Masterworks: A Musical Discovery, Boxed Set

This kit contains Holoman's book (Masterworks; A Musical Discovery, 0-13-226358-0; paperbound, 401 pages); a three-disk audio CD set; and a computer interactive CD-ROM (for Mac and IBM). The book covers the technical aspects of pitch, notation, and tonality and moves on to discussions of musical style from the middle ages to contemporary examples of popular songs, jazz, blues, atonality, and electronics. It also contains a glossary and a sampling of musical scores. The audio CDs contain musical performances to illustrate and enhance the presentation in the text. These selections feature good recordings of major artists and musical organizations; however, in several cases not the complete work. More problematical is the computer interactive CD-ROM the publisher decided to include, clearly poorly adapted from another product. The tutorial on its use does not use examples from musical subject matter, and there is a dictionary which under the term Bach yields "to live alone" and "slang for bachelor." Beethoven is not listed. The "Power CD" is very difficult to use, and this kit would not suffer from its absence. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.