Pastor Offiler lays out in this book a beautiful presentation of the major truths of God's word. By gleaning from the pages of scripture a concise overview of the various types and shadows of the Old Testament, and their fulfillment in the New Testament. This one book is a tremendous aid to any serious Spirit filled believer, desiring to grasp more fully the "big picture" of who God is, and what His will is for man.

I find this book to be an invaluable source of reference. Each area (animal, insect or vegtable) is covered in a short, easy, humerous style. It even covers the basics of beekeeping! The gardening section and the poultry sections are especially good. I would recommend this book for use as a quick reference or as a source for those starting out a small farm to decide which type garden or creatures are the best for their farm.

Paul Harder has created the best book on music theory I have ever had the privelege to use. His systematic course will take the reader from basic chordal theory to Voice leading, and beyond. I have been searching for just such a book for almost twenty years. My composition instructor and I have used this book to teach me the proper "rules" one needs to create tonal compositions of any scale. This book allows one to find their weaknesses and their strengths through it's well thought out structure, and the answers set in to the margins. By covering the answers with a sheet of paper and doing the excercises, then removing the paper to check his/her results the student can immediately identify his/her weaknesses and strengths. Supplemental and mastery excercises help the student achieve the level of knowledge necesary for the creation of their own masterpieces. Long standing as a mainstay of instruction for Harmony, Dr Steinke, through his thoughtful revisions, has assured that "Harmonic Material in Tonal Music, A Programmed Course part 1" will continue to teach many more up and coming composers.

This was the book which started my continuing quest for information regarding the foundation of music. It is a difficult read ONLY because one needs a huge background covering many individuals--Pythagoras, Kepler, Fludd, Hermes Trismegistus, Gurdjieff, the theosophists Blavatsky, Steiner, and Scott--all of whom I had but scant knowledge prior to reading this book. Godwin covers a wealth of information but only touches briefly on each: cosmology, the monochord, music of the spheres, temperment. I have reread this book several times; whole paragraphs are underlined. If you realize something is seriously wrong with the way music is presently used and abused by society, this book may be a starting point for you as it was for me six years ago.

This is one of the finest examples of a near future science fiction book I have read. The mixture of great science fiction with a wonderful examination of prejudice and its impact on a struggling society casts a light on the world of today. The characters are unusual, and develop in a very interesting and non-obvious way. I highly recommend Harmony.

Very insightful. It talks about the relationship between health and harmony explaining that the degree to which a person is at peace with his/herself can have a dramatic effect on their state of health. And that if a person is continually at war within themselves it will often manifest in disease. The author explains that disease is just that," "dis" "ease", or not being "at ease" with onesself; trouble within.

It's a long road to understanding this type of concept but really worth your time if you feel that you would like to play a part in creating good health for yourself. If one day you'd like to wake up and feel as if you have even a small degree of control over changing how you feel physically, mentally,spiritually, this might give you a lot of insight. If you hate always having to go to the doctor "to fix everything", maybe try this author. He is not against modern mainstream medicine at all; he applauds them, but he explains how our thoughts, feelings and actions can have a major impact on our general health.And what we can do to change things for the better.

I had never made any of the conncections with my own health, before reading this author. Now I know that I have the capability to change my health. I've proven it to myself many times.

I understand now that not all medicine comes in bottles.

Almost anybody who has taken even a single course in Physics at High School level would have come across Neils Bohr name in what is known as Bohr's Model of the Atom. But that model hardly gives a clue to the genius of Bohr - what seems simple and evident to us now was a great leap of human understanding. And this book helps us appreciate that.

One senses an almost reverential tone in the way the book has been written. It would have taken away from the book except that the facts are lucidly and logically stated. Even the opinions voiced by many of Bohr's colleagues are put in proper context. All in all one gets the feeling of a well thought out and well-researched book.

I have borrowed this excellent book from the public library numerous times and read it from cover to cover. Of all the music theory books in the library this was the most useful to me. Others were either elementary or so highly technical I could not get through them. Two features particularly contribute to this book's appeal. First, the author's writing style is very readable--concise and logical with each concept discussed relative to a brief musical example (mostly Bach and Mozart). Second, the musical examples are annotated with figured bass style chord indications. It was a thrill to learn to read figured bass rather fluently by reading the book and to see how the author's point about the musical examples jumps out when the figured bass notation is used. Bravo!

It was Foucault who in a onetime interview with Pierre Boulez had remarked how music has kept pace with the innovations in technology;Spectral harmonics at IRCAM,Just Intonation in the USA and I'd imagine not only innovation but subversion of concept would be great spots to transcend Foucault.For I find this(for Foucault it is our loss that music was not a realm he ever pursued,only as a spot of culture,the radical aesthetic and the end of man, where is he/she) a double entendre/ side here to this for technology does create obscurity as well The most exciting composers have been those who have continually challenged the traditions of reigning ideologies(the 18th and 19th Centuries) or the circumventing the magnetic attractions of the cash box(our own age)after the eclipse of modernity.Those who simply conspire to write serious music masquerading as film music(minimalism included) will be forgotten. All the John Williams's,countless permutations now by 2002,Phil Glass Clones out there will join the 747s in the Mojave Desert standing baking in the sun, bleached for Road Warrior to one day find.
I suppose Lacan would have or Zizek would find now something fascinating to say with the indulgences in today's new music,what is it, what does it represent, what incomplete dimension of your unconscious does it reside in.
Perhaps music creativity existing within the realms of the modernist language,post-Ferneyhough is harboring an aesthetic in exile,afraid to come out of its embattled neglected shell, like the intimacy of a Dutch lens grinder,a forgotten art.
Today it is actually more interesting, at least with new music, to discover the creative pathways of a work than the actual work itself,like an elaborate dinner setting where the food never comes(John Tilbury,pianist said that on radio) a new work for much of the time under-rehearsed,and played once,perhaps twice never to be heard again, and never recorded for consumption. And then there are primary new works which the citizens of a free democracy never get to hear at all. This the cause of cultural marginalization, we simply never hear some aspects of the creative spirit,even though the Silicon Valley has fashioned a saturation point of image,icon,aesthetic and place. Someone, some human body politically does decide who will get a Pulitzer,or what new premiere work the Chicago Symphony will play this year. In fact we seldom remember the Pulitzer winner's actual prize music,Can you name the work or even remember a moment from it??we listen more to the opaque cultural power a Prize represents, who cares about the music.Well Habermas said opacity"Undurchsichtlichkeit" is what this age is all about, New Age complaisance.

Carter has received numerous prizes but for his body of work the prizes seem to be arbitrary and marginal, we forget them because he has so many of them,like Oscars,who ever has more than one we forget about. We go(should go) directly toward the creative vigours structural or otherwise to the music, its incessant shapes, and convoluted designs,its virtuosic displays and its long range topologies of poly rhythms and other global durational frames.

The Harmony Book here, (actually Two Volumes sewed into one here)began as a fairly modest endeavor, a practical accounting means, a way to remember certain configurations of tones, or intervallic transformations. No one can remember everything, so Carter began making these large 14 inch long sheets of these tones. All of this creative odyssey is retold within the interview with scholar John F. Link, who has devoted his analytic work to Carter's polyrhythms,and also this Harmony Book.A wonderful interview here with Carter. Volume One is a Catalogue/Synthesis of three note, four note, five note etc chords, and their tranpostions. It seems easier to contemplate these chords here as 1+2=3, or 3+2=5, for one isolated tone then followed by 2 more tones can powerfully direct the best,evocative,crisis moments in music, anyones.. This becomes especially relevant when one needs to account for 55 six note chords distribute graciously over the durations of a work,or controlling the succession of 80 or 90 tones followed, staggered, accelerated as the work's discourse unfolds. Volume 2 then is Analysis, a means of looking more deeply into the relationships of all this stuff, the tones, the intervals, the chords. There are moments of pure illumination as in the discussion on Carter's provocative/evocative Night Fantasies or when for instance one learns as in Carter's Third String Quartet, a work shaped by the Duets,One Violin with Viola, One Violin then with Cello, One group more stationary reduced to Five tones, the other Duet ensemble is free to explore all interval rows. I can't help thinking this is how international capital functions,in Argentina, in South Korea in today's neo-liberal mileau.

There are also elaborate yet functional means of simple symbols, as a four note chord represented with a box, four point, then five note pentagon, and six, then what is referred to as the Sigla controlling and defining the entire array of tones,220 intervals and chords with all their additions.... There is a Glossary to help one wade through this fascinating Naming of the Father- game.

There are also nice excerpts from Carter's music that helps embellish a point,much like conceptual menus for creativity. Then there is the dimension as to who or what controls whom. Does one need this Harmony Book to decepher the structural complexity within Carter's oeuvre. Does Carter need his own Book? And the answer is sometimes! for Carter said that he did break the tyranny of these alloted configurations simply to make the music more interesting. I guess that is the last horizon, the music must be interesting, how one got there is also interesting,perhaps more so or less so, it may become part of what we may now think of musical philosophy and the creativity, the last bastion known.

A wonderful intoduction to the dark side of art dealing. I was absorbed by the mystery, and by the author's obvious knowledge of the art and the art world. A real page turner