For undergraduate/graduate-level courses in Twentieth-Century Techniques, and Post-Tonal Theory and Analysis taken by music majors.

A primer-rather than a survey-this text offers exceptionally clear, simple explanations of basic theoretical concepts for the post-tonal music of the twentieth century. Emphasizing hands-on contact with the music-through playing, singing, listening, and analyzing-it provides six chapters on theory, each illustrated with musical examples and fully worked-out analyses, all drawn largely from the classical pre-war repertoire by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Berg, and Webern.

Straus takes a paced, methodical, logical approach to each topic. He introduces it in context and - perhaps most significantly of all - uses language that's so transparent that merely to follow his descriptions, explanations and illustrations carefully is to understand each aspect of the theory under consideration. Mark Sealey, Classical.net