Schenkerian analysis
Schenkerian analysis is a method of analyzing tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935). The goal is to demonstrate the organic coherence of the work by showing how the "foreground" (all notes in the score) relates to an abstracted deep structure, the Ursatz. This primal structure is roughly the same for any tonal work, but a Schenkerian analysis shows how, in each individual case, that structure develops into a unique work at the foreground. A key theoretical concept is "tonal space".[1] The intervals between the notes of the tonic triad in the background form a tonal space that is filled with passing and neighbour tones, producing new triads and new tonal spaces that are open for further elaborations until the "surface" of the work (the score) is reached.
The analysis uses a specialized symbolic form of musical notation. Although Schenker himself usually presents his analyses in the generative direction, starting from the Ursatz to reach the score and showing how the work is somehow generated from the Ursatz, the practice of Schenkerian analysis more often is reductive, starting from the score and showing how it can be reduced to its fundamental structure. The graph of the Ursatz is arrhythmic, as is a strict-counterpoint cantus firmus exercise.[2] Even at intermediate levels of reduction, rhythmic signs (open and closed noteheads, beams and flags) display not rhythm but the hierarchical relationships between the pitch-events.
Schenkerian analysis is an abstract, complex, and difficult method, not always clearly expressed by Schenker himself and not always clearly understood. It mainly aims to reveal the internal coherence of the work – a coherence that ultimately resides in its being tonal.[3] In some respects, a Schenkerian analysis can reflect the perceptions and intuitions of the analyst.[4]
Fundamentals[edit]
Goals[edit]
Schenker intended his theory as an exegesis of musical "genius" or the "masterwork", ideas that were closely tied to German nationalism and monarchism.[5] The canon represented in his analytical work therefore is almost entirely made up of German music of the common practice period (especially that of Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, and Johannes Brahms),[6] and he used his methods to oppose more modern styles of music such as that of Max Reger and Igor Stravinsky.[7] This led him to seek the key to an understanding of music in the traditional disciplines of counterpoint and figured bass, which was central to the compositional training of these composers. Schenker's project was to show that free composition (freier Satz) was an elaboration, a "prolongation", of strict composition (strenger Satz), by which he meant species counterpoint, particularly two-voice counterpoint. He did this by developing a theory of hierarchically organized levels of elaboration (Auskomponierung), called prolongational levels, voice-leading levels (Stimmführungsschichten), or transformations (Verwandlungen), the idea being that each of the successive levels represents a new freedom taken with respect to the rules of strict composition.[8]
Because the first principle of the elaboration is the filling in of the tonal space by passing notes, an essential goal of the analysis is to show linear connections between notes which, filling a single triad at a given level, remain closely related to each other but which, at subsequent levels, may become separated by many measures or many pages as new triads are embedded in the first one. The analyst is expected to develop a "distance hearing" (Fernhören),[9] a "structural hearing".[10]
Harmony[edit]
The tonic triad, that from which the work as a whole arises, takes its model in the harmonic series. However,
Legacy and responses[edit]
Europe before World War II[edit]
Schenker himself mentioned in a letter of 1927 to his student Felix-Eberhard von Cube that his ideas continued "to be felt more widely: Edinburgh [with John Petrie Dunn], (also New York [probably with George Wedge]), Leipzig [with Reinhard Oppel], Stuttgart [with Herman Roth], Vienna (myself and [Hans] Weisse), [Otto] Vrieslander in Munich […], yourself [von Cube] in Duisburg, and [August] Halm [in Wickersdorf, Thuringia]."[57] Von Cube, with Moritz Violin, another of Schenker's students, founded the Schenker Institut in Hamburg in 1931.[58] Oswald Jonas published Das Wesen des musikalischen Kunstwerkes in 1932, and Felix Salzer Sinn und Wesen des Abendländischen Mehrstimmigkeits in 1935, both based on Schenkerian concepts. Oswald Jonas and Felix Salzer founded and edited together the short-lived Schenkerian journal Der Dreiklang (Vienna, 1937–1938).[59]
World War II brought European studies to a halt. Schenker's publications were placed under Nazi ban and some were confiscated by the Gestapo. It is in the United States that Schenkerian analysis knew its first important developments. This history has been contextualized by comments on both sides of the Atlantic, notably by Martin Eybl[60] and Philip A. Ewell.[61]
Early reception in the US[edit]
George Wedge taught some of Schenker's ideas as early as 1925 in the Institute of Musical Arts, New York.[62] Victor Vaughn Lytle, who had studied with Hans Weisse in Vienna, wrote what may be the earliest English-language essay dealing with Schenkerian concepts, "Music Composition of the Present" (The American Organist, 1931), without however really crediting Schenker for them.[63] Weisse himself, who had studied with Schenker at least from 1912, immigrated to the United States and began teaching Schenkerian analysis at the Mannes School of Music in New York in 1931. One of his students, Adele T. Katz, devoted an article to "Heinrich Schenker's Method of Analysis" in 1935,[64] then an important book, Challenge to Musical Tradition, in 1945, in which she applied Schenkerian analytical concepts not only to some of Schenker's favorite composers, Johann Sebastian and Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Haydn and Beethoven, but also to Wagner, Debussy, Stravinsky and Schoenberg: this certainly represents one of the earliest attempts to widen the corpus of Schenkerian analysis.[65]
The opinions of the critics were not always positive, however. Roger Sessions published in Modern Music 12 (May–June 1935) an obituary article under the title "Heinrich Schenker's Contribution"[66] where, after having recognized some of Schenker's achievements, he criticizes the development of the last years, until Der freie Satz (which he admits is not yet available in the US) and concludes that "It is precisely when Schenker's teachings leave the domain of exact description and enter that of dogmatic and speculative analysis that they become essentially sterile".[67] The most raging attack against Schenker came in the "Editorial" that Paul Henry Lang devoted in The Musical Quarterly 32/2 (April 1946) to the recently published book by Adele Katz, Challenge to Musical Tradition, which he opposed to Donald Tovey's Beethoven, also published in 1945; his attacks also target Schenker's followers, probably the American ones. He writes: