I. General 1. The place of analysis in the study of music

I. General
1. The place of analysis in the study of music.
The phrase ‘musical analysis’, taken in a general sense, embraces a large number of diverse activities. Some of these are mutually exclusive: they represent fundamentally different views of the nature of music, music’s role in human life, and the role of the human intellect with regard to music. These differences of view render the field of analysis difficult to define within its own boundaries. (Such a definition will be the concern of §§2 and 3 below.) Underlying all aspects of analysis as an activity is the fundamental point of contact between mind and musical sound, namely musical perception (see Psychology of music, §III).

More difficult, in some ways, is to define where precisely analysis lies within the study of music. The concerns of analysis as a whole can be said to have much in common on the one hand with those of musical aesthetics and on the other with those of compositional theory. The three regions of study might be thought of as occupying positions along an axis that has at one extreme the placing of music within philosophical schemes and at the other the giving of technical instruction in the craft of composition. There are complicating factors, however, concerning theory and criticism. Music theories have been developed that find their practical expression not in composition but in analysis; from the obverse point of view one might say that such theories derive stable concepts by abstraction from the data that analysis provides. The relationship is thus one of mutual dependency. A similarly mutual though less dependent relationship might be thought to exist in principle between analysis and criticism. Many writings that are intended primarily as criticism and lie within its traditions are recognizably analytical in their concern with the direct description and investigation of musical detail. Conversely, analytical writing expresses a critical position, albeit sometimes merely by implication, but often in a sophisticated manner through the multiple connotations of the theories it applies and the comparisons it draws. Even a wordless analysis – which would seem the least capable of doing so – passes a value judgment in asserting that its musical subject is worthy of study and explication.

The analyst and the theorist of musical composition (Satztechnik; Kompositionslehre) have a common interest in the laws of musical construction. Many would deny a separation of any kind and would argue that analysis is a subgroup of musical theory. But that is an attitude that springs from particular social and educational conditions. While important contributions have been made to analysis by teachers of composition, others have been made by performers, instrumental teachers, critics and historians. Analysis may serve as a tool for teaching, though it may in that case instruct the performer or the listener at least as often as the composer; but it may equally well be a private activity – a procedure for discovering. Musical analysis is no more implicitly a part of pedagogical theory than is chemical analysis; nor is it implicitly a part of the acquisition of compositional techniques. On the contrary, statements by theorists of compositional technique can form primary material for the analyst’s investigations by providing criteria against which relevant music may be examined.

Of greater significance is the fact that analytical procedures can be applied to styles of performance and interpretation as well as to those of composition. But the point at which composition ceases and interpretation begins is rarely incisive. Most Western analysis takes a score as its subject matter and implicitly assumes it to be a finalized presentation of musical ideas. If it is true that the notated form in which a medieval, Renaissance or Baroque work survives is an incomplete record, it is even more to the point that for the analyst of ethnomusicological material, jazz improvisation or popular music recorded on tape, vinyl or CD, a score is only an intermediary artefact which in no way marks off ‘composer’ from ‘performer’. It provides a coarse communication of a recorded performance, much of which will have to be analysed by ear or with electronic measuring equipment. Similar considerations apply to the analysis of performing practice in Western music, though here the written score may be used as a constant point of reference in measuring and comparing different realizations of it in performance.

Briefly, then, analysis is concerned with musical structures, however they arise and are recorded, not merely with composition. Moreover, within the subject matter that analysis and compositional theory have in common, the former is by definition concerned with resolution and explanation, so that its reverse procedure – synthesis – is no more than a means of verification; the latter is concerned directly with the generation of music, and analytical method is only a means of discovery. The fields overlap but with essential differences of subject, of aim and of method.

Similarly, the analyst, like the aesthetician, is in part concerned with the nature of the musical work: with what it is, or embodies, or signifies; with how it has come to be; with its effects or implications; with its relevance to, or value for, its recipients. Where they differ is in the centres of gravity of their studies: the analyst focusses his attention on a musical structure (whether a chord, a phrase, a work, the output of a composer or court etc.), and seeks to define its constituent elements and explain how they operate; but the aesthetician focusses on the nature of music per se and its place among the arts, in life and reality. That the two supply information to each other is undoubted: the analyst provides a fund of material which the aesthetician may adduce as evidence in forming his conclusions, and the analyst’s definition of the specific furnishes a continual monitoring service for the aesthetician’s definition of the general; conversely, the aesthetician’s insights provide problems for the analyst to solve, condition his approach and method, and ultimately furnish the means of exposing his hidden assumptions. Their activities may overlap so that they often find themselves doing similar things. Nonetheless, they have two essential differences, which may be characterized in terms of the relative importance of empiricism and reflection: analysis tends to supply evidence in answer to the empirical questions of aesthetics, and may be content to explore the place of a musical structure within the totality of musical structures, whereas the aesthetician’s concern is with the place of musical structures within the system of reality. (For further discussion, see Philosophy of music.)

Criticism is inseparable on the one hand from aesthetics and on the other from analysis. Within criticism there has been constant debate as to the extent to which it is a descriptive or a judicial activity. The ‘descriptive’ critic tries to do either or both of two things: to portray in words his own inner response – to depict his responding feelings – to a piece of music or a performance, or to think his way into the composer’s or performer’s mind and expound the vision that he then perceives. The ‘judicial’ critic evaluates what he experiences by certain standards. These standards may at one extreme be dogmatic canons of beauty, of truth or of taste – pre-set values against which everything is tested; or, at the other extreme, values that form during the experience, governed by an underlying belief that a composer or performer must do whatever he is attempting to do in the clearest and most effective way. In none of the above does criticism differ categorically from analysis: there is also a latent debate within analysis as to whether the analyst’s function is descriptive or judicial.

There is perhaps a difference of degree. In general, analysis is more concerned with describing than with judging. In this sense, analysis goes less far than criticism, and it does so essentially because it aspires to objectivity and considers judgment to be subjective. But this in turn suggests the other difference between analysis and criticism, namely that the latter stresses the intuitive response of the critic, relies upon his wealth of experience, uses his ability to relate present response to prior experience, and takes these two things as data and method, whereas analysis tends to use as its data definable elements: phrase-units, harmonies, dynamic levels, measured time, bowings and tonguings, and other technical phenomena. Again this is a difference only of degree: a critic’s response is often highly informed and made in the light of technical knowledge; and the analyst’s definable elements (a phrase, a motif etc.) are often defined by subjective conditions. Where subjectivities are acknowledged to be inevitable, the analytical mind will tend not to work with them directly, but to investigate their nature in relation to definable musical phenonema, thus drawing closer to aesthetics in general and to semiology in particular. To say that analysis consists of technical operations and criticism of human responses is thus an oversimplification, though it helps to contrast the general characters of the two. (See also Criticism, §I.)

A rather different relationship exists between musical analysis and music history. To the historian, analysis may appear as a tool for historical inquiry. He uses it to detect relationships between ‘styles’, and thus to establish chains of causality that operate along the dimension of time and are anchored in time by verifiable factual information. He may, for example, observe features in common between the styles of two composers (or groups of composers) and inquire by internal analytical methods and external factual ones whether this represents an influence of one upon the other; or, in reverse order, seek common features of style when he knows of factual links. Conversely, he may detect features out of common between pieces normally associated for one reason or another, and proceed to distinguish by comparative analysis distinct traditions or categories. Again, he may use an analytical classification of features as a means of establishing a chronology of events.

In turn, the analyst may view historical method as a tool for analytical inquiry. His subject matter is rather like sections cut through history. When under analysis they are timeless, or ‘synchronic’; they embody internal relationships that the analyst seeks to uncover. But factual information, concerning events in time, may, for example, determine which of several possible structures is the most likely, or explain causally the presence of some element that is incongruous in analytical terms. Comparative analysis of two or more separate phenomena (whether separated chronologically, geographically, socially or intellectually) only really activates the dimension of time – becoming ‘diachronic’ – when historical information relating the phenomena is correlated with the analytical findings. Historical and analytical inquiry are thus mutually dependent, with common subject matter and complementary methods of working. (For further discussion see Historiography and Musicology, §I and Musicology, §II, 8.)