Talk:Schenkerian analysis

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Contents 1 Edits 2 Rewrite begun 3 Needs serious attention 4 Reading 5 my first contribution to Wikipedia is... 6 Continental reception 7 "Magnum opus" clarification request 8 Further reading versus cited sources

[edit] Edits

Schenkerian Analysis bears more than one notable resemblance to Freudian Analysis, considered as a cultural phenomenon. First Schenker was Viennese and Jewish, like Sigmund Freud, and second, like Freud he held a view that behind or beneath the surface, deeper layers of structure exist, which may be revealed by analysis. Third, the ideas of both men successfully exported to the United States for reasons partly to do with Nazism, but also because perhaps of a less conservative intellectual attitude (I write from the UK, BTW).

When I was first introduced to Schenkerian Analysis, I couldn't believe how bizarre the basic Ursatz seemed, but after even a little study I found that the technique is capable of offering to address the powerful feeling of unity that exists in great works of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Austro-German art music in particular. At grammar school our lessons in music theory could help to explain how the surface variety in say Beethoven piano sonatas could have been concieved by the composer. But how did the music sound so unified with so much variety? Well, if there is a heirarchical, architectonic structure, which can be clearly represented in graphical form, at least the possibility of an explanation presents itself.

In the UK of course the ideas of Donald Francis Tovey have long held sway, and the sort of "analysis" you read in concert programmes or hear on the BBC is usually no better. A sort of half-baked rhetorical metaphor - you hear the music described as an "essay" or and "argument", and this without a nod to any justification of this stretched comparison. Schenker provided for me a refreshing alternative that recognised a deep structure, and took and approach which started from scratch as it were, and didn't borrow from a banal schoolmasterly approach to the study of classical literature.

The major drawback of Schenker's ideas is obviously that they can probably be applied only to tonal music, and not all of that. His concept that the techniques could be used to tell the difference between Good and Bad music would retain little currency today. The mere fact that the Second Viennese school was emerging around the time of Schenker's writings would be enough, and for a listener (like me) to a wide variety of "musics" (I would prefer "music"), the dominance of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms (whose music I certainly love passionately) is just not there. Not all music is great music, but Schenker's analysis cannot even start on plainsong, Stockhausen, Coltrane or gamalan.

Noam Chomsky's ideas of deep structure in human language now face very little credible opposing argument (I believe), and this is consistent with contemporary ideas of evolutionary biology. Surely the purported deep structure beneath the surface features of actual hum languages must ultimately have a genetic basic or connection. Academic study can still often remain siloed into separate disciplines, and a connection between adaptive evolution, psychoacoustics and (post-)Schenkerian analysis seems woefully underexplored.

Simon Christopher Buck 15:35, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

At the risk of going off topic:

The general idea that there's deep structure in human language is of course non-controversial, but if you get more specific than that, people have tried for decades to pin down exactly what Chomsky was saying in his theories, and he isn't very consistent about it.

Chomsky invented context-free grammars - the formal languages of theoretical computer science - thinking he was inventing a way to describe human language, but we know that human language is not context-free now. He also says (it would seem -- at least his followers say this) that we are born with grammatical rules hardwired in our brain, which is widely believed outside the field of linguistics but very controversial within it. He never tested any of his statements with scientific tests, only thought experiments, so I consider his contributions to theoretical CS to have much more merit than his hypotheses about linguistics.

But if you're just referring to the recursive structure of grammar - which Chomsky drew attention to more than anyone else - then yes, that's non-controversial.

rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 00:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I did some edits on the section of the article about the symbolic notation to make it more accurate and complete. I would like to do more work on the article. I'm working on a dissertation on Schenker theory, so I'm fairly well versed on the topic.

Jason D Yust 23:25, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Oops, I just rewrote the intro and intended to save the text of the old one which I did away with, but I accidentally lost it. It had some interesting things in it but gave a very misleading impression as an introduction. At some point we should include some off-shoots of Schenkerism like Lerdahl-Jackendoff, Narmour etc. but that should go in its own section near the end.

Jason D Yust 20:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

All previous versions of a page are saved under "history", so there's no need to worry about (permanently) losing the text of previous versions. Nevertheless, I was wondering whether you could elaborate on why you found the previous intro to be misleading. As it happens, I have some issues with the new intro myself, so we should probably discuss this further. I am, of course, very happy to see the new work on the article.

Komponisto 05:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, as you can tell, I'm new to the editing process, but I'm gradually getting the hang of it. To answer your question: one sorce of discomfort for me in the previous version of the intro is using the word "generative" to describe Schenkerian analysis at the outset. The implied reference to structural linguistics is inaccurate from an orthodox Schenkerian viewpoint, because it suggests that the prolongational techniques of Schenkerian analysis behave like formal rules, and form a complete system for analysis. Although the idea of using Schenker's ideas to define such formal systems is interesting and has been pursued by a number of theorists (Lerdahl, Kassler, Smoliar, Rahn, etc), Schenkerian analysis itself is not so rigorously defined. (And according to many prominent Schenkerians such as Schachter—I'm not saying I completely agree with them!—it is neither possible nor desireable to define an accurate generative grammar of tonal composition).

I also was bothered by the statement "Schenkerian analysis (and, more broadly, much of music theory) could be thought of as a kind of first-person psychology, cognitive science, or phenomenology". Not that it isn't true; it is interesting to think of it this way. But placed as it was prominently in the introduction, I feel it would give a very misleading impression to the naive reader. I don't think its an overstatement to say that the mainstream of American Schenkerianism (to say nothing of Schenker himself) is actively hostile to the application of cognitive science and psychology to music theory. These connections have their place in the article, just not in the introduction.

I think that most of the other content of the previous introduction is preserved though reworded: the subjective nature of the method, the idea of reduction and elaboration, and the mention of a specialized vocabulary and notational system.

I'm interested to hear your issues with the new version of the introduction. I'm sure that it can be improved.

Jason D Yust 16:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Before addressing the current intro specifically (which I'll do soon), allow me first to respond to your concerns about the previous intro.

The word "generative" was not actually intended as an allusion to linguistics--the word, after all, existed long before linguists adopted it for their purposes. Rather, it was meant to be taken at face value: Schenkerian analysis is concerned not merely with attributing hierarchical relationships to musical events, but also with describing how (that is, in terms of what process, or "operation") the subordinate events are obtained (i.e. "generated") from the superordinate events, thereby yielding a description of the roles played by the notes of a piece. Thus we have that some notes are neighbors, others are passing tones, etc. Although some of these ideas were around in rudimentary form long before Schenker, it seems clear to me that the idea of analyzing a work in this systematic (if not always precise) manner, with the goal of attributing at least one specific role or function to every note in a piece, is Schenker's principal claim to fame; this is why such a characterization of Schenker's theory was included in the introduction. (It should be noted that, to the extent that such an approach parallels the methodology of linguistics, it was Schenker who came up with the idea first, in the context of musical theory, even if the "discovery" of this method in linguistics was arrived at independently.)

I think this kind of introductory description is more suitable for an encyclopedia article than, say, one that is laden with music-theoretical terminology, because, unlike the latter, it abstracts the fundamental essence of Schenker's innovation out of its particular context, puts it into precise, discipline-neutral language, and allows Schenkerian theory to immediately be placed in a broader intellectual context. The philosophy I am invoking here is one that holds that introductions should convey as much information as possible while being concise--in other words that they should use abstract language, insofar as comprehensibility permits. The revolutionary nature of Schenker's contributions (which, among other things, renders them potentially interesting to people outside of music) makes the case for this type of treatment even more compelling. (I do not mean to imply that the current intro is completely unsatisfactory in this way; but I think in the previous version these considerations played a larger role. As I mentioned, I'll say more on the current intro at a later time.)

The issue of whether mainstream (or orthodox) Schenkerians would be hostile to the description of music theory as psychology etc. is a tricky one that probably depends on what one means by words like "mainstream". To dodge this issue I was careful to define what I meant when applying controversial characterizations, with the aim of reducing any controversy to one about the choice of words. Thus, when I characterized Schenkerian theory as "generative", I immediately specified what I meant: "Schenker understood musical compositions as complex elaborations of basic musical formulae", which I think is indisputable. If you think "generative" ought to mean something different, that's a separate (and less important) issue. Likewise, when I wrote that music theory could be thought of as psychology or phenomenology, I implied (or at least meant to imply) that its concern with "the explicit description and explanation of musical effects" was sufficient to yield this characterization. I think most Schenker experts would agree that Schenkerian theory is "concerned with the explicit description and explanation of musical effects", whether or not "cultural" considerations permit them to approve of my labeling this as "cognitive science". I did, however, think it important to point out that such labels could very reasonably be applied--in fact some very important musicians (possessing intimate acquaintance with Schenker's concepts in their original context), such as Milton Babbitt and Peter Westergaard, would happily do so. Their point of view, unfortunately, is little acknowledged on Wikipedia at present. Komponisto 07:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I think "complex elaborations of basic musical formulae" is accurate. I'll try to rework the intro again to bring this out more prominently, and maybe see if I can avoid some of the jargon. I still think avoiding the word generative is a good idea: the pre-Chomsky sense of the term is "capable of reproducing," which doesn't quite make sense. It is true that the word has been used for many things other than the generative grammar since the 50's, but it always has retained the sense of self-generating or generation by formula, which better characterizes the Lerdahl/Jackendoff theory than Schenkerian theory (and it is this aspect of GTTM that raised the hair of many orthodox Schenkerians, though L/J do not regard their theory as Schenkerian).

I hoped that my paragraph on the subjective nature of Schenkerian analysis would replace the idea of "first-person psychology." I understand what you mean by this, but I think "psychology" and especially "cognitive science" are words to avoid here just because of the unwanted associations. As for "the explicit description and explanation of musical effects," I'm not quite sure what this means. Schenkerian analysis, like all musical analysis, tries to describe and explain music. It's unclear to me what "music effects" means beyond "music."

I like the idea of including Milton Babbit! Maybe I'll look for a good quote in his review of Forte's "Schenkeresque" _Contemporary Tone Structures_ in the Musical Quarterly.

Jason D Yust 15:25, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I just made a few minor edits to further clarify certain definitions for the uninitiated - only a few minor things, V = dominant key area, etc. --207.38.220.42 19:15, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite begun

To address the concerns I mentioned below, I have started rewriting the article. My intention is to gradually replace the previous text in order not to delete any factual information. This will undoubtedly result (temporarily) in awkward transitions and quasi-incoherent writing, so the cleanup tag will continue to be appropriate.

Also, I plan to add more citations, but this may take some time. --Komponisto 09:22, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

One thing I should mention is that I am by no means committed to the current organization of the article (indeed I plan to change it at some point in the process if nobody else does), so if someone knowledgeable wants to improve this aspect, they should jump right in as with everything else. --Komponisto 12:02, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Here is my current proposal for a table of contents (large sections may need to be expanded into main articles):

1. Outline of Schenkerian theory

1.1 Foundations

1.1.1 Schenker's fundamental aims

1.1.2 Harmony

1.1.3 Counterpoint

1.1.4 Principle of repetition

1.2. Types of elaborations

1.2.1 Arpeggiation

1.2.2 Linear progressions

1.2.3 Neighbors

1.3. Structural levels and the Ursatz

1.3.1 The concept of structural levels

1.3.2 Ursatz forms

1.3.3 Immediate elaborations of the Ursatz

1.3.4 "Later" levels of structure

2. Examples of Schenkerian analyses

3. Reception of Schenkerian theory

3.1 Schenker's own time

3.2 Postwar United States and Britain

3.2.1 Differences of goals and methodolgy

3.2.2 Further development and extension

3.2.3 Criticism

3.3 Postwar Europe and elsewhere

--Komponisto 01:22, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I've started adding sections to the article, roughly following this outline, which I like. I began with "Schenker's Goals" which sets up a discussion of the Ursatz and Schenker's many prolongational techniques.

Jason D Yust 21:54, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

"Schenker's Harmony" is now complete, although more citations may be in order (also for "Schenker's goals") Eventually these sections should be more organized and we could include more internal links for terms such as "background" and "prolongation".

Jason D Yust 18:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Needs serious attention

This article has several major problems (in addition to style issues):

(1) The second sentence, "It reduces all tonal music from [sic; should be "to"] a simple progression based on the tonic triad..." is at best vague, at worst grossly misleading. The main problem is that it's not clear what is meant by "reduces". The first few sentences really ought to be something like:

brewhaha@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca: I think "reduces" in this context means that analysis tries to describe a work. Perhaps it can be put this way: "It describes all tonal music as a progression based on the tonic triad." Remove the quotation marks. 216.234.170.108 23:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Whatever the meaning of "reduce" [1], it is not the same as "describe" [2]. I think we should choose our words as carefully as possible, because (1) it's the right thing to do anyway, (2) this is a reference source, and (3) this subject (music in general, and Schenkerian theory in particular) has already suffered a great deal from verbal carelessness. Of course, the last is certainly my own opinion, but (1) and (2) should be good enough reasons for anyone. --Komponisto 21:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

The best word choice here for "reduce/describe" is "explain/rationalize," (though "describe" is also fine) as the binary we are dealing with in Schenkerian analysis is construction v. analysis. "Reduce" implies construction - alteration of the existing music, and as "Analysis" is contained within the practice's title, one should choose words that reflect analysis, not construction. Words such as "explain/describe/rationalize" all approach from an analytical perspective, not one of construction. --Stewie3128 09:29, 01 December 2006 (PST)

"Schenkerian analysis refers to a method of musical analysis based on the ideas of Heinrich Schenker. In general, this approach is characterized by its generative view of a musical work: Schenker understood complex musical structures in terms of successive elaborations of simpler musical structures. A Schenkerian analyst thus typically seeks to "reverse engineer" a composition by "revealing" the successive layers of elaboration. However, it is important to note that the object of study in Schenkerian analysis is the listener's understanding of a work's structure, not the compositional history of the piece."

This needs some refinement, but already it would be a much better introduction. Incidentally, I don't even think it's appropriate to mention the specific Ursatz forms until further down in the body of the article.

(2) Problem (1) is compounded by the fact that the article later contradicts itself:

"While contemporary authors such as Forte and Beach mistakenly[!] present Schenker's analysis as a process of 'reduction'..."

brewhaha@ecn.ab.ca: If Shenkerian analysis isn't invertible. In other words, if the description that it yields doesn't provide enough information to construct the original work, then it is a reduction. 216.234.170.108 23:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

The point is that the old version of the article started out by claiming that Schenkerian analysis was about reduction, and then later proceeded to declare that view (as attributed to Forte and Beach) "mistaken". There was clearly a contradiction in the text of the article. If something different was meant, then it should have been stated explicitly. --Komponisto 21:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Yet the second sentence claimed that "reduction" was exactly the essence of Schenkerian analysis! Does the article wish to make the claim that this is a way in which "Schenkerian analysis" differs from "Schenker's [own] analysis"? It shouldn't be making such a claim in this context, but if it that was the intention of the author, considerably more exposition is required here.

(3) No work of Heinrich Schenker himself is cited anywhere(!) in the article.

brewhaha@ecn.ab.ca: Sprechen Sie Deutsche? 216.234.170.108 23:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Enough to know that it's "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" (no "-e"). Yes, I missed the passing reference to Der Freie Satz. You got me. --Komponisto 21:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

(4) The article on Carl Schachter claims that Schachter is "renowned as arguably the most influential Schenkerian analyst since Schenker himself". Whatever one thinks of this claim, it seems clear to me that Schachter is sufficiently important in the field of Schenkerian analysis for his ideas on the subject to inform the article. The same goes for other prominent Schenker experts who receive little or no mention. As it stands, the article does not seem to reflect expert understanding of the subject.

(5) Some of the sources that are cited are odd (e.g. the Middleton book on popular music - not exactly the first source that comes to mind for information on Schenkerian matters, which are mostly concerned with the "serious" or "classical" musical tradition).

brewhaha@ecn.ab.ca: The subject is obscure, so I don't think that's a problem, unless you can't find them and you really need them. 216.234.170.108 23:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but it isn't obscure at all. It has been a major field of research for several decades now. Check Grove if you need confirmation of this. An encyclopedia article on Schenkerian theory should be based primarily on sources specifically devoted to Schenkerian theory. --Komponisto 21:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

(6) Generally speaking, the article is severely incomplete. Schenkerian theory is a huge field, with a large literature and a plethora of specialized concepts and terminology. It has also generated intensive and extensive controversy. It should be the subject of a series of related articles, to say nothing of a much expanded main article. --Komponisto 22:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

brewhaha@ecn.ab.ca: I think your proposed table of contents is about as detailed as I might want an encyclopedia to get. The new terms might already be around, begging for articles to use them. 216.234.170.108 23:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reading

I added Peter Westergaard's book An Introduction to Tonal Theory to the bibliography, under "Expansions". Of course it could also have gone under "Pedagogical", as it's in the intersection of these categories, but I'm hesitant to list it twice. Any thoughts? --Komponisto 04:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Having added that annotation to the book [Forte, Allen and Golbert, Steven E. (1982). Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis, Hyacinth 21:10, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)] listed in "Further reading" I feel the need to also annotate that so far (p.40) the book is very dry, and its content resembles classroom lectures, vaguely explaining concepts while declaring their utmost importance. Hyacinth 21:55, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Do you mean the Forte/Golbert? The Narmour is entertaining at least, though sometimes annoyingly polemical. Komar's a good writer (he was my advisor for years ... oy... ) Antandrus 03:19, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes. [3] Hyacinth 21:10, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Re: "The Narmour is entertaining at least, though sometimes annoyingly polemical."

As opposed to what?... Schenker's style? Schenkerians are either polemic or cryptopolemic. Haven't you read their stuff?

-Josh Broyles

I guess my basis of comparison were Middleton and Maus, and Maus makes interesting comparisons. Hyacinth 04:02, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the unqualifying tone of Narmour is, in a way, like Schenker. Narmour, though, benefits historically from have more to consider and more opportunity in which to consider it. In the later books, Narmour is able to become even more assertive, owing to a mountain of very credible sources he can cite in order to pass the credibility buck. He's like the Jared Diamond of melodic cognition modeling. - Josh Broyles

[edit] my first contribution to Wikipedia is...

1. "Schenkerian analysis is an approach to musical analysis devised by Heinrich Schenker. It generates all tonal music from a simple progression based on the tonic triad which in its simplest form is:"

The approach, in and of itself, doesn't generate ANY music, tonal or otherwise. The approach is intended to explain all tonal music AS IF generated from said progression. Schenker was actually explicit about not claiming to reveal compositional chronology, and even said that his theories should not be used for composing. Thus, if one is using Schenker's approach to generate actual music, one is not using Schenker's approach.

2. "Schenker came to understand every tonal work to be an embellishment of an Ursatz,"

'Came to understand' is a term I think is too close to 'discovered that'. One can arguably 'come to understand' anything as being anything, so I respectfully submit that the use of the term 'came to understand', as used here, is intended to mean something more than this. Why not simply say what is meant by it?

3. "giving precision to the claim that a tonal work unfolds in a particular triad or key."

This does not merely clarify the claim, but modifies it. Claiming that the outcome of World War I resulted from a conspiracy of Jewish bankers 'gives precision to' the claim that it resulted from a failure of some bankers to do what was expected or demanded of them.

4. "Schenker defined tonal music as that of the masterpieces of the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras. According to Allen Forte, "Schenker's major concept is not that of the Ursatz, as it is sometimes maintained, but that of structural levels, a far more inclusive idea." Schenker called these levels Schichten. He called only the Ursatz background or Hintergrund and he called the foreground Vordergrund. (Beach 1983)"

This is a good quotation, but Schenker did not invent the concept of structural levels; he merely showed one way of conceiving of them and constructed a graphic system which would pursue and exhaust a set of assumptions about structural level to graphic completion, which had not been done before. Also, the nature of the 'structure' is never clearly defined by Schenker as compositional, audio-cognitive or mere graphic pattern recognition. Schenker scholars tend to treat these things as if they are interchangeable. If they were interchangeable in the real world, though, there would be no use for music analysis to begin with.

5. "Milton Babbitt admired Schenker's work and his own work may be seen as part response, revision, and alternative to Schenker's. For example, he suggests that the properties described as natural phenomenon by Schenker be considered axioms and he also formulated a system to compose twelve-tone music that was "'equally intricate and fruitful.'"

'Phenomena', not 'phenomenon'. Good use of quotation marks on "equally intricate and fruitful".

6. "Allen Forte also responded to Schenker by providing an alternative system applicable to the analysis of nontonal nontwelve tone music. (ibid, p.162-163)"

This much implies patent similarity in the ontological underpinnings of Schenker's and Forte's approaches to the respective repertories. This is a methodoligically dangerous implication. That is: because in neither case is the thing purported to be modeled ever clearly defined, it may be convenient to assume that these two things modeled are the same. While my own opinion is not all that matters here, please allow me to assert, for the record, my own belief: A) that the thing best modeled by Schenkerian models is actually just the emphatic structure of a mnemonically optimized performance and B) that Forte's analyses are all but explicitly models either of compositional technique or of the application of specific quantifiable compositional constraints, as applied to specific works or bodies of work. 'Quantifiable' is important here; Schenker's numbers are mere ordinal taxonomy, whereas Forte's numbers have broad-reaching arithmetic significance. Moreover, whether or not one agrees with my specific assessment of the things modeled, it is completely clear that the use of numbers is different; that the numbers are used to approach essentially different properties of the things numbered (and this is not one of the stronger points to be made on this specific issue, but only the easiest one to make here without importing any graphics).

7. "Narmour, Eugene (1977). Beyond Schenkerism: The Need for Alternatives in Music Analysis. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press."

How would everyone feel about another article, just on Narmour?

It might save me the trouble of knocking over the whole Schenkerian house of cards on the actual Sckenker page.

- Josh Broyles

1. I changed "generates" back to "reduces". Do you know the explination for how all tonal works are reducible to a single entity though never generated from it?

Absolutely: the reduction, itself, literally presupposes that the works are generated by the thing to which they are reduced. We can reduce a pig to sausage, but this by no means proves conclusively that all pigs are generated by sausage. Thanks for the change.

2. It would seem that "came to understand" means only that he developed his theories over time. Perhaps "came to describe" would be better.

That works for me. Good Wikipedians will, of course, find something even better, eventually.

3.Replaced with "making the claim that a tonal work unfolds in a particular triad or key more specific".

Excellent!

4. I don't think the quote or other text implies that he invented the concept of structural levels. Do you have information about earlier conceptions you could add?

I'll find some. I'm not at university anymore, but I still have my notes. If I recall correctly, much of what has been shown of influences on Schenker wasn't well disseminated until AFTER the quote in question was published. Please feel free to keep on me about this.

5. No comment.

6. I'm don't think "alternative" implies that degree of similarity, but I guess Maus was willing to take that risk. Please feel free to find a source which disagrees.

I don't at all mean to suggest that I could have written a better article than Maus. I'm more of an editor/cynic than a writer.

Maus may be unaware of some important pedagogical contexts to which the article will presumably be applied by readers. Moreover, the periodicals section of any good university music library presents MANY graphic examples(with accompanying text) that are at once Fortean and Schenkerian. Forte's own work is actually less Schenkerian-looking than that of many of his more Schenkerian adherents. I have seen a significant amount of insightful Fortean or quasi-Fortean analysis of works comparably amenable to Schenkerian graphic methods, but I'm unaware of any of it being broadly published. I've always thought that applying Schenker to non-tonal music was something like the reverse of talking about 'T5 operations in Monteverdi'. Please don't conclude that I'd like to see an immediate closure on the matter of the implication that has drawn my concern. It's a comparatively minor point for me to make in regard to the specific article, and I'm just happy that I'm being allowed to take part in a process whereby collective expertise and authority gradually improves things.

I still don't see how "alternative" rather than meaning different somehow implies similarity. Also, this is also used in reference to Babbitt. Hyacinth 23:42, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

7. An article on Narmour or his work?

Hyacinth 03:54, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know Narmour as such, only his work. Narmour has been said to have softened his criticism of Schenker in recent years, but the book is sadly mostly unread by precisely the people who ought to be defending Schenker against it rather than dismissing it with a laugh (as they often do). Even more sadly, Narmour remains better known for 'hating Schenker' than for exposing an important series of ontological problems which Schenkerians have thus far declined to confront in earnest. Still more sad is the fact that all of this continues to overshadow and scare people away from Narmour's later books, The Analysis and Cognition of Basic Melodic Structures, and The Analysis and Cognition of Melodic Complexity, which expound a coherent system of analytic principles and devices objectively rooted for the most part in hard scientific research. Narmour's analyses are graphically daunting, but they tend to get right to the point; he more-or-less takes the top off of the average listener's skull to show you the gears going around while the piece is being listened to. People who prefer never to define what they are modeling will only tend to find this idea more disturbing than I have made it sound here, so Schenkerians have done a lot to further discourage the reading of these later books, on top of the basic challenge they present to readers in terms of being precise and thorough, rather than 'readable'.

-Josh Broyles

Sounds like an article or articles on his theories and methods would be great. See: Help:Starting a new page. Hyacinth 23:42, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll put in a stub at some point and wait for the Schenker flames to burn off of it before getting down to business.

-Josh Broyles

[edit] Continental reception

(2005/11/3) Has anyone considered to include some words about the fact that Schenker is practically unknown on the continent? "Schenkerianism" is - at most - considered to be complete rubbish, whereas students are mainly taught analysis of harmonic development after Riemann. Having read the Wikipedia article, though, especially the lines quoting Maus, I can certainly understand the unwillingness of some to simply take into account what is a major part of music analysis courses in English-speaking countries. Just in case you wonder: there is not even an article about Heinrich Schenker in the German Wikipedia version. Wicked, hm. User:Solobratscher

Wikipedia:Be bold!. Hyacinth 02:15, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Pursuant to 'be bold', I might as well add that I have hypothesized the Schenkerization of North America to be explicable by two factors:

1)The prevailing pattern of emigration of Schenker disciples to North America, where they were automatically credited as having special Europeanish insight into European music and special authority as to how European music scholars were alleged to be advancing beyond the primitive analytic methods of the backwards ex-colonials struggling to establish themselves as relevant in the 'real world' of music academia (Europe, that is).

2)A perecived but generally unstated need to de-Nazify Germanic music in the minds of American music students in the postwar era. The Jewishness of Schenker remains seemingly indispensable to mention in any discussion of Schenker's orientation to the larger culture associated with the works he selected for analysis, and the spread of North American interest in Schenker is timed historically in such a way as to correspond with scholars of Germanic music possibly finding themselves feeling a bit defensive about their subject.

Here's an experiment:

Ask as many Schenkerians as possible these two questions:

1) Was Schenker Jewish?

2) How does the second tone of the Ursatz derive from the Klang?

The speed and accuracy of the answers you'll get will do a bit to show how Schenker's political importance compares to the importance of his contribution to clear analytical thinking.

-Josh Broyles

Regarding your hypotheses see Wikipedia:No original research. Regarding the questions, the speed and accuracy of those answers mostly illistrates the difference between the first, usually quite simple, question, and the second, quite complicated, question. Doesn't it seem possible that the theories and methods appealled to people? Hyacinth 23:28, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

You can see why I'm not directly manipulating articles. There's plenty I still don't know about Wikipedia, but I usually learn things best by getting involved in a tangential manner, as I've done here. I trust you to ignore me as apporopriate and to filter my personality out of anything that you post.

If you care, the answer to the second question is just as simple as the answer to the first: the second tone of the Ursatz DOES NOT derive from the Klang.

Schenker never actually directly says that it does; he merely says that the Ursatz as a whole derives from the Klang. Being that the presence of this tone and its relation to the Klang are absolutely vital to the Ursatz, upon which the rest of the theroy and analytic techique is considered to stand, I should think that the derivation of the second tone would be the very first thing people would ask about in studying Schenker (as it was in my case, anyway). I can entertain competing hypotheses as to why the music theory community would be taking practically no interest in the second question (as it should seem to have infinitely more bearing on the meaning of the analyses than does the first question), but yours is the first such hypothesis with which I am yet confronted; the question is somehow more complicated.

It does seem possible that his theories and methods would have appealed to people, but their appeal must lie more in what is implied by them than by what they actually demonstrate, which is my ultimate point here. Astrology may also hold an appeal for astronomers, but the two fields don't tend to be freely intermingled by astronomers. Not everything that is worthy of study is worthy of belief.

Just more to consider, eh? I promise I'm ready to drop this for a while soon, and I appreciate your patience.

Thanks for reading!

-Josh Broyles

BTW: I'm not going to puke my MA thesis up on Wikipedia, but I did mine on the augmented triad, of all things. I'm probably not the best judge of what is 'original research' and what isn't, but I naturally (in addition to clear original research; listener conditioning experiments), did a lot of collection of what theorists had said about the augmented triad, from which an article on the Augmented triad could probably benefit. If a responsible Wikipedian wanted to look at the thesis...

-Josh

Josh and others,
This is a valuable article. Thanks for working so hard on it. I have a few suggestions:
(1) A section on Schenkerian Aesthetics might be a useful addition to the outline.
(2) Useful sources:
Leslie David Blasius, "Schenker's Argument and the Claims of Music Theory" (Cambridge)
Joseph N. Straus, "Remaking the Past: Tradition and Influence in Twentieth-Century Music" (Harvard)(list under post-tonal extensions)
Carl Schachter, "Unfoldings: Essays in Schenkerian Theory & Analysis" (Oxford)
(3) The bibliography:
A bibliographic category such as "Tonal Applications" might be useful for the bibliography; the Schachter might go here.
In the biblio, "Summaries" might be retitled "Summaries and Criticism," so as to include a place for the Blasius.
(4) I'd put the Westergaard in the category "Pedagogical Works," since it's a textbook. (I was Westergaard's teaching assistant and was pleased to see it included.)
(5) The issue of Schenkerian analysis as generative or reductive is controversial enough, and the source of enough misunderstanding, that it might deserve its own section. Personally, I think that those who insist on Schenkerian analysis as reductive are excessively hung up on the "theory" part of the phrase "Schenkerian theory." With his analyses, Schenker sought to enhance the performance and understanding of music; his analytical technique is primarily a tool for that purpose. It is wrongheaded to be preoccupied with the mechanics of the graphic-analytical process to the exclusion of the musical insights that it is intended to uncover. Music theory as a whole is probably not "theory" as scientists understand it; this issue is addressed to some extent in Blasius's book and elsewhere.
Best,
Jeff Perry, School of Music, Louisiana State University) --Jperrylsu 17:35, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I think Schenker's explanation of the derivation of the second tone would have to be considered question begging---if you go to Schenker expecting a philosophically worked-out system. (Narmour's first book in effect criticizes Schenker for this, but it probably isn't fair in the sense that while Schenker comes on like a "great thinker," the value of his ideas lies in the fact that he was "only" a great musician.)

For what it is worth as a perception about music (and only that), Schenker's explanation of the second tone involves two separate processes: the harmonic unfolding of the bass and what has been translated by Oster as "diatony" in the upper voice. There is also the conceptual overlay of a dichotomy between what is derived from Nature and what the artist (the composer) does with it. This last is probably the source of the problem of reduction versus generation because Schenker thinks it is Nature that does the vertical (harmonic/synchronic) generating but the artist who does the horizontal (contrapuntal/diachronic) generating while at the same also doing something like reduction as well (what Oster translates as "aural flight."

This is something of a muddle, perhaps. But I don't think it is wrong. Rather, it is that the creation of a musical structure is much more complicated that most things we are used to talking about---compare the proverbial difficulty of the centipede in describing the motion of its legs.

One idea that I find helpful first appears in Schenker's Harmony, if I remember right. Tonality should be conceived as a system of relationships between tones, in which the whole network can be reproduced at each of its interstices. In other words, the whole set of relationships around the tonic can be reproduced around each scale step, a phenomenon usually translated as "tonicization." If the relationships among the tones of the scale are three-dimensional---it would be hard to chart them all in two dimensions, certainly---then this adds at least one dimension, putting us in a realm analogous to the hypercube.

The second tone of the Ursatz, then, in Schenker's view, is in part the result of Nature's generation of overtones and in part the result of the artist's elaboration of that by giving to the generated tone (V) its own set of overtones (^2). The artist does this both for the sake of the added complexity that tonicization makes possible, but also to allow the melodic passing connection between the tones of the tonic triad the same sort of stability those tones have.

There is, after all, no reason why the processes that go into the composition and apprehension of music have to be simple. Arthur Maisel, 10 December 2007

[edit] "Magnum opus" clarification request

1)

Schenker's magnum opus, Neue Musikalische spans...
from Harmonielehre ... to the posthumously published Der Freie Satz 

A "Magnum opus" that "spans" starts up a question of grammatic felicities. (More to the point, I don't understand the sentence....) Anyway, can you give discrete dates for these works? Is it "Neu Musicalishes ...." (published xxxx), a (synthesis?) (compendium?) of Harmonienlehre (pub xxxx), etc.

2)

...The organization of this work 

see above. If you are sticking with the one-work concept, (as in Whitman's Leaves of Grass, where individual sets of poems just kept getting accumulated into the same named item). If so, would it help if you just threw some quotes are "work," or change it to "these works"? "Magnum opus" can stay singular and no one will care, or kill "magnum opus" and change it to something else.

Best to all, Shlishke (talk) 05:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Further reading versus cited sources

This article needs to seperate the further reading from the cited sources to ease or allow verifiability. Hyacinth (talk) 22:40, 29 December 2007 (UTC)