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By Instrumentation
Books on Music
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 enlarge | Authors: Stefan Kostka, Dorothy Payne
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
Category: Book
Buy Used: $12.30
New (33) Used (104) from $12.30
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 9212
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 5
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 688
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.2
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 8 x 1.2
ISBN: 0072852607
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.25
EAN: 9780072852608
ASIN: 0072852607
Publication Date: June 10, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Oh well ... nice try. October 18, 2005
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
I've been teaching music theory for 35 years, and have seen a lot of texts that I like less than this one. However, it doesn't make this one wonderful.
As other reviewers have mentioned, there are a lot of errors. Also, there are far too many places in the examples where they say, "Ignore this note", or "Forget about this for now". You'd think they'd have found better examples without making the interested student wonder what's really going on, and the less involved student confused with excess.
This book is heavy in overkill. It's the same problem as in computer manuals: they obviously feel like they have to tell you EVERYTHING, and that nothing is more important than anything else. For example, they go on for pages and pages about chord spacing and voice leading, where a simple grounding in how to write and recognize decent melodies would go a lot farther and reduce dependance on mastering mountains of scrupulous finicky detail.
The authors obviously feel that the inner voices are no more or less important than the soprano-bass counterpoint, whereas perceptually, the soprano and bass carry most of the weight of what's heard and experienced. The emphasis is on recognizing the vertical component of harmony at the expense of the horizontal, but music is experienced as ongoing linear motion, not as successive blocks of stuff. On the other confused hand, they treat Alberti Bass as a note-to-note melodic line, where it's exprienced as just a rhythmised chord with the bass predominant. Minor scales and harmony are introduced as soon as major, and this much complexity before students know what's going on is pedagogically weak. It's the same with triads and seventh chords. And so-on.
You need to understand the simple before getting into the complex.
If you are good at taking a long string of finicky detail where all is of equal importance, and developing it all into a bigger picture with hierarchies, this book might be good for you. Otherwise, keep looking.
 Book does not come with Audio CD August 20, 2005
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
As the title of this review states, this book does not come with the audio CD that is needed for the book. They expect the student to pay over $60 for the book and about $30 (thats right, I said $30) for the CD. Their avarice cannot be any more obvious. It is a shame.
Not helpful to a serious musician December 26, 2004
81 out of 102 found this review helpful
This book represents everything that is wrong in music theory education. This book approaches music as an abstract entity even though it provides many examples and exercises. It tries to compartmentalize different aspects of music, like harmony, melody, rhythm and form. I don't think it's the authors' fault entirely.
This is a book on tonal harmony. It has become the standard textbook for music theory in the United States. This is extremely misguided since it will give the student an extremely incomplete understanding of how music works. For example, counterpoint is not taught in this book. Counterpoint has been considered essential for the serious musician for the past 500 years. All the different aspects of music mentioned above are wholly intertwined. Any approach that seperates them misses the point.
This book also puts too much emphasis on harmony as a vertical phenomenon. Most people experience music as a horizontal phenonmenon and I haave found that approaches to music theory that treats music as such has had much more success. This goes back to why counterpoint is so essential in music theory. Learning harmony through an approach that pays attention to how melody, rhythm, and counterpoint affect harmony is the most honest and least troublesome way of learning how music works.
This may explain why many have had trouble with this book(I had for 5 years). You'll know how to name things such as chords and form after completing this book, but it won't help you understand how a piece works. It focuses more on nomenclature than on syntax and function.
There are a slew of books that will give the music student a more complete picture of theory. Most importantly, these more integrated methods will give better tools to understand the music they may be performing and/or studying. These books include Leo Kraft's Gradus, Aldwell and Schachter's Harmony and Voice Leading, Horton and Ritchey's Harmony Through Melody, Siegmeiter's Harmony and Melody, and to a lesser extent Forte's Tonal Harmony in Concept and Practice.
I am an active conductor and I feel I have a much stronger grasp of music after having been taught a more honest and comprehensive way of studying music and this was only after years of deprogramming what I had learned through the Kostka and Payne. I am still struggling with this issue. If you're serious about music, DO NOT GET THIS BOOK!
 It's quality stuff. December 19, 2004
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
It's ridiculous to say that this book is hard to understand; I use this book for my high school theory class and I can understand it. It's true that it is a little dry and has some errors, but overall it's really helped me learn theory.
 This book has some good points but a lot of flaws November 21, 2004
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Anybody who has seen the latest edition, knows it's got the theory there, and of all the editions, it was more clearly written than in any of the other ones, however the examples are crap and there are quite a few typographical errors. i guess if they ever proof read their book and make a next edition, it'll get another star from me, and also another thing they did in the book, which is probably not the best of ideas, is in their examples quite often towards the beginning having secondary functioning chords there before they're even introduced in the book. but with the errors in the text it still is probably one of the best in print. i don't think too many people would buy this book for independant studies, so there will be a teacher there to clear the confusion and hopefully spot the errors for the students.
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