Guidelines for Style Analysis, now in its expanded second edition, sets forth Jan LaRue’s original, penetrating, and adaptable approach to the understanding of musical works.

LaRue provides a consistent point of view from which music of any historical period can be examined.  His style-analytic method insures the close examination of all musical dimensions and elements, an understanding of their functions and interrelations, and a firm basis for evaluation and comparison.  Guidelines presents a codification of various ways of looking at music, within a comprehensive framework.  LaRue discusses in detail each aspect of the style-analytic routine, illustrating points with illuminating examples and diagrams.

In this expanded second edition, a companion volume, Models for Style Analysis, long planned, but never published during his lifetime, has now been added on a compact disc which is found in a pocket on the inside back cover.  Edited by Marian Green LaRue, it presents fifteen pieces, running the historical gamut from Gregorian chant to 12-tone music, with accompanying analyses by LaRue.  These models illustrate and clarify his style-analytic approach.

Guidelines and Models, taken together, give the teacher and student, the listener and performer, new insight into the nature of musical shape and movement, thereby creating heightened awareness of the many facets of the musical experience.

About the author

Jan LaRue (1918–2004), a distinguished scholar of music and a former president of the American Musicological Society, was the author of several books and numerous articles on aspects of style analysis, manuscript and watermark studies, and the 18th-century symphony, concerto and string quartet.  He was also an outstanding teacher who spent the largest part of his teaching career, nearly forty years, at New York University.

About the editor

Marian Green LaRue is the founding editor of The Journal of Musicology.  She resides in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.

DMM/SM 57 / 320p / 0-89990-156-5 / Paperback / $27.50 / Includes CD

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