Music: Music Theory

Founded by David Kraehenbuehl at Yale University in 1957, the Journal of Music Theory is the oldest music-theory journal now published in the United States. Originally a publication of the Yale School of Music, where it was officially housed for many years, JMT has always been edited by scholars associated with Yale's Department of Music, a relationship formalized in the last decade with JMT's move to the department. As the journal enters its second half century, the editors look forward to maintaining a tradition of publishing the best peer-reviewed research in the discipline.

The Journal of Music Theory fosters conceptual and technical innovations in abstract, systematic musical thought and cultivates the historical study of musical concepts and compositional techniques. The journal publishes research with important and broad applications in the analysis of music and the history of music theory as well as theoretical or metatheoretical work that engages and stimulates ongoing discourse in the field. While remaining true to its original formalist outlook, the journal also addresses the influences of philosophy, mathematics, computer science, cognitive sciences, and anthropology on music theory.

Music Analysis is the international forum for the presentation of new writing focused on musical works and repertoires. Through articles of this kind and through its lively Critical Forum, it also aims to take forward debates concerning the relationship of technical commentary on music with music theory, critical theory, music history and the cognitive sciences.

Music Analysis is eclectic in its coverage of music from medieval to post-modern times, and has regular articles on non-western music. Its lively tone and focus on specific works makes it of interest to the general reader as well as the specialist.

Music Theory Online, a Journal of Criticism, is the refereed, electronic journal of the Society for Music Theory. Published several times each year, each volume of MTO includes features such as articles, reviews, commentaries, and analytical essays. In addition, MTO publishes a list of job opportunities and abstracts of recently completed dissertations.

A leading journal in the field and an official publication of the Society for Music Theory, Music Theory Spectrum features articles on a wide range of topics in music theory and analysis, including aesthetics, critical theory and hermeneutics, history of theory, post-tonal theory, linear analysis, rhythm, music cognition, and the analysis of popular musics. The journal welcomes interdisciplinary articles revealing intersections with topics in other fields such as ethnomusicology, mathematics, musicology, philosophy, psychology, and performance.

How is the Beatles' "Help!" similar to Stravinsky's "Dance of the Adolescents?" How does Radiohead's "Just" relate to the improvisations of Bill Evans? And how do Chopin's works exploit the non-Euclidean geometry of musical chords? In this groundbreaking work, author Dmitri Tymoczko describes a new framework for thinking about music that emphasizes the commonalities among styles from medieval polyphony to contemporary rock. Tymoczko identifies five basic musical features that jointly contribute to the sense of tonality, and shows how these features recur throughout the history of Western music. In the process he sheds new light on an age-old question: what makes music sound good? A Geometry of Musicprovides an accessible introduction to Tymoczko's revolutionary geometrical approach to music theory. The book shows how to construct simple diagrams representing relationships among familiar chords and scales, giving readers the tools to translate between the musical and visual realms and revealing surprising degrees of structure in otherwise hard-to-understand pieces. Tymoczko uses this theoretical foundation to retell the history of Western music from the eleventh century to the present day. Arguing that traditional histories focus too narrowly on the "common practice" period from 1680-1850, he proposes instead that Western music comprises an extended common practice stretching from the late middle ages to the present. He discusses a host of familiar pieces by a wide range of composers, from Bach to the Beatles, Mozart to Miles Davis, and many in between. A Geometry of Musicis accessible to a range of readers, from undergraduate music majors to scientists and mathematicians with an interest in music. Defining its terms along the way, it presupposes no special mathematical background and only a basic familiarity with Western music theory. The book also contains exercises designed to reinforce and extend readers' understanding, along with a series of appendices that explore the technical details of this exciting new theory

This book has been written for students. It offers insights about various works of music, but more important, a repertory of ways of considering music. This repertory and ideas includes and explores the following:

* European music, from Gregorian chant and the music of Guillaume de Mauchet to Messiaen and Boulez

* The works of American composers such as Ives, Carter, Cage, and Babbit

* The musical thought of China, India, and the Zuni American Indians, made intrinsic to the analysis of musical tone color, language, and rhythm..as well as reference to the musical cultures of Indonesia, Japan and Tibet

The examination of music in diverse parameters...works regarded from different angles in different chapters of the book

* The foundation of concepts of music theory in the science of sound and its perception, as well as in broader theories of communication and information

The discussion, where necessary, of the relationship of musical ideas and structures to performance, as well as to ideas and structures in other realms of nature and human culture.

The Norton Manual of Music Notation is designed to serve as a practical guide to music handwriting and music-writing procedures. It provides the music student with an essential tool for learning to put notes down on paper with clarity and speed. At the same time, it serves as an indispensable reference to a wide variety of notational conventions.Part I deals with ELEMENTS OF NOTATION, arranged in the order they are found in printed music, i.e., clefs, followed by key signatures, time signatures, etc. For each element, a model, a model is given and, where appropriate, simple drills provided.In part II, the ELEMENTS ARE COMBINED and the student is introduced to considerations of spacing, changes of meter, clef, and key as well as the notation of syncopation and irregular divisions of the beat. Part III delineates SCORING PRACTICES ranging from notating two lines of music on one staff to discussions of transposing instruments, orchestral score layouts, and the extraction of instrumental parts. The author provides an appendix designed for those who wish to achieve more professional results; copying tools, materials, and techniques, as well as popular-music notation are described in detail. George Heussenstamm is a frequently-performed composer who has prepared his own scores for years. The copying skills he developed enabled him to give very successful courses in music notation at several California universities. The present book is the practical result of his experience as a teacher and professional copyist.

Summary
In Bach’s Germany musical counterpoint was an art involving much more than the sophisticated use of advanced compositional techniques. A range of theological, cultural, social, and political meanings attached themselves to the use of complex procedures such as canon and double counterpoint. This book explores the significance of Bach’s counterpoint in a range of interrelated contexts: its use as a means of reflecting on death; its parallels to alchemy; its vexed status in the galant music culture of the first half of the eighteenth century; its value as a representation of political power; and its central importance in the creation of Bach’s image in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Touching on a wide array of contemporary literary, philosophical, critical, and musical texts, the book includes new readings of many of Bach’s late works in order to re-evaluate the status and meaning of counterpoint in Bach’s work and legacy.

Since its appearance in 1725, it has been used by and has directly influenced the work of many of the greatest composers. J. S. Bach held it in high esteem, Leopold Mozart trained his famous son from its pages, Haydn worked out every lesson with meticulous care, and Beethoven condensed it into an abstract for ready reference.

This book is a hands-on investigation of the stages musicians go through as they learn to hear, read, and perform music. It draws on the latest research in music perception and cognition, music theory, and pedagogy, along with centuries of insight from music theorists, composers, and performers.

The first part explores the development of music listening skills, including such broader activities as dictation and transcription, and specific abilities such as meter perception, short-term musical memory, and tonic inference. The second part then examines the skills involved in reading and performing music. It looks at such physical skills as vocal production and eye movements and at such complex integrated tasks as sight-singing transpositions and modulations. Throughout the book the author presents these skills in their musical contexts and emphasizes their roles in the general development of musicality.

Aural Skills Acquisition builds important bridges between music theory, cognitive psychology, and pedagogy. It subjects ideas from music theory to the rigors of psychological testing and combines findings from the psychology of learning with ideas and methods of contemporary music theory. It will prove an invaluable guide for music teachers, music theorists, and psychologists interested in music perception and cognition.

Michael Friedmann's Ear Training for Twentieth-Century Music is a skills text; using non-tonal materials, students are asked to improvise at the keyboard, sing at sight, take dictation, memorize melodies by rote, and identify selected set classes by eye and ear.

Widely recognized as the definitive work in its field ever since its original publication in 1962, Serial Composition and Atonality remains an unsurpassed introduction to the technical features of what is probably the most revolutionary body of work since the beginnings of polyphony. In the analysis of specific compositions there is first and last of all a concern with the musical surface--an attempt to trace connections and distinctions there before offering any deeper-level constructions, and to offer none where their effects are not obvious on more immediate levels of musical experience. In this sixth edition of the book, George Perle employs the new and more consistent terminology for the identification of transpositional levels of twelve-tone sets that he first proposed in Twelve-Tone Tonality (1977).