Books on composing, orchestrating etc

Know any good ones?

So far I've got:

- "The Study of Orchestration" by Samuel Adler

- "Harmonic Practice in Tonal Music" by Robert Gauldin

- "Harmony" and "Counterpoint" by Walter Piston

- "Principles of Orchestration" by Rimsky-Korsakov

Did you ever use those books? What do you think of them?

I'm also very curious which you all think are the most practical, useful and most interesting book concerning subjects like orchestration, harmony, counterpoint, writing for a particular instrument...

I don't want to ask the wrong presents for Christmas. :unsure:

Those seem like pretty good books to me.

The classic book on counterpoint is Fux's "Gradus ad Parnassum" - Bach knew of it and approved it, and Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert (among others) studied from it.

It's available divided into two books: "The Study of Counterpoint" and "The Study of Fugue" edited by Alfred Mann. I got them off Amazon.

Originally posted by J. Lee Graham@Aug 7 2005, 08:51 AM

Those seem like pretty good books to me.

My current favourite books are as follows (in no particular order):

Schoenberg: "Theory of Harmony" and "Fundamentals of Musical Composition"

Walter Piston: "Orchestration" and "Harmony"

Wim Mertens: "American Minimal Music"

Allen Forte: "The Structure of Atonal Music"

I am not an atonalist. "The Structure of Atonal Music" is a fascinating insight into atonal music, however. It may be worth pointing out that Schoenberg's books are based in tonal music. They are very technical and detailed.

For further reading, I find the following to be excellent books (again, in no particular order):

William Duckworth: "Talking Music"

Eds. Christopher Cox and Daniel Warner: "Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music"

Mark Prendergast: "The Ambient Century"

Eds. Marjorie Perloff and Charles Junkerman: "John Cage: Composed in America"

Eric Tamm: "Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color or Sound" [sic.]

Paul Griffiths: "Modern Music: A Concise History" and "Modern Music and After: Directions Since 1945"

Michael Nyman: "Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond"

Anyone wanting a starting point in any of the second list could start with Nyman's book, or Griffiths' first book (then the second, as they progress nicely from one to the other). Talking Music and Audio Culture are both a collection of interviews by people in the field and are books I found difficult to put down. Prendergast's book details composers and artists "from Mahler to Trance" and is a wonderful reference for any composer who wants to have any kind of career in music (in my very humblest of opinions).

This selection makes up the quintessential section of my library. I have more books on music, some on visual art, some on theatre, some on matters relating to psychology and one or two on video/film... and some random other subjects... and fiction.

I learned music theory almost entirely out of "Tonal Harmony" by Kostka and Payne. I highly recommend it.

Any thoughts on Kent Kennan's book on counterpoint?

I agree that the Fux is a must have.

I also recommend:

"Treatise on Instrumentation" - Berlioz and Struass

Alfred Blatter's "Instrumentation and Orchestration" is another good one.

Why is Fux's book so important to people nowadays?

I do intend this question to be a pot boiler. I do also own this book.

Why is Fux's book so important to people nowadays?

I do intend this question to be a pot boiler. I do also own this book.

I personally bought it because of all the masters who owned, used, and learned from it. It is said that Beethoven carried the book around with him... to me that was meaningful.

How much might books such as Fux's be keeping us from advancing composition? For example: counterpoint is to be found in most pieces of music but don't neccessarily follow the 'rules' as lain down by Fux and the like. Is it advantageous to know the traditional methods before writing with other methods?

Is it ever!

It really is a bunch of rules for making things sounds good. Although a lot of it is very nitpicky by today's standards, it is really incredibly applicable to music.

How about counterpoints that don't follow the 'rules' as per Fux's book? If you look at counterpoints in lots of modern music, you will see that it often doesn't follow the traditional rules at all. *1 Take music by Cage, for example. His "First Construction (in Metal)" includes voices which are very much non specific in their tuning and therefore deny Fux's version of counterpoint. However, there very clearly is counterpoint here.

What I am getting at here is that far too many contemporary*2 composers have no understanding of modern principles, whether or not they use them in their own pieces. As I mentioned in another post in this thread, I have a book called "The Structure of Atonal Music", though I don't write atonal music. I believe this book is more of an asset to me than Fux's book: for it is my opinion that every composer's duty is to know as much about all music as humanly possible.

*1 Of course, with the diversity in composition in today's world, there are many compositions that do have counterpoint following some or all of the traditional rules.

*2 In this post, I use the word contemporary to mean those not just living, but writing music now.

If you look at counterpoints in lots of modern music, you will see that it often doesn't follow the traditional rules at all. *1 Take music by Cage, for example. His "First Construction (in Metal)" includes voices which are very much non specific in their tuning and therefore deny Fux's version of counterpoint. However, there very clearly is counterpoint here.

That is why atonal/modern music sounds like garbage and is garbage (for the 50 people who don't yet get it and are itching to jump at my post and make all sorts of comments about how modern music is great... this is my opinion. I respect yours, respect mine.)

Why does atonal or modern music sound like garbage? (For the one Cavatina out there, I am jumping on your post in full knowledge of opinions and so on and so forth! *grin* )

Are you saying that _all_ atonal or modern music sounds like garbage? How about the music of Jan Garbareck? Of John Adams? Of Sakamoto? Of Daugherty? Of Messiaen? Of Shostakovich?

Actually, I've just thought about asking the board about their interpretation of the words 'modern' and 'contemporary'.

Why does atonal or modern music sound like garbage? (For the one Cavatina out there, I am jumping on your post in full knowledge of opinions and so on and so forth! *grin* )

haha, the one Cavatina's ear do not enjoy the sound of 99.99999999999% of atonal music. I don't know how I can describe it any simpler than that. If you need more of an explanation, then sorry, but I can't help you. In all honesty, I can't think of a single atonal piece of music that I have heard/enjoyed.

Another opinion of mine is that atonal music doesn't exist.

Or, rather, there is no music that exists that is truly atonal. (That makes more grammatical sense.)

I believe that Fux is valuable to aspiring composers nowadays because you have to begin somewhere. You could begin by studying the counterpoint of the composers David mentioned, but to my mind that would be like studying John Donne's poetry before you've made it through Dr. Seuss. All in good time...and begin where it makes sense to begin: at the beginning.

Fux's counterpoint lessons are elemental building blocks, and the understanding they impart is fully transferrable to other idioms in music. The developing mind needs rules and boundaries, giving it discipline, the better to appreciate full intellectual freedom when it is ready.

Children, for example, need structure in their lives while they're growing up - they seem to rebel against it...indeed, testing the rules and limitations placed upon them and trying constantly to see what they can get away with seem to be hard-wired into childhood behaviour - yet every child innately craves structure and discipline, and I have never yet seen a child prosper without it. Children, left entirely to their own devices, will destroy themselves.

I'm not saying that someone who doesn't study Fux's "Gradus ad Parnassum" will destroy himself as a composer. I am saying that if you want a good, logical place to start on the road to mastery of any kind of counterpoint, Fux is your best bet. Take it from one who rebelled (as I did with the study of traditional harmony), tried to learn it by ear and intuition, floundered for years, wasted a lot of time and energy accomplishing very little, then finally got wise and came back to the beginning to learn my counterpoint ABCs from the man who codified it all 300 years ago. It just makes sense.

It is said that Beethoven carried the book around with him... to me that was meaningful.

I hadn't heard that about Beethoven, but it doesn't surprise me. His counterpoint studies with Haydn and Albrechtsberger used Fux as a textbook. I have seen Beethoven's early exercises with Haydn...and it's amazing to see how his mind unfolded and blossomed in the pages of that notebook. Astounding.

Same with Franz Schubert's studies. Believe it or not, his mind seemed to be more rebellious and inventive than Beethoven's early on! Of course, Haydn may have been keeping Beethoven on the narrow way through sheer intimidation.

Haydn studied Fux all his life. He didn't put the book away until he retired...and maybe not even then.

There is a wonderful book I'd like to recommend: "The Great Composer As Teacher And Student" - by (who else?) Alfred Mann...the same chap that broke up Fux into bite sized chunks for us. It's quite a book - gives some amazing insight into how the greats became great, and how they imparted some of their greatness to the younger generation. A must-read.

I should like to see Beethoven's early exercises. How on earth did you see them?

And by the way, very good post about Fux. I haven't finished him yet, though started several times. I will one of these days, but it does not seem critical, as a lot of it becomes nature if you study the scores of classical composers.

As mentioned in the forward, the following famous composers can attest to the Fux method: :)

Haydn, Mozart and Leopold, Beethoven, Martini, Cherubini, Meyerbeer, Chopin, Rossini, Paganini, Hummel, Liszt.

There may be others, I just skimmed it.

I should like to see Beethoven's early exercises.

Woohoo! Amazon here I come.

Well, I'm just back from London, and I've bought myself:

- "Twentieth Century Harmony" by Vincent Persichetti (sp?)

and

- "Orchestration" by Cecil Forsyth

I hope I did a good thing by not buying the Piston orchestration book first :happy: (I'm saving for next year to buy it :P ). I chose the Forsyth book because the Adler orchestration book recommended it (the Piston book was just mentioned). But the Persichetti book is really interesting :D.

I made a list on Amazon, for composition books:

COMPOSITION: The Complete Guide

As you may guess, I didn't read the majority of the books, so I'm basically as subjective you can get. ;)

Wow, this thread has been very helpful :) I will have to check out some of these books!

I read a GREAT book on film scoring not too long ago - "Complete Guide to Film Scoring" by Richard Davis. This is a very informative book and it is presented in an easy to understand way. It also has some interviews with film composers in the back of the book :D