methods to it. What the reviewer doesn't seem to realize is that he has failed to apply the first rule of finding normal order, of finding the MINIMUM SPAN of a set, which Straus does tell readers to do. The aforementioned septachord must be put in normal order first with minimum span (that is, 0,1,2,7,8,9) before applying Straus's right-to-left rule. A review must be critical but such a mistaken reading must either be ignorance or willful malevolence, neither of which is appropriate here. "from the real world of music" is arguably a worse review, throwing up a veil of unnecessary "big words," to use the vernacular, to hide a critique based upon nothing. What abuses of terminology, what logical fallacies, and what errors does this reviewer refer to? And if Straus's book is "cliff notes", then what is the real version? I don't discredit these reviews from a difference of opinion on my part but rather I am disgusted by the ignorance present in these reviews.

Having said all that, is is no surpise that I firmly believe that Straus's text belongs at the top of a short list of anyone who wishes to pursue pitch class set theory. It is indeed designed as a text and as such is often times clearer and more practical than the Allen Forte original. He engages precisely the repertoire Forte set out to engage (the second Viennese school mainly) and supports his clear explanations with convincing musical examples and step-by-step analyses. The positive reviews here obviously outweight the astoundingly ignorant negative ones. As well, this book has the blessing of the majority of the music theory community behind it, and rightly so. This is a valuable book that deserves a place on any theorist's (or aspiring theorists's) shelves.

Very useful
I like this book a lot. It is a practical, balanced, to-the-point guide. I have been composing for a long time (14+ years) but I've only been studying it full time for 3 years now, and I found that the book really helped to clarify a lot of my thinking about pitch collections, 20th century harmonies, and 20th century compositional techniques.

RE: The Prime Form debate. There are two methods for computing the prime form, the "Forte" and "Rahn" method. This book uses the "Rahn" method and is perfectly consistent throughout. While this is a minor issue, because it only affect 5 pitch class sets (of 200), perhaps it would be good to add a paragraph about the differences in a future revision to help beginniners avoid confusion.