@Il-pleut The Rhythmic Structure of Music looks good, thanks for that one. One of the things about western theory which irks me to no end is the way it treats melody and rhythm as interesting little things that just happen or as a side effect of harmony. And a couple books; Unplayed Melodies - Javanese Gamelan and the Genesis of Music Theory and The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory are two of my favorites.

@oid Well in serial music things go the other way, there melodie and harmonie are more or less considered as if non existant, agregats, ostinantos and clusters draw shapes tiled with transposable cells or sets of pitch-class.

But those books introduce to many other way to see things. And in his book "other harmonys" Tom Johnson introduces, aside of many theorical composition technics, his own analysis software called "mathematica".

Another one that features only female composers, with compositions as recent as 2014 :

If you want to dig into the contemporary philosofical thinking of sounds :

And if you want to explore a part of the
past, an apogée, a golden age :

And because guitare is important too, and because this is a book that is based on another key book of the twentieth century...

To put some perspective, a little bit of history of chinese music. Quite atonishing,
you realize that some musical objects are centuries older than you think.

@oid

@Il-pleut That looks great and I was even able to find a copy with a sane price, most copies were $100-250 and there were not many to choose from. I do like Malagasy music quite a bit, especially D'Gary whose guitar playing is infuriatingly difficult to figure out. I have really been trying hard to not buy more books and you are making that difficult, already got me to buy two and there are a few which I am rather tempted by.

To continue the american century,
those three :

ho and....

And if you think the world is better without boundaries, that's ok but the shock can be real :

And to illustrate, a fantastic piece from Stockhausen, microtonal, for flute :

@Il-pleut Beware of 'academia.edu'. Whatever you do, don't register on their site, or you'll start getting all sorts of spam from them, with subjects like "Are you the author of blah-blah-blah?".

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/bsuxe6/what_exactly_is_academiaedu/

https://www.quora.com/Is-Academia-edu-a-scam

https://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/01/23/dear-scholars-delete-your-account-at-academia-edu/?sh=4fd6e37f2d62

@Il-pleut damn, just when I thought I was "over" Stockhausen... that piece is great!

1953, on Elektronische studie 1 from Stockausen :

"In shaping the band by hand, he ( Stockausen) is adapting a technic known to optical sound in the film industry, by wich the the strenght of the audible signal varies directly in proportion to the area of tape passing the playback head. "

Robin Maconie

And now a pair of composers who have scored just so many films and be so modern each in his own way.

This one that I barely understand so far. But I will try intul it's done. Mikro-ton theory.
Cyclical and linear nature of the pitch.

When you start to write letters in the style of Benjamin Britten

And I'm gonna stop there, I think...

@Il-pleut said:

And I'm gonna stop there, I think...

My checking account will be happy about that.

@oid , @everybody , Last advice, when you read a book, try to read 2 or 3, or 4 books speaking of the same subject. By another author, one book older, one more recent, one in another language or at least translated, one from another country.

@Il-pleut thats a nice advice Thanks for the books and their pictures...