study-music

Common practice

Classical music has three very broad periods:

• pre-1650 (early music), a counterpoint was the most prominent then
• 1650..1900, so called “common practice period”, which is the focus of most traditional manuals on classical music
• 20th and 21st century, which has a huge variety of new techniques and approaches, so that sometimes pieces are idiosyncratic and don’t share many language traits with some larger class of pieces

Common practice music has several periods (having different language traits):

• Baroque (a mixture of polyphony and homophony), including Galant (schemata)
• Classical (decline of polyphony)
• Romantic (more chromaticism, prevalence of minor mode)

The books below mostly focus on classical and romantic periods. They give an intro into music notation and are good for a beginner, although they ultimately go pretty far into things like voice-leading in four-part writing, diatonic and chromatic harmony (from Roman numerals to Neapolitan sixth and augmented sixth chords) and overview of forms (sentence, period, binary form, sonata form). They will probably take a good year or two to study. Their core topics are the same, so the difference is primarily in the choice of examples, notation, terms, exercises and appendices.

Also, there are advanced materials

Also, let’s see what we have for a specific example: Beethoven op. 10 no. 1 mov. 1

Free online books with audio examples

• Andre Mount. Fundamentals, Function, and Form - Also there’s a workbook
• Open Music Theory, Version 2
• Comprehensive Musicianship: A Practical Resource, Workbook
• Robert Hutchinson. Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom
• Mauro Braunstein. Offtonic Theory - An online book that is spiced up with Jewish Chasidic examples (in addition to classical and rock ones) and an intro into Arabic maqamaat music
• Sean Butterfield. Integrated Musicianship
• https://evanwill.github.io/open-music2/contents.html
• Artusi: Interactive Music Theory and Online Skills - a free online auto-graded course that teaches you four-part writing right in the web score editor. It shows all errors in the voice-leading (parallel fifths, tritone leaps, jumps on augmented intervals, forgotten preparations, voice crossing)

Printed books

• Steven G. Laitz. The Complete Musician - A standard modern book on classical harmony with introduction into a form and XX century techniques. Audio examples are freely available
• Kevin Holm-Hudson. Music Theory Remixed - offers a mixed repertoire of classical, popular and non-Western music. A review
• Charles Horton, David A. Byrne, Lawrence Ritchey. Harmony Through Melody: The Interaction of Melody, Counterpoint, and Harmony in Western Music
• Elizabeth Marvin, Jane Piper Clendinning. The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis
• Benward/Saker. Music in Theory and Practice
• L. Poundie Burstein, Joseph N. Straus. Concise Introduction to Tonal Harmony
• Older books: Aldwell/Schachter (more Schenkerian), Kostka/Payne

(Comparison of books is taken from a review by Brad Osborn)

Video courses

• Christopher Brellochs. Two semesters of Music Theory - told, drawn on a whiteboard and played on a piano
• Seth Monahan. Basics of Classical Harmony & Counterpoint

Harmonic analysis

On the openness of harmonic analysis

• David Bennett Thomas - A very thorough analysis of carefully picked pieces from different styles.

• mDecks Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro YouTube channel - Worth checking many of their educational videos. Especially the playlist on harmony fundamentals

• https://www.youtube.com/@auralskillsguru

• Hrvoje Staneković. Musical harmony, theory with examples from piano repertoire – Several harmonic analyses of piano scores of Bach and Chopin with a very thorough introduction

• Frans Absil. Musical Analysis: Visiting the Great Composers - A lot of classical pieces from Bach to Shostakovich are analysed bar-by-bar

• Mark Gotham. Harmony Anthology

• Also see my overview of visualization techniques.

Form

• William E. Caplin. Analyzing Classical Form - Focuses solely on works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, this book teaches a theory of formal functions to analyze the structure of their pieces. A review, a podcast with the author, another podcast. Scores for its examples are on 🌈 rawl.rocks
• A form isn’t a fixed theory, rather, different theorists have different approaches on form, which is excellently represented in William E. Caplin, James Hepokoski, James Webster. Musical Form, Forms, and Formenlehre: Three Methodological Reflections
• James Hepokoski. Sonata Theory Handbook - Focuses on broader set of composers (going deep into 19th century) comparing to Caplin’s book, the author narrows the scope to a sonata form. A Wikipedia article on Sonata Theory. Scores for its examples are on 🌈 rawl.rocks
  • Also see Sarah Moynihan. Sonata Type Tree and her thesis

More

• History: Richard Taruskin, 5 volumes
• Stephen C. Stone. Music Theory and Composition: A Practical Approach - An approach to music theory through an emphasis on melody and counterpoint by starting with a single melodic line and gradually adding voices in counterpoint
• Michael Adduci. Music Theory