INTRODUCTION TO MUSIC THEORY

This text is primarily designed to serve as a textbook for a college-level music
theory fundamentals course. However, it also has the flexibility to serve equally
well for a typical core curriculum college-level Music Theory I or Harmony I course.
Our goal is to deliver sufficient information to enable the student to be able to
evaluate and analyze select music from the literature as quickly as is practical.
Secondly, we seek to provide sufficient instruction to enable a student to begin
writing music as quickly as is practical.
In order to develop a complete argument, it is important that the student
understand that this text “assumes a blank slate.” No prior knowledge on the part
of the student is assumed.
In order to give Instructors greater flexibility we have intentionally provided
content that may exceed the course objectives in some institutions. We anticipate
that instructors may want to adjust the material in the text to match their current
course content, or adjust their courses to make use of all of the content in this text.