Roots of the Classical

Peter Van der Merwe spent two years at the South African College of Music in Cape Town but is largely self-taught. He is now working as a qualified librarian. He published his first book, 'Origins of the Popular Style' with OUP in 1989.

I. THE MELODIC FOUNDATIONS ; 1. The subtle mathematics of music ; 2. The Ramellian paradigm ; 3. The children's chant ; 4. The pentatonic scale ; II. THE HARMONIC REVOLUTION ; 5. Primitive harmony ; 6. The discovery of tonality ; 7. Rivals to tonality ; 8. Dissonance and discord ; 9. The evolution of tonality ; III. THE MELODIC COUNTER-REVOLUTION ; 10. The rude, the vulgar, and the polite ; 11. The debt to the East ; The Phrygian Fringe ; Drones and ostinatos ; Outline, refrain, and sequence ; Modes and scales ; 12. The dances of central Europe ; The polka family ; The waltz ; 13. The nineteenth-century vernacular ; 14. Romanticism ; Romantic nationalism ; The symphonic tradition ; Wagner and the vernacular ; 15. Modernism ; 16. The popular style ; The late vernacular ; The blues and early jazz