For this second edition of his guide to the more adventurous evolutions of music since 1945, Reginald Smith Brindle has added a new chapter reviewing developments in the decade since the book first appeared.

This guide to the more adventurous evolutions of music since 1945--pointillism, post-Webernism, integral serialism, free dodecaphony, aleatory and indeterminate music, graphics, musique concrete, electronic music, and theatre music--was first published in 1975 and has been reprinted several times. For this second edition, Smith Brindle has added a new chapter reviewing developments over the decade since first publication. He discusses the decline of experimentalism and the reaction against increasing cerebralism and complexity as variously illustrated by the more recent works of Stockhausen, the minimalist works of Reich and Glass, and the partial return to romanticism. He also reviews the technological revolution which has taken place in computer music and concludes that the future of music will for the time being be most closely associated with technological change and development, rather than with radical changes in compositional techniques.

'A lively, well-organized, lucid, historically aware, and concise survey of the techniques, aspirations, interaction, and sociology of the avant garde as it has evolved since the end of World War II...a book that might easily be used as a text for an undergraduate course. Moreover, it could, with careful and intelligent application, be used for study by non-musicians.' Notes reviewing the first edition