MEYER’S ANVIL: REVISITING THE SCHEMA CONCEPT 327

listeners; (2) that these knowledge structures are historically contingent and
configure a situated psychology of hearing as a result; (3) that these situated
modes of listening are affected by style change; and (4) that historical modes of
listening are nonetheless still possible today. It is my hope that these advances
have outlined future paths for further investigations of the many aperçus lying in
Meyer’s workshop.

NOTES
1. The term is ubiquitous in philosophical and psychological journals and
monographs in the first half of the twentieth century, which can now be
further investigated and verified by electronic text search. For biographical
essays on Meyer’s life and work, see e.g. Levy (1988) and McClary (2009).
2. Tracing all of the subtleties in all of Meyer’s terms and their usage would
constitute an article in itself. But it should be noted here that Meyer had a
relatively short-lived romance with the term ‘archetype’. ‘Archetypes’ first
appear in 1973, and became the focal point of ‘Exploiting Limits: Creation,
Archetypes, and Style Change’ (1980). Archetypes are more general,
loosely constrained structures and therefore cross-cultural and transhistori-
cal to varying degrees. But in this essay Meyer was problematically talking
about ‘schemata’ under the name of ‘archetype’, which explains the latter’s
sharp peak in use and then its decline in 1980 and 1989 (see again Fig. 1).
Meyer himself recognised and addressed the problem in Style and Music: ‘I
have discussed the nature and function of schemata in Explaining Music, pp.
213–26, “Exploiting Limits”, and (with Burton S. Rosner) “Melodic Pro-
cesses”. In these studies I usually referred to such stable, replicated pat-
terns as archetypes. I prefer the term schema, however, not only because it is
the term commonly used in cognitive psychology, but because there is a
possible confusion with Jungian psychology, which uses archetype to refer to
presumably innate universals. But as far as I can see, the schemata of, say,
tonal music are significantly a matter of learning; that is, they arise on the
levels of style rules, not cognitive universals’ (1989, p. 50, n. 31). Though
the term ‘schema’ first appears in Meyer’s writings after he had read
Gombrich’s Art and Illusion (1960), increased usage of the term was also
further influenced by Gjerdingen’s dissertation (1984), supervised by
Eugene Narmour at the University of Pennsylvania.
3. See also Gjerdingen (2009a).
4. The change in orientation was partly influenced by Eugene Narmour,
Meyer’s student at the University of Chicago in the early 1970s. I thank
Robert Gjerdingen for bringing this to my attention. Among other impor-
tant changes in terminology (also influenced by Narmour) was the use of
‘implication’ as an alternative to ‘expectation’.

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5. Though Meyer never advanced his own formal definition of ‘culture’, his
discussions of the concept in general are highly suggestive of Geertz’s
(1973) interpretation of culture as a ‘system of shared symbols’, and Meyer
explicitly characterised the ‘disciplinary outlook’ of Style and Music as ‘akin
to that of cultural anthropology or social psychology’ (1989, p. x). This
affinity between Meyer’s and Geertz’s ideas may be more than coinciden-
tal. Their paths crossed at the University of Chicago: Geertz was on the
anthropology faculty from 1960 to 1970, and Meyer, who was on the music
faculty from 1946 to 1975, actually completed his dissertation under the
auspices of Chicago’s Committee of the History of Culture (prior to
Geertz’s arrival); his PhD was awarded in the ‘History of Culture’. Meyer
does cite Geertz on two occasions in ‘A Universe of Universals’ (1998,
reprinted in Meyer 2000), and as early as Music, the Arts, and Ideas ([1967]
1994), he references Geertz’s ‘The Impact of the Concept of Culture on
Man’ (1965), which was written while they both were at Chicago and
which later became part of Geertz’s influential monograph The Interpreta-
tion of Cultures (1973). Both were also influenced by the American philoso-
phers G.H. Mead and John Dewey. But whatever the historical details may
be, to interpret Meyer’s conception of ‘culture’ along Geertzian lines, is, I
maintain, a fair and accurate assessment of Meyer’s thinking and should be
understood to underlie the discussions of culture here. See also, in this
connection, the discussion below on schemata as shared symbols, and the
discussion of Meyer’s ideas in relation to Bartlett’s schema theory and
social psychology.
6. Though the origins of Meyer (1989) date to the late 1960s, with a project
then titled ‘Music as a Model for History’ (see e.g. Meyer 1989, p. iv),
Gjerdingen’s A Classic Turn of Phrase was not only published prior to Style
and Music but also came into existence well before the latter’s publication,
as a dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania (see n. 2 above). In
consequence, Gjerdingen’s research left its influences on Style and Music,
most notably in Meyer’s use of the term ‘schema’ and of certain schema-
theoretic literature (e.g. Bartlett [1932] 1995; Schank and Abelson 1977;
and Rumelhart 1980).
7. The 1–7, 4–3 population actually deviates from a normal distribution with
significance in its kurtosis (the measure of the sharpness of the distribu-
tion’s peak). The Meyer distribution is leptokurtic (sharper than a normal
distribution’s peak), with more than 4 standard errors of deviation (Kur-
tosis: 1.2139679; SEK: 0.297044). I thank Ric Ashley for his assistance in
analysing the formal statistical properties of the 1–7, 4–3 and of my own
population distribution discussed below.
8. Gjerdingen (1988) also illustrated that the degree of ‘typicality’ of a sche-
ma’s instances is commensurate with its ‘prevalence’ in a given historical
period. By extension, the more constrained a particular pattern is in its

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definition, the more likely its historical population distribution will look
something like Fig. 2 – an ascent to a sharp peak, followed by a decline. See
the relevant discussions on ‘typicality’ in Gjerdingen (1986), (1988) and
(2007).
9. Although Gjerdingen himself never discusses any examples of a ‘paired’
Prinner, he states that ‘in later decades [of the eighteenth century] it
became common to separate 6–5 from 4–3’ (2007, p. 49). Indeed, ‘paired’
Prinners are readily found in the later decades of the eighteenth century.
Mozart’s Piano Sonata in B♭ major, K. 281 (1774), first movement, bars
3–4, is a paradigmatic example. Gjerdingen has also discussed a general
trend in which several schemata, like the do–re–mi and sol–fa–mi, were
adapted to a ‘pairing’ principle later in the eighteenth century – perhaps a
consequence of the period’s preoccupations with Classical symmetry, pro-
portion and balance. See e.g. Gjerdingen (2007), pp. 85–6.
10. On the practice of ars combinatoria in eighteenth-century music, see e.g.
Ratner (1980), Gjerdingen (2007) and Berkowitz (2010).
11. The nature of this abstraction as a mental representation varies in the
psychological literature on categorisation. See n. 12.
12. The literature on schema theory and categorisation is vast. The following
representative and seminal works have informed my thinking and under-
standing of the schema concept in general, beyond those by the Penn
School: Aristotle (1906); Locke ([1706] 1997); Hume ([1777] 1975);
Bartlett ([1932] 1995); Piaget ([1947] 2001); Piaget and Inhelder ([1968]
1973); Minsky (1975); Rumelhart (1975), (1977) and (1980); Neisser
(1976); Rumelhart and Ortony (1977); Schank and Abelson (1977);
Mandler (1979); Mandler (1984); and Rumelhart, McClelland and the
PDP Research Group (1986).
Beyond this important literature, more recent studies have dealt specifi-
cally with problems of categorisation – that is, with how schemata are
represented in memory. There are two primary and competing strains of
categorisation theory: the so-called prototype and exemplar theories of cat-
egorisation. Each deals with the problem of abstraction and generalisation
quite differently. In the prototype theory, a schema is viewed as a mental
abstraction of the invariant features – that is, similarities – encountered in
numerous instances of some phenomenon in a given environment. The
exemplar theory, by contrast, views a schema not as an abstraction but as
the mental registering of the total instances of the phenomenon encoun-
tered, which are classified in memory according to their invariant features.
In practice, the difference amounts to mentally ‘comparing’ a new instance
of the object or phenomenon with a ‘prototypical’ mental abstraction, or
with numerous ‘exemplary’ traces of the object or phenomenon existing in
memory as engrams. In the latter view, ‘schema’ refers not to any individual

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exemplar but to the simultaneous functioning of all the previously experi-

enced instances of the object held in memory. This is referred to as
an ‘aggregate response’; see e.g. Johnson (2007) and Bartlett ([1932]
1995).
Prototype and exemplar views of categorisation are still part of an
ongoing debate in cognitive psychology and linguistics. But the exemplar
theory has recently gained favour from several experiments (e.g. Smith and
Minda 2002; and Dopkins and Gleason 1997), and is considered by some
to be a ‘mainstream’ approach to the modelling of memory (e.g. Baddeley
1997 and Johnson 2007). Its recent prevalence is likewise owed to impor-
tant work by Nosofsky (e.g. 1986, 1988, 1991 and 1992), and to recon-
ceptualisations of language processing as exemplar-based (Daelemans and
Van den Boesch 2005). More recently still, other studies have attempted to
reconcile the two paradigms (Verbeemen, Vanpaemel, Pattyn, Storms and
Verguts 2007; and Abbot-Smith and Tomasello 2006). Interestingly,
Meyer’s own language implies a conception of a schema that combines
prototype and exemplar views. On the one hand, our memories and past
experiences collectively provide an interpretative context in an aggregate
capacity: ‘As we listen to a particular musical work we organize our exper-
ience ... in terms of our memories of earlier relevant musical experiences’
(Meyer 1956, p. 88). But at the same time, he also spoke of schemata as
‘abstractions ... all stylistic response sequences involve abstraction’ (ibid., p.
57), in the form of ‘ideal types’, ‘class concepts’ or ‘norms’ (cf. also Meyer
1973, p. 213; ‘norms are abstractions’). Still, proponents of the exemplar
theory maintain that the generalisation and abstraction properties charac-
teristic of the prototype view are also exhibited by exemplar models, and
thus render a separate prototype model redundant (see e.g. Johnson 2007,
pp. 34–5). Finally, for more general sources on the problem of categorisa-
tion, see Smith and Medin (1981) and Rosch (1978). Zbikowksi (2002)
remains a primary resource for music categorisation studies, and offers
an engaging history of the categorisation literature in the cognitive
sciences.
See also the discussion below on statistical learning and affordance.

13. By no means do I wish to limit the concept of a ‘historical mode of

listening’ to the habit-forming and response-conditioning functions of
replicated patterning. But I would maintain that schemata provide a ne-
cessarily first and strong foundation for a broader, more ethnographically
minded study that investigates, along with the conventions that configure
one’s stylistic listening habits, other important communicative dimensions
grounded in these habits, such as compositional play and its aesthetic
effects, including humour, wit, irony, the serious and the sublime. This,
indeed, is the course set out in my further extensions of the schema
concept in an ongoing book project on the cognitive and communicative

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dimensions of style, tentatively titled The Act of Hearing: Style and Cogni-
tion in Music of the Late Eighteenth Century. In this connection see also n.
52.
14. See also Meyer ([1967] 1994), p. 8: ‘Once a musical style has become part
of the habit responses of composers, performers, and practiced listeners it
may be regarded as a complex system of probabilities’.
15. It is important to note that, while Meyer is speaking specifically about
‘affective response’ in this passage, he viewed ‘affective’ and ‘intellectual
responses’ as being predicated on the same ‘stylistic habits’. See Meyer
(1956), pp. 39–40 in particular. See also Meyer (1989), p. 12, for the same
argument.
16. In a study on music and communication in the eighteenth century (Mirka
and Agawu 2008), Bonds (2008) has advanced a similar view, arguing that
both Kenner and Liebhaber listeners are inscribed into the ‘compositional
matrix’ of eighteenth-century music.
17. In a personal communication, Gjerdingen described the corpus-as-
metaphor-for-experience argument as a ‘hypothesis’.
18. The review is actually anonymous. The Rochlitz attribution is from Geck
and Schleuning (1989).
19. From Ebers ([1796] 1802).
20. ‘Persuasive’ is an interesting term here, as Rochlitz is clearly not proffering
the G minor hearing as an analysis in the modern sense – that is, as an
instruction set for a plausible hearing of which his readers are to be
persuaded. There is nothing of persuasion in Rochlitz’s rhetoric. This is a
casual description of the Symphony’s harmonic details in the context of a
review.
21. Although Bartlett’s monograph was published in 1932, much of its
research derives from earlier work, some dating from the decade 1910–20.
See for example Bartlett (1920), also relevant to the discussion below on
the ‘War of the Ghosts’.
22. ‘“Schema” refers to an active organisation of past reactions, or of past
experiences, which must always be supposed to be operating in any well-
adapted organic response. That is, whenever there is any order or regularity
of behaviour, a particular response is possible only because it is related to
other similar responses which have been serially organised, yet which
operate, not simply as individual members coming one after another, but as
a unitary mass. Determination by schemata is the most fundamental of all
the ways in which we can be influenced by reactions and experiences which
occurred some time in the past. All incoming impulses [cf. Meyer’s ‘sound

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stimulus’] of a certain kind, or mode, go together to build up an active

organised setting [and] ... all the experiences connected by a common
interest: in sport, literature, art, science, philosophy, and so on, on a higher
level’ (Bartlett [1932] 1995, p. 201).
23. Meyer characterised the ‘disciplinary outlook’ of Style and Music as being
‘akin to that of cultural anthropology or social psychology’ (1989, p. x).
24. The folk tale is actually specific to the Chinook people, who spoke
Kathlamet.
25. The story has in fact survived via repeated oral transmission and recon-
struction. See Boas (1901).
26. Several of these documents in the Symphony’s reception history are dis-
cussed in more detail in Byros (2009a), particularly Ch. 1.
27. Cf. above, ‘Schemata: Methods of Objectification’.
28. These Rumelhart sources are listed in n. 12.
29. Another question, not treated here, involves what types of harmonisations
were most common for a -1, -1, +1 bass progression. The harmonisation in
the Eroica is the most frequent among 23 possibilities, and sits at the top of
a power-law distribution. See Byros (2009a), Appendix B.
30. Though no formal measures were taken to normalise the corpus, the
roughly 3,000 works are fairly evenly distributed throughout the 1720–
1840 time period. For a complete inventory of the compositions and
editions consulted, see Byros (2009a), Ch. 3 and Appendix A.
31. Eighteenth-century thoroughbass manuals classified diminished-seventh
chords without a third as bona fide diminished sevenths. In his Versuch,
Emanuel Bach ([1753, 1762] 1949, p. 133) actually discusses this species
of diminished seventh and its voice-leading details specifically in the
context of this pattern.
32. Every one of these 550 examples of the le–sol–fi–sol schema (and several
hundred other variants) may be referenced in Appendix B of Byros
(2009a), where detailed information is provided for each instance, includ-
ing the composer, work, date, movement, bar numbers, key(s) and variant
type (if a variant). The analytic component of the corpus study was done
entirely using traditional means: eyes, ears and hand. I studied the bass
lines for each composition in the corpus, searching for a -1, -1, +1 bass
progression in semitones and for descending chromatic tetrachords. The
harmonisation for each instance was analysed and then recorded in an
Excel document. In total, when including different harmonisations, top-
voice variants of the le–sol–fi–sol, etc., 109 different variants of the schema

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were recorded using a coding system of my own design, in which features

of the schema (mostly involving harmony) have a unique character repre-
sentation. For example, the character string ‘•(6)’ indicates a variant of the
6
schema that includes a iv 3 chord instead of a 53 for event one, while the
string ‘•(ß)’ indicates a substitution of an augmented sixth chord for event
one. None of these variants figured into the population of 550 examples of
what I call the schema’s ‘default form’ discussed in this essay. Further
instructions for reading the coding system are available in Byros (2009a),
Appendix B.
33. That composers understood the le–sol–fi stage of the schema as functionally
synonymous with an augmented sixth is evident in their interchangeable use
of the le–sol–fi–sol and augmented 6–V schemata. In sonata-form move-
ments and other rounded-binary structures, composers would substitute
one schema for the other in articulating a half cadence. This occurs, for
example, between the exposition and recapitulation in the first movement
of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto (1806).The exposition has a le–sol–
fi–sol (bars 104–111), while the recapitulation has an augmented 6–V
schema (bars 278–281). Such identifications between the two schemata
also appear in theme and variations, as in Emanuel Bach’s Sonata in D
minor for two-manual harpsichord (Sonata per il cembalo a due tastature,
Wq. 69, Helm 53, 1747). The third movement prominently features the
le–sol–fi–sol in its binary theme.Throughout its subsequent variations, Bach
uses the le–sol–fi progression of the schema interchangeably with the aug-
mented sixth. For further le–sol–fi and augmented-sixth identifications, see
Byros (2009a), Ch. 5.
34. See Gjerdingen (2007), pp. 273–83.
35. A common variant of the le–sol–fi–sol is the le–fi–sol, which is identical save
for the omission of the passing harmony between the first and third events
of the schema’s first stage. Beyond the 550 examples of the le–sol–fi–sol, my
corpus returned 198 examples of the le–fi–sol. See Byros (2009a), Appendix
B.
36. For a more extended discussion of the schema’s usage, see Byros (2009a),
Chs 3 and 5.
37. Between transition and second theme, development and recapitulation, etc.
38. Eighteenth-century conceptions of sonata form are largely punctuation
based. See Koch ([1782–93] 1969); Hepokoski and Darcy (2006); Spitzer
(2004), (2006) and (2007); and Berger (1996).
39. On subsequent hearings, the modulation will occur phenomenologically
earlier. Gottfried Weber’s Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst
([1817–21] 1830–2) offers a contemporary account of such effects of

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re-hearing on modulation. In a section called ‘Recurrence of Passages

Already Heard’ (‘Wiederkehr schon gehörter Stellen’), Weber writes on
Papageno’s ‘bird-catcher’ aria from Die Zauberflöte (1791), arguing that,
upon re-hearing the aria, the modulation to D major that first occurs at bar
6
7 with the appearance of the V 5 chord will shift and occur phenomeno-
logically earlier in the mind: ‘Our internal sense of hearing [Unser innerer
Gehörsinn] re-attunes itself ... and thus readily apprehends the D-harmony
[that] precedes A7, as D: I’ (Weber [1817–21] 1830–32, vol. 2, p. 153 and
1851, vol. 1, p. 365) – that is, already as tonic, despite the fact that a D
major chord sounds as dominant of G major in the immediately preceding
beat in bar 6.
40. The ‘window’ is often defined by differentiation in topic, thematic material
or figuration. In Ex. 10, the modulation is accompanied by a discrete
change of topic, where A♭ major is presented in the ‘singing style’, while C
minor is in the style of the French overture (Ex. 10). On the relationship
between topics and schemata, see Byros (forthcoming).
41. In the exposition of this movement, Haydn uses a modulating le–fi–sol in
the analogous ‘EEC’ location (bars 42–49). See also n. 35 on the le–fi–sol.
42. The schema was also, albeit less frequently, used to perform other modu-
lations – as, for example, when the major triad reinterpreted by the le–sol–fi
‘window’ is a dominant, to result in a modulation down a semitone, or a
subdominant, to result in a modulation down a minor third. These are also
enumerated in Appendix B of Byros (2009a).
43. The recordings are given in Table 3.
44. For discussions of ‘asymmetry’ as a criterion of ‘markedness’, see Hatten
(1994).
45. In the Landsberg 6 sketches transcribed by Nottebohm ([1880] 1979),
bars 1–2 of the Symphony carried all dominant-seventh harmony, and the
second ‘hammer blow’ in bar 2 fell not on the downbeat but on beat 3 of
the bar. This was obviously changed for the final version, ostensibly for the
reasons outlined here. Though dominant harmony in bars 1–2 would not
negate the effect of a modulatory cue in bars 1–6 (as stated above, at times
the cue consists of tonic-dominant exchanges), E♭ is nonetheless more
immobile and hence vulnerable to reinterpretation without it.
46. For discussions of the ‘neue Weg’, including dates and the credibility of
Beethoven’s having reported the decision to embark on a new path, see e.g.
Dahlhaus (1991), pp. 166–80; Plantinga (1999), pp. 151–8; and Kinder-
man (1995), pp. 51–2, and (2009), pp. 61–2.
47. In linguistics, ‘fronting’ – the process of shifting a ‘constituent’ (a word or
group of words) to the beginning of a sentence – is a common means of

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providing emphasis or ‘topicalising’. The concept also appears prominently

in eighteenth-century linguistic theory, discussed in terms of the ‘inversion’
of ‘word order’ (see Spitzer 2004, pp. 224–5 and 230–4). This eighteenth-
century perspective on the phenomenon was strongly tied to poetic lan-
guage in particular, where ‘fronting’ is used for ‘emotional effect’ (Spitzer
2004, p. 224). On the potential hermeneutic relevance of this schema
inversion for Beethoven’s theme, see n. 52.
48. The Sturm und Drang topic of bars 7–9 returns in full force in the devel-
opment, where the horn-call arpeggiations are assimilated into the synco-
pated and tremolo violins texture within a D minor, G minor and C minor
context (bars 186–205).
49. See Lockwood (1981) and Byros (2009a), Ch. 1.
50. See n. 32 above.
51. The potentially sacred resonances of the Stabat Mater Prinner in the
context of a funeral march are discussed in Byros (forthcoming).
52. For a more comprehensive and detailed analysis of the tonal and herme-
neutic ramifications of the Symphony’s opening push to G minor, see
Byros (forthcoming). There, I address, among other things, the ‘topical’
significance of the le–sol–fi–sol, and how that plays into contemporary
discussions of the Symphony’s ‘sublime’, ‘serious’ and ‘profound’ charac-
ter, as well as how that significance is used to prefigure the ‘death of the
hero’ in the ‘Funeral March’.
53. In this connection, see Meyer on communication above, as well as Mirka
and Agawu (2008).
54. To be sure, a more comprehensive picture of style would include more
than the replication of patterning, but also, for example, composers’
unique engagement with that replication via compositional play (see also
n. 13 in this connection). The Penn School has focused primarily on what
Spitzer (2006), under Adorno’s influence, has called call Style 1 (conven-
tion) in a larger ternary model of style, which also includes Style 2 (the
composer’s subjective voice; in Spitzer’s inquiry, that of late Beethoven),
as well as Style 3 (natural or metaphorical schemata). Spitzer’s ternary
model of style offers a productive framework for future studies that might
explore the dialectical relationship between schemata (object) and indi-
viduality (subject). From an anthropological perspective, Geertz offers a
provocative and similarly dialectical argument towards that end: ‘Becom-
ing human is becoming individual, and we become individual under the
guidance of cultural patterns, historically created systems of meaning in
terms of which we give form, order, point, and direction to our lives’
(1973, p. 52).

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55. Though statistical learning remains a contested issue with regard to lan-
guage acquisition (e.g. Saffran 2003a), other studies have indicated that
this learning mechanism may give rise to (semantic) categories (Brady and
Oliva 2008). In music, Huron’s recent work has suggested that statistical
learning is a ‘pervasive’ mechanism for music knowledge acquisition and
audition in general – that ‘statistical learning might form the basis for
auditory expectation’ (2006, pp. 71 and 153). And Patel’s research on the
analogies/homologies between music and language (2008) has brought
together and built on several statistical learning studies, to argue that
statistical learning is a common mechanism for music and language acqui-
sition – a ‘common mechanism for sound category learning’. This view is
also advanced by Saffran (2003b). See also n. 57.
56. See below on the idea of regularity as an affordance.
57. I would not, however, be inclined to say that knowing the schema amounts
to having internalised this regularity alone. For a discussion of how the
le–sol–fi–sol schema is based on more abstract scale-degree probabilities, see
Byros (2009a), Ch. 3. For a discussion of the schema’s third-order prob-
ability and its other, less common resolutions, see ibid., Ch. 5, pp. 279–84.
That schemata may be learned by statistical learning is also supported by
several studies that examine listeners’ acquisition of adjacent and non-
adjacent tone dependencies (Creel, Newport and Aslin 2004; and Gebhart,
Newport and Aslin 2009).
58. The ‘mapping’ mechanism may be an abstracted ‘prototype’ or an aggre-
gate response consisting of ‘exemplars’ of all the previously experienced
instances of the le–sol–fi–sol. See n. 12.
59. In terms of its kurtosis, the deviation from a normal distribution is not
significant – that is, its kurtosis has fewer than two standard errors of
deviation (kurtosis: –.226212; SEK: 0.208893).
60. The relevant discussion comes in Aristotle’s treatise on memory, De
memoria, translated in Aristotle (1906). Aristotle appears to be the first
philosopher to explicitly describe the schema concept. In this connection,
see Byros (2009a), Ch. 5 and also pp. 237–9.
61. For example, the Rule of the Octave (Campion [1716] 1976) and various
‘Chord-Form Tables’ (Byros 2009a) – which situate a given figured-bass
chord onto a specific scale degree in the bass – are widespread examples of
this tonal stamping concept. The concept forms the basis for harmonising
unfigured basses, as described in Heinichen ([1711] 2000 and [1728]
1994) and elsewhere, and is central to partimento realisation (Gjerdingen
2007). The activity of harmonising an unfigured bass or partimento
requires recognising a suitable tonal context. In this way, partimento

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realisations were exercises in learning and practicing schemata as

‘recognition devices’. For further discussion see Gjerdingen (2007) and
Byros (2009a), Ch. 2.

62. Resolving the apparent first stage of the le–sol–fi–sol to a minor triad in first
inversion deviates from every one of the probabilities for succession in my
corpus – that is, it also deviates from the other 14.6%. See Byros (2009a),
Ch. 5.

63. This is a running theme in Meyer ([1967] 1994). For other studies that
deal with style from the perspective of information theory and entropy, see
Youngblood (1958), Knopoff and Hutchinson (1981) and (1983) and
Margulis and Beatty (2008).

64. The interpretation originated in Schenker ([1930] 1997).

65. See Meyer (1989), pp. 245–58; Gjerdingen (1988), pp. 8–9; and Byros
(2009b), pp. 275–92.

66. See n. 2. above.

67. On gestalt psychology, see e.g. Koffka ([1935] 1999) and Smith (1988).

68. See Abraham (1951).

REFERENCES
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Music Analysis, 31/iii (2012) © 2013 The Author.

Music Analysis © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd