Luigi Dallapiccola was one of twentieth century's most accomplished and admired composers. His music incorporated many of the twelve-tone techniques developed by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton von Webern, but blended their expressionistic impulses with an Ital-ianate sense of lyricism. Brian Alegant's The Twelve-Tone Music of Luigi Dallapiccola traces the evolution of Dallapiccola's compositional technique over a thirty-year period (1942-74). Using both historical and music-analytical lenses, this book documents the influences of Webern and Schoenberg (many of which have not been previously disclosed), and highlights Dallapiccola's innovative handling of harmony, form, and text setting.<BR><BR>The Twelve-Tone Music of Luigi Dallapiccola sheds light on several works that have been virtually ignored and provides a long-needed account of Dallapiccola's idiosyncratic approach to twelve-tone composition. The first part of the book builds a conceptual and theoretical framework for the analysis of his twelve-tone music. The second part provides a fuller picture of his harmonic language and his penchant for text setting.<BR><BR>Alegant's Dallapiccola book will be a crucial source of insights for readers-theorists, musicologists, composers, conductors, performers, pedagogues---who are interested in twentieth-century music in general and postwar Italian music and the Second Viennese School in particular.<BR><BR>"Alegant's sophisticated, accessible analyses deeply enrich our understanding of one of the most fascinating sound worlds from the twentieth century. The Twelve-Tone Music of Luigi Dallpiccola is a major achievement."--- Christoph Neidhofer, associate professor (music theory), Schulich School of Music, McGill University.