Schoenberg's Models for Beginners in Composition (Schoenberg in Words) - Softcover

Gordon Root is an Associate Professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia, where he has taught since 2006. He earned a Ph.D. in Music Theory with a focus on Schoenberg's music from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Gordon Root's essays have been featured in Indiana Theory Review and Current Musicology. He has presented many papers on a range of topics including text and music, Schoenberg's pedagogy and harmonic theories, and programmatic aspects of Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone works. In 2009 he was awarded an Avenir Grant through the Arnold Schönberg Center and The Avenir Foundation of Wheat Ridge Colorado.

"The present volume is part of the ambitious 'Schoenberg in Words' series, which aims to reissue some of Schoenberg's published works on music theory and also his correspondence. If this updated edition of Models for Beginners in Composition (which Schoenberg published in 1943) is representative, the series sets a very high standard for bibliographic history in music theory. The volume includes the text of the original work, along with prefaces to the original edition (by Schoenberg) and the 1972 edition (by editor Leonard Stein). But a large part of the book is taken up with exhaustive commentary by Root (SUNY, Fredonia) and appendixes with welcome supplementary documents. This edition of Schoenberg's classic work will interest novice and expert alike."--Choice

"Meticulously edited, generously illustrated, and with useful supplemental materials including information on the historical context, explanations of Schoenberg's central theoretical concepts, and a companion webpage with recorded performances of the examples, Gordon Root's splendid new edition will make this important but sometimes overlooked book newly accessible to anyone interested in composition, theory, and the creative process. With its fascinating documentation of how his students actually used and learned from the exercises, this edition opens up new windows into why Schoenberg was such an effective teacher, while providing vivid insights into his personality, his commitment to coming to terms with his new life in America, and the development and influence of his theoretical ideas."--Joseph Auner, Tufts University

"Gordon Root's new translation of Schoenberg's Models is an invaluable resource: not only for scholars and teachers who seek familiarity with the methods of one of the twentieth century's great composition pedagogues, but for those of us interested in exploring how Schoenberg's understanding of the tonal tradition impacted his own music."--Jack Boss, Professor of Music Theory and Composition, University of Oregon

"An excellent bibliography and handy index add usefulness. The generous amount of illustrations, tables, diagrams, musical examples and facsimiles (of Schoenberg's own handwritten notes, comments and musical models) inform the mind, while also pleasing the eye." --Rhinegold Publishing