Books on Theory or Written by Composers?

[monafam]

Are there any good books/articles (online if possible) that are written by composers (any era)? 

What about musical theory?  I'm not so much looking for a "history of..." or an encyclopedia, as more of an opinion-type piece.

Thanks as always in advance (although I'll likely thank you later too)!

[SonicMan46]

Well, I'm not sure as a new poster 'how much' you know about music already - you could even be a college professor trying to obtain some advance recommendations?   

But, an early boook that I read relative your criteria was by Aaron Copland What to Listen For in Music - short & basic but a good starter; of course, there are plenty of others but please let us know what level of understanding you are now at?  Thanks - 

[monafam]

I actually have the Copland book, and I've been re-reading it.  Great book.

I guess I'm looking more for an opinion-type piece.  I'm not sure if that makes sense -- I know that in "The Rest is Noise" Ross makes references to books by Schoenberg, Ives, etc.  I sort of like those works where they go through a theory on their music, etc.

[Dana]

      Leonard Bernstein was a fantastic speaker on music. You should specifically check out his Norton Lectures at Harvard, available in book format and in DVD format. In the first of these six lectures, Leonard Bernstein explains why tonality exists!

      For more historical documents, many composers were also prolific writers (Schumann, Berlioz, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Wagner come to mind) - poke around in the amazon.com books department and see what you can find.

[(poco) Sforzando]

A lot of composers prefer not to talk about their music, but a good book by a composer on musical aesthetics, I'd read Roger Sessions's "The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, and Listener."

[Franco]

A couple of books by composers which fall into the opinion category are

The Aesthetics of Survival by George Rothberg

Collected Essays & Lectures, 1937-1995 by Elliott Carter

For pure theory, there's the books by Paul Hindemith (basic theory about melody and harmony, counterpoint), Arnold Schoenberg (elementary harmony, not his 12-tone technique) and George Perle (maybe a bit tough).

[zamyrabyrd]

     Leonard Bernstein was a fantastic speaker on music. You should specifically check out his Norton Lectures at Harvard, available in book format and in DVD format. In the first of these six lectures, Leonard Bernstein explains why tonality exists!
   

Coincidentally, I picked up the Unanswered Question (or the Norton Lectures) by Bernstein the other day as I was looking for good ideas for my course.  I am sorry but there were some gems but packed with so much drivel, umpteen pictures of himself, and some major inaccuracies, having to do with spoken language.  I did the same with the famous Young People's Concerts, but was horrified by a whole episode on "Sonata" being presented as a three part form, historically and analytically wrong.  Even if the purpose is for a general audience, not intended to be esoteric, one shouldn't steering them away in the wrong direction that include potential muscians as well.

He was a pioneer in bringing music to the masses with his personal charisma, using TV for the first time as a medium. Some of them were memorable hits. Later he made good films on Mahler and the 10th Symphony of Shostakovich.

Music, an Appreciation written by a real scholar, Roger Kamien is far more useful. Also the Cambridge series on Music History (used in our school) is very accessible--selective but not superficial.

The Composer's World by Hindemith is an excellent book by a composer.
ZB

[Dana]

Coincidentally, I picked up the Unanswered Question (or the Norton Lectures) by Bernstein the other day as I was looking for good ideas for my course.  I am sorry but there were some gems but packed with so much drivel, umpteen pictures of himself, and some major inaccuracies, having to do with spoken language.

Are you referring to his completely nonacademic forays into Chomsky? If so, please elaborate. If not, enlighten me!

[Diletante]

Music, an Appreciation written by a real scholar, Roger Kamien is far more useful. Also the Cambridge series on Music History (used in our school) is very accessible--selective but not superficial.

I searched that book on Amazon and it looks interesting, but pricey! Do you know if it comes with CDs?

[zamyrabyrd]

Are you referring to his completely nonacademic forays into Chomsky? If so, please elaborate. If not, enlighten me!

I read the whole book two years ago, and page through it every now and then. The idea of "universal language" is what he was promoting and linking it up to music. As far as I know, this particular hypothesis has not been proven to be universally true. To back this up, he cited examples of English speaking kids of 2 years putting together subject-verb-object sentences such as "I like green ice-cream" and being able to recognize the meaning when put in the passive voice.

His analysis of the first movement of the G minor Symphony by Mozart was interesting but by no means exhaustive.  Here he links up "deletion" of extraneous material as in poetry, but as I was talking to a fellow musician about this, he completely ignores the more important issue of "redundancy" which is more a feature of music.  But in all fairness, he did cite that feature in the analysis of the "Pastorale" Symphony of Beethoven.

ZB

[zamyrabyrd]

I searched that book on Amazon and it looks interesting, but pricey! Do you know if it comes with CDs?

I got it rather cheaply from Amazon some time ago. You just have to wait sometimes until an opportunity comes up.

Also two excellent books by a composer:
Harmony and Counterpoint by Walter Piston

ZB

[Dana]

I read the whole book two years ago, and page through it every now and then. The idea of "universal language" is what he was promoting and linking it up to music. As far as I know, this particular hypothesis has not been proven to be universally true. To back this up, he cited examples of English speaking kids of 2 years putting together subject-verb-object sentences such as "I like green ice-cream" and being able to recognize the meaning when put in the passive voice.

      Bernstein doesn't prove it either. On the contrary, he baldly states that his is a mostly personal and unproven inquiry, and asks his audience to give him the benefit of the doubt as one of the most prominent musical minds of his day. None of the above is inaccurate, simply speculative.

[zamyrabyrd]

      Bernstein doesn't prove it either. On the contrary, he baldly states that his is a mostly personal and unproven inquiry, and asks his audience to give him the benefit of the doubt as one of the most prominent musical minds of his day. None of the above is inaccurate, simply speculative.

Bernstein is practically Messianic all through the lectures about the alleged language to music link via Chomsky. Apologizing continuously about his lack of scholarship is a bit disingenuous and gets even tedious at times.

ZB

[Opus106]

I searched that book on Amazon and it looks interesting, but pricey! Do you know if it comes with CDs?

Yes. These days it comes with its own website.

[Dana]

Bernstein is practically Messianic all through the lectures about the alleged language to music link via Chomsky. Apologizing continuously about his lack of scholarship is a bit disingenuous and gets even tedious at times.

      That doesn't invalidate the lectures, or make him wrong, and his theories certainly aren't major inaccuracies (at least, they haven't been explained to be so). While there is a scientific element to why music is the way it is (which Bernstein addresses in the first lecture), the music itself, and furthermore, the act of philosophizing about music, is very personal. I find Bernstein's attempts to explain why he hears music the way he does very informative. If he appears to assume that his ideas are correct, he's certainly earned the right to be so, and I've found no reason to assume that his ideas are anything but.

[Tapkaara]

Ifukube wrote two books: Orchestration and Invitation to Music. Neither are currently available in anything but Japanese. Ifukube's Orchestration has become a standard text used by most Japanese composers.

[(poco) Sforzando]

      That doesn't invalidate the lectures, or make him wrong, and his theories certainly aren't major inaccuracies (at least, they haven't been explained to be so). While there is a scientific element to why music is the way it is (which Bernstein addresses in the first lecture), the music itself, and furthermore, the act of philosophizing about music, is very personal. I find Bernstein's attempts to explain why he hears music the way he does very informative. If he appears to assume that his ideas are correct, he's certainly earned the right to be so, and I've found no reason to assume that his ideas are anything but.

I think some of his theoretical analogies between musical and spoken language are forced and unconvincing, but that he is far better at individual analyses of musical works. What is not always acknowledged is that Bernstein really wanted listeners to have not only an emotional reaction but also an understanding of how the musical language works. (See the first essay from "The Infinite Variety of Music" for an explicit statement of this.) Some of his TV script analyses, for example the one where he explains how the Tchaikovsky 6 is built around the motif of a descending perfect 4th, are very well done in this respect.

[Dana]

I think some of his theoretical analogies between musical and spoken language are forced and unconvincing, but that he is far better at individual analyses of musical works. What is not always acknowledged is that Bernstein really wanted listeners to have not only an emotional reaction but also an understanding of how the musical language works. (See the first essay from "The Infinite Variety of Music" for an explicit statement of this.) Some of his TV script analyses, for example the one where he explains how the Tchaikovsky 6 is built around the motif of a descending perfect 4th, are very well done in this respect.

Another great read

[MishaK]

Schoenberg: Theory of Harmony

Berlioz (R. Strauss, ed.): Treatise on Instrumentation

[Joe Barron]

A fascinating glimpse into the mind of a composer, though it's not about theory so much as aesthetics, is Charles Ives's Essays Before a Sonata, which is in available online.

Stravinsky also put his name on "The Poetics of Music." It was ghosted, but one assumes it reflects his opinions.

Elliott Carter's essays, too, are worth reading. There's a fine collection put out by the University of Rochester.