Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory

Emphasizing hands-on contact with the musicthrough playing, singing, listening, and analyzingthis book provides six chapters on theory, each illustrated with musical examples and fully worked-out analyses, all drawn largely from the "classical" pre-war repertoire by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Berg, and Webern.This book offers exceptionally clear, simple explanations of basic theoretical concepts for the post-tonal music of the twentieth century. Chapter topics include basic concepts and definitions; pitch-class sets; centricity, referential collections, and triadic post-tonality; basic twelve-tone operations; and more twelve-tone topics.Musicians and enthusiasts looking to explore advanced topics in music theory and analysis.

Joseph Straus is Distinguished Professor of Music at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  He taught for many years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Queens College (CUNY).  The author or editor of twelve books and numerous articles, mostly on topics in twentieth-century music, he is a former President of the Society for Music Theory.