Musical analysis

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This article is about the process or academic discipline of music analysis. For the academic
journal by that name, see Music Analysis (journal).

Musical analysis is the attempt to answer the question how does this music work?. 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 Ian Bent (Bent,
1987), analysis is "an approach and method [that] can be traced back to the 1750s ... [though] it
existed as a scholarly tool, albeit an auxiliary one, from the Middle Ages onwards." A.B. Marx
was influential in formalising concepts about composition and music understanding towards the
second half of the 19th century.

The principle of analysis has been variously criticized, especially by composers, such as Edgard
Varse's claim that, to explain by means of [analysis] is to decompose, to mutilate the spirit of a
work (quoted in Bernard 1981, 1).

Contents
[hide]
1 Analyses
2 Techniques

o 2.1 Discretization

o 2.2 Composition

3 Analytical situations

o 3.1 Compositional analysis

o 3.2 Perceptual analysis

o 3.3 Analyses of the immanent level

o 3.4 Nonformalized analyses

o 3.5 Formalized analyses

o 3.6 Intermediary analyses

4 Divergent analyses

5 References
 o 5.1 Footnotes

o 5.2 Notations

6 Further reading

7 External links

[edit] Analyses
Some analysts, such as Donald Francis 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 which
seeks to reduce all tonal classical works to a simple contrapuntal sequence. Ernst Kurth coined
the term of 'developmental motif'. Rudolph Rti 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 which produce music, and vice versus. The insights gained from
the social considerations may then yield insight into the methods of analysis, and vice versa.

Edward Cone ("Analysis Today") argues that musical analysis lies in between description and
prescription. Description consists of simple non-analytical activities such as labeling chords with
Roman numerals 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.

[edit] Techniques
Many techniques are used to analyze music. Metaphor and figurative description may be a part
of analysis, and a metaphor used to describe pieces "reifies their features and relations in a
particularly pungent and insightful way: it makes sense of them in ways not formerly possible."
Even absolute music may be viewed as a "metaphor for the universe" or nature as "perfect form."
(Guck cited in Bauer 2004, p.131)

[edit] Discretization

The process of analysis often involves breaking the piece down into relatively simpler and
smaller parts. Often, the way these parts fit together and interact with each other is then
examined. This process of discretization or segmentation is often considered, as by Jean-Jacques
Nattiez (1990), necessary for music to become accessible to analysis. Fred Lerdahl argues that
discretization is necessary even for lay perception, thus making it a basis of his analyses, and
finds pieces such as Artikulation by Gyrgy Ligeti unaccessible, while Rainer Wehinger (1970)
created a "Hrpartitur" or "score for listening" for the piece, representing different sonorous
effects with specific graphic symbols much like a transcription.

[edit] Composition

Analysis often displays a compositional impulse while composition often expresses "display[s]
an analytical impulse" but where "intertextual analyses often succeed through simple verbal
description there are good reasons to literally compose the proposed connections. We actually
hear how these songs resonate with one another, comment upon and affect one another...in a way,
the music speaks for itself" [1]. This analytic bent most obviously in recomposition including the
mash-ups of popular music.

[edit] Analytical situations

Analysis is an activity most often engaged in by musicologists and most often applied to western
classical music, although music of non-western cultures and of unnotated oral traditions is also
often analysed. An analysis can be conducted on a single piece of music, on a portion or element
of a piece or on a collection of pieces. A musicologist's stance is his or her analytical situation.
This includes the physical dimension or corpus being studied, the level of stylistic relevance
studied, and whether the description provided by the analysis is of its immanent structure,
compositional (or poietic) processes, perceptual (or esthesic) processes (Nattiez 1990: 135-6), all
three, or a mixture.

Stylistic levels may be hierarchized as an inverted triangle:

universals of music
o system (style) of reference

style of a genre or an epoch

style of composer X

style of a period in the life of a composer

work

(Nattiez 1990: 136, he also points to Nettl 1964: 177, Boretz 1972: 146, and Meyer)

Nattiez outlines six analytical situations, preferring the sixth:

Poietic processes Immanent Esthesic processes

structures of the
 work
1 x
Immanent
analysis
2 x x
Inductive
poietics
3 x x
External
poietics
4 x x
Inductive
esthesics
5 x x
External
esthesics
6 x = x = x
Communication between the three levels
(Nattiex 1990: 140)

Examples:

1. "...tackles only the immanent configuration of the work." Allen Forte's musical set theory
2. "...proceed[s] from an analysis of the neutral level to drawing conclusions about the
poietic." Reti's (1951: 194-206) analysis of Debussy's la Cathdrale engloutie
3. The reverse of the previous, taking "a poietic document -- letters, plans, sketches -- ... and
analyzes the work in the light of this information." Paul Mie's "stylistic analysis of
Beethoven in terms of the sketches (1929)"
4. The most common, grounded in "perceptive introspection, or in a certain number of
general ideas concerning musical perception ... a musicologist ... describes what they
think is the listener's perception of the passage." Meyer's (1956: 48) analysis of measures
9-11 of Bach's C minor fugue in Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier
5. "Begins with information collected from listeners to attempt to understand how the work
has been perceived ... obviously how experimental psychologists would work"
6. "The case in which an immanent analysis is equally relevant to the poietic as to the
esthesic." Schenkerian analysis, which, based on the sketches of Beethoven (external
poietics) eventually show through analysis how the works must be played and perceived
(inductive esthesics)

[edit] Compositional analysis

Jacques Chailley (1951: 104) views analysis entirely from a compositional viewpoint, arguing
that, "since analysis consists of 'putting oneself in the composer's shoes,' and explaining what he
was experiencing as he was writing, it is obvious that we should not think of studying a work in
terms of criteria foreign to the author's own preoccupations, no more in tonal analysis than in
harmonic analysis."

[edit] Perceptual analysis

On the other hand, Fay (1971: 112) argues that, "analytic discussions of music are often
concerned with processes that are not immediately perceivable. It may be that the analyst is
concerned merely with applying a collection of rules concerning practice, or with the description
of the compositional process. But whatever he [or she] aims, he often fails -- most notably in
twentieth-century music -- to illuminate our immediate musical experience," and thus views
analysis entirely from a perceptual viewpoint, as does Edward Cone (1960: 36), "true analysis
works through and for the ear. The greatest analysts are those with the keenest ears; their insights
reveal how a piece of music should be heard, which in turn implies how it should be played. An
analysis is a direction for performance," and Thomson (1970: 196): "it seems only reasonable to
believe that a healthy analytical point of view is that which is so nearly isomorphic with the
perceptual act."

[edit] Analyses of the immanent level

Analyses of the immanent level include analyses by Alder, Heinrich Schenker, and the
"ontological structuralism" of the analyses of Pierre Boulez, who says in his analysis of The Rite
of Spring (1966: 142), "must I repeat here that I have not pretended to discover a creative
process, but concern myself with the result, whose only tangibles are mathematical relationships?
If I have been able to find all these structural characteristics, it is because they are there, and I
don't care whether they were put there consciously or unconsciously, or with what degree of
acuteness they informed [the composer's] understanding of his conception; I care very little for
all such interaction between the work and 'genius.'"

Again, Nattiez (1990: 138-9) argues that the above three approaches, by themselves, are
necessarily incomplete and that an analysis of all three levels is required. Jean Molino (1975a:
50-51) shows that musical analysis shifted from an emphasis upon the poietic vantage point to an
esthesic one at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Nattiez 1990: 137).

[edit] Nonformalized analyses

Nattiez distinguishes between nonformalized and formalized analyses. Nonformalized analyses,

apart from musical and analytical terms, do not use resources or techniques other than language.
He further distinguishes nonformalized analyses between impressionistic, paraphrases, or
hermeneutic readings of the text (explications de texte). Impressionistic analyses are in "a more
or less high-literary style, proceeding from an initial selection of elements deemed characeristic,"
such as the following description of the opening of Claude Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of
a Faun: "The alternation of binary and ternary divisions of the eighth notes, the sly feints made
by the three pauses, soften the phrase so much, render it so fluid, that it escapes all arithmetical
rigors. It floats between heaven and earth like a Gregorian chant; it glides over signposts marking
traditional divisions; it slips so furtively between various keys that it frees itself effortlessly from
their grasp, and one must await the first appearance of a harmonic underpinning before the
melody takes graceful leave of this causal atonality." (Vuillermoz 1957: 64)

Paraphrases are a "respeaking" in plain words of the events of the text with little interpretation or
addition, such as the following description of the "Boure" of Bach's Third Suite: "An anacrusis,
an initial phrase in D major. The figure marked (a) is immediately repeated, descending through
a third, and it is employed throughout the piece. This phrase is immediately elided into its
consequent, which modulates from D to A major. This figure (a) is used again two times, higher
each time; this section is repeated." (Warburton 1952: 151)

"Hermeneutic reading of a musical text is based on a description, a 'naming' of the melody's

elements, but adds to it a hermeneutic and phenomenological depth that, in the hands of a
talented writer, can result in genuine interpretive masterworks.... All the illustrations in
Abraham's and Dahlhaus's Melodielehre (1972) are historical in character; Rosen's essays in The
Classical Style (1971) seek to grasp the essence of an epoch's style; Meyer's analysis of
Beethoven's Farewell Sonata (1973: 242-68) penetrates melody from the vantage point of
perceived structures." He gives as a last example the following description of Franz Schubert's
Unfinished Symphony: "."

[edit] Formalized analyses

Formalized analyses propose models for melodic functions or simulate music. Meyer
distinguishes between global models, which "provide an image of the whole corpus being
studied, by listing characteristics, classifying phenomena, or both; they furnish statistical
evaluation," and linear models which "do not try to reconstitute the whole melody in order of
real time succession of melodic events. Linear models ... describe a corpus by means of a system
of rules encompassing not only the hierarchical organization of the melody, but also the
distribution, environment, and context of events, examples including Chenoweth's (1972, 1979)
explanation of "succession of pitches in New Guinean chants in terms of distributional
constraints governing each melodic interval," Herndon's (1974, 1975) transformational analysis,
and Baroni and Jacoboni's (1976) "grammar for the soprano part in Bach's chorales [which]
when tested by computer ... allows us to generate melodies in Bach's style."

Global models are further distinguished as analysis by traits, which "identify the presence or
absence of a particular variable, and makes a collective image of the song, genre, or style being
considered by means of a table, or classificatory analysis, which sorts phenomena into classes,"
one example being Helen Roberts' (1955: 222) "trait listing", and classificatory analysis, which
"sorts phenomena into classes," examples being Kolinski's (1956) universal system for
classifying melodic contours. Classificatory analyses often call themselves taxonomical.
"Making the basis for the analysis explicit is a fundamental criterion in this approach, so
delimiting units is always accompanied by carefully defining units in terms of their constituent
variables."

[edit] Intermediary analyses

Nattiez lastly proposes intermediary models "between reductive formal precision, and
impressionist laxity." These include Schenker, Meyer (classification of melodic structure in
1973: Chapter 7), Narmour, and Lerdahl-Jackendoff's "use of graphics without appealing to a
system of formalized rules," complementing and not replacing the verbal analyses. These are in
contrast to the formalized models of Babbitt (1972) and Boretz (1969). According to Nattiez
Boretz "seems to be confusing his own formal, logical model with an immanent essence he then
ascribes to music," and Babbitt "defines a musical theory as a hypothetical-deductive system ...
but if we look closely at what he says, we quickly realize that the theory also seeks to legitimize
a music yet to come; that is, that it is also normative ... transforming the value of the theory into
an aesthetic norm ... from an anthropological standpoint, that is a risk that is difficult to
countenance." Similarly, "Boretz enthusiastically embraces logical formalism, while evading the
question of knowing how the data -- whose formalization he proposes -- have been obtained."
(167)

[edit] Divergent analyses

Typically a given work is analyzed by more than one person and different or divergent analyses
are created. For instance, the first two bars of the prelude to Claude Debussy's Pellas et
Mlisande:

are analyzed differently by Leibowitz, Laloy, van Appledorn, and Christ. Leibowitz analyses this
succession harmonically as D minor:I-VII-V, ignoring melodic motion, Laloy analyses the
succession as D:I-V, seeing the G in the second measure as an ornament, and both van Appledorn
and Christ analyses the succession as D:I-VII.

Nattiez (173) argues that this divergence is due to the analysts' respective analytic situations, and
to what he calls transcendent principles (1997b: 853, what George Holton might call "themata"),
the "philosophical project[s]", "underlying principles", or a prioris of analyses, one example
being Nattiez's use of the tripartitional definition of sign, and what, after epistemological
historian Paul Veyne, he calls plots.

Van Appledorn sees the succession as D:I-VII so as to allow the interpretation of the first chord
in measure five, which Laloy sees as a dominant seventh on D (V/IV) with a diminished fifth
(despite that the IV doesn't arrive till measure twelve), while van Appledorn sees it as a French
sixth on D, D-F#-Ab-[C] in the usual second inversion. This means that D is the second degree
and the required reference to the first degree, C, being established by the D:VII or C major
chord. "The need to explain the chord in measure five establishes that C-E-G is 'equally
important' as the D-(F)-A of measure one." Leibowitz gives only the bass for chord, E indicating
the progression I-II an "unreal" progression in keeping with his "dialectic between the real and
the unreal" used in the analysis, while Christ explains the chord as an augmented eleventh with a
bass of Bb, interpreting it as a traditional tertian extended chord.

Not only does an analyst select particular traits, they arrange them according to a plot
[intrigue].... Our sense of the component parts of a musical work, like our sense of historical
'facts,' is mediated by lived experience." (176)

While John Blacking (1973: 17-18), among others, holds that "there is ultimately only one
explanation and ... this could be discovered by a context-sensitive analysis of the music in
culture," according to Nattiez (1990: 168) and others, "there is never only one valid musical
analysis for any given work." Blacking gives as example: "everyone disagrees hotly and stakes
his [or her] academic reputation on what Mozart really meant in this or that bar of his
symphonies, concertos, or quartets. If we knew exactly what went on inside Mozart's mind when
he wrote them, there could be only one explanation". (93) However, Nattiez points out that even
if we could determine "what Mozart was thinking" we would still be lacking an analysis of the
neutral and esthesic levels.

Roger Scruton (1978: 175-76), in a review of Nattiez's Fondements, says one may, "describe it as
you like so long as you hear it correctly ... certain descriptions suggest wrong ways of hearing
it ... what is obvious to hear [in Plleas et Mlisande] is the contrast in mood and atmosphere
between the 'modal' passage and the bars which follow it." Nattiez counters that if compositional
intent were identical to perception, "historians of musical language could take a permanent
nap.... Scruton sets himself up as a universal, absolute conscience for the 'right' perception of the
Plleas et Mlisande. But hearing is an active symbolic process (which must be explained):
nothing in perception is self-evident."

Thus Nattiez suggests that analyses, especially those intending "a semiological orientation,
should ... at least include a comparative critique of already-written analyses, when they exist, so
as to explain why the work has taken on this or that image constructed by this or that writer: all
analysis is a representation; [and] an explanation of the analytical criteria used in the new
analysis, so that any critique of this new analysis could be situated in relation to that analysis's
own objectives and methods. As Jean-Claude Gardin so rightly remarks, 'no physicist, no
biologist is surprised when asked to indicate, in the context of a new theory, the physical data
and the mental operations that led to its formulation' (1974: 69). Making one's procedures
explicit would help to create a cumulative progress in knowledge." (177)

[edit] References
[edit] Footnotes

1. ^ BaileyShea, Matt (2007). "Mignon: A New Recipe for Analysis and Recomposition",
Music Theory Online Volume 13, Number 4, December 2007.

[edit] Notations

Bauer, Amy (2004). "Cognition, Constraints, and Conceptual Blends in Modernist

Music", in The Pleasure of Modernist Music, Ashby, Arved, ed.
Bent, Ian (1987). Analysis. London: McMillan Press. ISBN 0-333-41732-1.

Bernard, Jonathan. 1981. Pitch/Register in the Music of Edgar Varse. Music Theory
Spectrum 3: 125.
Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1990). Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music
(Musicologie gnrale et smiologue, 1987). Translated by Carolyn Abbate (1990). ISBN
0-691-02714-5.
Blacking, John (1973). How Musical Is Man?. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Cited in Nattiez (1990). Cited in Nattiez (1990).
Laloy, L. (1902). "Sur deux accords", Revue musicale. Reprinted in La musique
retrouve. Paris: Plon, 1928, pp. 115-18. Cited in Nattiez (1990).
Liebowitz, R. (1971). "Pellas et Mlisande ou les fantmes de la ralit", Les Temps
Modernes, no. 305:891-922. Cited in Nattiez (1990).
Marx, A.B: Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition I-IV [1837-47].

Van Appledorn, M.-J. (1966). "Stylistic Study of Claude Debussy's Opera Pellas et
Mlisande". Ph.D. Diss., Eastman School of Music. Cited in Nattiez (1990).
Christ, William (1966), Materials and Structure of Music (1 ed.), Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, ISBN 0135603420, OCLC 412237 LCC MT6 M347 1966. Cited in Nattiez
(1990).
Stein, Deborah (2005). Engaging Music: Essays in Music Analysis. New York: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 0-19-517010-5.
Satyendra, Ramon. "Analyzing the Unity within Contrast: Chick Corea's 'Starlight'".
Cited in Stein (2005).
Cone, Edward. "Analysis Today", Music: A View from Delft", pp. 39-54. Cited in
Satyendra.

[edit] Further reading

Cook, Nicholas (1992). A Guide to Musical Analysis. ISBN 0-393-96255-5.
 Hoek, D.J. (2007). Analyses of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Music, 1940-2000.
ISBN 0-810-85887-8.
Kresky, Jeffrey (1977). Tonal Music: Twelve Analytic Studies. ISBN 0-253-37011-6.

[edit] External links

Benoit Meudic, IRCAM, Musical Pattern Extraction: from Repetition to Musical
Structure
Morphogenesis of chords and scales Chords and scales classification

Application of virtual pitch theory in music analysis (PDF)

iAnalyse, a musical analysis aided software by Pierre Couprie