Music Theory by George Thaddeus JonesReview by: George GreenNotes, Second Series, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Dec., 1974), pp. 309-310Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/897141 .

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ant music on modern music (Bela Bartok) and the past and future of folk music (Siegmeister).

Of all the divisions of the New Handbook, Part 2 ("How Music Is Made") covers the widest variety of subjects, ranging from elementary, basic definitions of what constitutes music to rather technical essays on musical forms, including fugue, cha- conne and suite, and sonata-form. The essays range from simple extracts from "listening to music" texts to abridged chap- ters from books on music theory and formal analysis.

The biographical sketches in both Part 3 ("Meet the Composers") and Part 8 ("Music of America: Our Composers") are generally informative, enabling the reader to get a good idea of the composer, his milieu, his style, and major contributions. Those parts dealing with contemporary uses of music are particularly important to the general reader who might be interest- ed in what actually constitutes the present world of sound. Lest this statement be interpreted as a recommendation for the layman alone, it must be emphasized that music students of high school and college level will derive much knowledge from the volume. Nor should the musical scholar shun it, although he might be more inclined to go directly to the works from which the essays are extracted, for the contributors are all among his respected colleagues. A clearly legible, well gotten-up book, The New Music Lover's Handbook should be in all college and public libraries. And it will be welcome in the home of every music lover, for whom it is intended.

RuTrH WATANABE Eastman School of Music

Music Theory. By George Thaddeus Jones. (College Outline Series, 137.) New York: Barnes & Noble, [c1974]. [xvii, 310 p.; paper, $3.95]

Along the shady paths of theory teachers' Utopia we may someday find a text which provides a comprehensive approach to all music of all cultures from antiquity to the present, assayed from every conceivable point of view. Failing in that, we must be content, within the confines of the two- or three-year theory sequence afforded by

most undergraduate college curriculums, to examine in detail a selective sampling of musical literature. But what portion of that repertory will serve best in 1974 the interests and needs of young musicians and concerned laymen?

The almost invariable answer, from both those theorists and composers who have prepared by now well-known texts, is West- ern music from roughly 1680 to 1890- Corelli to Brahms. We are generally given two explanations for this attitude, so curiously anomalous in the history of musi- cal education (imagine the suggestion that Mozart really should have begun musical pursuits with a thorough study of Dufay): 1) music of the common-practice era domi- nates our concert stages (largely to the exclusion of recent music), and 2) one cannot understand twentieth-century music without a grounding in tonality.

The reality of our situation is that many, if not most, undergraduates do not in fact come to grips with new music at all and carry into their adult lives the implicit notion that Bach, Beethoven and Wagner are the great composers of today, and that even Webern and late Stravinsky are evi- dences of recent musical lunacy, ideas often reinforced by the programming of famous performers and by the nineteenth-century- ish viewpoint of the performance faculties of universities and conservatories.

Against this backdrop one is gratified to see modest advances in the recognition at least of the first half of this century in such a recent book as the late Alvin Etler's Making Music (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jo- vanovich, 1974), which aims to give students, in their first year of theory, those analytical and composing skills which bear out what Etler describes as "contemporary common practice" (in fact, a rather Hindemithian style).

All the more disappointing then is Music Theory by George Thaddeus Jones, a prac- ticing composer who teaches at Washington, D.C.'s Catholic University. The book purports to serve as an introduction to notation and rudimentary concepts of tonal music, before moving on to the already well-furrowed ground of basic part-writing procedures, illustrated primarily by ex- cerpts from Bach chorales, and the har- monic vocabularies of common-practice composers. One serious problem is that Jones' material has already been explored

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in far greater depth by works of A. I. McHose, (the principle influence here), Hindemith, Allen Forte, Sessions, and Pis- ton, inter alios. The passing references to theoretical precepts of Schenker, Hinde- mith, and Schoenberg are so cursory that they seem certain to confuse an inexperi- enced student.

Such constructs as the whole-tone scale, melodic tonal structure, phrasal articula- tions, and modality are given such a once- over-lightly that one wishes they had not been introduced at all. Some students, for example, might logically infer from Jones that a Bach chorale evinces the same sort of periodic structure as the opening of a Mozart piano sonata.

In Jones's defense one may speculate that his book's faults derive from specifications stipulated by his publishers, whose other books in the College Outline series in music contain similarly oversimplified, mislead- ing, even outrageous paradigms of complex conceits.

GEORGE GREEN Skidmore College

Handbuch der Oper. By Rudolf Kloiber. Kassel: Barenreiter, [c1973]. [vol. I (Adam-Prokofjew), 431 p.; vol. II (Puccini-Zimmerman), 442 p.; paper, DM 9.80 each vol.]

This revised and expanded edition of Kloiber's Handbuch der Oper displays excel- lent organization, an attractive layout, and a sturdy binding for a paperback. The dictionary section is arranged in alphabet- ical order by composers and chronological order for their works. Kloiber provides name of librettist, date and place of first performance, and-a useful addition- details of publisher, edition, revision and/or translation. For detailed description he selects from the baroque period to the present day one hundred and eighty operas which are currently performed or recorded -with plot summary, historical back- ground on the libretto and music, time and place of setting, orchestration, voice types for the principal roles, and an approximate timing. The works described in detail are indexed by composer and title in volume II; Kloiber also provides an index of oper- atic roles by voice type.

Although Kloiber promises to include operas, music dramas, Singspiels, musical comedies, staged oratorios, dramatic canta- tas, and intermezzos, but to exclude operet- tas, musicals, ballets, and incidental music to plays, he is often inconsistent. He lists works such as Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe, Debussy's Martyr de Saint-Sebastien and sev- eral operettas; not only does he indude Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat, but he singles it out for full description. Omissions in a work of such broad scope are inevitable; however, there should be full descriptions for Ravel's Enfant et les Sortileges, Purcell's Dido, Bellini's Puritani and Sonnamrbula, Massenet's Werther, Verdi's Ernani and Ve- pres Siciliennes, and Berlioz's Benvenuto Cel- lini. Only three of Rossini's operas and four of Donizetti's are described, an inaccurate representation of their present-day stand- ing. Absent from the lists of works are Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda, Mascagni's Mas- chere and three of Britten's church operas. Composers such as Boito, Blacher, Poulenc, Purcell, Shostakovitch, Peri, Pepusch, and Dallapiccola should have received fuller treatment in the main body of the work instead of being relegated to an additional list of opera composers and their works in volume II.

The listing of voice types would be useful were it not for the adoption of the multi- farious Germanic classifications; preferable would be an indication of the actual vocal ranges. However, the classification of Cherubino, Rosina, and Die Amme (Die Frau ohne Schatten) as sopranos is suspect - and any mezzo-soprano who is capable of encompassing the role of Lady Macbeth should be congratulated.

It is sometimes difficult to present plot summaries which are not unintentionally humorous: Kloiber's are clear and succinct and avoid this pitfall. On the other hand, his descriptions of the music are superficial. In the description of twentieth-century works, Kloiber fares better, even managing to squeeze in a summary of the musical forms of Berg's Wozzeck. The additional section presenting a mini-history of opera (vol. II, pp. 783-803) regurgitates a couple of misleading generalizations and presents nothing new except an attempt to pay more attention to contemporary works.

It seems surprising that the careful scru- tineers of Barenreiter did not catch errors in the spelling of some French and Italian

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