Understanding Post-Tonal Music

Understanding Post-Tonal Music explores the compositional and musical processes of twentieth-century post-tonal music. The book is intended for undergraduate or general graduate courses on the theory and analysis of twentieth-century music. The aim of the book is to increase the accessibility of post-tonal music by providing students with tools for understanding issues like pitch organization, rhythm and meter, form, texture, and aesthetics. By presenting the music first and then deriving the theory, Understanding Post-Tonal Music leads students to greater understanding and appreciation of this challenging and important repertoire.

About the Author Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: An Overview of Twentieth-Century Compositional Styles 1. Pitch Centricity and Composition with Motivic Cells 2. Pitch Centricity and Symmetry 3. Introduction to Pitch-Class Set Theory 4. Analyzing Atonal Music 5. Drawing on (and Reinterpreting) the Past … 6. … And Inventing the Future 7. Twelve-Tone Music I: An Introduction 8. Twelve-Tone Music II: Invariance, Symmetry, and Combinatoriality 9. Serialism: Developments after 1945 10. Expanding the Limits of Musical Temporality 11. Aleatory Music, Sound Mass, and Beyond 12. Where Past and Future Meet … 13. Simplifying Means 14. Into the Twenty-First Century Epilogue Appendix: The List of Set Classes Bibliography Acknowledgment of Sources Musical Example Index Subject index

Miguel A. Roig-Francolí is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.