Musical analysis
Musical analysis is the study of musical structure in either compositions or performances.[1] According to music theorist Ian Bent, music analysis "is the means of answering directly the question 'How does it work?'".[2] The method employed to answer this question, and indeed exactly what is meant by the question, differs from analyst to analyst, and according to the purpose of the analysis. According to Bent, "its emergence as an approach and method can be traced back to the 1750s. However it existed as a scholarly tool, albeit an auxiliary one, from the Middle Ages onwards."[3]
This article is about the process or academic discipline of music analysis. For the academic journal by that name, see Music Analysis (journal).The principle of analysis has been variously criticized, especially by composers, such as Edgard Varèse's claim that, "to explain by means of [analysis] is to decompose, to mutilate the spirit of a work".[4]
Analyses[edit]
Some analysts, such as Donald Tovey (whose Essays in Musical Analysis are among the most accessible musical analyses) have presented their analyses in prose. Others, such as Hans Keller (who devised a technique he called Functional Analysis) used no prose commentary at all in some of their work.
There have been many notable analysts other than Tovey and Keller. One of the best known and most influential was Heinrich Schenker, who developed Schenkerian analysis, a method that seeks to describe all tonal classical works as elaborations ("prolongations") of a simple contrapuntal sequence. Ernst Kurth coined the term of "developmental motif" . Rudolph Réti is notable for tracing the development of small melodic motifs through a work, while Nicolas Ruwet's analysis amounts to a kind of musical semiology.
Musicologists associated with the new musicology often use musical analysis (traditional or not) along with or to support their examinations of the performance practice and social situations in which music is produced and that produce music, and vice versa. Insights from the social considerations may then yield insight into analysis methods.
Edward T. Cone[5] argues that musical analysis lies in between description and prescription. Description consists of simple non-analytical activities such as labeling chords with Roman numerals[6] or tone-rows with integers or row-form, while the other extreme, prescription, consists of "the insistence upon the validity of relationships not supported by the text." Analysis must, rather, provide insight into listening without forcing a description of a piece that cannot be heard.