This book studies recent music in the western classical tradition, offering a critique of current analytical/theoretical approaches and proposing alternatives. The critique addresses the present fringe status of recent music sometimes described as crossover, postmodern, post-classical, post-minimalist, etc. and demonstrates that existing descriptive languages and analytical approaches do not provide adequate tools to address this music in positive and productive terms. Existing tools and concepts were developed primarily in the mid-20th century in tandem with the high modernist compositional aesthetic, and they have changed little since then. The aesthetics of music composition, on the other hand, have been in constant transformation. Lochhead proposes new ways to conceive musical works, their structurings of musical experience and time, and the procedures and goals of analytic close reading. These tools define investigative procedures that engage the multiple perspectives of composers, performers, and listeners, and that generate conceptual modes unique to each work. In action, they rebuild a conceptual, methodological, and experiential place for recent music. These new approaches are demonstrated in analyses of four pieces: Kaija Saariaho’s Lonh (1996), Sofia Gubaidulina’s Second String Quartet (1987), Stacy Garrop’s String Quartet no.2, Demons and Angels (2004-05), and Anna Clyne’s "Choke" (2004). This book defies the prediction of classical music’s death, and will be of interest to scholars and musicians of classical music, and those interested in music theory, musicology, and aural culture.

This book studies recent music in the western classical tradition, offering a critique of current analytical/theoretical approaches and proposing alternatives. It addresses the fringe status of recent music and demonstrates that existing descriptive languages and analytical approaches don't provide adequate tools to address it in productive terms. Lochhead offers new ways to conceive works, their structurings of musical experience and time, and the procedures and goals of analytic close reading, defining tools that engage the perspectives of composers, performers, and listeners. This book will be of interest to scholars of classical music, and music theory, musicology, and aural culture.

This book studies George Crumb’s The Winds of Destiny (2004) and Black Angels (1970) as artifacts of collective memory and cultural trauma. It situates these two pieces in Crumb’s output and unpacks the complex methodologies needed to understand these pieces as contributions and challenges to traditional narratives of the Civil War and the Vietnam War. The Winds of Destiny is shown to be a critical commentary on the legacy of American wars and militarism, both concepts crucial to American identity. The Winds of Destiny also acts as an ironic war memorial as a means of critiquing such concepts. Black Angels has long been associated with the Vietnam War. This book shows how this association began and how it endures through connections to iconic Vietnam War media, including films and books. Together these analyses show the legacy of trauma in American collective memory, which is in a continuous crisis. Crumb’s musical critiques point to a need to resist conventional narratives and to begin to heal trauma on a collective level. This book will be of interest to students of contemporary American music, American studies, and memory studies. It benefits readers by newly situating Crumb’s music within these three fields of study.

Understanding Post-Tonal Music is a student-centered textbook that explores the compositional and musical processes of twentieth-century post-tonal music. Intended for undergraduate or general graduate courses on the theory and analysis of twentieth-century music, this book will increase the accessibility of post-tonal music by providing students with tools for understanding 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. The updated second edition includes new "Explorations" features that guide students to engage with pieces through listening and a process of exploration, discovery, and discussion; a new chapter covering electronic, computer, and spectral musics; and additional coverage of music from the twenty-first century and recent trends. The text has been revised throughout to enhance clarity, both by streamlining the prose and by providing a visual format more accessible to the student.

Materials and Techniques of Post-Tonal Music, Fifth Edition provides the most comprehensive introduction to post-tonal music and its analysis available. Covering music from the end of the nineteenth century through the beginning of the twenty-first, it offers students a clear guide to understanding the diverse and innovative compositional strategies that emerged in the post-tonal era, from Impressionism to computer music. This updated fifth edition features: chapters revised throughout to include new examples from recent music and insights from the latest scholarship; the introduction of several new concepts and topics, including parsimonius voice-leading, scalar transformations, the New Complexity, and set theory in less chromatic contexts; expanded discussions of spectralism and electronic music; timelines in each chapter, grounding the music discussed in its chronological context; a companion website that provides students with links to recordings of musical examples discussed in the text and provides instructors with an instructor’s manual that covers all of the exercises in each chapter. Offering accessible explanations of complex concepts, Materials and Techniques of Post-Tonal Music, Fifth Edition is an essential text for all students of post-tonal music theory.

Music Theory has a lot of ground to cover. Especially in introductory classes a whole range of fundamental concepts are introduced at fast pace that can never be explored in depth or detail, as other new topics become more pressing. The short time we spend with them in the classroom belies the complexity (and, in many cases, the contradictions) underlying these concepts. This book takes the time to tarry over these complexities, probe the philosophical assumptions on which these concepts rest, and shine a light on all their iridescent facets. This book presents music-theoretical concepts as a register of key terms progressing outwards from smallest detail to discussions of the music-theoretical project on the largest scale. The approaches individual authors take range from philosophical, historical, or analytical to systematic, cognitive, and critical-theorical-covering the whole diverse spectrum of contemporary music theory. In some cases authors explore concepts that have not yet been widely added to the theorist's toolkit but deserve to be included; in other cases concepts are expanded beyond their core repertory of application. This collection does not shy away from controversy. Taken in their entirety, the essays underline that music theory is on the move, exploring new questions, new repertories, and new approaches. This collection is an invitation to take stock of music theory in the early twenty-first century, to look back and to encourage discussion about its future directions. Its chapters open up a panoramic view of the contemporary music-theoretical landscape with its expanding repertories and changing guiding questions, and offers suggestions as to where music theory is headed in years to come.

"This book consists of analyses of thirty-three musical passages or entire short works in a variety of post-tonal styles. 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. Composers studied include Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Bartok, Stravinsky, Copland, Crawford-Seeger, Babbitt, Dallapiccola, Carter, Louise Talma, Hale Smith, Elisabeth Lutyens, Ursula Mamlok, Tania León, Tan Dun, Shulamit Ran, Kaija Saariaho, Joan Tower, John Adams, Sofia Gubaidulina, Thomas Adès, Caroline Shaw, Chen Yi, and Suzanne Farrin. The approach is pedagogical, in the somewhat informal style of a classroom. Musical examples and analytical videos carry the burden of the analytical argument, with relatively little prose. For each piece, the book suggests ways of making sense of the music, using basic concepts of post-tonal theory to tease out rich networks of musical relationships and reveal something of the fascination and beauty of this challenging music"--