'The Fundamentals of Music Composition' is the culmination of over forty years of teaching musical principles to students and composers in Europe and America.

For his classes, Schoenberg developed a presentation method in which each technical issue is addressed in a very basic way, so that it is simultaneously simple and thorough.

This book can be used for both analysis and composition. On one hand, it has the practical objective of systematically introducing students to the process of composition, from the smallest to the largest forms.

On the other hand, the author extensively analyzes, with numerous examples, those specific sections from the works of the Masters that relate to the compositional problem being examined.