The New Music: The Avant-Garde Since 1945

Rating:
Summary: A great source for the new music
Review: As to talk about the new music and go further deeply into it, one has to clearly define the roots, social situation, paradigms, early tendencies of pioneers, theoretical backround of art in general with its relation to the overall world view and so on... Brindle's success on figuring out these concepts deserves an appreciation. The book achieves to provide a wide understanding of twentieth century music with almost all aspects of the reasoning of artistic creativity of our age. One of the most important qualities of this book also underlies in it's perfectly selected musical examples provided quite often within the text that are also including new technics used in the "new" music. From this point of view alone, it would be evaluated as the second book after Erhard Karkoschka's "Notation in New Music". Though it is mostly in charge of musicologists who are in search of a comprehensive twentieth century music source rather than composers especially focusing on compositional tools but anyway it is a must have book for both.

Rating:
Summary: Fine synopsis of post-war trends in the avant garde
Review: Worthwhile addition to the library of books devoted to contemporary music. The presentation is quite lucid and the topics covered are quite relevant for today's composer, or those interested in modern techniques. There is very little coverage of the most recent composers, namely those working in neo-tonal contexts, but there is a mention of this trend in an epilogue. I find the graphical information in the book some of the best content in the book. Some chapters try to cover somewhat technical topics too quickly, but if you read it carefully enough, it's comprehensible.