Reading List

(In Order of Importance)
 
    Hermann Helmholtz, On The Sensations of Tone, As A Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1954 unabridged and unaltered republication of the second (1885) edition of the Ellis translation of Die Lehre von den Tenempfindungen, as published by Longmans & Co.  
 
 
 
    John Backus, The Acoustical Foundations of Music, Musical sound: a lucid account of its properties, production, behavior, and reproduction, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1969  
 
   

Andrew Barker, Greek Musical Writings II, Harmonic and Acoustic Theory, Cambridge Readings in the Literature of Music, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 1989

  
 

 

 

 

 

  

 

  
 
   

Few studies have stimulated me as has John Chalmers's Divisions of the Tetrachord. It is a great work by any standards, and I rejoice. Lou Harrison's Forward to:

John H. Chalmers, Jr., Divisions Of The Tetrachord, A Prolegomenon To The Construction of Musical Scales, Frog Peak Music, Hanover, NH USA, 1993

  
 
   

Daniélou attacks the immobility of the West from the perspective of the Far East. From there, it is paradoxically the West that appears to be a static and contemplative world, one that has been asleep for millenia. Sylvano Bussotti in the Forward to:

Alain Daniélou, Music And The Power of Sound, The Influence of Tuning and Interval on Consciousness, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, 1943, Revised edition copyright 1995

  
 
             
 
   

 

  
 
       
 
   

Paul Hindemith, Elementary Training for Musicians, Associated Music Publishers, Inc., New York, 1946

Paul Hindemith, Craft of Musical Composition, Theory, Associated Music Publishers, Inc., New York, Schott & Co., Ltd., London, 1942

  
 
    John Curtis Franklin, Hearing Greek Microtones, Forthcoming in: Hagel, S/Danek, G. (eds.), Performing Ancient Greek Music Today (Vienna, 2005?)  
 
   

The music of the Baganda people, the most important tribe of Uganda in East Central Africa, is the key to the understanding of all African music. . . .

Joseph Kyagambiddwa, African Music From The Source of The Nile, Atlantic Press, Published under the auspices of the Catholic Interracial Council of New York, 1956, liner notes

  
 
 
 
    Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music, An Account of a Creative Work, Its Roots and Its Fulfillments, A Dacapo Paperback, 1979  
 
   

This book represents an attempt to recapture the compositional ideas of the ancient world. For musicians today, abstract as well as programmatic types of early music still furnish untapped springs of compositional possibilities.

Claire C. J. Polin, Music of the Ancient Near East, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1954, pvii

  
 
 
 
 
 
   
Kathleen Schlesinger, The Greek Aulos, A Study of Its Mechanism and of its Relation To The Modal System of Ancient Greek Music followed by A Survey of the Greek Harmoniai in Survival or Rebirth in Folk-Music, Bouma's Boekhuis N.V. Publishers, Groningen, 1970
  
 
    Joseph G. Maneri, Scott A. Van Duyne, Preliminary Studies in the Virtual Pitch Continuum, Boston Microtonal Society, Cambridge, MA  
 
                                                            
           
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Revised: March 23, 2017