Preface; Acknowledgments; A Note on the Text; Introduction; Part I. Criticism: 1. Problems in writing about music; 2. Resistances to Britten's music: their psychology; 3. National frontiers in music; 4. Sport and art: the concept of mastery; 5. Music and psychopathology; Part II. Composers and Their Music: 6. Art as departure (Haydn); 7. New Music: Beethoven's Choral Fantasy; 8. Schubert: tune and melody; 9. Little known greatness (Mendelssohn and Mozart); 10. Schumann was a symphonist; 11. Tristan and the realism of adolescence (Wagner); 12. Resistances to Brahms; 13. Elgar the progressive; 14. The unpopularity of Mahler's popularity; 15. The sentimental violin (Glazounov); 16. The 'Lucky' Hand and other errors (Schoenberg); 17. Natural master (Schmidt); 18. Schoenberg: A Survivor from Warsaw ; 19. Film music: The Harry Lime theme (Karas and Weill); 20. Mátyás Seiber 1905-1960; 21. Gloriana as music drama (a reaffirmation) (Britten); 22. Shostakovich's Twelfth Quartet; 23. Stravinsky v. Stravinsky; 24. The state of the symphony: not only Maxwell Davies's; 25. Britten's last masterpiece; 26. The Man and the Music (Simpson); Part III. Towards a Theory of Music: 27. Towards a theory of music; 28. The musical analysis of music; 29. Functional Analysis No. 9A: Mozart's Piano Sonata in A minor, K 310; 30. A slip of Mozart's: Its analytical significance (1956/57); 31. Knowing things backwards; 32. Mozart's wrong key signature; 33. Key characteristics; 34. Strict serial technique in classical music; 35. Schoenberg: the future of symphonic thought; 36. Whose fault is the speaking voice? 37. Why this piece is about Billy Budd; 38. Rhythm: Gershwin and Stravinsky; 39. Principles of composition; Notes; Index.