A Practical Approach to Viennese Classical Music

This book is to some extent a continuation of Dr. Kiss's 2015 textbook A Practical Approach to Harmony: From the Birth of Polyphony to the Baroque Era.

The aim of this book is to support conservatory students (aged 14-22) and their teachers with a collection of carefully selected material from which to learn the necessary musical concepts and practical knowledge of music theory, form, and harmony.

The target era is the Viennese Classical period, which spans just under one hundred years between around 1730 and 1830. The focus is on the greatest representatives of their time: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

The book concentrates on the practical aspects of studying music theory, form, and harmony. This means that all musical concepts become practical knowledge and are integrated into skills that a cultured musician needs (score reading, writing, singing or playing, composing, memorizing, transposing, arranging, analyzing, and so on).

The book consists of ten units grouped into three levels of difficulty: Basic (units 1 to 5), Intermediate (units 6 to 8), and Advanced (units 9 and 10). The structure of each unit is identical:

 1. Listening and Analysis

Analysis of selected compositions based on the following considerations: the structure of melody, rhythm, harmony, tonality, instrumentation, and form.

 2. Theory and Practice

Learning theoretical concepts from masterpieces, and applying them to singing, playing, transposing, piano reduction writing, improvising, composing, and analyzing.

 3. Keyboard Harmony

Creative activities such as: writing and realizing figured basses; harmonizing melodies; and playing, composing, and transposing chord progressions.

 4. Ear Training

Harmonic singing exercises and notating chords and complex musical excerpts after listening to them.

 5. Appendix

The Appendix of each unit contains the solutions to the tasks in that unit.