Walter Piston was Professor of Music at Harvard University. An outstanding composer whose many works have been performed by leading orchestras and chamber ensembles both in the US and abroad, he received the Pulitzer Prize twice for distinguished musical composition.

This fifth edition of Harmony marks the forty-fifth year of its successful use. Years after Walter Piston's death, his students and their students can still take great pride in the enduring vitality of his teaching. By now it is plain that the book is different from what it used to be, but its essential approach and its basic substance remain as they were.