Music Composition Books

I'm looking for a new music composition book to further my studies (I'd prefer to take a class, but I can't currently). I've read The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory, Music Theory for Dummies, and Introduction to Music Composition by King Palmer. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks. :)

Actually... have you considered reading "Theory of Harmony" by Arnold Shoenberg.... It's a brilliant work that delves into the possibility of WHY things sound the way they. It's insightful.

Shoenberg's Fundamentals of Composition is a good one on forms.

Shoenberg's Fundamentals of Composition is a good one on forms.

YES! I agree here as well!.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll look into those books.

Fundamentals is on Scribd...:whistling:

Both Schoenburg books are absolutely amazing, harmony would be a great area to study next. That being said, I think there are few books you could go wrong with and my method of finding sources like that is to go to used book stores because not only are you likely to find good books but they're cheaper and you can get more. I spent $30 for the Theory of Harmony, then i spent $1.35 for stravinsky's Poetics in Music (I believe thats the title) so really you can get a lot more and sometimes find more interesting things depending on where you live.

"20th Century Harmony" by Vincent Persichetti is a great book, and a very practical one, really written from the viewpoint of a composer (as opposed to that of a music theorist).

Rolifer reccomended Norton's Scores (Volume 2, than 1) which is a compalation of scores with a CD to listen to the music, score to read along (some aren't full) and authors comments on how this was used and how that affected the mood, etc.

Schoenberg's books are really great. Read Persichetti's book after them.

One of the first books my first composition teacher (when I was 13) made me go out and purchase was "The Study of Orchestration" by Samuel Adler. It's a fantastic book which discusses in detail all the ranges and uses of the instruments, and how you can use their various techniques to produce different colors.

I highly recommend it for anyone who plans to do anything with composition.

I've downloaded Schoenberg's Fundamentals of Musical Composition, Structural Functions of Harmony, and Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint from Scribd and have started reading Fundamentals of Musical Composition.

I like it, thanks for the suggestions.

I'll go search my local bookstore for actual books tomorrow and see if I come up with anything I like.

I personally think it's best to learn harmony and counterpoint first and to concentrate on forms after that - learn the smaller building blocks and then progress to the bigger ones.

I have a question, what do you mean 'downloaded' the book? Can you send/give me a link on where you get them?

Scribd has various books in the public domain. Just search for the name of the Schoenberg book you want and download it.

By the way, I decided to read Walter Piston's Harmony first and read Schoenberg's books later.

Wow, great ressource, thanks :]