Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #246635 in Books
• Published on: 1962-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 667 pages

Customer Reviews

necessary book
i believe we are biological machines. We process stimuli from our environment in parallel processing neural nets called brains. this is done so that we have appropriate motor output for our environment.

concepts are essentially processing categories of our brains. the concepts we have reflect certain efficient ways of processing environmental stimuli, ways that WORK. the most successful concepts are the ones that work.

when it comes to music composition, the concepts in this book WORK.

though some criticize and say a host of difficulties and nuances are subsumed under some pretty broad strokes, that ultimately doesn't matter. because suspended maj 9th don't matter. music that moves matters. this book focuses on the motion in music.

the basic idea is that harmony indicates certain stopping points, like the hard bones of an organism. but the motion between these points, the flesh as it were, is counterpoint.

bones and flesh, structure and motion, crystallization and fluidity, harmony and counterpoint.

that's the idea. will change the way you hear music. very, very deep. very, very good.

these ideas are very close to an explication of how composers think.

A must have for serious musicians
Shenkerians principles in digestable form. A great approach to analysis(one that seems to be dominating todays music analysis). I was not really sold on Shenkerian analysis until I read this book. I still feel that sometimes the principles are "over-exhausted", but Shenkerian analysis is certainly better, and more meaningful than strict chordal grammar analysis. The only problem is that the examples are not placed within the text; so you constantly have to flip back and forth to look at the example that the text is referring too.

Quintessential Schenkerian Theory
For anyone interested in Tonal Theory this work is absolutely necessary. Salzer's work is a continuation & extrapolation on Heinrich Schenker's work on music theory. The only drawback is it is not fully consistent when dealing with post-Romanticism (but then Schneker's theory is not always applicable in later musical contexts, & in some cases not completely internally-consistent). However, for the foundations of music from Bach to Beethoven (& the Romantic composers afterward as well as any modern composition even remotely tonal) it is a masterwork.