Roots of the Classical

Download or read book Roots of the Classical written by Peter Van der Merwe and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2004-12-09 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. 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.