Tonal music book review

Are you a music lover, I don’t want to ask you if you like music, almost everyone loves it and almost everyone has specific tastes, but there is more to music than just listening. Maybe you want to know more about its structure, and how to analyze it? If so, let me recommend a very good book:

“Form in Tonal Music” by Douglas M. Green; Holt, Rinehart and Winston Publishing Company Incorporated; New York, NY; 1965; ISBN: 0-03-46015-7.

This book eliminates the confusion of the typical study of musical analysis, as it simplifies the disciplines of harmony and counterpoint, allowing the student to understand how to build without overloading with historical music tunes and famous names. Knowing the music without confusion first is the aim of this book, and therefore, it is perhaps a good first reading, before analyzing the music from a historical point of view. I think I would recommend it to almost any serious music student.

The book contains chapters on the basics of sentence form, form, gender, and harmonic structure, as well as sentence development and combination. Next, the book, which is written in the style of a textbook, discusses the various analytical methodologies. The student will learn the variations, the ternary forms, the rondo, the sonata (very complete) and the binary forms.

Concerto movement, fugue and similar genres are discussed, and then there is a final chapter, which is very fascinating, even proving that Green really knows his stuff, as he touches on the unique forms of structure. You’ll be fascinated by the amount of information and the ways you can apply that knowledge when you’re done.