Great for aspiring composers

A composer friend of mine recommended this book to me as a good introduction to composition. After reading it, I agree. Have you ever wondered why you can write something that obeys all the rules of classical music theory but has no life to it? Toch takes a good look at the practice of composition through the ages and abstracts a set of principles - the shaping forces in music - that give a composition structure and vitality. The things that I found really interesting about these principles were how universally they apply across all periods and styles of music, and how willing the 'classical' composers like Mozart and Beethoven were to break the rules of classical theory in pursuit of a larger goal.

If you have any interest in the principles of music composition, this is a great book. My only comment is that points illustrated by quotations (which is most of them) are not always clear unless you can play or 'hear' the music - easy for Mozart, not so easy for Brahms, Debussy etc. Having a piano handy would help with this. Another solution would be to read this book in a music library and listen to the relevant works as they come up - in fact I hope to do this sometime myself.

Overall highly recommended for students of music - it's a breath of fresh air after all the traditional dogma.