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 ; 12. The Dances of Central Europe ; 13. The Nineteenth-Century Vernacular ; 14. Romanticism ; 15. Modernism ; 16. The Popular Style ; Epilogue