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.[1] The English term usually translates Schenker's Auskomponierung (better translated as "composing out" or "elaboration"). According to Fred Lerdahl, "The term 'prolongation' [...] usually means 'composing out' (Schenker's own intention for the term is open to debate)."[2]
Prolongation can be thought of as a way of generating musical content through the linear elaboration of simple and basic tonal structures with progressively increasing detail and sophistication,[3] and thus analysis consists of a reduction from detail to structure. Important to the operation of prolongation is the hierarchical differentiation of pitches within a passage of tonal music. Typically, the note or harmony of highest hierarchical significance is the tonic, and this is said to be "prolonged" across durations of music that may feature many other different harmonies. (However, in principle any other type of consonantchord, pitch, or harmonic function can be prolonged within tonal music.) "In chord prolongation, one chord governs a prolongation of various chords; these different chords are subordinated to that one chord which they help to express and prolong."[4]
A pitch is located in a pitch class, a pitch class is located within a chord, a chord is located in a key region, a key is located in pitch space including the circle of fifths and their relative minors. A rhythmic event is located within the meter which is located within the form. Thus "reductions" are often made at different levels excluding the prolongational from the structural events; these may express the relationships through time-reductions or prologational reductions (which may be Urlinien or tree diagrams).
Prolongation in Schenkerian theory
The early 20th-century music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935) was responsible for developing both the conceptual framework for prolongation and a means of analyzing music in terms of prolonged musical structures (called Schenkerian analysis).
Schenker’s own usage of the term differs from the modern one.[5] The German word Prolongation is not common, and Schenker first used it in a very specific meaning (maybe originating in legal, possibly Viennese vocabulary), referring to the extension of the primal laws (Urgesetze) or of the primal concepts (Urbegriffe) of strict composition in free composition[6] and the phenomena resulting from the extension of these laws.[7] He used the word mainly to denote the transformation of a given level of voice-leading to the next one, describing the passage from level to level as a Prolongation. Adele T. Katz appears to be responsible for the shift of meaning where "prolongation" became the American translation of Auskomponierung.[8]
In his analysis of J.S. Bach's Little Prelude in D minor, BWV 926, in Der Tonwille 5, Schenker proposes what may be his earliest figure showing the steps through which the Ursatz develops into the foreground. He explains that this figure "shows the gradual growth of the voice-leading prolongations, all predetermined in the womb of the Urlinie".[9] The "gradual growth" illustrated is a global phenomenon, always concerning the piece as a whole. The figure is further commented upon on p.45 of the same volume. Schenker stresses that it starts with the two-voice setting of the Ursatz – an expression, therefore, of the fundamental laws of strict counterpoint. Each of the following steps is described as a Prolongation, a specific freedom taken with respect to the laws expressed in the previous step. And in Freie Satz, he confirms that the word still refers to the passing from one voice-leading level to another: "For the sake of continuity with my earlier theoretical and analytical works, I am retaining in this volume the words of Latin derivation Prolongation and Diminution as designations for the voice-leading levels in the middleground".[10]
The concept of Prolongation is important for Schenker because he believes that showing how a masterpiece of free composition remains rooted in the laws of strict counterpoint explains its utter unity, its "synthesis".[11] The means and techniques of passing from one level to the next are subsumed in Schenker's notion of "composing out" or "compositional elaboration" (Auskomponierung, a German neologism), which for him is a mechanism of elaborating pitch materials in musical time.[3] The means of elaboration are described below as "prolongational techniques", in conformity with the modern Schenkerian English usage, but should better be termed "elaborations".
The broadening of the meaning of "prolongation" has been described by Anthony Pople[12] in seven steps: (1) Schenker proposes it as an operational concept in his teaching; (2) Felix Salzer,[13]Allen Forte[14] and others, disseminate and clarify it; (3) it is used within attempted formalisations of Schenkerian analysis;[15] (4) new theories evoking Schenker[16] make use of it; (5) it is used within theories amplifying Schenker's own;[17] (6) definitions are proposed in theories beyond the Schenkerian canon;[18] and (7) definitions of the term are proposed in relation to atonal music.[19] The replacement of Schenker's own term Auskomponierung by "prolongation" appeared in step (2), as an English translation.
The English "prolongation" has been used in The Masterwork in Music to translate German words including Auskomponierung, ausdrücken and Auswicklung.[20] In Free Composition, "prolongation" is more than once used to translate Auskomponierung and "prolonged" for auskomponiert. Oster otherwise translates Auskomponierung as "composing out" and others use "compositional elaboration" or, short, "elaboration."[21] Drabkin quotes as "methods of prolongation" techniques that include Anstieg, Ausfaltung, Koppelung, Tieferlegung, Übergreifen and Untergreifen,[22] which Schenker would rather have described as techniques of Auskomponierung.
In Schenkerian analysis, the analyst discerns ways in which prolongation creates the details of a musical composition by elaborating the background structure. Most of these methods involve contrapuntal processes, to such a degree that Schenkerian theory is a theory that almost completely synthesizes harmony and linear counterpoint in the service of the more global phenomenon of tonal prolongation. Prolongational techniques include arpeggiations, linear progressions, unfoldings, etc., in general aiming at the horizontalization, "the elaboration in time of a governing vertical sonority – a chord or an interval. [...] When an interval is horizontalized, its tones unfold against a background determined in the vertical dimension by the governing sonority of which it is part."[27]
Conditions for prolongation
Schenker intended his theory to apply only to music of the common practice period, and there to a select class of mostly Austro-German composers in a line from J.S. Bach to Johannes Brahms.[citation needed] Developments in more recent music theory have sought to clarify the conditions under which prolongation may obtain, so that other repertoires may either be opened up or more justifiably be precluded. Schenker pupil Felix Salzer, for example, detects the rudiments of prolongational horizontalization in music as early as 12th-century plainchant and argues that it is a musical principle that persists through post-tonal music as well, such as Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky.[28] Music theorist Robert Morgan has argued that a central tenet of Schenkerian thought—that only consonant triads are capable of prolongation—needlessly excludes a class of dissonant sonorities, such as diminished sevenths or a more arbitrarily defined set of pitches; Morgan claims that, starting in the 19th century, composers such as Liszt, Wagner, and Scriabin, began "composing out" these dissonant configurations as rigorous a manner as is usually ascribed to the triadic prolongation of tonal composers.[29]
Atonal music poses a stark challenge to prolongational hearing and analysis, as its harmonic makeup by definition eschews the long-range controlling force of monotonality, and in most cases purposely abstains from consonant triads, or indeed referential or centric sonorities at all.[citation needed] Music theorist Joseph Straus has attempted to define more rigorously what it is about atonality that precludes prolongational hearing. His own definition of prolongation is "the sense of continuation of a musical object, particularly when not literally present ... prolongation is a cognitive act of the listener".[30] He formulated four conditions for the possibility of Schenkerian prolongation in any musical style (1987)[31] These are:
A scale of stability among consonant harmonies [see diatonic function].
Ways in which less structural pitches embellish more structural pitches.
A clear relationship between harmony and voice-leading.
Straus concludes that such conditions do not exist in atonal music and therefore that "atonal prolongation" is impossible; although he is open to the possibility that prolongation is a possibility in other post-tonal music (he gives the example of music composed with the octatonic scale), he argues that in practice most post-tonal music does not display this. Instead, he suggests that in post-tonal music, including atonal music, a model of 'association' is more defensible than strict prolongation. However, Lerdahl argues that Straus' argument is based on circular criteria.[32] Lerdahl's own formulation of prolongation is more amenable to atonal structures. For example, in atonal music, strong prolongation may be distinguished from progression, repetition of an event versus movement to a different event, while weak prolongation, repetition of an event in altered form, may not easily be distinguished due to the lack of a referential triad (klang).[33]Miguel Roig-Francolí has proposed a related theory of 'Pitch-Class-Set Extension', in which contiguous harmonic units are linked through common-tone or chromatic connection and successive harmonies are understood to 'extend' earlier ones.[34]
Sources
↑ "It is one of the most valuable services of Schenkerian theory to have revealed for the first time the unity of composing-out and the prolonged application and validity of the laws of voice leading." Oswald Jonas, Introduction to the Theory of Heinrich Schenker, trans. John Rothgeb (New York: Longman, 1982), p. 54. 2nd English edition (Ann Arbor: Musicalia Press, 2005), p. 59.
↑ Salzer, Felix (1962). Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music, p.111. ISBN0-486-22275-6.
↑ See N. Meeùs (2021), Prolongation, Orfeu 6/3, pp. 109-124.
↑ For instance when he explained that the task of the study of counterpoint is to reveal how its fundamental laws can be extended to apply to free composition: "But to reveal the basic form together with its variants, and [thereby] to uncover only prolongations of a fundamental law even where apparent contradictions hold sway – this alone is the task of counterpoint!" Kontrapunkt I (1910), p. 315; English translation (1987), p. 241. This is the usage to which Oswald Jonas refers in the quotation from note 1 above. See also J. Dubiel, "When You are a Beethoven: Kinds of Rules in Schenker's Counterpoint", Journal of Music Theory 34/2 (1990), p. 293, and R. Snarrenberg, "The Art of Translating Schenker: A Commentary on 'The Masterwork in Music,' Vol. 1", Music Analysis 15/2-3 (1996), p. 324.
↑ Schenker claims among others that three-voice counterpoint is subject to the same laws as two-voice counterpoint, of which it represents a "Prolongation": "In three-voice settings, the [laws of] two-voice settings actually continue to apply; three-voice setting therefore represents merely a prolonged phenomenon". Kontrapunkt II (1922), p. 1; English translation (1987), p. 1.
↑ Adele T. Katz (1935). "Heinrich Schenker's Method of Analysis", The Musical Quarterly 21/3, pp. 311-329. This conception of "prolongation" may have its origin in the teaching of Hans Weisse.
↑ Der Tonwille 5 (1923), p. 8, Fig. 1; English translation (2004), p. 180. Later in the same volume, p. 33 (transl., p. 202), Schenker describes a similar figure as showing "the succession of prolongations, that is, the layers of the voice-leading."
↑ Der freie Satz, 2d edition (1956), § 45, p. 57; English translation (1979), p. 25.
↑ Deriding the lack of the "art of prolongation" in Bruckner, he writes "his ear could not hear the beginning and end of a motion as an entity. The two points remain without inner relationship to one another; and everything shoved and squeezed in between, though executed with so much art on an individual level, exhausts itself purely physically without any concern for connection." Der Tonwille 5, p. 46; English translation, p. 213.
↑ Anthony Pople, "Using Complex Set Theory for Tonal Analysis: An Introduction to the 'Tonalities' Project", Music Analysis 23/2-3 (2004), pp. 162-164. Pople describes "prolongation" as "a Humpty-Dumpty Word".
1 2 Forte, Allen (1979). Tonal Harmony in Concept and Practice, p.426. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. ISBN0-03-020756-8.
↑ Salzer, Felix and Carl Schachter (1989). Counterpoint in Composition, p. 144. ISBN0-231-07039-X.
↑ Salzer, Felix (1962). Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music, p. 267. ISBN0-486-22275-6.
↑ Morgan, Robert (1976). "Dissonant Prolongation: Theoretical and Compositional Precedents" in Journal of Music Theory 20/1, 49–91.
↑ Maisel, Arthur, "Voice leading as drama in Wozzeck," C. Schachter and H. Siegel, eds. (2006). Schenker Studies 2 (pp. 160-186), p.178. ISBN0-521-02832-9.
↑ Straus, Joseph N. (1987). "The Problem of Prolongation in Post-Tonal Music", Journal of Music Theory 31, p. 1-21. cited in Lerdahl (1989).
↑ Lerdahl, Fred (1989). "Atonal Prolongational Structure", p.67, Music and the Cognitive Sciences. McAdams, Stephen and Irene Deliege, eds. ISBN3-7186-4953-5.
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches, or chords. However, harmony is generally understood to involve both vertical harmony (chords) and horizontal harmony (melody).
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".
Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. The Oxford Companion to Music describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation ; the second is learning scholars' views on music from antiquity to the present; the third is a sub-topic of musicology that "seeks to define processes and general principles in music". The musicological approach to theory differs from music analysis "in that it takes as its starting-point not the individual work or performance but the fundamental materials from which it is built."
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 the "foreground" 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 each individual case, that structure develops into a unique work at the foreground. 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 can be both the tonic of the scale and the root of the tonic chord. The tonic can be a different note in the same scale, when the work is said to be in one of the modes of the scale.
The Tristan chord is a chord made up of the notes F, B, D♯, and G♯:
In music, a subject is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based. In forms other than the fugue, this may be known as the theme.
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.
Felix Salzer was an Austrian-American music theorist, musicologist and pedagogue. He was one of the principal followers of Heinrich Schenker, and did much to refine and explain Schenkerian analysis after Schenker's death.
In music, consecutive fifths or parallel fifths are progressions in which the interval of a perfect fifth is followed by a different perfect fifth between the same two musical parts : for example, from C to D in one part along with G to A in a higher part. Octave displacement is irrelevant to this aspect of musical grammar; for example, a parallel twelfth is equivalent to a parallel fifth.
In Schenkerian analysis, the fundamental structure describes the structure of a tonal work as it occurs at the most remote level and in the most abstract form. A basic elaboration of the tonic triad, 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.
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. [...] 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.
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.
Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11, is a set of pieces for solo piano written by the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg in 1909. They represent an early example of atonality in the composer's work.
In music theory, an inversion is a type of change to intervals, chords, voices, and melodies. In each of these cases, "inversion" has a distinct but related meaning. The concept of inversion also plays an important role in musical set theory.
Post-tonal music theory is the set of theories put forward to describe music written outside of, or 'after', the tonal system of the common practice period. It revolves around the idea of 'emancipating dissonance', that is, freeing the structure of music from the familiar harmonic patterns that are derived from natural overtones. As music becomes more complex, dissonance becomes indistinguishable from consonance.
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."
A generative theory of tonal music (GTTM) is a theory of music conceived by American composer and music theorist Fred Lerdahl and American linguist Ray Jackendoff and presented in the 1983 book of the same title. It constitutes a "formal description of the musical intuitions of a listener who is experienced in a musical idiom" with the aim of illuminating the unique human capacity for musical understanding.
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."
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.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
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