An engaging study -- the first ever -- of the principles used by noted scholars to unravel the masterpieces of Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and other modernists. For the past forty years, pitch-class set theory has served as a frame of reference for the study of atonal music, through the efforts of Allen Forte, Milton Babbitt, and others. It has also been the subject of sometimes furious debates between music theorists and historically oriented musicologists, debates that only helped heighten its profile. Today, as oppositions have become less clear-cut, and other analytical approaches to music are gaining prominence, the time has come for a history of pitch-class set theory, its dissemination, and its role in the reception of the music of Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and other modernist composers. Analyzing Atonal Music: Pitch-Class Set Theory and Its Contexts combines thorough discussions of musical concepts with an engaging historical narrative. Pitch-class theory is treated here as part of the musical and cultural landscape of the United States. The theory's remarkable rise to authority is related to the impact of the computer on the study of music in the 1960s, and to the American university in its double role as protector of high culture and provider of mass education. Michiel Schuijer teaches at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on topics at the interface between music theory and historical musicology.

Why do most musical performers and musical researchers continue to inhabit divergent epistemic spaces? To what extent is the act of musical performance coextensive with the act of doing musical research, and vice versa? At what point in the research process can a performative act transform into a scholarly one, and a scholarly act into performative one? These, and other related questions, form the central focus of this book with each chapter offering a fresh perspective on a particular topic in music performance studies: improvisational traditions, historical performance practices, analysis and performance, sports psychology, cross-cultural musical interactions, and institutional challenges. This book is aimed at music researchers, teachers, students, and practicing musicians interested in the intersection of academic and performance research and bridges the divide between the research of university-trained musicologists, scholars from other fields who focus on music, and the growing community of musical artist-researchers. Material in the book is supported by performance outcomes offered by the contributors on a separate YouTube channel and on the Routledge online portal.