Reviews for Harmony, melody & composition

The average rating for Harmony, melody & composition based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-06-09 00:00:00 Hirotsugu Fukuchi Although Schoenberg is primarily known for his atonal 12 tone row compositions, he is able to set that aside in order to provide the reader with a wealth of information to explore and digest. Using the Beethoven piano sonatas as the primary means of analysis, he explores all of the levels of composition, from the simple Phase and Motive, up to the larger compositional forms. It should be noted that there are numerous examples throughout the book that aren't based on Beethoven's sonatas, and prove to be quite interesting. This is not a "how to" book on Composition, but it does provide the student with a means in which to begin exploring the discipline. His experience as a teacher comes through in his presentation, though it is often dull and to the point. My main complaint about the book is that the musical examples and the corresponding analysis are often separated by several pages, thus forcing the reader to keep flipping back and forth. It would have been nice to have the analysis either above or below the examples so that the reader could concentrate on the task at hand instead of needles page turning. Overall this is a decent introduction to the fundamentals of composition and would be a welcome addition to any composer's library.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-01-18 00:00:00 Kilim Choi While there is definitely a lot to be learned from this book, it won't suffice just reading it. Playing or listening to the examples and analysing them (within the context of the work and by putting thought into it) is crucial to get the most out of it. The main focus of the author are van Beethoven's piano sonatas, although he does draw from other common practice repertoire in order to illustrate approaches to writing themes and to explain forms. I would, however, not recommend taking anything as gospel; The claim, for example, that the inversion, retrograde and retrograde inversion of a theme are considered "exact repetitions" of a motive is ridiculous, especially as the author defines exact repetitions as those preserving all features, which would imply that direction of melodic movement and orientation are of no relevance.