Abstract
Abstract
This article interrogates and reimagines the approach to reductive music analysis characterized by spatial metaphors (like “underlying” harmony). Such language portrays analysis as the process of discovering a structure “beneath” a piece’s “surface.” I argue that this picture downplays the multi-faceted, varied processes that go into creating musical reductions. Examining details of several different kinds of relationships between “surface” and “depth,” I show that while the traditional characterization is analytically apt in many cases, it encourages false equivalences in others. Borrowing Schoenberg’s description of music theory as being based in “good comparison,” I suggest that such an alternative conception might better suit some of our engagements with reductive analysis. Moreover, adopting this alternative might encourage different kinds of engagements, altering our perspective in a way that makes constructing reductions a much more flexible—and potentially more powerful—approach than has hitherto been the case.
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Reference60 articles.
1. Review of Felix Salzer, Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music;Babbitt;Journal of the American Musicological Society,1952
2. “The Structure and Function of Musical Theory.”;Babbitt;College Music Symposium,1965
3. “Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B♭, BWV 825: Schenker’s Unpublished Sketches with Commentary and Alternative Readings.”;Beach;Music Theory Spectrum,2008
4. “After Ewell: Music Theory and ‘Monstrous Men.’”;Beaudoin;Journal of Schenkerian Studies,2019
5. “Models of Underlying Tonal Structure: How Can They Be Abstract and How Should They Be Abstract.”;Benjamin;Music Theory Spectrum,1982