Joseph N. Straus - Böcker

Carl Schachter is the world's leading practitioner of Schenkerian theory and analysis. His articles and books have been broadly influential, and are seen by many as models of musical insight and lucid prose. Yet, perhaps his greatest impact has been felt in the classroom. At the Mannes College of Music, the Juilliard School of Music, Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and at special pedagogical events around the world, he has taught generations of musical performers, composers, historians, and theorists over the course of his long career. In Fall 2012, Schachter taught a doctoral seminar at the CUNY Graduate Center in which he talked about the music and the musical issues that have concerned him most deeply; the course was in essence a summation of his extensive and renowned teaching. In The Art of Tonal Analysis, music theorist Joseph Straus presents edited transcripts of those lectures. Accompanied by abundant music examples, including analytical examples transcribed from the classroom blackboard, Straus's own visualizations of material that Schachter presented aurally at the piano, and Schachter's own extended Schenkerian graphs and sketches, this book offers a vivid account of Schachter's masterful pedagogy and his deep insight into the central works of the tonal canon. In making the lectures of one of the world's most extraordinary musicians and musical thinkers available to a wide audience, The Art of Tonal Analysis is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of music.

Preeminent music theorist and leader in the study of music and disability Joseph Straus presents a truly groundbreaking take on musical modernism--demonstrating in an expansive and vivid multimedia presentation that modernist music is inextricably entwined with attitudes toward disability. In Broken Beauty, Straus argues that the most characteristic features of musical modernism--fractured forms, immobilized harmonies, conflicting textural layers, radical simplification of means in some cases, and radical complexity and hermeticism in others--can be understood as musical depictions of disability conditions, including deformity/disfigurement, mobility impairment, madness, idiocy, and autism. Against the traditional medical model of disability, which sees it as a bodily defect requiring diagnosis and normalization or cure, this new sociocultural model of disability sees it as cultural artifact, something that is created by and creates culture. Straus places this revised model of disability against a wide range of canonical, high-art concert music from the first decades of the century through the 1950s. Broken Beauty illustrates how disability is right at the core of musical modernism; it is one of the things that musical modernism is fundamentally about.

Carl Schachter is the world's leading practitioner of Schenkerian theory and analysis. His articles and books have been broadly influential, and are seen by many as models of musical insight and lucid prose. Yet, perhaps his greatest impact has been felt in the classroom. At the Mannes College of Music, the Juilliard School of Music, Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and at special pedagogical events around the world, he has taught generations of musical performers, composers, historians, and theorists over the course of his long career. In Fall 2012, Schachter taught a doctoral seminar at the CUNY Graduate Center in which he talked about the music and the musical issues that have concerned him most deeply; the course was in essence a summation of his extensive and renowned teaching. In The Art of Tonal Analysis, winner of the Society for Music Theory's 2017 Citation of Special Merit, music theorist Joseph Straus presents edited transcripts of those lectures. Accompanied by abundant music examples, including analytical examples transcribed from the classroom blackboard, Straus's own visualizations of material that Schachter presented aurally at the piano, and Schachter's own extended Schenkerian graphs and sketches, this book offers a vivid account of Schachter's masterful pedagogy and his deep insight into the central works of the tonal canon. In making the lectures of one of the world's most extraordinary musicians and musical thinkers available to a wide audience, The Art of Tonal Analysis is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of music.

Carl Schachter is, by common consent, one of the three or four most important music theorists currently at work in North America. He is the preeminent practitioner in the world of the Schenkerian approach to the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which focuses on the linear organization of music and now dominates discussions of the standard repertoire in university courses and in professional journals. His articles have appeared in a variety of journals, including some that are obscure or hard to obtain. This volume gathers some of his finest essays, including those on rhythm in tonal music, Schenkerian theory, and text setting, as well as a pair of analytical monographs, on Bach's Fugue in B-flat major from Volume 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier and Chopin's Fantasy, Op. 49.

Carl Schachter is, by common consent, one of the three or four most important music theorists currently at work in North America. He is the preeminent practitioner in the world of the Schenkerian approach to the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which focuses on the linear organization of music and now dominates discussions of the standard repertoire in university courses and in professional journals. His articles have appeared in a variety of journals, including some that are obscure or hard to obtain. This volume gathers some of his finest essays, including those on rhythm in tonal music, Schenkerian theory, and text setting, as well as a pair of analytical monographs, on Bach's Fugue in B-flat major from Volume 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier and Chopin's Fantasy, Op. 49.

Elements of Music, Fourth Edition, is an introduction to music fundamentals for music majors and non-majors. Organized into brief, digestible, self-contained lessons, each of which is followed by exercises and in-class activities, the text offers instructors flexibility in how they teach music fundamentals. Unmatched concision and clarity make learning fundamentals simple. Throughout the text, a core repertoire introduces students to fundamental concepts, helping students connect fundamentals to music they enjoy. And with the new Oxford fourth edition, the text offers more resources than ever for students to complete fundamentals work online.

The Art of Post-Tonal Analysis consists of analyses of thirty-three musical passages or entire short works in a variety of post-tonal styles. For each piece author Joseph N. Straus shows how it is put together and what sense might be made of it: how the music goes. Along the way, he shows the value of post-tonal theory in addressing these questions, and in revealing something of the fascination and beauty of this music. The works under study are taken from throughout the long twentieth century, from 1909 to the present. Within the atonal wing of modern classical music, the composers discussed here, some canonical and some not, represent a diversity of musical style, chronology, geography, gender, and race/ethnicity. Musical examples, plus a companion website full of analytical videos, carry the burden of the analytical argument, with rarely more than a few sentences of prose at a time. In writing these analyses, Straus imagined teaching these pieces to a class of undergraduate or graduate students, seated at the piano, pointing at score, listening as they go--the book is intended as a record of these (hypothetical) classes. His approach could be loosely described as transformational, rooted in an interest in seeing how musical ideas (shapes, intervals, motives) grow, change, and effloresce. When musical ideas are obviously dissimilar and possibly in conflict, the book teases out subtle points of connection between them. Above all, the book aims to create rich networks of relatedness, allowing our musical minds and musical ears to lead each other along some of the many enjoyable pathways through this challenging and beautiful music.

The Art of Post-Tonal Analysis consists of analyses of thirty-three musical passages or entire short works in a variety of post-tonal styles. For each piece author Joseph N. Straus shows how it is put together and what sense might be made of it: how the music goes. Along the way, he shows the value of post-tonal theory in addressing these questions, and in revealing something of the fascination and beauty of this music. The works under study are taken from throughout the long twentieth century, from 1909 to the present. Within the atonal wing of modern classical music, the composers discussed here, some canonical and some not, represent a diversity of musical style, chronology, geography, gender, and race/ethnicity. Musical examples, plus a companion website full of analytical videos, carry the burden of the analytical argument, with rarely more than a few sentences of prose at a time. In writing these analyses, Straus imagined teaching these pieces to a class of undergraduate or graduate students, seated at the piano, pointing at score, listening as they go--the book is intended as a record of these (hypothetical) classes. His approach could be loosely described as transformational, rooted in an interest in seeing how musical ideas (shapes, intervals, motives) grow, change, and effloresce. When musical ideas are obviously dissimilar and possibly in conflict, the book teases out subtle points of connection between them. Above all, the book aims to create rich networks of relatedness, allowing our musical minds and musical ears to lead each other along some of the many enjoyable pathways through this challenging and beautiful music.

Approaching disability as a cultural construction rather than a medical pathology, this book studies the impact of disability and concepts of disability on composers, performers, and listeners with disabilities, as well as on discourse about music and works of music themselves. For composers with disabilities--like Beethoven, Delius, and Schumann--awareness of the disability sharply inflects critical reception. For performers with disabilities--such as Itzhak Perlman and Evelyn Glennie--the performance of disability and the performance of music are deeply intertwined. For listeners with disabilities, extraordinary bodies and minds may give rise to new ways of making sense of music. In the stories that people tell about music, and in the stories that music itself tells, disability has long played a central but unrecognized role. Some of these stories are narratives of overcoming-the triumph of the human spirit over adversity-but others are more nuanced tales of accommodation and acceptance of life with a non-normative body or mind. In all of these ways, music both reflects and constructs disability.

Approaching disability as a cultural construction rather than a medical pathology, this book studies the impact of disability and concepts of disability on composers, performers, and listeners with disabilities, as well as on discourse about music and works of music themselves. For composers with disabilities--like Beethoven, Delius, and Schumann--awareness of the disability sharply inflects critical reception. For performers with disabilities--such as Itzhak Perlman and Evelyn Glennie--the performance of disability and the performance of music are deeply intertwined. For listeners with disabilities, extraordinary bodies and minds may give rise to new ways of making sense of music. In the stories that people tell about music, and in the stories that music itself tells, disability has long played a central but unrecognized role. Some of these stories are narratives of overcoming-the triumph of the human spirit over adversity-but others are more nuanced tales of accommodation and acceptance of life with a non-normative body or mind. In all of these ways, music both reflects and constructs disability.

Concise Introduction to Tonal Harmony has successfully introduced thousands of students to music theory. With the new Second Edition, Burstein and Straus have made the text better than ever by listening to professors and students and adding new coverage of post-tonal theory and more opportunities for music analysis. The text includes Norton’s Know It? Show It! online pedagogy, which has been proven to help students develop theory skills.

This book is the first full-length analytical study of the music of Ruth Crawford Seeger. Crawford was a pivotal figure in the American avant-garde, the so-called 'ultra-modern' movement of the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to her historical significance, as part of the first generation of American composers to step out from the shadow of European models, her music deserves attention for its original and compelling structures and its expressive power. Crawford created new ways of writing melodies, of combining them in heterogeneous juxtaposition, of projecting musical ideas over the largest spans of time, and of structuring rhythm and dynamics alongside pitch. In her innovative musical language, Crawford wrote a small handful of works that should now take their rightful place in the musical modernist canon.

This book is the first to be devoted to the music of Stravinsky's last compositional period. In the early 1950s, Stravinsky's compositional style began to change and evolve with astonishing rapidity. He abandoned the musical neoclassicism to which he had been committed for the preceding three decades and, with the stimulus provided by his newly gained knowledge of the music of Schoenberg and Webern, launched himself on a remarkable voyage of compositional discovery. The book focuses on five historical, analytical, and interpretive issues: Stravinsky's relationship to his serial predecessors and contemporaries; his compositional process; the problem of creating formal continuity in a repertoire so obviously discontinuous in so many ways; the problem of writing serial harmony; and the problem of expression and meaning. Challenging conventional interpretations, the book shows that Stravinsky's serial music is not only of great historical significance, but also of astonishing structural originality and emotional power.

Most histories of American music have ignored the presence of twelve-tone music before and during the Second World War, and virtually all have ignored its presence after 1970, even though so many major composers continued (and continue) to compose serially. This book provides a comprehensive history of twelve-tone music in America, and compels a revised picture of American music since 1925 as a dynamic steady-state within which twelve-tone serialism has long been, and still remains, a persistent presence: a vigorous and unbroken tradition for more than eighty years. Straus outlines how, instead of a rigid orthodoxy, American twelve-tone music is actually a flexible, loosely-knit cultural practice. The book provides close readings of thirty-seven American twelve-tone works by composers including Copland, Babbitt, Stravinsky and Carter, among many others, who represent a typically American diversity of background and life circumstances, and strips away the many myths surrounding twelve-tone music in America.

Like his compositions, Milton Babbitt's writings about music have exerted an extraordinary influence on postwar music and thinking about music. In essays and public addresses spanning fifty years, Babbitt has grappled profoundly with central questions in the composition and apprehension of music. These writings range from personal memoirs and critical reviews to closely reasoned metatheoretical speculations and technical exegesis. In the history of music theory, there has been only a small handful of figures who have produced work of comparable stature. Taken as a whole, Babbitt's writings are not only an invaluable testimony to his thinking--a priceless primary source for the intellectual and cultural history of the second half of the twentieth century--but also a remarkable achievement in their own right. Prior to this collection, Babbitt's writings were scattered through a wide variety of journals, books, and magazines--many hard to find and some unavailable--and often contained typographical errors and editorial corruptions of various kinds. This volume of almost fifty pieces gathers, corrects, and annotates virtually everything of significance that Babbitt has written.The result is complete, authoritative, and fully accessible--the definitive source of Babbitt's influential ideas.

Most histories of American music have ignored the presence of twelve-tone music before and during the Second World War, and virtually all have ignored its presence after 1970, even though so many major composers continued (and continue) to compose serially. This book provides a comprehensive history of twelve-tone music in America, and compels a revised picture of American music since 1925 as a dynamic steady-state within which twelve-tone serialism has long been, and still remains, a persistent presence: a vigorous and unbroken tradition for more than eighty years. Straus outlines how, instead of a rigid orthodoxy, American twelve-tone music is actually a flexible, loosely-knit cultural practice. The book provides close readings of thirty-seven American twelve-tone works by composers including Copland, Babbitt, Stravinsky and Carter, among many others, who represent a typically American diversity of background and life circumstances, and strips away the many myths surrounding twelve-tone music in America.

Now published by Norton, Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory has been thoroughly updated to reflect the latest developments in the field, with additional coverage of transformational theory and voice leading. The Fourth Edition helps students identify key theoretical points and guides them through the process of analysis, while also offering new recently composed musical examples—all at an exceptional value.

Written by master teachers Poundie Burstein and Joe Straus, the workbook that accompanies Concise Introduction to Tonal Harmony, Third Edition, provides your students the practice they need to master music theory. The workbook contains hundreds of exercises—more than could ever be assigned in any one class—offering you the flexibility to construct assignments that best meet the needs of your students. The Third Edition has been revised with new exercises based on new selections in the Third Edition .

Successfully used by thousands of students at hundreds of schools, Concise Introduction to Tonal Harmony represents a tested, concise approach to the tonal harmony textbook. The text introduces all the topics typically covered in the undergraduate theory sequence—fundamentals, diatonic and chromatic harmony, form, and post-tonal theory—but the focus is on carefully annotated notated musical examples rather than lengthy prose explanations of rules and exceptions, and engaging online tools help students build skills. This is a text your students will be able to read and comprehend, freeing up class time for enriching discussions and activities.Burstein and Straus—both experienced classroom teachers—illustrate concepts using a repertoire of music from a diverse range of composers in the Western tradition. The Third Edition increases the diversity of the selections with new pieces by J. Rosamond Johnson, Eva Jessye, Tania Léon, and more historically marginalized composers. Additionally, you can more easily incorporate jazz and popular music into your course with new teaching resources and worksheets on jazz and popular music topics.