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Serial Music
Olivier Messiaen
Popular Song
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Allen's life so far...
Links to other sites of interest
Madeleine Forte's web site
Allen Forte Electronic Archive
Publications of Allen Forte
Books
  • Contemporary Tone-Structures, Columbia, 1955.
  • Tonal Harmony in Concept and Practice, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962. Third Edition, 1979.
  • The Structure of Atonal Music, Yale University Press, 1973
  • The Harmonic Organization of The Rite of Spring, Yale University Press, 1978. Paperback edition to be issued Fall, 2005 (ISBN 0-300-10537-1).
  • Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis (with Steven E. Gilbert), W. W. Norton & Co., 1982.
Click the thumbnails below for more information.

The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era, 1924-1950.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

The Atonal Music of Anton Webern.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998.
Listening to Classic American Popular Songs
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001

With a companion CD featuring Richard Lalli and Gary Chapman

Articles (selective)
  • "The Structural Origin of Exact Tempi in the Brahms-Haydn Variations," The Music Review, May, 1957.
  • "Schenker's Conception of Musical Structure," Journal of Music Theory, April, 1959.
  • "A Theory of Set-Complexes for Music," Journal of Music Theory, Winter, 1964. "A Program for the Analytical Reading of Scores," Journal of Music Theory, Winter, 1966.
  • "Sets and Non-Sets in Schoenberg's Atonal Music," Perspectives of New Music, Fall-Winter, 1972.
  • "Schoenberg's Creative Evolution: The Path to Atonality," The Musical Quarterly, Vol. LXIV, No. 2, April, 1978: 133-176.
  • "Aspects of Rhythm in Webern's Atonal Music," Music Theory Spectrum 2, 1980.
  • "Generative Chromaticism in Mozart's Music," The Musical Quarterly, October, 1980.
  • "Middleground Motives in the Adagietto of Mahler's Fifth Symphony," 19th Century Music, Vol. VIII, No. 2, Fall, 1984.
  • "Liszt's Experimental Music and Music of the Early Twentieth Century," 19th Century Music, Volume X, number 3 (1987): 209-28.
  • "The Mask of Tonality: Alban Berg's Symphonic Epilogue to Wozzeck," In Robert P. Morgan and David Gable, eds., Alban Berg: Analytical and Historical Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 1991: 151-200.
  • "New Approaches to the Linear Analysis of Music," Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. XLI, No. 2, Summer, 1988: 315-348. "Pitch-Class Set Genera and the Origin of Modern Harmonic Species," Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 32, No. 2, Fall, 1988, 187-270.
  • "Debussy and the Octatonic." Music Analysis, Vol. 10:1-2, 1991, 125-169.
  • "Concepts of Linearity in Schoenberg's Atonal Music: A Study of the Opus 15 Song Cycle." Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 36/2, Fall 1992, 285-382.
  • "Secrets of Melody: Line and Design in the Songs of Cole Porter" The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 4, Winter, 1993, 607-647.
  • "The Golden Thread: Octatonic Music in Webern's Early Songs." In Kathryn Bailey, Webern Studies. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  • "Reflections upon the Gershwin - Berg Connection." The Musical Quarterly, Summer 1999, Vol. 83, No. 2: 150-168.
  • Responses to Papers read at New England Conference of Music Theorists (NECMT 2000) published in the online journal, Music Theory Online, Number 6.3, August, 2000.
  • “Olivier Messiaen as Serialist,” Music Analysis 21/1, March 2002
  • “Introduction to a Theory of Intervallic Harmony.” Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Music Theory. Tallinn, Estonia, April 2003
  • “Messiaen’s Chords” to be published in Messiaen: Music, Art and Literature, London: Ashgate Press, Spring 2005.
  • “Messiaen’s Mysterious Birds” in a collection to be published by Oxford University Presses, 2005.
  • Two Chapters from my book, The American Popular Ballad, translated into Italian to be published in Italy.