Compared to tonal theory, now in its fourth century of development, post-tonal theory is in its infancy. But in the past three decades, it has shown itself to be an infant of prodigious growth and surprising power. A broad consensus has emerged among music theorists regarding the basic musical elements of post-tonal music—pitch, interval, motive, harmony, collection—and this book reports that consensus to a general audience of musicians and students of music. Like books on scales, triads, and simple harmonic progressions in tonal music, this book introduces basic theoretical concepts for the post-tonal music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Beyond basic concepts, the third edition of this book also contains information on many of the most recent developments in post-tonal theory, including expanded or new coverage of the following topics:
- Transformational networks and graphs
- Contour theory
- Composing-out
- Atonal voice leading
- Atonal pitch space
- Triadic post-tonality (including voice-leading parsimony)
- Inversional symmetry and inversional axes
- Interval cycles
- Diatonic, whole-tone, octatonic, and hexatonic collections
As a result, this book is not only a primer of basic concepts but also an introduction to the current state of post-tonal theory, with its rich array of theoretical concepts and analytical tools.
Although this book can make no pretense to comprehensiveness either, either chronologically or theoretically—there is just too much great music and fascinating theory out there—this third edition explores a much wider range of composers and musical styles than its predecessors. Although the "classical" prewar repertoire of music by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bart6k, Webern, and Berg still comprises the musical core, theoretical concepts are now also illustrated with music by Adams, Babbitt, Berio, Boulez, Britten, Cage, Carter, Cowell, Crawford, Crumb, Debussy, Feldman, Glass, Gubaidulina, Ives, Ligeti, Messiaen, Musgrave, Reich, Ruggles, Sessions, Shostakovich, Stockhausen, Varese, Wolpe, Wuorinen, and Zwilich.
As with the previous editions of this book, I received invaluable advice from many friends and colleagues based on their teaching experience. I am grateful to Wayne Alpern, Jonathan Bernard, Claire Boge, Ricardo Bordini, Scott Brickman, Michael Buckler, Uri Burstein, James Carr, Patrick Fairfield, Michael Friedmann, Edward Gollin, Dave Headlam, Gary Karpinski, Rosemary Killam, Bruce Quaglia, Daniel Mathers, Carolyn Mullin, Catherine Nolan, Jay Rahn, Nancy Rogers, Steven Rosenhaus, Art Samplaski, Paul Sheehan, Stephen Slottow, David Smyth, Harvey Stokes, Dmitri Tymoczko, and Joyce Yip. My thanks go also to Chris Johnson and Laura Lawrie at Prentice Hall for their expert editorial work at every stage. Michael Berry provided additional editorial assistance. Closer to home, in matters both tangible and intangible, Sally Goldfarb has offered continuing guidance and support beyond my ability to describe or repay. Adam and Michael helped, too.
Joseph N. Straus
Graduate Center
City University of New York
Scan an ISBN with your phone
