Customer Reviews

Tonal Harmony: With an Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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).

This is an excellent introduction, covering most aspects of theory thoroughly. It is also MUCH easier to read than Walter Piston's Harmony. The problem is that this book is much more abstract than piston's book, breezes over inversions of chords much too quickly and is a tad lax in the rules of voice leading. I do suggest you consider that text as well.

It's still a good introduction that you will ACTUALLY READ. It covers all triads, seventh chords, chord functions, chromatically altered chords like Neapolitan and Augmented sixth chords, covers non-harmonic tones, and even goes off onto other (more abstract) topics.

As to the reviewer below who pointed out that it neglects counterpoint and focuses too much on the vertical aspect of music (for example, in the exercises EVER note is a different chord and almost no non-harmonic tones are employed): this is an ELEMENTARY HARMONY text. Counterpoint is generally approached after the student has mastered all that is contained in this book. The exercises are meant to teach voice leading and chord functions. Fux's treatise on Counterpoint from Gradus Ad Parnassum clearly states that what is learned in the "first part" on Harmony still applies in writing counterpoint. The horizontal aspect of music can be taught better if the the vertical aspect is understood first. Multiple times Fux also says that exercises, whether those in the book on counterpoint or those in this text, are designed to instruct and make future writing of music easier, but aren't the same as writing music.

Be forewarned that the new 4th edition is rife with errors resulting from bad proofreading -- both in the text and in the workbook. Apparently, the publishers (I can't imagine the authors would do this) were in such a hurry to get this out by the start of the Fall 1999 semester, that they unleashed this abortion of botched key signatures and wrong notes. Were these guys swattin' flies on staff paper, or what? The typography and layout are crowded and harder to read than the clean, uncluttered pages of the 3rd edition. Also, I've been told part of the rush was to incorporate more information on reading lead sheets, women composers, and more 20th century techniques. Why does the latter need to be in an introductory text? Save it for the grad students. Please spare us the contemporary and politically correct fourth edition, and give us back the sturdy, error-free 3rd edition.

All in all this book wasn't that bad. It is used at my college for undergraduate theory. Fortunately I was lucky enough to have a good teacher for Theory 1-2 who was able to clear up all the typographical errors and an even better teacher for Theory 3-4 who studied with Dr. Payne and knew off the bat what changes needed to be made. The only problem with this book is the vast (and I mean VAST) amount of typographical errors that could have been cleared up with a good group of proof-readers. The book is set up in a sensical order and generally has adequate definitions to follow important terms. A primary concern, wordiness and typos aside, are the relevancies of the listening examples. In many cases, poors examples are selected for analysis which brings up MUCH debate during class because there really are more explanations (and better explanations) than those given. For example, pg 404 (Augmented 6th Chords part II) gives a Tchaikovsky example that has a Ger+6 in the 3rd to 4th measures. The chord does not really act as a Ger+6 chord, but more as a chromatic mediant (a topic that actually isn't discussed much in this book).

If there were to be another edition of this book that featured better examples, I would have given it a 4 star rating. If there were another edition of this book that fixed the MANY MANY typos along with better examples, I would definitely give it 5 stars.

Tip-For those of you using the workbook edition as well, just because the directions say that the example is in C major, it doesn't necesarrily mean that it is. Listen to the recordings and ask your professor.

This book represents everything that is wrong in music theory education. This book approaches music as an abstract entity even though it provides many examples and exercises. It tries to compartmentalize different aspects of music, like harmony, melody, rhythm and form. I don't think it's the authors' fault entirely.

This is a book on tonal harmony. It has become the standard textbook for music theory in the United States. This is extremely misguided since it will give the student an extremely incomplete understanding of how music works. For example, counterpoint is not taught in this book. Counterpoint has been considered essential for the serious musician for the past 500 years. All the different aspects of music mentioned above are wholly intertwined. Any approach that seperates them misses the point.

This book also puts too much emphasis on harmony as a vertical phenomenon. Most people experience music as a horizontal phenonmenon and I haave found that approaches to music theory that treats music as such has had much more success. This goes back to why counterpoint is so essential in music theory. Learning harmony through an approach that pays attention to how melody, rhythm, and counterpoint affect harmony is the most honest and least troublesome way of learning how music works.

This may explain why many have had trouble with this book(I had for 5 years). You'll know how to name things such as chords and form after completing this book, but it won't help you understand how a piece works. It focuses more on nomenclature than on syntax and function.

There are a slew of books that will give the music student a more complete picture of theory. Most importantly, these more integrated methods will give better tools to understand the music they may be performing and/or studying. These books include Leo Kraft's Gradus, Aldwell and Schachter's Harmony and Voice Leading, Horton and Ritchey's Harmony Through Melody, Siegmeiter's Harmony and Melody, and to a lesser extent Forte's Tonal Harmony in Concept and Practice.

I am an active conductor and I feel I have a much stronger grasp of music after having been taught a more honest and comprehensive way of studying music and this was only after years of deprogramming what I had learned through the Kostka and Payne. I am still struggling with this issue. If you're serious about music, DO NOT GET THIS BOOK!

Anybody who has seen the latest edition, knows it's got the theory there, and of all the editions, it was more clearly written than in any of the other ones, however the examples are crap and there are quite a few typographical errors. i guess if they ever proof read their book and make a next edition, it'll get another star from me, and also another thing they did in the book, which is probably not the best of ideas, is in their examples quite often towards the beginning having secondary functioning chords there before they're even introduced in the book. but with the errors in the text it still is probably one of the best in print. i don't think too many people would buy this book for independant studies, so there will be a teacher there to clear the confusion and hopefully spot the errors for the students.

Music theory is kind of like math. Some people are good at theory, but hate studying it; some have a complete theory block and can't understand even the fundamentals. And some, like me, love it, are good at it, and enjoy it for its own sake.

For those who are interested in this vast and sometimes intimidating subject, Kostka's "Tonal Harmony" is a superb, well written, extremely thorough, and largely lucid guide. This is the text I used in both college theory classes and in the independent study I did with a University of Oregon doctoral student, and in both cases I found it very useful. To get much out of it, one really should have some background in theory, but with at least a modest understanding of the subject, this book is one that can be used alone by the self-motivated musician.

Everything from four-part writing and figured bass to secondary functions and French augmented sixth chords is covered here. In fact, unless you are getting a Ph.D. in music theory, there's a lot here you'd never need to know. Kostka and his co-writer include many exercises at the end of each chapter, and there are a couple of chapters on post-tonal theory at the end of the book.

There will never be a perfect guide to music theory, since it's such a complex subject. There will also never be a perfect guide to physics. That doesn't mean this book can't be of use to you. Highly recommended.

It's ridiculous to say that this book is hard to understand; I use this book for my high school theory class and I can understand it. It's true that it is a little dry and has some errors, but overall it's really helped me learn theory.