Customer Reviews

Materials and Techniques of Twentieth-Century Music (2nd Edition)

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Was searching for the longest time for a good, in-depth reference book over twentieth century music, and I've found it in Mr. Kostka's publication. Thank God for Mr. Kostka!

Twentieth-century music books tend to be a little heavy on the beginning of the century and leave out all the recent developments like Minimalism, and electronic music. This book was published in 1998 and covers those sections beautifully.

Also, the way the material is organized is much more helpful than if it went chapter by chapter by composer or historically.

Other merits include the summaries at the end of each chapter, the numerous musical examples, exercises, and references to other books over twentieth century music.

One word of warning, however.

Although the book is excellently written, it is a book for advanced music theory students. If you don't have all your musical terminology down from previous study, you're going to get lost very quickly.

But what a breath of fresh air not to be talked down to anymore!

While reading, I kept thinking how Mr. Kostka uncoveres the mystical/mathematical qualities of this music; so well, in fact, that this book would make even Pythagoras proud.

It's a nice book and I'm glad that there are some tips written in. It has already helped a lot for my theory class.

This is a fine book with many musical examples. It's well-written and superior to most of the books on the subject I've read. I would suggest this along with Techniques of Twentieth Century Composition: A Guide to the Materials of Modern Music. These are the two best works on the subject. Techniques of Twentieth Century Composition: A Guide to the Materials of Modern Music (Music Series)

Not a very informative book. Each subject was skimmed over at best. The section on free atonality was especially disappointing. The use of aggregates to analyze an atonal work leaves me cold. It doesn't tell you anything about the music or a particular composer's approach. It becomes little more than an exercise in tedium.