Music Theory Essentials offers an antidote to music theory textbooks that are overly long and dense. Focusing on the essentials, this text provides a clear-cut guide to the key concepts of music theory. Beginning with no assumptions about music theory knowledge, the book covers the core elements of music fundamentals, diatonic and chromatic harmony, post-tonal theory, and popular music in a single concise volume. Emphasizing critical thinking skills, this book guides students through conceptualizing musical concepts and mastering analytic techniques. Each chapter concludes with a selection of applications designed to enhance engagement: Exercises allow students to apply and practice the skills and techniques addressed in the chapter. Brain Teasers challenge students to expand their musical understanding by thinking outside the box. Exploring Music offers strategies for students to apply learned concepts to the music they are currently learning or listening to. Thinking Critically encourages students to think more deeply about music by solving problems and identifying and challenging assumptions. A companion website provides answers to book exercises, additional downloadable exercises, and audio examples. Straightforward and streamlined, Music Theory Essentials is a truly concise yet comprehensive introduction to music theory that is accessible to students of all backgrounds.

Harmony and voice leading is a textbook in two volumes dealing with tonal organization in the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Comprehensive Aural Skills is a complete suite of material for both performance and dictation, covering the wide range of sight singing and ear training skills required for undergraduate courses of study. It provides a series of instructional modules on rhythm, melody, and harmony, and blends musical examples from the common-practice repertory with original examples composed to specifically address particular skills and concepts. Each module includes material for classroom performance, self-directed study, and homework assignments. Features A complete suite of aural skills material: Comprehensive Aural Skills is a combined sight singing and ear training textbook, audio, and companion website package. Fully modular, customizable organization: Instructors can choose freely from the set of exercises in the book and supplemental material on the companion website to appropriately tailor the curriculum based on their students’ needs. Engaging and idiomatic musical examples: Examples are selected and composed specifically for the didactic context of an aural skills classroom. Dictation exercises for practice and assignment: Practice exercises include an answer key so students can work independently and receive immediate feedback, while homework assignments are given without a key. Audio examples for dictation: The website hosts live recordings of acoustic instruments performed by professional musicians for each dictation exercise and homework assignment. Supplemental Materials for Instructors: A wealth of material for class use and assignment can be found on the companion website. Teachers Guide: The guide includes answers for every homework assignment, brief commentary on each module’s content, tips for integrating written theory, and strategies on how to effectively teach new concepts and skills. The companion website for Comprehensive Aural Skills includes a wealth of additional examples in all areas of aural skills and at every level of difficulty represented in the text. Students have access to additional dictation examples with recordings and answer keys, allowing them to directly reinforce their classroom experience and practice dictation on their own time.

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.

Tonal Harmony with an Introduction to 20th-Century Music is intended for a two-year course in music theory/harmony. It offers a clear and thorough introduction to the resources and practice of Western music from the 17th century to the present day. Its concise, one-volume format and flexible approach make the book usable in a broad range of theory curricula. The text provides students with a comprehensive but accessible and highly practical set of tools for the understanding of music. Actual musical practice is emphasized more than rules or prohibitions. Principles are explained and illustrated, and exceptions are noted. In its presentation of harmonic procedures, the text introduces students to the most common vocal and instrumental textures encountered in tonal music. Traditional four-part chorale settings are used to introduce many concepts, but three-part instrumental and vocal textures are also presented in illustrations and drill work, along with a variety of keyboard styles. To encourage the correlation of writing and performing skills, we have included musical examples in score and reduced-score formats as well as charts on instrumental ranges and transpositions. Some of the assignments ask the student to write for small ensembles suitable for performance in class. Instructors may modify these assignments to make them most appropriate for their particular situations. - Preface.

This is a preassembled package of Concise Introduction to Tonal Harmony (978-0-393-41719-7) and Concise Introduction to Tonal Harmony Workbook (978-0-393-41703-6). Concise Introduction to Tonal Harmony has successfully introduced thousands of students to music theory, and its accompanying workbook provides your students the practice they need to master music theory.