After many years of knowing I
should read this masterful book, I'm so glad I finally did this year. And after I read it once, I went back through it again to write down the strongest points of each section. When it comes to understanding forms in western art music over the past few hundred years,
Fundamentals of Musical Composition by the great Arnold Schoenberg was the most helpful, clear, and concise book on the topic I've ever encountered. It does require the reader to have a fair understanding of western music fundamentals in place already, but if you have that and you'd like a bit more insight about what goes into writing a sonata or a symphony β or things derived from those β it's a phenomenal resource.
This is not, significantly, a book about orchestration or arranging. There are many other great texts about those topics (I like the ones by Rimsky-Korsakov and Henry Mancini, for example). The concepts in the Schoenberg book can easily be illustrated with a piano reduction of a score. That's one of the things I found most useful about it: these concepts translate way beyond European classical music. My strongest background is in jazz, fusion, "contemporary instrumental" music, all that, although I've played and studied a fair amount of European classical music in the past. But it's not like I'm writing concertos regularly. Schoenberg's concepts still lit continuous lightbulbs over my head while I was reading.
There's a legendary text about screenwriting by Robert McKee called
Story and it's a standard text for all the most prominent screen and stage MFA programs in the country. I consider
Fundamentals of Musical Composition to be the parallel for music. I wish I'd read it years ago but I'm glad I finally did. It's not exactly a piece of gear but I still give it five stars across the board.
And that's my first book report for GS.