Question:
If I am serious about studying music for a lifetime...?
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
If I am serious about studying music for a lifetime...?
Eight answers:
joshuacharlesmorris
2011-07-12 18:03:07 UTC
Order is really up to you. Hindemith I might save for after you've read a few of the others since it assumes you already have a fundamental knowledge of theory. If you want to exist in the halls of academia you'll end up reading all of them. Some are more useful than others.



I have my issues with the David Cope and Smith-Brindle books, there's nothing technically wrong, but I think they're just too conservative and limited in scope.



Aldwell-Schachterr and similar books designed for a college theory student serve that purpose well, but for a student seriously interested in music should serve only as reference point for using a common language to communicate with other musicians. Everything you learn from that book you can learn better by studying the Bach chorales on your own.



Books to add:

Music Notation in the Twentieth Century: A Practical Guidebook by Kurt Stone

Schoenberg: Style and Idea (It's just as important to understand Schoenberg's philosophy as his technique as the two are so closely related)

Simple Composition Charles Wourinen

New Musical Resources by Henry Cowell

Silence by John Cage

Hearing and Knowing Music: The Unpublished Essays of Edward T. Cone (One of the best collections of essays on music theory. Cone is one of a handful of theorists capable of thinking like a composer)
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2016-05-16 20:26:07 UTC
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2016-05-02 08:15:34 UTC
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?
2016-04-15 04:45:36 UTC
Maybe you just never noticed the music you were unfamiliar with as a child. I was in my teens in the 70s and remember hearing nothing vaguely new on the Muzak in the grocery store I worked in. Later studies of music would inform my ear of the big hits of previous eras that I heard in that store: Canadian Sunset, and Liberace-like renditions of famous classical music themes. The reasons you don't hear newer music in stores often have to do with saleability and copyright. If copyright expires, then the song is "public domain" meaning that it can be used without paying royalties. Those are the songs you often hear in stores and as backgrounds for commercials. Copyrights can be renewed beyond their original issue period, tho - that is why you pretty much never hear Beatles songs in the grocery store. Those songs still generate lots of royalties in sales of downloads and payment of royalties for on-air play, licenses to game manufacturers, and such. They are not likely to go into the public domain for a long time. Music from the 80s is just barely reaching the 25-year copyright expiration date, and some of those copyrights are probably getting renewed. The others are probably not big enough hits to attract the attention of someone who resells or remakes music for background.



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?
2011-07-12 17:14:45 UTC
You are certainly well read. The most definitive book that one could read regarding a lifetime of music study in my opinion is the Harvard Dictionary of Music. it is the finest resource for information of any information needed in music. Although your library is awesome, I would add that to your collection. Hope this is helpful. Good luck to you and glad you are smart enough to know that music is a life-long study. Bless you too.
onlyocelot
2011-07-12 17:26:32 UTC
Well, you don't give us much to go on, because you don't say what experience or knowledge you are starting with.

First thing: organize the books by subject rather than author, when you think about them. You really can't begin to understand some of these books without the info in others, and there's a reason that music schools organize classes the way they do.

In music, as in so many things, you must learn to walk before you run, run before you drive, and should drive before you fly, although who knows, maybe learning to fly before driving is cool. (CAP thinks so!)



In music, melody is crawling: if you are going to compose, and you have never tried to construct, write down, and play with melodies, the rest is a lost cause. You have no books on melody, and I really can't recommend any. It's an innate thing. Certainly, the Hindemuth book (Elementary training for Musicians) is the place to start. If you feel confident that you can handle coming up with "thematic material", then the next step should be harmony.

Classical harmony is the study of building bass lines that fit with melodies and building the harmonic progressions that fill out the music. Classical harmony is the usual approach, also known as 4-voice harmony. Getting each of the voices to move together in the right direction so that the harmony sounds good throughout is called voice leading. I'm not familiar with the Schachter book (Harmony and voice leading), but that would be the place to start. Piston's harmony is good after you've got a basis in classical harmony: his chord progressions and allowable chords to follow others is much more modern and appropriate to modern forms. In general, though, you should look at each of the Harmony books, and if one strikes you as making more sense than the others, go for it. A note: If it is your intent to continue without a teacher, it is possible that none of these books will be much help, but Hindemuth's Harmony is based almost entirely on Beethoven Piano sonatas (surprise!) so acquiring the scores from IMSLP.ORG and recordings of all of them (unless you play well enough to play the examples for yourself!) is in order. Heinrich Schenker's book is very likely the one in which he introduces what is called "Shenkerian Analysis" and boy, you'd better be grounded in harmony before cracking that one! I'll have something to say about books like "Harmony Simplified" later.

After Harmony, Counterpoint: This is the art of making the voices more independent while still relating well to each other. From your list, it looks like a tossup between Hindemuth and Piston's Counterpoint books. Save the others, again, until you have a basis in counterpoint, because most of them are putting forth 'new ideas' in terms of old ones.

Next step will be a good book on composition, but it would be hard for someone who doesn't know what kind of music you want to write to suggest a composition book that would appeal to you. Wait until you feel more confident in harmony and counterpoint, then look through your composition books. It will be a while before you have to worry!

Orchestration books can be read any time, and should be kept on hand when you start writing things you expect to get played. The ones you have are all good (Wendy Carlos mentions the Berlioz orchestration book in "Secrets of Synthesis". Orchestration will not change drastically until the instruments in the orchestra change drastically.



The rest of the books are pretty much specialist/further reading books. When someone talks about "my musical language", don't expect it to be yours; if they add something wildly academic (like Polarities in Form) to something fundamental (like Counterpoint), save it for later. And save the Fugue books until after you have mastered harmony and counterpoint and are familiar with the standard forms: Fugues are still a place for a composer to prove his worth, and it is something to work up to, rather than try and crash early.



I hope this helps



Books like "Simplified Harmony" or "Counterpoint for Beginners" may be an easy read, but don't expect to build a lifetime of study on their precepts. You can look into them any time you want, but if you're serious, stick to the big guns; Piston and Hindemuth in your collection. The last 8 books are pretty specialist, and I recommend that you avoid serial/tone-row composition until you've mastered classical harmony and counterpoint. It's possible to make a tone-row composition with no knowledge of music at all...but to make _music_ out of a tone row requires incredible chops!
petr b
2011-07-12 17:47:30 UTC
I had the luck and privilege to be taught in undergraduate from a cursory text designed as a quick review for returning graduate students, and under the tutelage of an Emeritus professor each class saw supplemental hand-chosen examples from literature which were the subject of our study and the works to analyze. I think this is half-way to working with a private tutor as in 'the old days.'



From a brief glance and confirmed by other musician's comments -

I'd throw out the Hindemith, second rate books self-justifying the way he wrote, never well regarded other than a brief vogue of modernism and "our American -European composer wrote a textbook." Students of same are still spouting ridiculous garbage about the 'naturalness' of the western scale, triads, common practice tonality, etc.



(The composer was in the phase of his career when he was composing more than ever 'music by the yard' from his theoretic standpoint - those works barely distinguishable one from the other and saying 'nothing.' Theory is anything but a bunch of 'rules' or 'laws.' Hindemith. in the most negative cliche of Teutonic mentalities, set down bunches of them, his, so you can write like Hindemith - at the nadir of his creative output on top of it.) These are severely dated artifacts.



Schenkerian analysis is 'interesting' as Elliott Carter put it, for 'seeing that a piece descends, say, one octave over the course of the work.' but other than that tells you 'little.' The incentive was to design a general theory system with the intention fo prove all German Music superior to all other music.



I would avoid any text with 'voice-leading' in the title, and instead pick up a decent counterpoint book.



I would avoid any text or theory program which separates and then separately concentrates on melody and chord progressions. If you want to be an adequate classical musician, these are inseparable and taught together from the start: to learn less in another manner will make you less adequate to the task. (If you want to become a very well-versed pop songwriter, or enter other arenas of pop music, study melody and chord progressions apart.)



At any normal university, Harmony 101 starts with Bach Chorales - these perfectly clear examples cover simultaneously 'melody' 'chord progression' and 'voice leading' - breaking them down further just keeps you simple when you need to immediately handle all three at once to get anywhere.



The Kennan books are used widely in the states: clear, plain and straightforward, so much so and so accessible they are also used in high schools music programs offering theory. They are loaded with other practicalities, mentioning 'limits' of composing for less than professional groups, high school level bands, pragmatic tips on average ranges and other technical limits well worth keeping in mind to compose playable music for that level.



I recommend an old-style text on modal counterpoint just as Mozart and Beethoven would have used, and only then look into later Baroque counterpoint. If you admire the earlier north European pre-baroque contrapuntists, find a book by a north European. If you more admire the French and Italian schools, look for a text from one of their masters. ~ They are often taught in reverse order these days, which makes not a whole lot of sense, since half of Bach at all times is half modal thought, which is where he came from and transited through.



You should have: Rameau Treatise on Harmony / Rimsky-Korsakov on orchestration: Keep in mind any period document such as the Rameau, Berlioz, etc. is a period document dealing with instruments and sensibilities of the era, and often an aesthetic unique to the author. They are quite valuable, but one must keep those factors in mind as well. Unlike the Hindemith, these are GOOD dated artifacts.



I have not been exposed to the others on your list, because I was so generally taught 'custom,' with just that frame of a textbook and ditto for the counterpoint. One can get crazy-involved with different texts.



At the freshman entry level, there is all of common practice period to cover. Past a point, you will learn from texts covering the same or similar material more about what the author thinks or believes, an aesthetic, more than theory itself.



Read about anything contemporary, even if you do not grasp it the first time and may not until later after years of study. It is what is going on now, which we should all be aware of first. The past is relevant only to us as it refers to our present, or it is dead artifact. Learn a lot about period history beyond dates. Read popular novels of the day, look up what people wore, try and get a grasp on the 'collective ethos' of an era. By all means examine art, literature, architecture and the decorative arts. Sometimes a mundane record of correspondence between two ordinary people tells much.





Best regards.


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