Sorry we've been off the radar for a while. I for one have been preparing my TSMT (Texas Society for Music Theory) presentation on Gubaidulina's serial music. We don't have the monopoly on the conference that we did last year, but David Forrest and I are both talking about 20th-century music. Again.
Let's see... two book recommendations: Robert Gjerdingen's Music in the Galant Style offers a very interesting look at the repertoire that falls between the Baroque and Classical eras. The gist of the book is that most of this music can be understood as a combination of a variety of schema that were taught to budding young composers in the Italian conservatories. Take, for example, the Romanesca (the numbers below suggest scale degrees):
1 7 6 5 4 3 4-4 3
3 2 1 7 6 5 6 7 1
1 5 6 3 4 1 4 5 1 <- Romanesca
The Romanesca was a pedagogical device that answered the question "How do you harmonize a string of descending parallel thirds (the top two voices) without creating parallel fifths? (Note: I've tied over scale degree four in the top voice to avoid parallels between it and the bass.) There are variants on the Romanesca, as well, but after reading one of Gjerdingen's chapters and studying the examples, you become adept at spotting the patterns fairly quickly. And they turn up quite a lot in later music (Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, even Schubert and others) as well. (You may recognize the Romanesca as the opening of Pachelbel's canon.)
The second book recommendation is David Huron's Sweet anticipation: Music and the psychology of expectation (which is evidently coming out in paperback next month).* I've only just started it and it's quite engaging. I'll write more about it when I'm further along. Suffice it to say, it won the Society for Music Theory's Wallace Berry award last year.
I've updated the links on the side. Check out our friends!
Reviews of pedagogical materials will be forthcoming... the one "Teach yourself music" book that I pass every day on my way to get coffee is no longer there, so my first candidate is going to have to be something else.
*I'm personally waiting for the movie...
Let's see... two book recommendations: Robert Gjerdingen's Music in the Galant Style offers a very interesting look at the repertoire that falls between the Baroque and Classical eras. The gist of the book is that most of this music can be understood as a combination of a variety of schema that were taught to budding young composers in the Italian conservatories. Take, for example, the Romanesca (the numbers below suggest scale degrees):
1 7 6 5 4 3 4-4 3
3 2 1 7 6 5 6 7 1
1 5 6 3 4 1 4 5 1 <- Romanesca
The Romanesca was a pedagogical device that answered the question "How do you harmonize a string of descending parallel thirds (the top two voices) without creating parallel fifths? (Note: I've tied over scale degree four in the top voice to avoid parallels between it and the bass.) There are variants on the Romanesca, as well, but after reading one of Gjerdingen's chapters and studying the examples, you become adept at spotting the patterns fairly quickly. And they turn up quite a lot in later music (Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, even Schubert and others) as well. (You may recognize the Romanesca as the opening of Pachelbel's canon.)
The second book recommendation is David Huron's Sweet anticipation: Music and the psychology of expectation (which is evidently coming out in paperback next month).* I've only just started it and it's quite engaging. I'll write more about it when I'm further along. Suffice it to say, it won the Society for Music Theory's Wallace Berry award last year.
I've updated the links on the side. Check out our friends!
Reviews of pedagogical materials will be forthcoming... the one "Teach yourself music" book that I pass every day on my way to get coffee is no longer there, so my first candidate is going to have to be something else.
*I'm personally waiting for the movie...