What are some good books on music theory and history? I'd ask /mu/ but they're normies

Just drop the intellectual pretension and enjoy it on the level you are capable of.

Memorzing scale circles and cadences by monikers won't make you "understand the music" any more than knowing brush types and dye names will make you "understand painting".

Harmony and Voice Leading by Aldwell and Schachter
drive.google.com/file/d/0B8h8bP8t6H4hRmpfUHQ3UmplUzA/view?usp=sharing

Counterpoint by Kent Kennan
drive.google.com/file/d/0B8h8bP8t6H4hOEpPSWFSVXRZeGs/view?usp=sharing

The Study of Orchestration by Samuel Adler
drive.google.com/file/d/0B8h8bP8t6H4hNlpjcHlRSDN0dEE/view?usp=sharing

These are my recommendations.They might be too advanced if you have no idea about music.

I mingle with that crowd, don't want them to think I'm a pleb.

You are a pleb. You can't hide it forever.

This tbph familam. Most musicians don't discuss music on the level that I think that you think they do, and the only people who actually do are jazz assholes and professors/PhD's. Find music you enjoy listening to and be able to explain why you enjoy listening to it, and be open-minded to other peoples' musical interests. Knowledge of theory isn't necessary for a really good conversation about music, and unless you do something musical as a profession, it won't win you any brownie points outside of conversations with the uber-pretentious.

t. musician

But, like, there's tons of terminology in otherwise interesting musicological texts I have no grasp of.

Fuck. But I listen to that stuff!

Music is enjoyed all over the world by people who don't know the first thing about its theory and there's nothing wrong with that. The music itself is deeper than the theory.

What about music history? Knowing how music evolved and which movements are which.

solid recs

if it interests you read about it, but it is not necessary to enjoy listening to music

You sound like a total pseudointellectual.
You asked a question and you got your answer. I don't understand why people do this. They get the answer they didn't want and so they constantly shift the context until they think their pretension will be entertained. You do realize that we don't care what you do? Go consult musicological texts if you want, no one cares. You'll be an example of absurdity, but again, no one cares about what you do to yourself.

Well, if you have that specific interest that requires it, then sure. But just for general knowledge or "better understanding" it's not very useful.

The question was about which music theory books to read, not whether or not I should read them.

The guy he's replying to is not OP.

Start with Baroque, read up through Romantic. Generally speaking, good conversation material can be extracted mainly from that, and everything before/after is fetish material for edgelords. 20th-Century is a polarizer, read only if truly interested.

Since we are on Veeky Forums I will use a comparison with literature. Literature is enjoyed all over the world by people who do not know the first thing about it's theory. They cannot tell you why a book is good or why a book is bad. And they simply cannot appreciate more advanced works since it requires more theoretical and background knowledge to make sense of. But for someone who has that knowledge they can appreciate just how brilliant the work is, whereas it would go completely over the head of a regular person.
Music is the same. Anyone will probably tell you that they like Bowie, but ask them to tell you why it's better than the latest pop music and they will draw a blank. Go a step further and bring in classical music and jazz, now it's simply indiscernible noise to their ears. A lot of people will enjoy it without understanding it, but theory is necessary to completely appreciate the greatness of the music. Basically, understanding music theory is the difference between liking the music just because it sounds good and liking the music because you are amazed at what the composer created. To draw one last comparison, it's comparable to liking a 1000 meter tall skyscraper because it looks cool, and liking a 1000 meter tall skyscraper because you are capable of understanding and appreciating the intricate architectural and engineering marvel that the structure is.

I cannot recommend Walter Pistons book on Harmony enough. I would also read something like Levine's jazz theory book. Even if you don't like jazz understanding jazz theory is really good. In reality jazz and classical just have two ways of understanding the exact same thing. They compliment each other really well.

Except music theory books can be ridiculously complicated and aimed at people with years of formal training under their belt. Try working your way through a book explaining the Bartók's computational method.

You can but I don't see why you would. The extra time it would take to do it this way would be longer than learning an instrument. Also it would be extremely difficult to do.

This isn't a good comparison. The equivalent of knowing brush types would be something like knowing the seating arrangements in an orchestra and how they effect the sound. The equivalent of more important music theory in visual art would be understanding composition, and colour theory, things that do increase ones ability to understand a painting.

>Music is the same.
We all learn to use language automatically and we all learn (in the western world) to read and write. The ability to pick up a book and read it for music would be something like sigh-reading, a skill which takes years to acquire. Peoples reading and writing skills are pretty sophisticated, their musical understanding is not.
>but ask them to tell you why it's better than the latest pop music and they will draw a blank
Such questions of aesthetics need not be answerable to music theory. One can formulate why they prefer X style of music over Y without any reference or understanding of music theory. Music theory is only descriptive, it only shows what has been done, not what to do. If one doesn't like a piece of music for an ideological reason music theory probably won't be important for that value judgement.

>things that do increase ones ability to understand a painting
It only helps with understanding with technical side of creation process, which while relevant ins some degree to unraveling artistic intent pales is comparison to what knowledge of general art history or particular artist's biography would open up to you.

Imagine two people are watching a game of chess but only one of those two people knows the rules. The one who is ignorant can enjoy the patterns of the movement of pieces, the carved pieces themselves etc but he cannot see 99% of what is actually happening. The person who understands the rules can appreciate the game in far more ways than the other person.
Painting, at least representation painting is the attempt to answer certain questions of how to render x. Cézanne is known as a painters painter because this question is the most important thing about his art. If you know nothing about theory you are unable to understand the very point of his entire artistic career.

> to what knowledge of general art history or particular artist's biography would open up to you.
I never anywhere said those aren't important. In fact just before what I just quoted you admitted my position is correct.
>which while relevant ins some degree to unraveling artistic intent
I never said how important such things are to enjoying a painting, you assumed I meant they are extremely important. I only said that they are technical matters which can/do increase ones enjoyment as opposed to the more trivia sort of knowledge of brush types.

>very point of his entire artistic career.
it's looking

No, it's how to render three-dimensional objects onto a two-dimensional plane in a manner divorced from the technique of perspective.

he wasn't theoretical at all, he was quite dumb in that way.

>No-one recommending the fucking recommended texts

Start with the AB Guide - there's two books, and that's probably the most systematic introduction.

If you want more, there's Fux's "Study of Counterpoint", and also there's Schoenberg's "Fundamentals of Musical Composition" and "Structural Functions of Harmony."

Regarding some history, there's "The Classical Style" and "The Romantic Style" by Charles Rosen

>he wasn't theoretical at all
I never said anything of the sort.
>he was quite dumb in that way
How is that dumb? He was attempting to do something that had never before been attempted in the history of all visual art. Attempting to create an image that while only being a single image mimicked the effect that humans having two eyes have on the rendering of the depth of an object isn't easy. Even if it is dumb it doesn't change the fact that it's a pursuit that can only appreciated with some knowledge of art theory which was my whole point.

Cook - A Guide to Musical Analysis

gl op (y)

playing without studying music theory amounts to poorly emulating basic genres and not understanding anything at all

Asides from the fact the person is saying they don't play this ignores the many fantastic musicians who have never had formal training. Jazz had its origins as a folk music with many fine players learning everything by ear and being unable to read a note.

Scruton's book is good

As a moderately well read amateur musician I approve this rec thread.

The Complete Musician by Steven G. Laitz

Jazz musicians have to internalize a ton of music theory even though they can't always read. They have to understand relationships between modes and chords and very dissonant harmonies.

I highly doubt that's what you meant when you talked of studying musical theory especially considering this is a thread about recs for books. If you want to call the approach that the oldest jazz artists took (jazz musicians have for well over 70 years been thoroughly trained in theory) as "studying" then I see no reason why you couldn't extend that to other musicians of a thousand other kinds of music, and if your definition of studying musical theory is such why would you claim that it "amounts to poorly emulating basic genres and not understanding anything at all"?

based user with based recs