A Concise Guide to Understanding Music offers guidance on many aspects of musical form, the creative concepts of major composers over the centuries, and developments ranging from early notation to the present day. The book is profusely illustrated and also contains an extensive bibliography as well as detailed lists of compositions for the reader to listen to and enjoy. For those who wish to understand more about all kinds of music, this is the book to help you.

List of Illustrations
Foreword

PART I - THE BASIC ESSENTIALS
1. The Composer
2. Sound
3. The Musical Scale
4. Plainsong and the Modes
5. The Development of Scales and Tonality
6. Melody
7. Counterpoint
8. Harmony

PART II - INSTRUMENTS - NOTATION

9. The Instruments of Music
10. Notation
11. The Revival of Improvisation
12. Reading Musical Notation

PART III - MUSICAL FORM
13. Musical Form
14. Expectations of Musical Form
15. Binary and Ternary

PART IV - MUSIC FOR A PURPOSE
16. Sacred Music
17. Music and Words
18. Music and Movement

PART V - MUSICAL EXPLORATIONS
19. The Suite
20. Rondeau, Rondo
21. Theme and Variations
22. Earlier Forms of Variations
23. The Art of Fugue
24. The Mechanisms of Fugue
25. Sonata
26. The Classical Era
27. Sonata Form
28. The Symphony Orchestra in the Concert Hall
29. The Development of the Symphony
30. The Symphonies of Haydn
31. The Symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven
32. The Continuation of Symphony
33. Concerto
34. The Form of the Concerto
35. The Operas of Mozart and Beethoven

PART VI - THE 19TH CENTURY
36. Early 19th Century Romanticism
37. Schumann, Chopin and Liszt
38. Hector Berlioz
39. Opera in the 19th Century
40. Johannes Brahms
41. The Music of Nationalism

PART VII - THE 20TH CENTURY
42. The Age of Change
43. Claude Debussy
44. Maurice Ravel
45. Erik Satie
46. Serialism
47. Spanish Music
48. Heitor Villa-Lobos
49. Through Folk Songs to the 20th Century
50. The Genius of Stravinsky
51. Composers and Dictators
52. Charles Ives
53. Edgard Varèse
54. George Gershwin
55. Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber
56. Developments in Italy
57. Olivier Messiaen
58. John Cage
59. British Composers
60. Witold Lutoslawski
61. Leonard Bernstein
62. The Fulfillment of the 20th Century
63. Pierre Boulez
64. György Ligeti
65. Karlheinz Stockhausen
66. Minimalism
67. The 21st Century