Comprehensive Musical Analysis

Now available in paperback! Evolved from the author's widely used book, The Analysis of Music (Prentice-Hall, 1975; 2nd. ed. Scarecrow Press, 1984), Comprehensive Music Analysis is a guide for acquiring the tools of musical analysis, skills which are essential to every serious musician and musical scholar. The new volume presents material on Heinrich Schenker and reductive linear analysis and additional material on set theoretical analysis. White's theoretical writing is characterized by logic of methodology, clarity of organization, and lucidity of prose. It should be eagerly received by theorists seeking a comprehensive view of current methodology.White's approach to current theoretical dogma is not uncritical. As Gerald Warfield (General Editor of the recent English translation of Schenker's Der Freie Satz) says in his Preface to White's new book,...we begin to glimpse a powerful tool which does not exist in any single school of theory or musicology, but which draws upon any and all nethodologies as required by the analyst. The opinions in this book are strong. Indeed, there is material which may disturb the dogmatic, yet the author's intentions are clear. White invites you to take your cue for analysis from the compositions themselves rather than from dogma. Replete with musical examples, charts, and diagrams, the book is more than a treatise on analysis, it is a valuable tool for the advanced student of music as well as the musical scholar.