Music Theory from Zarlino to Schenker

Book excerpt: At last a vast amount of recent scholarship, pertaining to four centuries of theoretical developments including the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, has been organized systematically in a single volume. In the Dictionary of Theorists, the major section of the volume, individual entries devoted to approximately 250 theorists supply all of the bibliographic information most scholars are likely to require: titles and publication data for each author's treatises and principal articles, as well as titles and locations of manuscripts; lists of translations, facsimile editions, and microfilm copies of each work; a bibliography of articles, books, dissertations, and encyclopedia entries pertinent to an author and his works; and a compilation of modern reviews of the books, translations, and facsimile editions cited. Author, title, and subject indices facilitate access to materials for various research topics in the areas of speculative and practical music theory, and to a lesser yet significant extent, in the areas of acoustics, aesthetics, lexicography, music analysis, musicology, orchestration, and performance practice. A chronology is provided so that the reader may determine at a glance, which authors were active at any point within the centuries covered.