A Guide To Musical Analysis

This extremely practical introduction to musical analysis explores the factors that give unity and coherence to musical masterpieces. Having first identified and explained the most important analytical methods, Nicholas Cook examines given compositions from the last two hundred years to show how different analytical procedures suit different types of music.

Now available in paperback! Evolved from the author's widely used book, The Analysis of Music (Prentice-Hall, 1975; 2nd. ed. Scarecrow Press, 1984), Comprehensive Music Analysis is a guide for acquiring the tools of musical analysis, skills which are essential to every serious musician and musical scholar. The new volume presents material on Heinrich Schenker and reductive linear analysis and additional material on set theoretical analysis. White's theoretical writing is characterized by logic of methodology, clarity of organization, and lucidity of prose. It should be eagerly received by theorists seeking a comprehensive view of current methodology. White's approach to current theoretical dogma is not uncritical. As Gerald Warfield (General Editor of the recent English translation of Schenker's Der Freie Satz) says in his Preface to White's new book,"...we begin to glimpse a powerful tool which does not exist in any single school of theory or musicology, but which draws upon any and all nethodologies as required by the analyst. The opinions in this book are strong. Indeed, there is material which may disturb the dogmatic, yet the author's intentions are clear. White invites you to take your cue for analysis from the compositions themselves rather than from dogma." Replete with musical examples, charts, and diagrams, the book is more than a treatise on analysis, it is a valuable tool for the advanced student of music as well as the musical scholar.

The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis is a complete package of theory and aural skills resources that covers every topic commonly taught in the undergraduate sequence. The package can be mixed and matched for every classroom, and with Norton’s new Know It? Show It! online pedagogy, students can watch video tutorials as they read the text, access formative online quizzes, and tackle workbook assignments in print or online. In its third edition, The Musician’s Guide retains the same student-friendly prose and emphasis on real music that has made it popular with professors and students alike.

The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).

Analysis of 18th- and 19th-Century Musical Works in the Classical Tradition is a textbook for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in music analysis. It outlines a process of analyzing works in the Classical tradition by uncovering the construction of a piece of music—the formal, harmonic, rhythmic, and voice-leading organizations—as well as its unique features. It develops an in-depth approach that is applied to works by composers including Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms. The book begins with foundational chapters in music theory, starting with basic diatonic harmony and progressing rapidly to more advanced topics, such as phrase design, phrase expansion, and chromatic harmony. The second part contains analyses of complete musical works and movements. The text features over 150 musical examples, including numerous complete annotated scores. Suggested assignments at the end of each chapter guide students in their own musical analysis.

Music is said to be the most autonomous and least representative of all the arts. However, it reflects in many ways the realities around it and influences its social and cultural environments. Music is as much biology, gender, gesture - something intertextual, even transcendental. Musical signs can be studied throughout their history as well as musical semiotics with its own background. Composers from Chopin to Sibelius and authors from Nietzsche to Greimas and Barthes illustrate the avenues of this new discipline within semiotics and musicology.

Revisiting Music Theory: A Guide to the Practice contains the basics of music theory with the vocabulary used in harmonic and formal analysis. The book assumes few music reading skills, and progresses to include the basic materials of music from J. S. Bach to the twentieth century. Based on Blatter’s own three decades of teaching music theory, this book is aimed at a one or two year introductory course in music theory, can serve for individual study, or as a review for graduate students returning to school. Drawing examples from well-known classical works, as well as folk and popular music, the book shows how theory is applied to practice. The book is divided into five parts. The first part introduces music notation, reviewing the basics of pitch, time, and dynamics as represented in written music. Part 2 introduces the concept of melody, covering modes, scales, scale degrees, and melodic form. Part 3 introduces harmony, dealing with harmonic progression, rhythm, and chord types. Part 4 addresses part writing and harmonic analysis. Finally, Part 5 addresses musical form, and how form is used to structure a composition. Revisiting Music Theory will be a valuable textbook for students, professors, and professionals.

This is a step by step guide for music theory and analysis for the beginners. From basics of musical notation to the principles of tonality, all of the difficult subjects of music theory are explained in detail, with demonstrations. The student is prepared for analysis studies step by step. The exercises provided at the end of each chapter (and sometimes extra exercises in the middle of a chapter) are designed for the student to develop what she/he learned by reading and prepare herself/himself for the next challenge.Music theory is generally a scary subject for musicians. This is not true for a person who is capable of developing connections between different aspects of music theory and is able to practice them in a fluid way. That is because the practice holds the analytical secrets inside and the person who opens it is awarded. For most of the students, practicing scales or practicing chords of a scale is something just very very low profile work. The fingers memorize which key on the piano to be pressed in which order when the piano is chosen as the instrument for assistive training, but the brain does not want to develop connections between different aspects of the same theoretical practice such as playing a major scale first, let's say G major, and then playing a different one, let's say A-flat major. The result is a temporary learning of scale practicing, but a possible failure in music theory, since the rules which are just there to see are not exercised at the same time. We observed that a long-term learning is possible by practicing and examining what is practiced to make connections. We searched a way to show these connections in this book. Analysis is another problem in academic education of music. Students from different majors are excepted to make a standard level analysis of musical works from literature. The most difficult thing for those whose major is not composition or theory, who have a strong focus on the matter, is to recognize the chords in a given texture, to eliminate the unnecessary tones, and by this way, to identify the way chord progressions are held in the piece to explain the functionality of the elements used in music. That is the main goal of musical analysis and any level of failure, which also includes composition and theory majors sometimes, becomes a huge headache for both student and the teacher. This book suggests a path to quickly train the lower level students in a class in basics and then to train the medium level and upper level students (along with the trained lower levels) in a different manner than the conventional music theory training does so that even the higher levels will re-consider their knowledge on the facts which will allow them go in the details deeper, and even inspire the way think music and musical analysis. Analysis is expected to be a quiet easy skill that student uses in a fluent way.The book provides exercises at the end of every chapter. The study of these exercises should be sufficient for a basic level learning. The exercises usually cover more than one aspect of a goal in separate questions.Among the other powerful features of this book, we can mention the chapters on musical design. The music student usually learns only one dimension of identification of chords in music which lacks of concerning the textural differences. We find it essential to mention main textural differences and demonstrate how to approach them in order to make a good analysis at the beginner level. We think the basic music theory training should include such an unpronounced aspect of analysis. We also explain the effect of instrumental choice in the work and what to expect to see as well as how to approach different setups for analysis by demonstrations, including orchestral writing.