Ernst Toch wrote about how, in the absence of a composition teacher, he taught himself the basics by copying the Mozart string quartets from the parts into full score. After he had completed the exposition, he would write his own development section, then compare his with Mozart's. That principle of study, by trial and error, is the concept of this book. Because it uses large chunks of real pieces, and because you can compare your work with the work of the masters, the book helps the student avoid common pitfalls like overwriting, bad chord voicings, and non-idiomatic part writing. In addition, looking at the two, and sometimes three staff reductions of major works shows the student a clear, elegant method of writing sketches of his own.

I checked this book out of the library, and liked its approach so much that I made my own templates so that I could apply its principles to other pieces.

Whoever owns the rights to this book should rerelease it immediately!

I used this book while I was at school studying orchestration. I really loved the idea of it. Orchestrating reductions and having the authors orchestration to compare your own. Unfortunately then I didn't have a whole lot of time to use it as much as I would have liked to. Now I'd love to find this book to get all the goodies that it has to offer. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in studying the art of orchestration. Also, I'd encourage the publisher to re-release it.

This is the most thorough book I have ever read on Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School. It very clearly leads the reader through the progression from tonal music to the twelve-tone system and demonstrates how this progression is a logical extension of the music that came before. There is also a great deal of analysis of almost all the works of Schoenberg, Berg & Webern.