This indispensable handbook explains how scholars and students should work with and think about the composer's working manuscripts.

This introduction provides students and scholars with the information and skills they need when studying composers' sketches.

The term 'music sketch' relates to the vast variety of documents that are used by composers to work out a musical technique or idea and to prepare their work for performance or publication. These documents can often provide crucial insights into authorship, biography, editorial practice and musical analysis. This introduction provides students and scholars with the knowledge and skills they need to embark on research projects involving the study of composers' working documents. Presenting examples of the compositional process over a 400-year period, it includes a selection of detailed case studies on how sketches were created and the techniques that were used, such as transcription and the sorting of loose leaves. Numerous illustrations of manuscripts and autographs, many of which have never been published before, show how these vital documents can be used to better understand compositional processes.

How is it possible to talk or write about music? What is the link between graphic signs and music? What makes music meaningful? In this book, distinguished scholar Leo Treitler explores the relationships among language, musical notation, performance, compositional practice, and patterns of culture in the presentation and representation of music. Treitler engages a wide variety of historical sources to discuss works from medieval plainchant to Berg's opera Lulu and a range of music in between.