The Piece as a Whole: Studies in Holistic Musical Analysis

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Designed to serve music students at the college level, this informal approach to music theory relates the technical aspects of music with the expressive character of the art. The approach is holistic in the sense that it focuses on the inter-relationships between the piece as heard by a socially conditioned listener and the notated, performed score. The composers addressed are: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Debussy and Schoenberg. There are separate chapters on the problems of meaning in music and on the interdependence of aesthetic and ethical value-judgements. This approach to music theory should be a welcome addition to the musical analysis literature.

Author Bio

HUGH AITKEN recently retired as Professor of Music at The William Paterson College of New Jersey. He studied composition at The Juilliard School and taught there from 1950 to 1970. He is the composer of over eighty works. His publishers include Oxford University Press, Theodore Presser Co., and ECS Music.