Tonality

Wide-ranging in scope, and with almost 700 musical examples from the Middle Ages to the present day, Tonality: An Owner's Manual weaves philosophy, mathematics, statistics, and computational analysis into a new and truly twenty-first century theory of music. It proposes a sweeping reformulation of the basic concepts of Western music theory, revealing simple structures underlying a wide range of practices from the Renaissance to contemporary pop. Each of its central chapters re-examines a basic music-theoretical concept such as voice leading, repetition, nonharmonic tones, the origins of tonal harmony, the grammar of tonal harmony, modulation, and melody.