Books by Nicholas (Professor of Music Cambridge University) Cook

A theory of the way in which different media music, words, moving pictures and dance work together to create multimedia. Beginning with a study of the way meaning is mediated in television commercials, and concluding with in-depth readings of Disney's Fantasia, Madonna's video Material Girl and Armide, Goddard's sequence from the film Aria.

It is a common experience that words are inadequate for music. Drawing on psychological and philosophical materials as well as the analysis of specific musical examples, this study attempts to make a clear distinction between the province of music theory and that of aesthetic criticism.

This extremely practical introduction to musical analysis explores the factors that give unity and coherence to musical masterpieces. Having first identified and explained the most important analytical methods, Nicholas Cook examines given compositions from the last two hundred years to show how different analytical procedures suit different types of music.