Description

Roots of the Classical identifies and traces to their sources the patterns that make Western classical music unique, setting out the fundamental laws of melody and harmony, and sketching the development of tonality between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries.

CONTENTS

I. The Melodic Foundations
1 The Subtle Mathematics of Music
2 The Ramellian Paradigm
3 The Children’s Chant
4 The Pentatonic Scale
II. The Harmonic Revolution
5 Primitive Harmony
6 The Discovery of Tonality
7 Rivals to Tonality
8 Dissonance and Discord
9 The Evolution of Tonality
III. The Melodic Counter-Revolution
10 The Rude, the Vulgar, and the Polite
11 The Debt to the East
12 The Dances of Central Europe
13 The Nineteenth-Century Vernacular
14 Romanticism
15 Modernism
16 The Popular Style
Epilogue