Tonal Harmony, With an Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music [Hardcover]

Stefan Kostka (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0072415703 | ISBN-13: 978-0072415704 | Publication Date: February 2000 | Edition: 4th Rev

Designed to meet the needs of the two-semester theory curriculum for music majors, Tonal Harmony is a straightforward book that emphasizes practicality and ease-of-use for both the student and the professor.

By focusing on the core elements of the theory curriculum in a single-volume format, the text is both a complete coursebook and a handy and cost-saving manual for students. On the professors side, the supplements package (with a collection of CD audio examples and an extensive Instructors Manual) makes the book easy to use and to teach.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 704 pages
• Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill College; 4th Rev edition (February 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072415703
• ISBN-13: 978-0072415704
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,719 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #40 in Books > Children's Books > Arts, Crafts & Music > Music

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Much improved but still has a ways to go, December 9, 2001

By 

klavierspiel "klavierspiel" (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Tonal Harmony, With an Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music (Hardcover)

I've used this book for my first-year theory class for nine years, through three editions. I haven't found any better but that doesn't mean I think it's perfect. I agree with some of the other commentaries about the errors and the poor choice of musical examples. Students of mine have frequently complained about this. In addition, the book is very keyboard-centric and thus creates difficulties for people who don't play the piano and who aren't used to reading keyboard score. One can argue, of course, that keyboard facility is a skill any serious musician ought to have (being a pianist myself, I agree in principle), but still, there ARE good musicians who are not pianists who will struggle unnecessarily with this material.

Other, specific things I would change about the book: 1) The chapters on part-writing emphasize too heavily the minutiae of voice-leading and thus obscure the point that we're talking about the relative motion of complete melodic lines. More exercises involving only two parts, to give students a thorough grounding in the basics (i.e., no parallel fifths and octaves), would really help. 2) Although including discussions and examples from popular music is a good idea, the section that tries to explain the concept of "suspension" in pop chord symbols is skimpy and confusing. 3) I find the whole explanation of harmonic progression, based on the circle-of-fifths progression, unconvincing. Piston's looser cataloging for me better fits the reality of tonal music.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Oh well ... nice try., October 17, 2005

By 

Music Man "fluter" (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tonal Harmony (Hardcover)

I've been teaching music theory for 35 years, and have seen a lot of texts that I like less than this one. However, it doesn't make this one wonderful.

As other reviewers have mentioned, there are a lot of errors. Also, there are far too many places in the examples where they say, "Ignore this note", or "Forget about this for now". You'd think they'd have found better examples without making the interested student wonder what's really going on, and the less involved student confused with excess.

This book is heavy in overkill. It's the same problem as in computer manuals: they obviously feel like they have to tell you EVERYTHING, and that nothing is more important than anything else. For example, they go on for pages and pages about chord spacing and voice leading, where a simple grounding in how to write and recognize decent melodies would go a lot farther and reduce dependance on mastering mountains of scrupulous finicky detail.

The authors obviously feel that the inner voices are no more or less important than the soprano-bass counterpoint, whereas perceptually, the soprano and bass carry most of the weight of what's heard and experienced. The emphasis is on recognizing the vertical component of harmony at the expense of the horizontal, but music is experienced as ongoing linear motion, not as successive blocks of stuff. On the other confused hand, they treat Alberti Bass as a note-to-note melodic line, where it's exprienced as just a rhythmised chord with the bass predominant. Minor scales and harmony are introduced as soon as major, and this much complexity before students know what's going on is pedagogically weak. It's the same with triads and seventh chords. And so-on.

You need to understand the simple before getting into the complex.

If you are good at taking a long string of finicky detail where all is of equal importance, and developing it all into a bigger picture with hierarchies, this book might be good for you. Otherwise, keep looking.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful, necessarily dry, and best, educational., February 21, 2002

By 

Thomas J. Dempster - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tonal Harmony, With an Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music (Hardcover)

I am quite amused by the complaints I hear from students and professors about this text. Perhaps these folks who exude grunts and groans about this text have not had the grave misfortune of encountering Gauldin's bare-bones tonal-harmony survey. I would jump quickly to recommend Piston's original text, but the deVoto bastardization destroyed any sense of "fun" or instructional continuity present in the original version (which I am lucky - and old enough - to own).

Let's face it: expository writing is tedious. It is not meant by nature or design to be a page-turning writing device. Nonetheless, Kostka's survey is complete, providing adequate and clear examples, and written in a very succinct manner. True, Kostka does dwell in a few places, but these minutiae-explanations are necessary (if you have ever taught elementary theory, you will understand immediately). The organization of the text is second to none, and the authors are consistent in explanations and refrain from "inventing" jargon or becoming unnecessarily nebulous (Gauldin, for one, is notorious in this regard).