On 19 Jul 2004 at 8:29, Ken Moore wrote: > I have had several arguments with my Professor because I have never > seen a convincing statement from an analyst specifying what s/he > thought was the nature of the subject matter. My main candidates are: > > 1) The way the composer thought, or might have thought about the > work; > > 2) The way a listener thinks, or might think about the work; > > 3) The way a performer should think (some performers do > Schenkerian analyses before they perform); > > 3) Marks on paper (in which case the process is pointless). > > Of these, 1) and 2) ought to be supported by more evidence than I have > ever seen in any book about analysis. 3) has the nature of a command > rather than a statement, though evidence would be welcome that a > particular analytical method had some value.
I think you should spend some time looking at analytical writings by musicologists instead of just by music theorists. As a musicologist, it's my goal to eal with all three in my analytical work (though I'd avoid the word "should"). Composers also tend to be rather more sensitive in their analysis than theorists, in my opinion. A good starting point for this might be the New Grove article on Analysis. The 1980 version was by Ian Bent and was something of a watershed of thought. I haven't seen the version of the article in New Grove II. You might want to look at the text of the 1980 version (which was also published separately as a book) and then examine the bibliography of the newer Grove to find recent work in analysis. Also, keep in mind that one of the thing that "professors" have as their job when working with students is to teach them the basic skills they need to be able to analyse music and describe it's purely musical content. Learning that skill is often just about as interesting as learning how to spell and diagram sentences, but, nonetheless, it's still fundamental to everything that the higher art of writing is about. But, I also am not thrilled by the one-size-fits-all approach of many Schenkerians. But I was taught by Paul Mast, a student of Carl Schachter, and part of a much more flexible Schenkerian school than the traditional one. This school doesn't have the propaganda aspect in it -- for them it's a tool that works well with some kinds of music and poorly with others. In the latter case, they clearly understand that it's a problem of suitability of the analytical tool, not some deficiency in the subject of study. Unfortunately, there some Schenkerians who don't seem to see it that way. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
