Book Description
One of most important books in Western music. Detailed explanation of principles of diatonic harmonic theory. New 1971 translation by Philip Gossett of 1722 edition. Many musical examples.
Customer Reviews:
An especially imporant work in the history of music theory.......2005-12-03
The importance of this work in the history of music would be hard to overestimate. While later music theorists and analysts, such as Schenker, find this emphasis on chords to be destructive to the horizontal considerations that make a great work hold together, this work has influence so many people that even those that do not even know his name but talk about root position chords and their inversions are invoking his concepts without realizing the source.
No, this is not a textbook for students. It is a treatise that explains in depth aspects of music that Rameau felt important and that he felt were essential for him to impart to other musicians. Composers of all stripes have consulted this work as have performers. Rameau has great authority because he was also a significant (if not great) composer.
The translation is quite good and easy to read. The concepts are not hard, but it helps to understand aspects of Baroque music such as figured bass and the types of pieces that were important in that era. Some grounding in species counterpoint would also make things easier, but is not absolutely necessary.
This book is really something all serious musicians need to know. You can take from it what you want for your own musical practice, but it really is not possible to consider yourself musically informed without knowing this work directly.
A Tonal Harmony Classic.......2005-11-27
This treatise constitutes a touchstone document in the theory of European art music, especially, that from ca. 1600-1850. It is a great tool, not only for historians of the music and music theory of the 17th- and 18th- centuries, but also, for historians of science interested in acoustics. Definite recommendation!
Definitely too vague.......2005-08-22
I bought this book because of the positive reviews it got from others but it definitely misses the point with me. Too vague and too opaque to be understood, there is a lot of writing in there that amounts to no practical use about chord harmony. Not for autodidacts for sure.
Excellent book.......2004-05-09
This is a great book but I wouldnt give it to a beginner a better book would be "Harmony and Voiceleading" by Schacter and Aldwell or "The Theory and Practice of Tone Relations" by Percy Goetschius (book is out of print but you can get a used one for cheap)or any other standard book on harmony. Rameau's book is about his theories of chords and inversions and I'd recommend a good understanding of intervals as well before tackling this book. Keep in mind this book was written in the 18th century but with that in mind theres alotta cool stuff to learn. He was a pioneer of harmony as we understand it today. Before he wrote this book harmonies were concieved as being born from the bass note instead of from the root of the chord.Definately an interesting read and essential for anyone wanting to know more about harmony.
recommended.......1999-09-15
Jean-Phillipe Rameau is, of course, the most esteemed French composer of the late Baroque period (comparable in stature only to J.S. Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel). He is also quite possibly the most influential music theorist ever to have lived. His theory of root progression profoundly altered Western-European-derived music, for the better and for the worse (as his contemporary detractors warned it would--by greatly simplifying the study of harmony such that it could be easily abused). But Rameau's works have rarely been made available in English translation. This is book that belongs on every music theorist's, composer's, and music teacher's shelf. (I impatiently await further volumes of Rameau's works in English translation.)
Also recommended: "Pentatonic Scales for the Jazz-Rock Keyboardist" by Jeff Burns
Product Description
268 pages 8 1/2 x 6 5/8 x 1 inch
Chapter 1 Gramatical theory backround and context
Chapter 2 Gramatical Theory The representation of Musical sound
Chapter 3 Gramatical Theory Written images of musical sound
Chapter 4 Harmonic theory The knowlege of musical sound
Chapter 5 A semantic theory of the written representation of harmonic sound
This is a doctoral thesis about the origins of music and the epistemology of grammar and harmony
Customer Reviews:
Rehash of familiar facts and anecdotes........2007-03-26
Another unnecessary tome of the "publish or perish" variety. It merely documents that the author has identified and consulted written accounts of the phenomenon from the last 150 years and patched together a narrative that is very much of the cut-and-paste variety. No original research is evidenced; and where the author had the opportunity to correct gross errors of fact in sources quoted, it's just too much bother. To wit: on p. 237, "La Goulue...still there in the 1930s... In the background..stands an old man...Valentin-le-Désossé, her old dancing partner." Well, La Goulue was dead by early 1929 (30 Jan. to be exact), and her partner Valentin had slipped back into the perfectly bourgeois existence that he emerged from - to die in 1907.
On p. 246, Mrs. Wilson gives us two paragraphs on a "certain" Dr. Walter Serner (1889-1942). She appears to know nothing about him as a writer (of brilliantly unique short stories), but insists that he eventually disappears in the Soviet Union, "perhaps in search of the bohemian's always elusive utopia".
This romanticizing nonsense is especially galling, considering that Serner suffered the usual fate the Nazis had in store for Jews: he and his wife were arrested in Prague in 1942 and murdered a few months later, probably in Auschwitz.
The author's website tells us that she has written an autobiography at age 45, and is a feminist, lesbian and social activist. I'd say stick to it.
haven't read it all yet, but..........2005-12-20
I will be sure to re-review this item when I complete the book, but I felt the need to encourage people to buy this instead of "Bohemian Manifesto : A Field Guide to Living on the Edge" by Lauren Stover. I have actually never read that book either, but having scanned it several times, it seems to me to be a way of making the bohemian conformist and conventional; to a "real bohemian" type it would most likely be laughable. I put this in quotes because it is one of the issues that "Bohemians: the Glamorous Outcasts" grapples with. Having begun this book twice, I can say I was much more interested and understood it better the second time around, after having taken a course in 19th century European art and a survey art course from Renaissance to Modern art, so some prior knowledge of art history may be a large help in understanding
Average customer rating:
- An Entertainment Book about International Bridge Circuit
|
'For Love or Money: The Life of a Bridge Journalist'
Mark Horton , and
Brian Senior
Manufacturer: Master Point Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Bridge
| Card Games
| Puzzles & Games
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Puzzles & Games
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 1894154010 |
Customer Reviews:
An Entertainment Book about International Bridge Circuit.......2001-06-12
Horton and Senior are two of the world's top bridge journalists. They take you to the behind the scenes of the international bridge circuit. This book containing full of great hands, crazy characters and strange but true happenings that often don't (or can't) get reported in the pages of the bridge magazines.
Average customer rating:
|
Omar Sharif's Life in Bridge
Omar Sharif
Manufacturer: Faber & Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Bridge
| Card Games
| Puzzles & Games
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Gambling
| Puzzles & Games
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Puzzles & Games
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Sports
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0571130984 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Winnipeg Free Press, published by Thomson Gale on April 16, 2007. The length of the article is 668 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Goren Bridge / Omar Sharif and Tannah Hirsch.(Life)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication:
Winnipeg Free Press (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 16, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: d7
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Winnipeg Free Press, published by Thomson Gale on September 27, 2007. The length of the article is 827 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Goren Bridge / Omar Sharif and Tannah Hirsch.(Life)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication:
Winnipeg Free Press (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 27, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: d9
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Winnipeg Free Press, published by Thomson Gale on July 9, 2007. The length of the article is 591 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Goren Bridge / Omar Sharif and Tannah Hirsh.(Life)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication:
Winnipeg Free Press (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 9, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: d7
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Winnipeg Free Press, published by Thomson Gale on June 4, 2007. The length of the article is 612 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Goren Bridge/ Omar Sharif and Tannah Hirsch.(Life)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication:
Winnipeg Free Press (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 4, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: d7
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
If you've held back from developing open source or free software projects because you don't understand the implications of the various licenses, you're not alone. Many developers believe in releasing their software freely, but have hesitated to do so because they're concerned about losing control over their software. Licensing issues are complicated, and both the facts and fallacies you hear word-of-mouth can add to the confusion. Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing helps you make sense of the different options available to you. This concise guide focuses on annotated licenses, offering an in-depth explanation of how they compare and interoperate, and how license choices affect project possibilities. Written in clear language that you don't have to be a lawyer to understand, the book answers such questions as: What rights am I giving up? How will my use of OS/FS licensing affect future users or future developers? Does a particular use of this software--such as combining it with proprietary software--leave me vulnerable to lawsuits? Following a quick look at copyright law, contracts, and the definition of "open source," the book tackles the spectrum of licensing, including:
- The MIT (or X), BSD, Apache and Academic Free licenses
- The GPL, LGPL, and Mozilla licenses
- The QT, Artistic, and Creative Commons licenses
- Classic Proprietary licenses
- Sun Community Source license and Microsoft Shared Source project
The book wraps up with a look at the legal effects--both positive and negative--of open source/free software licensing. Licensing is a major part of what open source and free software are all about, but it's still one of the most complicated areas of law. Even the very simple licenses are tricky. Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing bridges the gap between the open source vision and the practical implications of its legal underpinnings. If open source and free software licenses interest you, this book will help you understand them. If you're an open source/free software developer, this book is an absolute necessity.
Customer Reviews:
Important and timely.......2005-03-30
People don't realize how important licensing is with open source, but there is a lot.
Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing is a very needed book and well written.
A Worthwhile Introduction to Open Source Licensing.......2005-01-30
Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing
Andrew M. St. Laurent
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/osfreesoft/
When sharing with others that I was reviewing an O'Reilly book through their User Group & Professional Association Program, the first question was always the same: "What book are you reviewing?" After saying the title was "Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing", responses ranged from "What's that?" to "Well, you won't have any trouble sleeping!" One might think that this list of people included relatives and coworkers who were not attuned to the open source community and its issues. On the contrary, the responses came from those within my circle of acquaintances that include software developers, system administrators, and even an intellectual property lawyer. Licensing is not exactly the sort of topic where people slide forward in their seats and ask to be told more. Such is the appeal of software licensing; however, the importance of understanding licensing, particularly within the context of open source development, cannot be overstated.
Those familiar with the O'Reilly product offerings have no doubt seen or purchased one or more their Pocket Reference series (http://pocketrefs.oreilly.com/). They are not comprehensive references, but rather convenient guides for a specific topic to provide the sort of information one is not likely to have committed to memory, particularly as the trend of having cross-disciplined technologists continues. This book could be considered the analog of pocket guides for open source and free software licensing. Open source licenses and their legal interpretation are subject matter that easily warrant a "pocket reference" that is a full-sized book of nearly 200 pages.
Frankly, reading through a software license and maintaining a reasonable level of comprehension is a rather tough job. The author manages to make the task far more bearable and fruitful at the same time; a difficult balance to strike. The pace of the annotation works well to break up the various licenses (twelve in total) into bite-sized chunks. Chapters 2 and 3, which address the BSD/MIT family of licenses and the GPL/LGPL/MPL family of licenses respectively, each end with a section titled "Application and Philosophy" that serves as a sort of reward for making it through the license and establishes a touchstone to summarize and provide meaningful context for what has been covered.
The annotations of the different licenses are a great introduction, but the book should not be considered as a complete reference for open source licensing issues. The book seems to affirm this at points where the author indicates that particular topics fall outside the book's scope, even to the point of recommending experienced legal counsel for certain issues. It also has a wonderful collection of footnotes and reference to other resources to allow the reader to flesh out topics of interest beyond the focus of this work.
One subtlety of the book that should not be missed is how the history of the open source movement is woven throughout the book to provide the context in which these licenses came into being and were modified to accommodate the vibrant, emerging world of open development models. The book's last two chapters bring that context to the foreground, fully developing the consequence of the licenses in daily development activity. It is far too easy to view these licenses and as mere legal documents that exist in and of themselves; the author reminds us that these licenses are the manifestations of a spirit of selfless contribution and work toward social good made possible by the considerable sacrifice of quite gifted individuals. For those passionate about the open source and free software movements, the section of chapter 7 titled "Models of Open Source and Free Software Development" is a poignant and stirring encapsulation of the first years of the GNU and Linux projects and the work that brought them into being. The cliché rings true; we do indeed "stand on the shoulders of giants."
The number of editorial errors involving misspelled and/or missing words seemed relatively high; this is a trend that seems to have developed in technical books in recent years, to a point that the technical community has come to accept it as some sort of side effect of the rapid pace with which books must be produced in order to keep pace with the rate of change. Given that this is an issue present in other works as well as this one, it should not particularly count as a mark against the work, but rather serve to underscore an issue publishers should consider improving.
"Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing" is a book which strikes a balance between completeness of subject matter coverage and manageability of size. Given the amount of attention the average open source user or developer has given to licensing, reading this book would be a considerable improvement. This book is recommended for a couple of audiences. First, it serves as a great foundation for developers either active in or contemplating participation in open source development. Searching most any open source mailing list for the term "license" can usually turn up some of its hottest flame wars. If most developers had this introductory level of understanding about the main open source licenses, hundreds of message threads arguing about licensing could be avoided.
A second audience for this book is the project manager and/or CTO in most corporate IT shops. Most corporate projects are making use of numerous open source libraries and frameworks. This is particularly true with J2EE, but also with .Net as a number of .Net counterparts to popular J2EE resources arise, e.g. NAnt, NUnit, etc. This book can dispel unnecessary apprehension regarding the use of these libraries that often arises from fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) propagated in much of the mainstream technology media. It can also equip managers to make informed decisions about team members' potential contributions to open source projects and the potential legal implications.
good quick reference.......2005-01-13
I am an attorney who does open source software license work for a living. When this book came along, I picked it up, mostly because I was interested in seeing how O'Reilly does branching out well beyond its usual technical subjects. As you are probably aware, 2004 was the year of open source, according to some publications. Well, it was also the year of open source books. I have seen at least five that deal with the topic directly.
Getting to the merits of St. Laurent's book, I struggled with whether to give it three or four stars. You see, even as a lawyer I found it lacking in clarity and flow. Overall, I am opposed to the route he took in excerpting almost every term of each license and then providing exposition of his own that was a lot of times hardly more helpful than the original license language. A better approach to explaining the licenses can be found in Larry Rosen's wonderful book "Open Source Licensing." However, this downside becomes an upside when using the book as a reference, instead of an educational guide (justifying the fourth star). St. Laurent's approach here is useful for going into more depth on a particular license. Perhaps that was the goal all along.
Another advantage this book has over Rosen's is its broader treatment of the growing array of licenses and license types. St. Laurent covers more licenses and for that I am thankful. In the end, I would recommend having a copy of both Rosen's and St. Laurent's book handy. And whatever you do, skip Rod Dixon's "Open Source Software Law."
Clearly defines licensing standards - great reference.......2004-12-28
Software licensing can be one of the most confusing issues of software installation and development. Most people assume that there are few if any issues with Open Source and Free Software Licensing but that often is not the case. While it may be free to install you wade into murky waters when you change the code, make a new program that uses some of the coding of the open source program, make a derivative program, or a host of other situations. Part of the confusion is that all Open Source or Free Software licensing is not the same. For example there are the MIT, BSD, Apache, and Academic Free Licenses. Or what about the GNU license? Most people don't realize that there are two different versions of GNU licenses, the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)? Then there is the Mozilla Public License, Q Public License, Artistic License, and Creative Commons License.
Author Andrew M. St. Laurent does an excellent job explaining all these various licenses, what you can do and can't do, the various benefits and shortcomings of the licenses and pitfalls to watch for. If you are doing development in this arena, have made an improvement to one of the programs, or have written a program for internal use that might have resell value you can't afford to not understand the nuances of the various licensing agreements. Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing is highly recommended and required reading for anyone in this situation.
Not at all as dry as I thought it would be.......2004-10-14
I honestly didn't think I'd find this as interesting as I did. As important as licenses are, an annotated listing of them didn't sound like anything I wanted to flop back on the couch with. However, the author has managed to make this both interesting and educational.
It covers all the common open source licenses, explaining what each section means, and digging into problems that might come up for the licensor or licensee. Open Source isn't all that it covers: standard shrink-wrap licenses are examined, as is Sun's Community Source License and Microsoft's "Shared Source Initiative".
Finally, the book itself is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license. It is interesting that O'Reilly is willing to publish works like this, but I'm glad they are.
Books:
- Treatise on Instrumentation
- Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap
- Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi Performs Suzuki Cello School (Volume 1 and 2)
- We All Go Traveling by
- Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan And the 1960s
- Yes Yes Y'All: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip-Hop's First Decade
- Younger Than That Now: The Collected Interviews with Bob Dylan
- 100 Tips For Guitar You Should Have Been Told (includes CD)
- 1000 Record Covers (Taschen 25)
- 1791: Mozart's Last Year
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- How Doctors Think
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
- Survey of Accounting
- Maya 8 for Windows and Macintosh
- Accounting Information Systems
- Divided Kingdom
- Cities of the Dead
- Wiley Not-for-Profit GAAP 99: Interpretation and Application of Generally Accepted Accounting Princi
- The World Economy: Resources, Location, Trade and Development
- A Visual Introduction to Bears
Study of Counterpoint
The Study of Fugue
Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music (Two Volumes Bound As One)
Principles of Orchestration
Structural Functions of Harmony
