Product Description

With the publication of this remarkable tome, students of Elliott Carter's music and theorists with an interest in contemporary music, have a detailed guide to understanding the music of a great composer. In addition, Harmony Book is a valuable study of the post-tonal harmonic possibilities within the twelve-note chromatic scale and will be an invaluable resource to serious composers of every style interested in expanding their own harmonic practice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #286213 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 369 pages

Customer Reviews

Not your grandmother's harmony book
This is not a "harmony book" in the traditional sense - apart from a page of explication of one of Carter's guitar pieces, there is nothing here about how to write music. It is, however, an incredibly useful resource for composers working in a certain style.

As Carter began to be interested in the combinatorial relations of groups of pitches, he compiled this catalogue and cross-reference for his own use so that he would not have to figure it all out again with each piece. So if you are using two 6-note sets and you need to know which 4-note sets they have in common, or, if you have a 4-note set and want to know all the different 6-note sets that can be formed by adding each different interval, this is the book for you. In that sense there is nothing like it.

What we really need is a software version of this material - anybody listening?

A Giant's Tool
A Giant's Tool: Elliott Carter's Harmony Book
Edited by Nicholas Hopkins and John F. Link

Review by John de Clef Piñeiro

With the publication by Carl Fischer of Elliott Carter's Harmony Book, another remarkable document is now available for students and scholars of America's most continuously prolific composer. As one who has long been enthralled by the voluptuous complexity of Elliot Carter's aesthetic, it was with some trepidation that I undertook to examine an analytical tome that purports to be, in the words of one of its editors, "essentially a massive encyclopedia devoted to exploring harmonic relationships . . . . not truly a `harmony' book . . . . [that] was planned and developed to serve only as a tool for [Carter's] compositional work, rather than as a resource for public usage."

Assembled by Carter himself over a period of more than 20 years, the chordal material contained in the Harmony Book represents one creative mind's mapping of the harmonic musical universe for practical application, which, in turn, has been supplemented and expanded over time by the procedures developed in practical application. In a project lasting two-and-one-half years, editors Nicholas Hopkins and John F. Link have made numerous refinements and clarifications in nomenclature, taxonomy and organization to Carter's manuscript of the Harmony Book, which the editors note was never intended by Carter for publication.

It should also be noted that although this painstaking compilation and analysis of harmonic relationships can satisfy a Carter student's technical interest on one level, it certainly does not, and is clearly not intended to, readily sate the desire of a diverse music-listening public to comprehend the complicated creative process that has employed and continues to employ this comprehensive collection of harmonic materials as a tool. Indeed, after examining this truly scholarly achievement, one can conclude that it is possible to be fascinated by, and even love,Carter's music, without the benefit of this volume.

Nevertheless, it is without question that Messrs. Hopkins and Link have performed an invaluable editorial feat by providing reader-friendly levels of organization and illuminating essays and original interview material that will assure the enduring academic significance and landmark status of this work for years to come. As has already been the case with other scholars who have consulted and relied upon earlier manuscript versions of the Harmony Book for their own commentaries, both musicologists and musical theorists alike will find in this volume essential materia prima in formulating their own understanding and conclusions about the oeuvre of this towering American master of post-tonal chromaticism in musical composition.

Why bother?
If you are a listener of music, this book will not help you 'hear' the music of Carter. It will help you understand it. In effect, harmony in Carter's music, exploiting the full chromatic spectrum as it does, frees his poly-rhythmic structures and intricate counterpoint to function independently of harmony. In my opinion, the harmony in Carter's music is its weakest aspect. I don't really hear it in his music. What I found interesting in this book was seeing how Carter's use of harmony enables his long term poly-rhythmic structures to work, which in themselves are quite fascinating. But the lack of the sense of 'vertical' in his music makes the actual study of his harmony a moot point for this listener.