# Musical analysis - is it missing something?



## Ajayay (Mar 11, 2015)

When I read analyses of classical pieces, I'm afraid the overwhelming feeling I have is boredom.

It's all very well listing the names of the harmonies, intervals, scales etc. as if the process of identifying them is somehow mystically going to reveal the innermost secrets of the piece. But I feel it often misses the real point which is the overall design and why the design is the way it is.

I'm struck that when I read the writings of jazz arrangers, they are coming from a different angle very often. Their knowledge of harmony and theory is usually pretty good but it's often all about the feeling and the effect with them. The actual progression is only a means to an end and it's what sounds good that matters and why.

So when reading various analyses of Ravel's Ondine the other day, I was struck by how little any of them had to say about the philosophy of the piece, or the feelings and sensations it creates. Only two of them really tackled that - one did it rather well, although its main focus was still the interminable listing of names of chords etc, and another was really strangely written (very inappropriate in places) but had the interesting theory that the piece was implicitly about Ravel's own sexuality and the rejection of it that society imposed on him.

Don't you wish musical analysis would deal a bit more in the emotions and colours and a bit less in the dissection of intervals and harmonies?


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Maybe you should look more at program notes, which tend to be non-technical.

Personally, I want to see more mid-level technical analysis. I'm a layman. Something that tells me WHY the music sounds as it does, but not too technical. E.g., "meanwhile, the horns play the earlier melody, but shifting it to a minor key." I can "feel" the music myself, although I don't always know what the composer is doing to get it to sound that way.



> had the interesting theory that the piece was implicitly about Ravel's own sexuality and the rejection of it that society imposed on him


I'm trying to think how a work of music could be about one's sexuality. I'm suspicious of this kind of analysis. So I guess, no, I don't agree with you.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

A work of music can be analyzed easily via the prism of sexuality. If you study postmodern sexual theories of music such as Foucault then it's not hard.

For example, "Michel Foucault coined the term "biopower" to refer to what he
viewed as the dominant system of social control in modern Western
society. He argued that over the past few centuries, Europe has
witnessed a decrease in coercive mechanisms of control such as military
force, and an increase in social control through individual self-discipline.
His conception of modern power was novel in that it contrasted with
existing models that conceptualized power as "domination", that is, as a
centralized and repressive force exerted by one group over another--a
"possession" which could be acquired and imposed on others through
physical coercion. Rather, he described power as dispersed throughout
society, inherent in social relationships, embedded in a network of
practices, institutions, and technologies--operating on all of the "microlevels"
of everyday life. "Biopower", Foucault asserted, operates on our
very bodies, regulating them through self-disciplinary practices which
we each adopt, thereby Subjugating ourselves."

--Jen Pylypa

One can see this being applied to romantic composers during the 19th century exhibiting that total freedom and sexual craziness in the works of Lizst or Wagner and then moving towards the academic 20th century in a much most stentorian methodology here.

One of countless examples, where music theory doesn't have to make music analyses boring. Apply literary/visual art criticism techniques to music and there are many fruitful readings.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Layman level descriptive analysis works best for me. I like it when memorable names are given to the individual themes.

"Meanwhile the opening _Drunken Roundabout_ theme from the first movement resurfaces as an ostinato accompaniment in the remote key of Q minor . . . " I love that sort of thing.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Ajayay said:


> When I read analyses of classical pieces, I'm afraid the overwhelming feeling I have is boredom.
> 
> It's all very well listing the names of the harmonies, intervals, scales etc. as if the process of identifying them is somehow mystically going to reveal the innermost secrets of the piece. But I feel it often misses the real point which is the overall design and why the design is the way it is.
> 
> ...


Probably because that's not really the point of musical analysis. Musical analysis, in a literal sense, is more of an objective "scientific" look at the music, and as such, shouldn't include opinions that only apply to someone's personal experience of the music and not to the music itself. It would be like a scientist writing up a paper on the long term effects of cocaine and then in the middle of it they suddenly started preaching about the morality of using the drug. It's just not something that should be included in objective analysis.

However, no one is saying that musical analysis of the type you are talking about even *should* explain the whole story of the music. You're right, it's only part of it.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

violadude said:


> Probably because that's not really the point of musical analysis. Musical analysis, in a literal sense, is more of an objective "scientific" look at the music, and as such, shouldn't include opinions that only apply to someone's personal experience of the music and not to the music itself. It would be like a scientist writing up a paper on the long term effects of cocaine and then in the middle of it they suddenly started preaching about the morality of using the drug. It's just not something that should be included in objective analysis.
> 
> However, no one is saying that musical analysis of the type you are talking about even *should* explain the whole story of the music. You're right, it's only part of it.


Indeed, a scientific analysis of a piece includes the elements from music theory only and that can sound dry to many. For colorful analyses, the music reviews at the Gramophone supposedly fulfill that role for the listener here.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

violadude said:


> Probably because that's not really the point of musical analysis.


It was trendy for a minute though. Didn't someone once try to argue that Schubert's cadences are totally gay?


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> It was trendy for a minute though. Didn't someone once try to argue that Schubert's cadences are totally gay?


Yep, here is the news article regarding that flap over:

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/04/arts/critic-s-notebook-was-schubert-gay-if-he-was-so-what-debate-turns-testy.html


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Albert7 said:


> Yep, here is the news article regarding that flap over:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/04/arts/critic-s-notebook-was-schubert-gay-if-he-was-so-what-debate-turns-testy.html


"The second movement of the "Unfinished" Symphony had been analyzed to show its possible homosexual character by the feminist musicologist Susan McClary."

That sentence...is the stupidest thing I've ever read...ever. I'm going to need about a week and a lot of "medication" to get over it.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

I have read and re read Charles Rosen "The Classical Style" about 3 times in my life. Rosen imo achieves the perfect balance between describing the technical innovations but conveying what the sense of meaning of the music is. He does a great job of placing in the context of the cultural milieu of the times.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

violadude said:


> "The second movement of the "Unfinished" Symphony had been analyzed to show its possible homosexual character by the feminist musicologist Susan McClary."
> 
> That sentence...is the stupidest thing I've ever read...ever. I'm going to need about a week and a lot of "medication" to get over it.


The sad thing is that there are people who presumably would actually waste time pondering over what she said and maybe even end up agreeing with her.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I've thought before that, outside the purely technical, music criticism is really backward and intellectually impoverished compared to any other field of cultural criticism. Something like what McClary wrote would not fly in another field. Also almost everything Richard Taruskin has written, for example his notion of the "poietic fallacy," an idea so simple-minded that I'm amazed it could come from the brain of any allegedly educated person let alone a leading scholar.


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## pianolearnerstride (Dec 17, 2014)

The coloristic analysis of music is really useless imo. I mean it's fine if someone is explaining their feelings when listening to a piece. But that's a purely subjective nothing that may or may not have anything to do with the composer's intentions. But to say this is what the composer "meant" by this section... really irks me.

The technical analysis is very helpful for anyone who is trying to compose music, or doing something within that field.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Here is one of the best papers on very solid application of postmodernist interpretation to any form of music... Derrida is awesome here:

https://cobussenma.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/derrida_zacher_encounter.pdf


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> I've thought before that, outside the purely technical, music criticism is really backward and intellectually impoverished compared to any other field of cultural criticism. Something like what McClary wrote would not fly in another field. Also almost everything Richard Taruskin has written, for example his notion of the "poietic fallacy," an idea so simple-minded that I'm amazed it could come from the brain of any allegedly educated person let alone a leading scholar.


"Yes. In any case, what I like about Paris is the fact that you can't be a snob and a racist at the same time here, because that won't do. Paris is the only city I know where racism never exists in your presence, it's something you hear spoken of."

--Ornette Coleman


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> It was trendy for a minute though. Didn't someone once try to argue that Schubert's cadences are totally gay?


Bobby Reynolds said that when we were in the 7th grade. He also said Mozart's modulations were retarded.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

violadude said:


> That sentence...is the stupidest thing I've ever read...ever.


Huh!

So you don't read my posts.

Fine.

No, really, Fine. Nothing's wrong. Everything's fine.

I mean, that's just fine. Like, whatever, man.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

science said:


> Huh!
> 
> So you don't read my posts.
> 
> ...


Aw, don't be so self-deprecating, man.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

As Harold C. Schonberg observed:

"I have taken great pains to avoid program-note writing like 'Now the music goes to the dominant of D minor, with a soaring melody that...' In 1893 Bernard Shaw had the last word on this kind of tedious nonsense:

_How succulent this is; and how full of Mesopotamian words like "the dominant of D minor." I will now, ladies and gentleman, give you my celebrated "analysis" of Hamlet's soliloquy on suicide, in the same scientific style. "Shakespeare, dispensing with the customary exordium, announces his subject at first in the infinitive, in which mood it is presently repeated after a short connecting passage in which, brief as it is, we recognize the alternative and negative forms on which so much of the significance of repetition depends. Here we reach a colon; and a pointed pository phrase, in which the accent falls decisively on the relative pronoun, brings us to the first full stop._"


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Albert7 said:


> A work of music can be analyzed easily via the prism of sexuality. If you study postmodern sexual theories of music such as Foucault then it's not hard.
> 
> For example, "Michel Foucault coined the term "biopower" to refer to what he
> viewed as the dominant system of social control in modern Western
> ...


Nothing in this post has anything to do with music and it was a complete waste of time to read even enough of it to determine that. And what is a "stentorian methodology"? No, don't answer that. Please.

The OP is asking about interesting and readable musical description and commentary. No one looking for it should even consider wading through the muck of Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, McClary, and the rest of the postmodern posthumous posturers. They are nothing but metastasizing verbaloma.

A good bracing description of sonata-allegro form is far less tedious and more profitable.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Nothing in this post has anything to do with music and it was a complete waste of time to read even enough of it to determine that. And what is a "stentorian methodology"? No, don't answer that. Please.
> 
> The OP is asking about interesting and readable musical description and commentary. No one looking for it should even consider wading through the muck of Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, McClary, and the rest of the postmodern posthumous posturers. They are nothing but metastasizing verbaloma.
> 
> A good bracing description of sonata-allegro form is far less tedious and more profitable.


'Nothing'- 'squared.'

But I have to be honest: I'm always amused with how postmodernists try to 'deconstruct' and 'undermine' science and music without actually knowing any.

An undergraduate liberal arts degree in 'Metastasizing Verbaloma'- M.V.- almost qualifies one for the guy who helps the fries guy at McDonald's.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> "stentorian methodology"?


Stentor .... a Greek herald in the Iliad who had a voice as loud as 50 men ... hence a methodology that uses a philosophy of 'he who shouts loudest has his argument heard'

As you anticipated, an argument that might appeal to the poor lost souls who are desperate to find the true way to whatever they seek but that says nothing about music and contributes nothing to the debate in this thread


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Whether a piece of music "works" or not is completely subjective -- and subject to change over time. All musical analysis can do (or tries to do) is explain "why" it works (or doesn't). And sometimes the analysis is good and accomplishes that purpose for many people, and sometimes it doesn't. It's an adjunct to appreciation, but only that. Analyses that are generally good, and not too terribly technical are the classics by Tovey, and the newer ones by Michael Steinberg.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

violadude said:


> Probably because that's not really the point of musical analysis. Musical analysis, in a literal sense, is more of an objective "scientific" look at the music, and as such, shouldn't include opinions that only apply to someone's personal experience of the music and not to the music itself. It would be like a scientist writing up a paper on the long term effects of cocaine and then in the middle of it they suddenly started preaching about the morality of using the drug. It's just not something that should be included in objective analysis.


I disagree, it would be a correct example saying that the scientist who's analysing cocaine is just describing the form of the molecule withouth explaining what the effects on a person are.
I think that the most interesting (but obviously by far the most complex) analysis of a piece of music is exactly the one that tries to explain how a musical effect produces an emotional or psychological effect.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

norman bates said:


> I disagree, it would be a correct example saying that the scientist who's analysing cocaine is just describing the form of the molecule withouth explaining what the effects on a person are.
> I think that the most interesting (but obviously by far the most complex) analysis of a piece of music is exactly the one that tries to explain how a musical effect produces an emotional or psychological effect.


Imagine a plot analysis of a film that focused, not on what happened, but how it made you feel. Wouldn't someone else, reading the same analysis, inevitably hit one or more points where their first thought is not of increased understanding, but "I didn't feel that way." If the author's feelings and the reader's feelings didn't line up well, then the reader would be unlikely to follow the analysis well at all.

As for the OP, remember that the construction of Jazz on the macro-level is generally quite simple. Most analyses of Classical music either focus on macro-structure or some element of detail in the design (such as the tendencies of a certain motif), so the focus is inevitably different.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> Imagine a plot analysis of a film that focused, not on what happened, but how it made you feel.


"what happened" in a movie it's the script, and I think that a movie is much more that what happens in the plot. 
One of the greatest movies I've ever seen is Killer of sheep; talking of the plot, it could be described with not much more than "basically nothing happens".
So everybody who would try to talk of it just in terms of succession of events would do a complete disservice to the reader (and missing completely the meaning of the movie), it would be pure pedantry.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Ajayay said:


> When I read analyses of classical pieces, I'm afraid the overwhelming feeling I have is boredom.
> 
> It's all very well listing the names of the harmonies, intervals, scales etc. as if the process of identifying them is somehow mystically going to reveal the innermost secrets of the piece. But I feel it often misses the real point which is the overall design and why the design is the way it is.
> 
> ...


To receive the "poetic" aspects of a piece of music, one must be in the subjective, receptive state of a listener, and observer. *This is an act of submission,* to surrender oneself to the effects of the music.

To analyze music objectively, means to "control" it, by knowing how it functions on a basic musical level, and *this is an empowering process.

*So, there is an aspect of "dominance/submission" in the approach to understanding music, depending on one's preferred role, either as dominant or submissive.


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Triplets said:


> I have read and re read Charles Rosen "The Classical Style" about 3 times in my life. Rosen imo achieves the perfect balance between describing the technical innovations but conveying what the sense of meaning of the music is. He does a great job of placing in the context of the cultural milieu of the times.


I second that emotion.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

norman bates said:


> "what happened" in a movie it's the script, and I think that a movie is much more that what happens in the plot.
> One of the greatest movies I've ever seen is Killer of sheep; talking of the plot, it could be described with not much more than "basically nothing happens".
> So everybody who would try to talk of it just in terms of succession of events would do a complete disservice to the reader (and missing completely the meaning of the movie), it would be pure pedantry.


Okay, then, a narrative analysis with reference to shot composition and the choices of the director.

That's still a far cry from writing an analysis as if the feelings engendered by some aspect of the film were more important than the cinematic aspects.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Ajayay said:


> When I read analyses of classical pieces, I'm afraid the overwhelming feeling I have is boredom.
> 
> It's all very well listing the names of the harmonies, intervals, scales etc. as if the process of identifying them is somehow mystically going to reveal the innermost secrets of the piece. But I feel it often misses the real point which is the overall design and why the design is the way it is.


Beginning in the early 1980s, a number of notable musicologists and theorists began arguing from exactly this perspective: That purely technical analysis is never going to answer vital questions about why musical forms have developed over time the way they have or why certain critical events in musical structures occur when and as they do. Joseph Kerman, for example, wrote an essay in 1980 entitled "How We Got into Analysis and How to Get Out," arguing that modern formal analysis has a myopic focus on tonal/harmonic structure that ignores several of music's most important technical parameters, including thematic processes and rhythm, and stands in the way of a broader, work-centered criticism. Writers like Anthony Newcomb, Leo Treitler, Edward T. Cone, Fred Maus, Robert Hatten, and many others began writing analytical essays under the premise that it is impossible to get at why musical works are constructed the way they are without addressing issues of expression and meaning. Most of these writers drew to some extent on the tools of structuralist and post-structuralist literary theory and semiotics, and as a result they began to be classified as proponents of musical narrative theory or as "musical narrativists." Note, however, that this designation does not imply a tendency to claim that musical works tell stories or have specific extramusical meanings. The analytical and critical literature growing out of this movement is quite large and there are a number of books collecting essays in this field. (Jenefer Robinson's Music and Meaning, for example, consists largely of studies in so-called musical narrative, as does a recent collection titled Music and Narrative since 1900, ed. Michael Klein and Nicholas Reyland).


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

violadude said:


> "The second movement of the "Unfinished" Symphony had been analyzed to show its possible homosexual character by the feminist musicologist Susan McClary."
> 
> That sentence...is the stupidest thing I've ever read...ever. I'm going to need about a week and a lot of "medication" to get over it.


"Stupid" might not be the right word. People with modest IQ's are rarely capable of coming up with something as absurd.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I actually do suspect it's possible to do good work applying critical theory to music analysis - it just needs to do a lot better than "feminine cadences = gay."


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Dim7 said:


> "Stupid" might not be the right word. People with modest IQ's are rarely capable of coming up with something as absurd.


Oh, you'd be surprised.

Have you ever read Mark Twain's essay on Mary Baker Eddy?


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Well okay, it's true that stupid people call practically anything 'gay'.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

norman bates said:


> I disagree, it would be a correct example saying that the scientist who's analysing cocaine is just describing the form of the molecule withouth explaining what the effects on a person are.
> I think that the most interesting (but obviously by far the most complex) analysis of a piece of music is exactly the one that tries to explain how a musical effect produces an emotional or psychological effect.


I'm with you in spirit Norman, but your focus on the emotional and psychological effects on the listener tends to lead to confusion and subjectivity. I think it is better to ask how the expressive coherence and psychological cogency of compositions relates to or influences their formal construction and integrity.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> I actually do suspect it's possible to do good work applying critical theory to music analysis - it just needs to do a lot better than "feminine cadences = gay."


Leo Treitler, addressing McClary's infamous essay imputing the "murderous rage of a rapist" to the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth, said something like "it is all politics." McClary's writing is, indeed, primarily political speech and no one with any sense takes her analyses as serious, let alone competent, music criticism.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> I've thought before that, outside the purely technical, music criticism is really backward and intellectually impoverished compared to any other field of cultural criticism. Something like what McClary wrote would not fly in another field. Also almost everything Richard Taruskin has written, for example his notion of the "poietic fallacy," an idea so simple-minded that I'm amazed it could come from the brain of any allegedly educated person let alone a leading scholar.


I'm curious about what the "poietic fallacy" is an where he wrote about it. In any case, Taruskin has written some absolutely brilliant criticism that is right up Ajayay's alley. In particular I would recommend his "Public Lies and Unspeakable Truth: Interpreting Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony," (In Shostakovich Studies. Ed. David Fanning. Cambridge University Press (1995): 17-56), probably the smartest thing I have ever read on Shostakovich and the competing interpretations of his Fifth Symphony. It will stand up against the best cultural criticism in other fields.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> I'm curious about what the "poietic fallacy" is an where he wrote about it.


The notion appears in an essay with that title in the collection "The Danger of Music."

http://www.amazon.com/Danger-Music-...=UTF8&qid=1426190510&sr=8-8&keywords=taruskin

I enjoyed the book, especially for all the gratuitous sniping against composers and scholars he doesn't particularly like. I understand if others have different tastes.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> Leo Treitler, addressing McClary's infamous essay imputing the "murderous rage of a rapist" to the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth, said something like "it is all politics." McClary's writing is, indeed, primarily political speech and no one with any sense takes her analyses as serious, let alone competent, music criticism.


Apparently she retracted this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McClary#The_Beethoven_and_rape_controversy


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> Apparently she retracted this.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McClary#The_Beethoven_and_rape_controversy


Yes she did. Everyone, including Treitler, still talked about the original published version, however. I never understood why that particular essay drew so much attention, as it isn't among her most important work. "Sexual Politics in Classical Music" and "Narrative Agendas in Absolute Music" are more ambitious. And both commit far more egregious offenses against good sense, historical fact, logic, and scholarly ethics than the Beethoven thing did. Ah well.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> The notion appears in an essay with that title in the collection "The Danger of Music."
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Danger-Music-...=UTF8&qid=1426190510&sr=8-8&keywords=taruskin
> 
> I enjoyed the book, especially for all the gratuitous sniping against composers and scholars he doesn't particularly like. I understand if others have different tastes.


Thanks! I always enjoy his writing even when I disagree with him.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

One day I'll write an epic Taruskin takedown post.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> I'm curious about what the "poietic fallacy" is an where he wrote about it. In any case, Taruskin has written some absolutely brilliant criticism that is right up Ajayay's alley. In particular I would recommend his "Public Lies and Unspeakable Truth: Interpreting Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony," (In Shostakovich Studies. Ed. David Fanning. Cambridge University Press (1995): 17-56), probably the smartest thing I have ever read on Shostakovich and the competing interpretations of his Fifth Symphony. It will stand up against the best cultural criticism in other fields.


Taruskin defines the poietic fallacy thus:


> the conviction that what matters most (or more strongly yet, that all that matters) in a work of art is the making of it, the maker's input.


His article "The Poietic Fallacy" (a discussion of Schoenberg) can be found in PDF form here: http://www.posgrado.unam.mx/musica/lecturas/historiaInterpretacion/JSTOR/Taruskin-Poietic.pdf


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## Bored (Sep 6, 2012)

Well yes, but music has two parts, technicality and emotions.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'm going to do something I know better than to do - I'm going to share my suspicion about a topic that I know I know almost nothing about. So, with apologies for my ignorance: 

My suspicion is that knowing the laws of music theory is very much like understanding grammar, the definitions and connotations and etymologies of words, and the history of literature. Without knowing those things very well, you'll never really understand a great work of fiction. (I can hear it almost as soon as someone opens their mouth. Yes, it is a world of snobbery and I am among the snobs. If you don't want to be judged, educate yourself before you begin pontificating in our presence. Not like me in this post.) You'll definitely never write one without knowing them fairly well. But nothing ever boils down to those things - and in fact, those things themselves consist solely (or almost so) of descriptions of prior practices (including some the authors themselves weren't even fully aware of) rather than prescriptions for future practice.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

science said:


> I'm going to do something I know better than to do - I'm going to share my suspicion about a topic that I know I know almost nothing about. So, with apologies for my ignorance:
> 
> My suspicion is that knowing the laws of music theory is very much like understanding grammar, the definitions and connotations and etymologies of words, and the history of literature. *Without knowing those things very well, you'll never really understand a great work of fiction.* (I can hear it almost as soon as someone opens their mouth. Yes, it is a world of snobbery and I am among the snobs. If you don't want to be judged, educate yourself before you begin pontificating in our presence. Not like me in this post.) You'll definitely never write one without knowing them fairly well. But nothing ever boils down to those things - and in fact, those things themselves consist solely (or almost so) of descriptions of prior practices (including some the authors themselves weren't even fully aware of) rather than prescriptions for future practice.


It depends what you mean by understand. My view is that everything necessary to aesthetic appreciation-everything a composer can reasonably expect of a listener-is available to all who are willing to listen attentively and exert the mental energy required to remember and recognize themes, motives, and other salient elements when they reappear. The only caveats I would make are that experience with a lot of music helps establish a context in which one can recognize what is exceptional or outside the norms in a particular work, and having some basic terminology facilitates the internal monologue one generates in coming to terms with what one is hearing.

Technical knowledge comes in when one tries to explain how a composition works, and doing this kind of analysis and criticism in music probably requires more arcane knowledge than analysis and criticism in most other arts.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> It depends what you mean by understand. *My view is that everything necessary to aesthetic appreciation-everything a composer can reasonably expect of a listener-is available to all who are willing to listen attentively and exert the mental energy required to remember and recognize themes, motives, and other salient elements when they reappear.* The only caveats I would make are that experience with a lot of music helps establish a context in which one can recognize what is exceptional or outside the norms in a particular work, and having some basic terminology facilitates the internal monologue one generates in coming to terms with what one is hearing.
> 
> Technical knowledge comes in when one tries to explain how a composition works, and doing this kind of analysis and criticism in music probably requires more arcane knowledge than analysis and criticism in most other arts.


I don't think that's all the composers put in there, however. There is no reason for composer to limit themselves to what they can reasonably expect from a listener.

But we do disagree about other arts! There is basically no aspect of the human experience - clothing, furniture, dance, theater, film, poetry, rhetoric, food, drink, gardening, architecture, whatever - that cannot be analyzed in detail and depth with a wide variety of methods. To me, music is typical in this way rather than exceptional.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

science said:


> I don't think that's all the composers put in there, however. There is no reason for composer to limit themselves to what they can reasonably expect from a listener.







I doubt the average listener hears this and notices that there is a canon between the outer lines. They might notice some similarity, or that one is imitating the other at certain points, but not "the bass is a canonic imitation of the soprano."

But that doesn't matter insofar as one can enjoy the music just fine without hearing the canon.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

science said:


> I don't think that's all the composers put in there, however.


You are right that composers, especially modern ones, put more in there.



science said:


> There is no reason for composer to limit themselves to what they can reasonably expect from a listener.


Depends on how much they care about being comprehended.



science said:


> But we do disagree about other arts! There is basically no aspect of the human experience - clothing, furniture, dance, theater, film, poetry, rhetoric, food, drink, gardening, architecture, whatever - that cannot be analyzed in detail and depth with a wide variety of methods. To me, music is typical in this way rather than exceptional.


All I need to understand the vast majority of criticism in literature, drama, film, poetry, dance and the visual arts is the ability to read; No specialized skills required. Comprehending serious music criticism requires reading music and a knowledge of theory, which are daunting prerequisite skills by comparison.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

Ajayay said:


> When I read analyses of classical pieces, I'm afraid the overwhelming feeling I have is boredom.
> 
> It's all very well listing the names of the harmonies, intervals, scales etc. as if the process of identifying them is somehow mystically going to reveal the innermost secrets of the piece. But I feel it often misses the real point which is the overall design and why the design is the way it is.
> 
> ...


I think it should be about how the techniques reveal what the music is about or is expressing. I agree with you - most analyses I've read have been so purely theoretical as to be superficial, and written in a way that would never help a composer inculcate the techniques......or they only gloss over the technical aspect of the music.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> You are right that composers, especially modern ones, put more in there.
> 
> Depends on how much they care about being comprehended.
> 
> All I need to understand the vast majority of criticism in literature, drama, film, poetry, dance and the visual arts is the ability to read; No specialized skills required. Comprehending serious music criticism requires reading music and a knowledge of theory, which are daunting prerequisite skills by comparison.


I see; we were talking about different things. I was thinking of what it takes to become an expert (i.e. to create credible academic literature) in those fields, not just to understand what the experts say.


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

violadude said:


> "The second movement of the "Unfinished" Symphony had been analyzed to show its possible homosexual character by the feminist musicologist Susan McClary."
> 
> That sentence...is the stupidest thing I've ever read...ever. I'm going to need about a week and a lot of "medication" to get over it.



What is a "feminist musicologist" anyway?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

MoonlightSonata said:


> What is a "feminist musicologist" anyway?


Read McClary's "Sexual Politics in Classical Music" and anything else in her book _Feminine Endings_ and you will understand why McClary is so classified. I don't want to get into a general discussion, but the term is often applied to musicologists who foreground gender issues of various kinds and who call into question covert assumptions in criticism that tend to promote the hegemony of masculine or patriarchal values. (I hope someone does a better summary than mine ;-) Some champion the work of neglected female composers, performers, and thinkers.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

None of the musical analyses I have ever read seemed like they were something that would help a composer inculcate the techniques being used, much less allow anyone to understand them.......I don't think I really gained from reading any.

Secondly I want to say that I don't think one should have to exert mental energy when listening to music......only the energy of merely holding your attention should be necessary. Music is not an intellectual delight but a visceral experience and the greatest music treats it that way, IMO.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> None of the musical analyses I have ever read seemed like they were something that would help a composer inculcate the techniques being used, much less allow anyone to understand them.......I don't think I really gained from reading any.


What kind of analyses are we talking about here? The term analysis itself tends to be reserved for formalist criticism, although there is a lot of analytical writing on music that addresses broader issues of meaning and expression. Is it possible that your reaction to musical analysis might be a function of the specific kinds you have been reading? Perhaps what you have been reading just isn't addressing the musical qualities you care about?



Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> Secondly I want to say that I don't think one should have to exert mental energy when listening to music......only the energy of merely holding your attention should be necessary. Music is not an intellectual delight but a visceral experience and the greatest music treats it that way, IMO.


Yes, but sometimes attention, concentrated attention, requires energy. And not all visceral responses are spontaneous or instinctive. Sometimes they only emerge after one comprehends connections between one idea and another that aren't immediately apparent on the first few hearings. I don't think the intellectual and the visceral are necessarily opposed or at cross purposes.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> None of the musical analyses I have ever read seemed like they were something that would help a composer inculcate the techniques being used, much less allow anyone to understand them.......I don't think I really gained from reading any.
> 
> Secondly I want to say that I don't think one should have to exert mental energy when listening to music......only the energy of merely holding your attention should be necessary. Music is not an intellectual delight but a visceral experience and the greatest music treats it that way, IMO.


I think the experience of music transcends the categories of "intellectual" and "visceral" - I'd say it's both and neither.

You don't _need_ analysis to enjoy music, but often great music makes us _want_ to analyze it, and this can deepen our appreciation and understanding of it.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

As EdwardBast mentioned, some musicians have correctly pointed to Western theory's overemphasis on tonal movement, and although I'm not familiar with each of these writers I also believe that our tradition is off-balance in this respect, in that processes of thematic development that are not tonally clear, and especially processes of rhythmic development or metric sophistication are not nearly as well understood. Having gone through a "higher education" curriculum in music, I know that we were taught exhaustively about harmonic concerns, with very little about how rhythm and meter work, and I believe this is because, on the whole, most experts in Western music simply don't understand rhythm as well as they understand tonality. So when it comes to providing an analysis, the default is to stay in completely safe waters and report only on events that have easily discernible harmonic significance. Thematic or motivic elements tend to be mentioned only insofar as they fit into the scheme determined by the harmony. I don't see any way out of this (including sliding over into deconstructionism) without overhauling the entire approach to music that our current tradition tends to take.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Funny said:


> As EdwardBast mentioned, some musicians have correctly pointed to Western theory's overemphasis on tonal movement, and although I'm not familiar with each of these writers I also believe that our tradition is off-balance in this respect, in that processes of thematic development that are not tonally clear, and especially processes of rhythmic development or metric sophistication are not nearly as well understood. Having gone through a "higher education" curriculum in music, I know that we were taught exhaustively about harmonic concerns, with very little about how rhythm and meter work, and I believe this is because, on the whole, most experts in Western music simply don't understand rhythm as well as they understand tonality. So when it comes to providing an analysis, the default is to stay in completely safe waters and report only on events that have easily discernible harmonic significance. Thematic or motivic elements tend to be mentioned only insofar as they fit into the scheme determined by the harmony. I don't see any way out of this (including sliding over into deconstructionism) without overhauling the entire approach to music that our current tradition tends to take.


The emphasis on tonal-harmonic structure in modern theory is probably due in part, as you speculate, to the fact that it is the area that is best understood. (To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.) Also, it is attractive because it is fairly objective, employs a satisfyingly scientific sounding nomenclature, and it can be used recursively to account for the organization of ever larger formal structures with a single set of principles, as when used in reductive systems like Schenkerian analysis.

The semiotic, structuralist, dramatic and narrative approaches to interpretation usually called "musical narratology" (or musical narrative) have been proposed as one "way out" of the stultifying, myopic focus of formalist theory. One thing these approaches have in common is that their primary focus is usually on thematic processes-how themes and motives are deployed, developed and transformed, along with the overriding principles motivating these processes. Interestingly, harmonic details are often cited in narrative analyses as subsidiary issues or aspects of "thematic characterization." By and large, the narrativists believe that thematic processes cannot be understood without taking into account expression, meaning, and the overall expressive structure of musical works. This is another reason why traditional formalist theory avoids thematic processes: their study gets messy and forces one to consider thorny issues of content incompatible with a positivistic, quasi-scientific stance.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

In John Rahn's *Basic Atonal Theory* book, pieces are analyzed in terms of pitch-class sets, and basic patterns are uncovered. That seems like a good way to know what kinds of patterns exist in music.


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## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

I would be interested in hearing some recommendations of musical analysis that focuses on 'the broader picture' of the work. Something that shows all motivic developments, how the developments relate to each other, and how the music progresses forward. 

When all I see is 'I - V - V7 - I - IV - V - I - I7 - etc' theres not a lot to take from that. How does the piece create suspense on that V7? Why does this section that sounds like its about to conclude on I, suddenly turn on the IV and still sound uninterrupted?

Things like flow are more useful for a composer to understand then the small specifics, which is something I would like to read more about.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> Music is not an intellectual delight but a visceral experience and the greatest music treats it that way, IMO.


I feel this is entirely a matter of your personal approach rather than an objective truth.

For me, almost completely locked out of the intellectual aspects of music, I have little choice; but with some other arts I can chose whether to shut down my intellectual-critical capacity as I enjoy them or to let it run as wild as I am usually inclined to do. My feeling is that art that withstands or even rewards intellectual criticism from many perspectives is stronger than art that is best appreciated without that. But I'm not at all romantic.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

science said:


> I feel this is entirely a matter of your personal approach rather than an objective truth.
> 
> .


Sure, just like absolutely every value judgement that's ever been made.


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