Materials and Techniques of Twentieth-Century Music

The challenge of music historians looking at the 20th Century is too many and too much. Too many styles and idioms for one person to be broadly expert. Too much information; books, blogs, YouTube, label websites, musician sites, composer sites, university programs, etc. But there is one starting point: the exhausted tonality regimes and beautiful expressiveness of the Romantic Period. Enter this book, which examines the compositional and orchestral extensions of the pre World War II half century. After 1945 is the Modern Era and After The Wall Fall is the contemporary space. Those are covered in their own books in much greater sympathy and depth than in the subject edition. However, i quite like this book as an excellent primer on harmonic thinking for western art music composition in the 1900-WW II stretch. Frankly, this should be the last period examined from a harmonic perspective.

Was searching for the longest time for a good, in-depth reference book over twentieth century music, and I've found it in Mr. Kostka's publication. Thank God for Mr. Kostka!Twentieth-century music books tend to be a little heavy on the beginning of the century and leave out all the recent developments like Minimalism, and electronic music. This book was published in 1998 and covers those sections beautifully.Also, the way the material is organized is much more helpful than if it went chapter by chapter by composer or historically.Other merits include the summaries at the end of each chapter, the numerous musical examples, exercises, and references to other books over twentieth century music.One word of warning, however. Although the book is excellently written, it is a book for advanced music theory students. If you don't have all your musical terminology down from previous study, you're going to get lost very quickly.But what a breath of fresh air not to be talked down to anymore! While reading, I kept thinking how Mr. Kostka uncoveres the mystical/mathematical qualities of this music; so well, in fact, that this book would make even Pythagoras proud.