Musical Form, Forms, and Formenlehre

Reviews / Votes

I highly recommend this book on all accounts for the reader interested in formenlehre.

By Halvor Hosar (Norway), Amazon.com But perhaps the most captivating aspect of the book lies in the responses and rebuttals: each of the contributors was invited to venture comments on his collaborators' essays, and each in turn provides a short response to his colleague's comments. Thus, Hepokoski and Webster respond to Caplin's essay, and Caplin replies in turn, then Caplin and Webster to Hepokoski's, and forth. The exchanges are lively, and their result is to silhouette each analytical system against the others. For his having arranged to cast the book in this "dialogic form," students of the new American Formenlehre will long be in Berge's debt.
Nathan John Martin, Columbia University, Notes, March 2011 Besides its many other merits, 'Musical Form, Forms, and Formenlehre' demonstrates a novel format for cooperative engagement in music-theoretical writing. ... The result is a wonderfully rich and engaging book in which the personalities of the contributors are more evident than in most writing in our field.
Reviewed by Mitch Ohriner, Indiana Theory Review Volume 28