20th Century Music

Ton de Leeuw was a truly groundbreaking composer. As evidenced by his pioneering study of compositional methods that melded Eastern traditional music with Western musical theory, he had a profound understanding of the complex and often divisive history of twentieth-century music. Now his renowned chronicle Music of the Twentieth Century is offered here in a newly revised English-language edition. Music of the Twentieth Century goes beyond a historical survey with its lucid and impassioned discussion of the elements, structures, compositional principles, and terminologies of twentieth-century music. De Leeuw draws on his experience as a composer, teacher, and music scholar of non-European music traditions, including Indian, Indonesian, and Japanese music, to examine how musical innovations that developed during the twentieth century transformed musical theory, composition, and scholarly thought around the globe.

Traces the currents that have shaped the development of music in the twentieth century and discusses the contributions of such composers as Mahler, Debussy, Stockhausen, Vaughan Williams, Bartok, and Stravinsky

Publisher Description

Twentieth-Century Music Theory and Practice introduces a number of tools for analyzing a wide range of twentieth-century musical styles and genres. It includes discussions of harmony, scales, rhythm, contour, post-tonal music, set theory, the twelve-tone method, and modernism. Recent developments involving atonal voice leading, K-nets, nonlinearity, and neo-Reimannian transformations are also engaged. While many of the theoretical tools for analyzing twentieth century music have been devised to analyze atonal music, they may also provide insight into a much broader array of styles. This text capitalizes on this idea by using the theoretical devices associated with atonality to explore music inclusive of a large number of schools and contains examples by such stylistically diverse composers as Paul Hindemith, George Crumb, Ellen Taffe Zwilich, Steve Reich, Michael Torke, Philip Glass, Alexander Scriabin, Ernest Bloch, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Sergei Prokofiev, Arnold Schoenberg, Claude Debussy, György Ligeti, and Leonard Bernstein. This textbook also provides a number of analytical, compositional, and written exercises. The aural skills supplement and online aural skills trainer on the companion website allow students to use theoretical concepts as the foundation for analytical listening. Access additional resources and online material here: http: //www.twentiethcenturymusictheoryandpractice.net and https: //www.motivichearing.com/.

American Music in the Twentieth Century surveys the art music written in the United States during the last 100 years from the groundbreaking experiments of Charles Ives to the present day. Writing for the general reader, Kyle Gann describes the characteristic sounds of the diverse movements that have sprung up in this eventful period, while at the same time he sketches the changing social and cultural contexts for American concert music, and provides concise biographies of key figures.

Free website with music available, to access see page 4.

Bringing together scholars from the fields of musicology and international history, this book investigates the significance of music to foreign relations, and how it affected the interaction of nations since the late 19th century. For more than a century, both state and non-state actors have sought to employ sound and harmony to influence allies and enemies, resolve conflicts, and export their own culture around the world. This book asks how we can understand music as an instrument of power and influence, and how the cultural encounters fostered by music changes our ideas about international history.

A History of Twentieth-Century Music in a Theoretic-Analytical Context is an integrated account of the genres and concepts of twentieth-century art music, organized topically according to aesthetic, stylistic, technical, and geographic categories, and set within the larger political, social, economic, and cultural framework. While the organization is topical, it is historical within that framework. Musical issues interwoven with political, cultural, and social conditions have had a significant impact on the course of twentieth-century musical tendencies and styles. The goal of this book is to provide a theoretic-analytical basis that will appeal to those instructors who want to incorporate into student learning an analysis of the musical works that have reflected cultural influences on the major musical phenomena of the twentieth century. Focusing on the wide variety of theoretical issues spawned by twentieth-century music, A History of Twentieth-Century Music in a Theoretic-Analytical Context reflects the theoretical/analytical essence of musical structure and design.