Roots of the Classical: The Popular Origins of Western Music

by Peter Van der Merwe

Overview

Roots of the Classical identifies and traces to their source 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. The author then focuses on the years 1770-1910, treating the Western music of this period - folk, popular, and classical - as a single, organically developing, interconnected unit in which the popular idiom was constantly feeding into 'serious' music, showing how the same patterns underlay music of all kinds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198166474
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/17/2005
Pages:	576
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Peter Van der Merwe was born in Cape Town of Boer and Irish stock. He has studied at the College of Music in his native city but is virtually self-taught as musician and musicologist. He divides his time between the study of music and work as a cataloguer at the municipal library in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. His first book, Origins of the Popular Style, was published by OUP in 1989.

Table of Contents

I. The Melodic Foundations1. The subtle mathematics of music2. The Ramellian paradigm3. The children's chant4. The pentatonic scaleII. The Harmonic Revolution5. Primitive harmony6. The discovery of tonality7. Rivals to tonality8. Dissonance and discord9. The evolution of tonalityIII. The Melodic Counter-Revolution10. The invention of folk-music11. The cantilena style12. The debt to the East13. Drones and ostinatos14. Melodic line15. Sequences16. Relatively diatonic modes17. Chromatic modes and scales18. The polka family19. The early waltz20. The later waltz21. The waltz suite22. The continuing Italian ascendancy23. Melody24. Harmony25. Tonal counterpoint26. Romantic nationalism27. The symphonic tradition28. Wagner and the vernacular29. The roots of Modernism30. The Modernist conspiracy31. The late vernacular32. The blues and early jazz

Editorial Reviews

"This is a marvelously stimulating and important book: a masterpiece of canny observation, a miracle of effective organization, a model of colorful, pungent writing, and an ear-opener that should be read and pondered by all scholars and musicians who deal with music of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries in any and all of its genres."—Music & Letters

"Providing an insightful account of the roots of Western classical musical style, Van der Merwe looks at melody, counterpoint and harmony, and traditional tonality in the 18th century. The author draws on a variety of sources to demonstrate the relative simplicity of musical constructions that theorists and historians have previously considered complex. He also looks beyond the traditional sources, examining the importance of styles from alternative repertoires such as children's song and dances of Central Europe. The strengths of this book are the breadth of Van de Merwe's examples and his perspective, which is relatively free of the value judgments commonly placed on the selected repertoires. By avoiding the good music/bad music dichotomy, the author provides some fresh insights on the origins of classical style...Highly recommended." —CHOICE

From the Publisher