Carl Dahlhaus was without doubt the premier musicologist of the postwar generation, a giant whose recent death was mourned the world over. Translated here for the first time, this fundamental work on the development of tonality shows his complete mastery of the theory of harmony. In it Dahlhaus explains the modern concepts of harmony and tonality, reviewing in the process the important theories of Rameau, Sechter, Ftis, Riemann, and Schenker. He contrasts the familiar premises of chordal composition with the lesser known precepts of intervallic composition, the basis for polyphonic music in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Numerous quotations from theoretical treatises document how early music was driven forward not by progressions of chords but by simple progressions of intervals. Exactly when did composers transform intervallic composition into chordal composition? Modality into tonality? Dahlhaus provides extensive analyses of motets by Josquin, frottole by Cara and Tromboncino, and madrigals by Monteverdi to demonstrate how, and to what degree, such questions can be answered. In his bold speculations, in his magisterial summaries, in his command of eight centuries of music and writings on music, and in his deep understanding of European history and culture, Carl Dahlhaus sets a standard that will seldom be equalled. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

For centuries, the augmented sixth sonority has fascinated composers and intrigued music analysts. Here, Dr Mark Ellis presents a series of musical examples illustrating the 'evolution' of the augmented sixth and the changing contexts in which it can be found. Surprisingly, the sonority emerged from one of the last remnants of modal counterpoint to survive into the tonal era: the Phrygian Cadence. In the Baroque period, the 'terrible dissonance' was nearly always associated with negative textual imagery. Charpentier described the augmented sixth as 'poignantly expressive'. J. S. Bach considered an occurrence of the chord in one of his forebear's motets 'remarkably bold'. During Bach's composing lifetime, the augmented sixth evolved from a relatively rare chromaticism to an almost commonplace element within the tonal spectrum; the chord reflects particular chronological and stylistic strata in his music. Theorists began cautiously to accept the chord, but its inversional possibilities proved particularly contentious, as commentaries by writers as diverse as Muffat, Marpurg and Rousseau reveal. During the eighteenth century, the augmented sixth became increasingly significant in instrumental repertoires - it was perhaps Vivaldi who first liberated the chord from its negative textual associations. By the later eighteenth century, the chord began to function almost as a 'signpost' to indicate important structural boundaries within sonata form. The chord did not, however, entirely lose its darker undertone: it signifies, for example, the theme of revenge in Mozart's Don Giovanni. Romantic composers uncovered far-reaching tonal ambiguities inherent in the augmented sixth. Chopin's Nocturnes often seem beguilingly simple, but the surface tranquillity masks the composer's strikingly original harmonic experiments. Wagner's much-analyzed 'Tristan Chord' resolves (according to some theorists) on an augmented sixth. In Tristan und Isolde, the chord's mercurial

In Music in the Mirror, thirteen distinguished scholars explore the concept of music, music theory, and music literature as mirror images of one another?whether real or distorted. Encompassing the history of music and music theory and literature from the Middle Ages to the present, these essays, in their reconsideration of the relationships among music, theory, and literature, offer new approaches and articulate compelling visions for future research.

The Hungarian composer György Ligeti (1923-2006) was one of the most innovative and influential composers of the last 50 years. Ligeti reached his creative maturity in the 1970s and 1980s. This book focuses on how Ligeti's compositional style completely transformed during and after the composition of his only opera Le Grand Macabre (1974-77).

This is a thorough-going study of Monteverdi's Vespers, the single most significant and most widely known musical print from before the time of J.S. Bach. The author examines Monteverdi's Vespers from multiple perspectives, combining his own research with all that is known and thought of the Vespers by other scholars. The historical origin as well as the musical and liturgical context of the Vespers are surveyed; similarly the controversial historiography of the Vespers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is scrutinized and evaluated. A series of analytical chapters attempt to clarify Monteverdi's compositional process and the relationship between music and text in the light of recent research on modal and tonal aspects of early seventeenth century music. The final section is devoted to thirteen chapters investigating performance practice issues of the early seventeenth century and their application to the Vespers, including general and specific recommendations for performance where appropriate. The book concludes with a series of informational appendices, including the psalm cursus for Vespers of all major feasts in the liturgical calendar, texts, and structural outlines for the Vespers compositions based on a cantus firmus, an analytical discography, and bibliographies of seventeenth-century musical and theoretical sources.

The question of tonality's origins in music's pitch content has long vexed many scholars of music theory. However, tonality is not ultimately defined by pitch alone, but rather by pitch's interaction with elements like rhythm, meter, phrase structure, and form. Hearing Homophony investigates the elusive early history of tonality by examining a constellation of late-Renaissance popular songs which flourished throughout Western Europe at the turn of the seventeenth century. Megan Kaes Long argues that it is in these songs, rather than in more ambitious secular and sacred works, that the foundations of eighteenth century style are found. Arguing that tonality emerges from features of modal counterpoint - in particular, the rhythmic, phrase structural, and formal processes that govern it - and drawing on the arguments of theorists such as Dahlhaus, Powers, and Barnett, she asserts that modality and tonality are different in kind and not mutually exclusive. Using several hundred homophonic partsongs from Italy, Germany, England, and France, Long addresses a historical question of critical importance to music theory, musicology, and music performance. Hearing Homophony presents not only a new model of tonality's origins, but also a more comprehensive understanding of what tonality is, providing novel insight into the challenging world of seventeenth-century music.