Music Theory Book

[caters]

So this all started out last year when I was talking with someone about music theory. They said I could probably write a music theory one pager because I know so much about the subject. Well, I'm not that good at being concise so I said that I could probably write a whole book on it. And they told me to go ahead and write that book. And that's where it all started.

Of course I knew there had to be some kind of limit, there's no way I can cover the entirety of music theory, it's just too broad. And some things I have only heard of and don't really know that well. I settled with Notation, Harmony, and Form cause those are my strong points.

Then came the question of whether I want to use music from the real world or make simplified demonstrations and use those. Well, knowing my own preference for studying music theory in the years before I wrote this book, I knew I had to go with real world music. And obviously you can tell by me posting this in a classical music forum that my real world music examples are from classical music composers.

But that's still too broad, cause there are lots of eras, from Ancient to 21st Century. I had to narrow down my palate. I immediately ruled out Ancient and Medieval cause they wouldn't fit in anything except Notation. And I ruled out 20th Century and 21st century cause copyright, I just did not want to go through all that I would have had to to use those, like buying the music and stuff, that would be way too expensive and risky for what it's worth. While I didn't rule out Renaissance entirely, I was like:

I'm not that knowledgeable on Renaissance music, so if I do use it, it will only be a small number of pieces.

This left me with Baroque, Classical, and Romantic. And what do you know, that's where most of my music knowledge lies. However, it was even still too wide a compass, this time not because of eras, but composers. There are a bunch of composers from those eras that I don't know about, and even some of the ones I do know about are obscure. And while I do believe obscure composers need appreciation, unless they were related in some obvious way to a well known composer(like being a spouse or a student or a family relative or whatever), I wasn't going to include it, so as to narrow my compass and use some well known repertoire.

Lastly came the question of just how I was going to organize this book. Obviously, I knew I wanted to do Notation first, that's the only place it makes sense to put Notation. But then I had Harmony and Form. I was then thinking of the connections in music and I realized that if I put Harmony second and Form last, that would be the most natural placement, cause I introduce the melodic concepts of Motif and Phrase at the beginning of the Form section and Melody and Harmony combined in specific ways = Form. You can't have form without melody and the only kinds of form you can have without harmony are the very simple ones, Strophic, Through Composed, and Variations. The rest have cadences and/or contrasting key areas in their definitions.

For Harmony, I decided to go with a secondary organization of Diatonic, Chromatic, Chord Progression and Key Change. And for Form, well, I was a bit inspired by Schoenberg's Fundamentals of Musical Composition and chose a tiny to large trajectory. Tiny forms would be the Motif and Phrase I mentioned earlier. Large forms would be Rondo, Sonata, and Sonata-Rondo. And it turns out that the order of those categories is one thing that differs me from Schoenberg.

To me, it made sense to put the Motif first, cause that's what's built on and developed to make everything else. Be it the rhythm of a dance or a specific melodic pattern in a fugue or a combination of rhythm and melody(which most of the well known motifs are combination motifs) from which each aspect can be developed independently in different parts of the piece. As for the large forms, Schoenberg put Sonata-Rondo in between Rondo and Sonata. That to me made no sense at all cause Sonata-Rondo is the combination of Rondo and Sonata. So I instead decided to make it the last of the 3 large forms. And to round it all out, I decided to go over Canon and Fugue as well, which Schoenberg didn't even bother with. Now I'm not going to talk about how to go about writing a fugue, cause I honestly have trouble with that myself, I'm just going to be talking about Fugue from a structural standpoint.

I have a checklist that I am using to keep track of where I'm at and it's got all the major sections(Notation, Harmony, Form), all the minor sections(Diatonic Harmony, Small Forms), all the subsections(Applied Chords, Sonata Form), and all the sub-sub sections(Balanced Binary, Sentential Period). And I've also got a spreadsheet where I'm keeping track of composer distribution by concept. So far, the composer with the most examples is Mozart, although Beethoven is catching up. I'm currently at Mode Mixture. And it's between here and Modulation that I expect Beethoven to catch up and pass Mozart. Sometimes I find that I want to use the same piece for multiple different concepts. In that case, I typically try to prevent as much exact duplicating as possible by either using different parts of the piece or different sizes of the same part(single phrase vs full theme for instance). If the 2 concepts are far enough apart though that I don't think it will be that much of a worry or I'm focusing on 2 different aspects of it(for instance, Augmented Sixths and Sentence Form, just 2 out of multiple concepts where I'd be using or have used Beethoven's Fifth Symphony), I will go ahead and use the exact same part for both.

I don't know if I'll publish the book or not yet, that doesn't really start coming to mind until I'm near the end of the writing process. And even though I already have so much down, I've still got a lot more to go. This has been and will be a years long process for me to finally finish this book. I assume this is an okay subforum for me to post about this in? If it needs moved, then by all means move it.

[DaveF]

Thanks for a most interesting post, and I wish you nothing but well in such an ambitious undertaking.  Just a few points below that I felt needed comments:

I immediately ruled out Ancient and Medieval cause they wouldn't fit in anything except Notation.

There are a bunch of composers from those eras that I don't know about, and even some of the ones I do know about are obscure.

I decided to go over Canon and Fugue as well, which Schoenberg didn't even bother with.

I'm sure you don't mean to suggest that medieval music was devoid of harmony and form - in the latter area, the virelai, rondeau and ballade are the most tightly-controlled (and clear to the ear) forms ever devised.  Perhaps you just mean that you don't feel yourself sufficiently knowledgeable to deal with these - which is quite understandable; you can't know everything.

I can't see that you are going to miss much by not instancing the works of less well-known composers.  After all, one of the greatest books ever written about music theory, Charles Rosen's The Classical Style, deals with only three.  A perfect cadence in Krommer is much the same as one in Beethoven, and if Hummel has done something, you can bet Schubert has as well.  I imagine you would only need to quote from the work of a more obscure figure if you discovered that they were the first to employ a particular device (I'm thinking, for example, of John Field's invention of the Nocturne).  It sounds from what you say that you intend your book to be, as well as a handbook on theory, a wide-ranging survey of composers great and small, which would indeed be a superhuman undertaking.

And Schoenberg possibly didn't include Canon and Fugue in his treatment of forms because they are not forms, but techniques.

Other than these minor points, I'm greatly impressed by your systematic approach, as well as the depth of your knowledge (sentential period - hmm, had to look that one up).  Now get writing, and keep us updated.

[Gurn Blanston]

Absolutely,  post away! Sounds like a worthwhile project and we will be keen to see it.

I don't blame you for not using Haydn,  he can be problematic,  since for every example you show of him following 'rules' can be instantly countered with one of him doing just the opposite.  Pesky geniuses... 😁

🤠

[caters]

Thanks for a most interesting post, and I wish you nothing but well in such an ambitious undertaking.  Just a few points below that I felt needed comments:

I'm sure you don't mean to suggest that medieval music was devoid of harmony and form - in the latter area, the virelai, rondeau and ballade are the most tightly-controlled (and clear to the ear) forms ever devised.  Perhaps you just mean that you don't feel yourself sufficiently knowledgeable to deal with these - which is quite understandable; you can't know everything.

Yeah, I didn't mean to say that it lacks harmony or form, it's just not where my expertise lies.

I can't see that you are going to miss much by not instancing the works of less well-known composers.  After all, one of the greatest books ever written about music theory, Charles Rosen's The Classical Style, deals with only three.  A perfect cadence in Krommer is much the same as one in Beethoven, and if Hummel has done something, you can bet Schubert has as well.  I imagine you would only need to quote from the work of a more obscure figure if you discovered that they were the first to employ a particular device (I'm thinking, for example, of John Field's invention of the Nocturne).  It sounds from what you say that you intend your book to be, as well as a handbook on theory, a wide-ranging survey of composers great and small, which would indeed be a superhuman undertaking.

I just figured that the more composers I have the better. Cause not every composer is going to do the same thing. For instance Bach uses the Picardy Third a lot but it's incredibly rare in Handel. And Beethoven uses more of what I'd call Parallel Key Switching, where it's prolonged and/or has a cadence in the parallel key and/or has the parallel key start after a cadence, vs Mode Mixture which is more of a chord by chord thing. So I figured I had to cover my bases and that's why I'm at currently 16 composers, these to be precise:

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Franz Joseph Haydn
• Ludwig van Beethoven
• Johann Sebastian Bach
• George Frederik Handel
• Frederic Chopin
• Franz Schubert
• Felix Mendelssohn
• Robert Schumann
• Clara Schumann
• Johannes Brahms
• Anton Bruckner
• Edvard Grieg
• Carl Maria von Weber
• Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• Antonio Vivaldi

On the other hand, having more than 100 or more than 1000 composers just because there are that many is too much, so I need to find that balance and I think I'm there by limiting the lesser well known to relatives, students, and spouses of the well known ones.

And Schoenberg possibly didn't include Canon and Fugue in his treatment of forms because they are not forms, but techniques.

I still think they deserve a mention when talking about form, especially the Fugue, cause the Fugue in a way does kind of resemble another form, Sonata Form, cause it also has an Exposition, Development, Recapitulation structure.

Other than these minor points, I'm greatly impressed by your systematic approach, as well as the depth of your knowledge (sentential period - hmm, had to look that one up).  Now get writing, and keep us updated.

Thanks, I definitely will keep you guys updated on this book.

[caters]

Absolutely,  post away! Sounds like a worthwhile project and we will be keen to see it.

I don't blame you for not using Haydn,  he can be problematic,  since for every example you show of him following 'rules' can be instantly countered with one of him doing just the opposite.  Pesky geniuses... 😁

🤠

Uh, did I ever say I wasn't using Haydn? Cause I am using Haydn, just not as much as Beethoven and Mozart. There's some charts showing what I have in terms of excerpt numbers from Classical Era composers(I put Beethoven in Classical Era, although I personally think of him as a Romantic from his Pathetique Sonata onwards, just so that I don't exclude Early Period Beethoven)




You can see that there's that point right around Plagal Function where my Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn examples are about equal in number. But then Mozart just shoots off at PAC and again at Harmonic and Melodic evasion. Beethoven doesn't really start catching up until you get to Applied Chords. Haydn, barely any change.