Schenkerian Analysis - Review

Schenkerian Analysis Review Analysis of Tonal Music/ A Schenkerian Approach (Cadwallader, Gagné)

Since september 2020 we dived in to the Schenkerian Analysis Method, closely studying the book “Analysis of Tonal Music/ A Schenkerian Approach (by Cadwallader, Gagné)”
following all the instructions and completing all the exercises.
In this review, I would like to share my impressions and thoughts on the work, we have done, so far.

Schenkerian theory is a theory of tonal music, meaning the most essential principles of the harmonic and contrapuntal dimensions of tonal music. From the immediate beginning, the preface of the book, it becomes clear, that Schenkerian Analysis is very subjective since the analysis of a musical work should not be based solely on a visual interpretation of the score, but it should be based on the sound of the piece(heard in ones’s inner ear).

I think that is why there is such a division between understanding Schenker’s legacy. There is a difference between the universal ideas, associated with broad, general ideas that pertain to the essential nature of tonality, and for the others that of individual features, for whom his approach is is a way of revealing the individual and intricate features of specific compositions.

In the world of music theory, Schenkerism causes even something like a religious divide. As explained above, for some the ideas of Heinrich Schenker constitute the most profound and comprehensive theory of tonal music; others reject them as a negation of common sense and musical understanding. In between the orthodox and the unbelievers stand the liberals and pragmatists. The last may hold little of the truth claims of the theory, but find its principles useful in analytic practice.

For the unbelievers, studying Schenkerian writing is a hard walk: rather like an atheist reading theology, one stumbles over one counter-intuitive judgment after another, with no rewarding vista at the end of the road. Thwarted intuitions are no argument against a theory: every major

scientific advance has involved just that. The insight afforded by a Schenkerian analysis seems however unfit to win over those who doubt its foundations; and the reasoning involved does not qualify as science.
However, the phenomenon of clashing opinions in itself is worthy of study. If a theory strikes many as not just dubious, but irrational – how is it possible that a great number of presumably competent theorists consider it valid and insightful? Evidently, the disagreement goes beyond technicalities: it involves principles of aesthetic, epistemological and ontological nature.

I will not argue that Schenkerism is a religious belief. But it seems to depend on a disposition to believe which is cognitively similar to that determining forms of religious belief. Schenkerism is often spoken of in terms derived from religion – orthodoxy, fundamentalism, zeal, dogmatism, disciples – and not only by the most ardent adversaries (though such language might be censored in the current political climate). For its originator, religion and aesthetics were welded. Schenker saw himself as a prophet, the sole true interpreter of a near-lost language. His initiates still keep up a mystery cult atmosphere, praising the prophet in what looks to the outsider like a ritual of obligatory laudations.

There are difficulties explaining this method. The funny thing is, that Schenkerian analysis is pseudo-algorithmic.
When studying this method, the reader is pretended to be walking along a clearly recognizable path. At the same time he is led to believe that this is an “interpretation".

Schenker forgets that sounding art (= music) is intersubjective and culturally relative. The genuinely romantic thing about music. I find that ironic: his analysis only works with romantic music.
To enhance this thought, here are some examples:

Key is a “temporal projection of the tonic triad”
This reflects a way of thinking which reifies its basic assumptions: it supposes an object (the triad) rather than a more abstract relational ordering of scale degrees (where we should think of tones and chords as concretizing relations rather than as sounds ‘projecting’ themselves). This reifying or ‘thingish’ thinking unavoidably invests the object with active properties which cannot be accounted for in rational terms. One could devise an elaborate set of transformation rules to derive tonality from the triad- as-tonic, but this would obliterate all imaginary economy and simplicity of the one- principle-approach.

According to Schenker, the Ursatz is an elaboration of the triad; the triad is a representation of the first five partials in the overtone series. Hence all triadic tonal music ‘grows organically’ from a natural origin. It involves an arbitrary truncation of the overtone series as legitimizing principle; not without a large number of additional assumptions can one ‘derive’ the Ursatz from the triad; and it makes historically and culturally bound style standards absolute.

The Urlinie has the form 3– 2– 1, 5– 4– 3– 2– 1 or 8– 7– 6– 5– 4– 3– 2– 1. Together with a bass outlining I–V–I, the Urlinie constitutes the Ursatz.

Whatever the Ursatz may actually be, ontologically, epistemologically, and aesthetically: the simplest interpretation seems to take it as a diagrammatic expression of two precepts: (1) to reduce the score to hierarchically nested levels of (harmonic) I–V–I (or ‘interrupted’, and occasionally partial: I–V and V–I); (2) to locate the structural Stufen in accordance with the treble progression 3– 2– 1 (or its extensions). As for the second, it must be admitted that many melodies can be seen as constructed on a descending scalar outline, in which voice leading is a shaping force; and no doubt the extent to which this can be plausibly done has only been revealed by the massive output of Schenkerian reductions. Voice leading thus is certainly a factor in melodic creation. Such surface analysis is however not the focus of Schenkerian interest: the principle is applied not as a tool of melodic, but of formal analysis.

Accepting the 3– 2– 1 directive, we will have to force ourselves to interpret (to ‘hear’) any apparent structural line beginning on 1 as a preparation (Anstieg) for what comes, no matter what our musical intuitions might be.

A ‘liberal’, pragmatic view is probably the most common; it states: if Schenker analysis can be of some use – use it. One of its weaknesses, its reliance on intuitive judgment to fill the gaps in the formalism, is positively valued. The method is justified by insights gained in its application. It matters whether theories are true, in the sense of being adequate in representing and relating facts, productive of new facts or insights, and falsifiable in the sense that constraints are sufficiently narrow to allow for situations were the theory should work, but doesn’t: where facts are harder than theorems.

In conclusion, what seems to proponents a sensible, valid or enlightening view of the structure of tonal music, is considered implausible and often irrational by opponents. Where difference of opinions is fundamental, there is need of debate. This is why I am very happy to be studying Schenker at this point, because it is only if you know the material through and through, that you can objectively judge it.

F. Liszt:

"Our aspiration, our calling, our desire for a genuine life, is to see the truth of who we really are - that the nature of our Being is connectedness and love, not the illusion of a separate self to which our suffering clings."

"Mein einziges Bestreben als Musiker war und wird es sein, meinen Speer in die unendlichen Räume der Zukunft zu schleudern (...) - der Rest ist ohne Bedeutung."

"Der Glaube mehrt die Tatkraft."

The things that we love tell us who we are (T. v. Aquin)

"(...) Aus dem Tiefsten muss das Höchste zu seiner Höhe kommen." - F. Nietzsche

"Das Höchste, was der Mensch besitzen kann, ist jene Ruhe, jene Heiterkeit, jener innerer Friede, die durch keine Leidenschaft beunruhigt werden kann" I. Kant