Form as Harmony in Rock Music

DREW NOBILE'S FORM as Harmony in Rock Music constitutes an important addition to the growing body of monographs and textbooks focusing on the theory and analysis of rock music (variously defined). Nobile frames his theory around repertoire he calls “small-r rock,” which he describes not as a genre, but as an “umbrella term encompassing many genres,” including music that might be characterized generically as “big-R Rock,” pop, folk-rock, and so on. He strives to “make the case that all of these various genres can be seen to exhibit a consistent musical style, engaging with the same compositional norms and employing similar expressive devices” (xxi). Nobile's “target repertoire . . . is concise, radio-ready rock songs from . . . the ‘classic rock’ decades,” and he considers the years 1963 and 1991 to mark “important stylistic boundaries” delineated on one end by the Beatles' first commercial recording and on the...