Download or read book The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory written by Thomas Christensen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-20 with total page 1033 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory is the first comprehensive history of Western music theory to be published in the English language. A collaborative project by leading music theorists and historians, the volume traces the rich panorama of music-theoretical thought from the Ancient Greeks to the present day. Recognizing the variety and complexity of music theory as an historical subject, the volume has been organized within a flexible framework. Some chapters are defined chronologically within a restricted historical domain, whilst others are defined conceptually and span longer historical periods. Together the thirty-one chapters present a synthetic overview of the fascinating and complex subject that is historical music theory. Richly enhanced with illustrations, graphics, examples and cross-citations as well as being thoroughly indexed and supplemented by comprehensive bibliographies of the most important primary and secondary literature, this book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars alike.
Download or read book Music Theory For Dummies written by Michael Pilhofer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-02-25 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people grimace at the sound of music theory. It can conjure up bad memories of grade school music classes, rattle the brains of college students, and make self-taught musicians feel self-defeated. Music Theory may seem tedious and unnecessary, especially since not many people can read music. Luckily, Music Theory for Dummies shows you the fun and easy way to understanding the concepts needed to compose, deconstruct, and comprehend music. This helpful guide will give you a great grasp of: Note value and counting notes Treble and bass clefs Time signatures and measures Naturalizing the rhythm Tempo and dynamic Tone, color, and harmonics Half steps and whole steps Harmonic and melodic intervals Key signatures and circles of fifths Scales, chords, and their progressions Elements of form Music theory’s fascinating history This friendly guide not only explores these concepts, it provides examples of music to compliment them so you can hear how they sound firsthand. With a bonus CD that demonstrates these ideas with musical excerpts on guitar and piano, this hands-on resource will prove to you that music theory is as enjoyable as it is useful. Don’t get discouraged by the seemingly complicated written structure. With Music Theory for Dummies, understanding music has never been easier! Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.
Download or read book The Birth of Music Theory written by Richard Dumbrill and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a full revision of the essential cuneiform texts of Ancient Near-Eastern Musicology. It covers a period from around 2600 to 500 BC in Sumerian, Akkadian and Hurrian languages. It is the most recent re-evaluation of these texts which are explored in a new light and replace previous obsolete analyses.
Download or read book Music in the Mirror written by Andreas Giger and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Music in the Mirror, thirteen distinguished scholars explore the concept of music, music theory, and music literature as mirror images of one another?whether real or distorted. Encompassing the history of music and music theory and literature from the Middle Ages to the present, these essays, in their reconsideration of the relationships among music, theory, and literature, offer new approaches and articulate compelling visions for future research.
Download or read book History of Music Theory Books I and II written by Hugo Riemann and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Apollo s Lyre written by Thomas J. Mathiesen and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Greek music and music theory has fascinated scholars for centuries not only because of its intrinsic interest as a part of ancient Greek culture but also because the Greeks? grand concept of music has continued to stimulate musical imaginations to the present day. Unlike earlier treatments of the subject, Apollo?s Lyre is aimedøprincipally at the reader interested in the musical typologies, the musical instruments, and especially the historical development of music theory and its transmission through the Middle Ages. The basic method and scope of the study are set out in a preliminary chapter, followed by two chapters concentrating on the role of music in Greek society, musical typology, organology, and performance practice. The next chapters are devoted to the music theory itself, as it developed in three stages: in the treatises of Aristoxenus and the Sectio canonis; during the period of revival in the second century C.E.; and in late antiquity. Each theorist and treatise is considered separately but always within the context of the emerging traditions. The theory provides a remarkably complete and coherent system for explaining and analyzing musical phenomena, and a great deal of its conceptual framework, as well as much of its terminology, was borrowed and adapted by medieval Latin, Byzantine, and Arabic music theorists, a legacy reviewed in the final chapter. Transcriptions and analyses of some of the more complete pieces of Greek music preserved on papyrus or stone, or in manuscript, are integrated with a consideration of the musicopoetic types themselves. The book concludes with a comprehensive bibliography for the field, updating and expanding the author?s earlier Bibliography of Sources for the Study of Ancient Greek Music.
Download or read book Music Theory History Workbook written by Chuck Elledge and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Manual of Harmonics of Nicomachus the Pythagorean written by Nicomachus (of Gerasa.) and published by Red Wheel/Weiser. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In ancient Greek thought, the musical scale discovered by the philosopher Pythagoras was seen as a utopian model of the harmonic order behind the structure of the cosmos and human existence. Through proportion and harmony, the musical scale bridges the gap between two extremes. It encapsulates the most fundamental pattern of harmonic symmetry and demonstrates how the phenomena of nature are inseparably related to one another through the principle of reciprocity. Because of these relationships embodied in its structure, the musical scale was seen as an ideal metaphor of human society by Plato and other Pythagorean thinkers, for it is based on the cosmic principles of harmony, reciprocity, and proportion, whereby each part of the whole receives its just and proper share. This book is the first ever complete translation of The Manual of Harmonics by the Pythagorean philosopher Nicomachus of Gerasa (second century A.D.) published with a comprehensive, chapter-by-chapter commentary. It is a concise and well-organized introduction to the study of harmonics, the universal principles of relation embodied in the musical scale. Also included is a remarkable chapter-by-chapter commentary by the translator, Flora Levin, which makes this work easily accessible to the reader today. Dr. Levin explains the principles of Pythagorean harmony, provides extensive background information, and helps to situate Nicomachus' thought in the history of ideas. This important work constitutes a valuable resource for all students of ancient philosophy, Western cosmology, and the history of music.
Download or read book The Work of Music Theory written by Thomas Christensen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-23 with total page 647 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together an anthology of articles by Thomas Christensen, one of the leading historians of music theory active today. Published over the span of the past 25 years, the selected articles provide a historical conspectus about a range of vital topics in the history of music theory, focusing in particular upon writings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Christensen examines a variety of theorists and their arguments within the intellectual and musical contexts of their time, in the process highlighting the diverse and idiosyncratic nature of the discipline of music theory itself. In the first section of the book Christensen offers general reflections on the meaning and interpretation of historical music theories, with especial attention paid to their value for music theorists today. The second section of the book contains a number of articles that consider the catalytic role of the thorough bass in the development of harmonic theory during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the final two sections of the anthology, focus turns to the writings of several individual music theorists, including Marin Mersenne, Seth Calvisius, Johann Mattheson, Johann Nicolaus Bach, Denis Diderot and Johann Nichelmann. The volume includes essays from hard-to-find publications as well as newly-translated material and the articles are prefaced by a new, wide-ranging autobiographical essay by the author that offers a broad re-assessment of his historical project. This book is essential reading for music theorists and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century musicologists.
Download or read book Inside Arabic Music written by Johnny Farraj and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-18 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes hundreds of listeners cheer ecstatically at the same instant during a live concert by Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum? What is the unspoken language behind a taqsim (traditional instrumental improvisation) that performers and listeners implicitly know? How can Arabic music be so rich and diverse without resorting to harmony? Why is it so challenging to transcribe Arabic music from a recording? Inside Arabic Music answers these and many other questions from the perspective of two "insiders" to the practice of Arabic music, by documenting a performance culture and a know-how that is largely passed on orally. Arabic music has spread across the globe, influencing music from Greece all the way to India in the mid-20th century through radio and musical cinema, and global popular culture through Raqs Sharqi, known as "Bellydance" in the West. Yet despite its popularity and influence, Arabic music, and the maqam scale system at its heart, remain widely misunderstood. Inside Arabic Music de-mystifies maqam with an approach that draws theory directly from practice, and presents theoretical insights that will be useful to practitioners, from the beginner to the expert - as well as those interested in the related Persian, Central Asian, and Turkish makam traditions. Inside Arabic Music's discussion of maqam and improvisation widens general understanding of music as well, by bringing in ideas from Saussurean linguistics, network theory, and Lakoff and Johnson's theory of cognition as metaphor, with an approach parallel to Gjerdingen's analysis of Galant-period music - offering a lens into the deeper relationships among music, culture, and human community.
Download or read book The The Theoretical Practical Elements of Music Parts III and IV written by Francesco Galeazzi and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012-06-21 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A virtuoso violinist, conductor, composer, and a professor of mathematics and botany, Francesco Galeazzi (1758–1819) firmly believed that musical education should be clear, demonstrable, and practical. In 1791 and 1796, he published the two volumes of his Elementi teorico-practici di musica, a treatise that demonstrated both his thorough grounding in the work of earlier theorists and his own approach to musical study. The first volume gave precise instructions on the violin and how to play it; the second demonstrated his command of other instruments and genres and provided comprehensive introductions to music theory, music history, and music aesthetics. The treatise also addresses the nature of compositional process and eighteenth-century concerns about natural and acquired talent and creativity. This volume offers an unprecedented English translation of the second volume of Elementi teorico-practici di musica, with annotations and commentary. The translation is introduced with a study of Galeazzi's life and milieu, the genesis and sources for the Elementi, and its reception through the present day.
Download or read book Decentering Musical Modernity written by Tobias Janz and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection investigates the concept of modernity in music and its multiple interpretations in Europe and East Asia. Through contributions by both European and East Asian musicologists it discusses how a decentered understanding of musical modernity could be matched on multiple historiographical perspectives while being attentive to the specificities of local music and their narratives in East Asia and Europe. The essays connect local, global and transnational history with sociological theories of modernity and modernization, making the volume an important contribution to overcoming the Eurocentric dichotomy between western music and world music within the field of historical musicology.
Download or read book Hugo Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought written by Alexander Rehding and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-05-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generally acknowledged as the most important German musicologist of his age, Hugo Riemann (1849–1919) shaped the ideas of generations of music scholars, not least because his work coincided with the institutionalisation of academic musicology around the turn of the last century. This influence, however, belies the contentious idea at the heart of his musical thought, an idea he defended for most of his career - harmonic dualism. By situating Riemann's musical thought within turn-of-the-century discourses about the natural sciences, German nationhood and modern technology, this book reconstructs the cultural context in which Riemann's ideas not only 'made sense' but advanced an understanding of the tonal tradition as both natural and German. Riemann's musical thought - from his considerations of acoustical properties to his aesthetic and music-historical views - thus regains the coherence and cultural urgency that it once possessed.
Download or read book Contemplating Music written by Joseph Kerman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemplating Music is a book for all serious music lovers. Here is the first full-scale of ideas and ideologies in music over the past forty years; a period during which virtually every aspect of music was transformed. With this book, Joesph Kerman establishes the place of music study firmly in the mainstream of modern intellectual history. He treats not only the study of the history of Western art music--with which musicology is tradtionally equated--but also sometimes vexed relations between music history and other fields: music theory and analysis, ethnomusicology, and music criticism. Kerman sees and applauds a change in the study of music towarda critical orientation, As examples, he presents a fascinating vignettes of Bach research in the 1950's and Beethoven studies in the 1960's. He sketched the work of prominent scholars and theorists: Thurston Dart, Charles Rosen, Leonard B. Meyer, Heinrich Schenker, Miltion Babbit, and many others. And he comments on such various subjects as the amazing absorption of Stephen Foster's songs into the cannons of black music, the new intensity of Verdi research, controversies about performance on historical instruments, and the merits and demerits of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Comtemplating Music is fulled with wisdom and trenchant commmentary. It will spark controversy among musicologists of all stripes and will give many musicians and amateurs an entirely new perspective on the world of music.
Download or read book Aristoxenus of Tarentum and the Birth of Musicology written by Sophie Gibson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aristoxenus made an enormous contribution to the development of music theory in antiquity. Despite his Pythagorean upbringing, he rejected Pythagorean methods of harmonics which focused on the mathematical significance of musical structures and instead applied a scientific methodology appropriated from Aristotle. This volume studies the theories of Aristoxenus.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Medieval Music written by Mark Everist and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning a millennium of musical history, this monumental volume brings together nearly forty leading authorities to survey the music of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. All of the major aspects of medieval music are considered, making use of the latest research and thinking to discuss everything from the earliest genres of chant, through the music of the liturgy, to the riches of the vernacular song of the trouvères and troubadours. Alongside this account of the core repertory of monophony, The Cambridge History of Medieval Music tells the story of the birth of polyphonic music, and studies the genres of organum, conductus, motet and polyphonic song. Key composers of the period are introduced, such as Leoninus, Perotinus, Adam de la Halle, Philippe de Vitry and Guillaume de Machaut, and other chapters examine topics ranging from musical theory and performance to institutions, culture and collections.
Download or read book Music Theory from Zarlino to Schenker written by David Damschroder and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At last a vast amount of recent scholarship, pertaining to four centuries of theoretical developments including the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, has been organized systematically in a single volume. In the Dictionary of Theorists, the major section of the volume, individual entries devoted to approximately 250 theorists supply all of the bibliographic information most scholars are likely to require: titles and publication data for each author's treatises and principal articles, as well as titles and locations of manuscripts; lists of translations, facsimile editions, and microfilm copies of each work; a bibliography of articles, books, dissertations, and encyclopedia entries pertinent to an author and his works; and a compilation of modern reviews of the books, translations, and facsimile editions cited. Author, title, and subject indices facilitate access to materials for various research topics in the areas of speculative and practical music theory, and to a lesser yet significant extent, in the areas of acoustics, aesthetics, lexicography, music analysis, musicology, orchestration, and performance practice. A chronology is provided so that the reader may determine at a glance, which authors were active at any point within the centuries covered.
