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In Schenkerian analysis, the fundamental structure (German: Ursatz) describes the structure of a tonal work as it occurs at the most remote (or "background") level and in the most abstract form. A basic elaboration of the tonictriad, it consists of the fundamental line accompanied by the bass arpeggiation. Hence the fundamental structure, like the fundamental line itself, takes one of three forms, according to which tonic triad pitch is the primary tone. The example hereby shows a fundamental structure in C major, with the fundamental line descending from scale degree:
The Urlinie offers the unfurling (Auswicklung) of a basic triad, it presents tonality on horizontal paths. The tonal system, too, flows into these as well, a system intended to bring purposeful order into the world of chords through its selection of the harmonic degrees. The mediator between the horizontal formulation of tonality presented by the Urlinie and the vertical formulation presented by the harmonic degrees is voice leading.[1]
The upper voice of a fundamental structure, which is the fundamental line, utilizes the descending direction; the lower voice, which is the bass arpeggiation through the fifth, takes the ascending direction (fig. 1). [...] The combination of fundamental line and bass arpeggiation constitutes a unity. [...] Neither the fundamental line nor the bass arpeggiation can stand alone. Only when acting together, when unified in a contrapuntal structure, do they produce art.[2]
Fundamental line
Urlinie in relation to the tonic triad.
The fundamental line (German: Urlinie) is the melodic aspect of the Fundamental structure (Ursatz), "a stepwise descent from one of the triad notes to the tonic" with the bass arpeggiation being the harmonic aspect.[3] The fundamental line fills in the spaces created by the descending arpeggiation of the tonic triad. Its first tone (primary tone, head tone) may be , or .
There are no tonal spaces other than those of —, —, and —. There is no other origin for passing-tone progressions, or of melody.[4]
Lines from are rare; some Schenkerians consider them impossible. There appears to exist a tendency, in modern Schenkerian analyses, to prefer lines from .
The upper [...] fifth of a chord, presenting itself by leap in the service of a passing motion or neighbor note, I call an upper-fifth divider[6]
In the case of the Ursatz, the upper-fifth divider is in the service of in the Urlinie. Together, they may form the germ of a dominant chord at a later level. See Schenkerian analysis.
Terminology
The term Ursatz is not common in German, but it was not created by Schenker. Its meaning is close to that of "axiom";[7] it is used among others by Schopenhauer.[8] The translation of Ursatz as "fundamental structure" and of Urlinie as "fundamental line" has been questioned. The translators of Das Meisterwerk in der Musik[9] and Der Tonwille[10] and those of the project Schenker Documents Online[11] have chosen to retain the German original terms in their translations.
Adele T. Katz, one of the first commentators of Schenker in the United States, may be responsible for the choice of "structure" as a translation for Satz. She defined in 1935 the Ursatz as "the elemental structure out of which the composition evolves."[12] In 1945, she opposed the "harmonic and structural chords" to the "contrapuntal and prolonging chords"[13] and she translated Urlinie as "the structural top voice".[14] These expressions were taken over by Felix Salzer, who apparently was the first to speak of "fundamental structure".[15]
While "structure" may seem acceptable as a translation of Satz in this context, by want of anything better, that of Ur- as "fundamental" is much less. As Stephen Peles puts it,
We lost something when we adopted "fundamental line" as the standard translation of Urlinie; "primal line" captures more of the resonance the word would have had for Schenker's readers, who would immediately have made the association with Ursprache, and other Ur-thises and Ur-thats that were the ultimate philological goals of their respective historical disciplines.[16]
In other disciplines, Ur- usually is translated as "primal", as in Goethe's Urpflanze, the "primal plant",[17] or in Urdenken ("primal thinking"),[18]Urbild, "primal image" (Goethe) or Urform, "primal form", "archetype" (Schelling), etc.
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a single, central triad is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another. More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized European classical music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. "The repertory of atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in novel combinations, as well as by the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments".
In music theory, a leading-tone is a note or pitch which resolves or "leads" to a note one semitone higher or lower, being a lower and upper leading-tone, respectively. Typically, the leading tone refers to the seventh scale degree of a major scale, a major seventh above the tonic. In the movable do solfège system, the leading-tone is sung as ti.
In music, the subdominant is the fourth tonal degree of the diatonic scale. It is so called because it is the same distance below the tonic as the dominant is above the tonic – in other words, the tonic is the dominant of the subdominant. It also happens to be the note one step below the dominant. In the movable do solfège system, the subdominant note is sung as fa.
Schenkerian analysis is a method of analyzing tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935). The goal is to demonstrate the organic coherence of the work by showing how it relates to an abstracted deep structure, the Ursatz. This primal structure is roughly the same for any tonal work, but a Schenkerian analysis shows how, in an individual case, that structure develops into a unique work at the "foreground", the level of the score itself. A key theoretical concept is "tonal space". The intervals between the notes of the tonic triad in the background form a tonal space that is filled with passing and neighbour tones, producing new triads and new tonal spaces that are open for further elaborations until the "surface" of the work is reached.
Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is called the tonic. The root of the tonic chord forms the name given to the key, so in the key of C major, the note C is both the tonic of the scale and the root of the tonic chord. Simple folk music songs often start and end with the tonic note. The most common use of the term "is to designate the arrangement of musical phenomena around a referential tonic in European music from about 1600 to about 1910". Contemporary classical music from 1910 to the 2000s may practice or avoid any sort of tonality—but harmony in almost all Western popular music remains tonal. Harmony in jazz includes many but not all tonal characteristics of the European common practice period, usually known as "classical music".
In music, function is a term used to denote the relationship of a chord or a scale degree to a tonal centre. Two main theories of tonal functions exist today:
In music theory, the scale degree is the position of a particular note on a scale relative to the tonic, the first and main note of the scale from which each octave is assumed to begin. Degrees are useful for indicating the size of intervals and chords and whether an interval is major or minor.
Voice leading is the linear progression of individual melodic lines and their interaction with one another to create harmonies, typically in accordance with the principles of common-practice harmony and counterpoint.
In music theory, prolongation is the process in tonal music through which a pitch, interval, or consonant triad is considered to govern spans of music when not physically sounding. It is a central principle in the music-analytic methodology of Schenkerian analysis, conceived by Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker. The English term usually translates Schenker's Auskomponierung. According to Fred Lerdahl, "The term 'prolongation' [...] usually means 'composing out' ."
In Schenkerian theory, a scale-step is a triad that is perceived as an organizing force for a passage of music. In Harmony, Schenker gives the following example and asserts that
our ear will connect the first tone, G, with the B on the first quarter of measure 1 as the third of G.
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Likewise, it will connect that G with the D on the first quarter of measure 2 as its fifth. Our ear will establish this connection instinctively, but nonetheless in accordance with the demands of Nature. In an analogous way, it will link that first G with the C and E of the second half of measure 1 and thus form the concept of another triad. For our ear will miss no opportunity to hear such triads, no matter how far in the background of our consciousness this conception may lie hidden and no matter whether in the plan of the composition it is overshadowed by far more obvious and important relationships.
Progressive tonality is the music compositional practice whereby a piece of music does not finish in the key in which it began, but instead 'progresses' to an ending in a different key or tonality. To avoid misunderstanding, it should be stressed that in this connection 'different key' means a different tonic, rather than merely a change to a different mode : Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony (1888–94), for example, which moves from a C minor start to an E-flat major conclusion, exhibits 'progressive tonality'—whereas Ludwig van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (1804–08), which begins in C minor and ends in C major, does not. A work which ends in the key in which it began may be described as exhibiting 'concentric tonality'. The terms 'progressive' and 'concentric' were both introduced into musicology by Dika Newlin in her book Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg (1947).
In music, the dominant is the fifth scale degree of the diatonic scale. It is called the dominant because it is second in importance to the first scale degree, the tonic. In the movable do solfège system, the dominant note is sung as "So(l)".
In music, klang is a term sometimes used to translate the German Klang, a highly polysemic word. Technically, the term denotes any periodic sound, especially as opposed to simple periodic sounds. In the German lay usage, it may mean "sound" or "tone", "musical tone", "note", or "timbre"; a chord of three notes is called a Dreiklang, etc.
In music, a linear progression is a passing note elaboration involving stepwise melodic motion in one direction between two harmonic tones. "The compositional unfolding of a specific interval, one of the intervals of the chord of nature." For example: -- over the tonic. According to Schenker: "A linear progression always presupposes a passing note; there can be no linear progression without a passing note, no passing note without a linear progression." In German Zug may be combined with prefixes to create related words such as Untergreifzug, a linear progression rising from a lower voice, Uebergreifzug, a linear progression overlapping another, or Terzzug, linear progression through a third. The term Zug may best be translated as "a direct, unimpeded motion from one place to another."
Monotonality is a theoretical concept, principally deriving from the theoretical writings of Arnold Schoenberg and Heinrich Schenker, that in any piece of tonal music only one tonic is ever present, modulations being only regions or prolongations within, or extensions of the basic tonality.
In Schenkerian analysis, a structural level is a representation of a piece of music at a different level of abstraction, with levels typically including foreground, middleground, and background. According to Schenker musical form is "an energy transformation, as a transformation of the forces that flow from background to foreground through the levels."
In Schenkerian analysis, the primary tone or head tone is the starting tone of the fundamental line. The fundamental line itself originates as an arpeggiation of the tonic chord, filled by passing tones:
In Schenkerian analysis, the bass arpeggiation is the bass pattern forming the deep background of tonal musical works. It consists in scale steps I-V-I, each of which may span hundreds of measures of music in the foreground.
This is a glossary of Schenkerian analysis, a method of musical analysis of tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935). The method is discussed in the concerned article and no attempt is made here to summarize it. Similarly, the entries below whenever possible link to other articles where the concepts are described with more details, and the definitions are kept here to a minimum.
Matthew G. Brown is a British-American music theorist, musicologist, educator, and artistic director. He is Professor of Music Theory at Eastman School of Music.
References
↑ Schenker, Heinrich, Der Tonwille, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol. I, p. 53, translation by R. Snarrenberg.
↑ Schenker, Heinrich, Free Composition, translation by Ernst Oster, New York, Longman, 1979, pp. 10-11.
↑ Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music, p.193. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN0-335-15275-9.
↑ Schenker, Heinrich, Der Tonwille, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol. II, p. 117, translation by I. Bent. It will be noted that the tonal spaces are presented here in ascending order: this is because Schenker in 1924 had not yet conceived the fundamental line as necessarily descending.
↑ Oswald Jonas, Einführung in die Lehre Heinrich Schenkers, Wien, Universal, revised edition, 1972, p. 38, example 62. Introduction to the Theory of Heinrich Schenker, J. Rothgeb ed. and transl., 2d edition, Ann Arbor, Musicalia Press, p. 49, example 62.
↑ Schenker, Heinrich, Der Tonwille, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol. I, p. 176, translation by J. Dubiel, modified.
↑ K. E. Georges, Kleines deutsch-lateinisches Handwörterbuch, Hannover, Leipzig, 1910, col. 318.
↑ A. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (Ergänzungen zum ersten Buch), Werke in zehn Bänden, Band 3, Zürich 1977, p. 22: Andererseits hat auch der subjektive Ausgangspunkt und Ursatz "die Welt ist meine Vorstellung" sein Inadäquates, etc.
↑ Schenker, Heinrich, The Masterwork in Music, English translation, W. Drabkin ed., I. Bent et alii transl., Cambridge University Press, 3 vols., 1994-1997.
↑ Schenker, Heinrich, Der Tonwille, English translation, W. Drabkin ed., I. Bent et alii transl., Oxford University Press, 2 vols., 2004.
↑ Salzer, Felix (1952). Structural Hearing. Tonal Coherence in Music, New York, Charles Boni, p. 12.
↑ Peles, Stephen (2001). Review of Schenker's Argument and the Claims of Music Theory by Leslie D. Blasius, The Journal of Music Theory 45/1, p. 185. See also Snarrenberg, Robert (1997). "Competing Myths: The American Abandonment of Schenker’s Organicism», Theory, Analysis and Meaning in Music, A. Pople ed., Cambridge University Press, p. 29-56.
↑ Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Letter to Friedrich Constantin von Stein, 1787: Die Urpflanze wird das wunderlichste Geschöpf von der Welt über welches mich die Natur selbst beneiden soll. .
↑ Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Berlin, 2014, p. 433: Alles Urdenken geschieht in Bildern, etc.
Further reading
Cadwallader, Allen and Gagné, David. Analysis of Tonal Music: A Schenkerian Approach. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Schenker, Heinrich. Free Composition. Ernst Oster, tr. and ed. New York: Longman, 1979.
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