Description
Book SynopsisHow do you tell the key of a piecewithout looking at a score? How do you know when a musical work ended before an audience applauds or a radio announcer returns on air? Was there, in fact, a breakdown of tonality' in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? These questions and others are the focus of David Wulstan's Listen Again: A New History of Music. He also shows where the nuove musiche of the early Baroque era came from and what the two critical but unlinked chords in the middle of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. III signify.Previous literature in music does not properly address these questions and innumerable others. In Listen Again, Wulstan illustrates how music from Bach to Bartók was far less revolutionary than customarily imagined and that the inversionist doctrine of Rameau and kindred acoustical misconceptions, courtesy of Heinrich Schenker and other analysts, solve fewer problems than their purveyor claim. In Listen Again, Wulstan takes to task early theorists, who were mos
Trade ReviewIn his previous books, Wulstan focused on early music, but more recently, he has contributed to his oeuvre by demonstrating his knowledge of musical theory from the Middle Ages to the present. As he admits, Listen Again is not a ‘bedtime book’; it is a volume for those interested in pondering well-crafted analysis of music and its historical value. The author writes that he has sought to ‘cover most of the ground in regard to European music from the earliest times of which we have any real knowledge and to determine the mechanisms of tonality from a historical point of view.’ The book provides a number of opportunities to consider senescent ideas, such as modal versus tonal music, in a new light. Immediately following the introduction is a useful glossary of technical terminology the author uses—e.g., superdominant as opposed to submediant. . . .Listen Again is likely to inspire some interesting discussions among students with a foundation in music history and theory. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * CHOICE *
Wustan presents a tantalizing and absolutely compelling argument.... Recommended. * The Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians *
Table of ContentsForeword Acknowledgments Introduction Permissions Chapter 1: Some Matters of Terminology and Other Preliminaries Chapter 2: The Recognition of Key Chapter 3: Tonal Balance and Minor Tonality: The Use of Sequences; dissonance Chapter 4: The Rule of the Octave: Harmony and Rhythm Chapter 5: The Enhanced Tonic: Fugal Technique and Tonality Chapter 6: Complex Key Chapter 7: The Classical Style, Part I Chapter 8: The Classical Style, Part II Chapter 9: Classical to Romantic: Beethoven and Schubert Chapter 10: The Romantic Era, Part I: Chopin, Brahms and Mendelssohn Chapter 11: The Romantic Era, Part II: The Age of Wagner Chapter 12: The Perception of Music Chapter 13: The Twentieth Century, Part I: The Palette of Debussy Chapter 14: The Twentieth Century, Part II: Themes and Theories in the Music of Stravinsky and Some Other Composers Chapter 15:The Twentieth Century, Part III: Techniques and Treatises – Bartók, Hindemith, and Others Chapter 16: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Chapter 17: Two Cultures Chapter 18: Mediæval to Renaissance Chapter 19: Renaissance to Baroque Chapter 20: Back to the Future
