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.[1] According to Schenker musical form is "an energy transformation, as a transformation of the forces that flow from background to foreground through the levels."[2]
For example, while details such as melodic notes exist at the lowest structural levels, the foreground, in the background the fundamental structure is the most basic structural level of all tonal music, representing the digression from and necessary return to the tonic that motivates musical form. It may be conceived of in a specific piece as the opening in the tonic and the return to the tonic with a perfect authentic cadence (V-I) after the development of sonata allegro form.
Strata is the translation given by John Rothgeb for Schichten ("Levels") as described by Oswald Jonas in his Introduction to the Theory of Heinrich Schenker.[3] This translation did not gain wide acceptance in modern Schenkerian literature and the translation of Schichten as "levels" usually has been preferred.[4]
"Structural level" may not exactly correspond to Schenker's own concept. Schenker thought that the levels were levels of elaboration of the piece of music, so that the first level was not the background itself (the starting point), but its first elaboration at the early middleground. He called levels "the voice-leading and transformation levels, prolongations, elaborations, and similar means."[5]
The image hereby shows Schenker's earliest presentation of levels in a figure, his analysis of J.S. Bach's Little Prelude in D minor, BWV 926, in Der Tonwille 5 (1923), p. 8. Schenker writes:
"The figure hereafter shows the gradual growth of the voice-leading prolongations, all predetermined in the womb of the Urlinie.
a) gives the image of the Urlinie progression and the first intervals; b) introduces the downward register transfer f2—f1 by means of third progressions in the outer voices and the 5—6 exchange, then the renewed swing upwards to f2; c) shows the chromaticisms, effecting more powerful (tonicizing) connections and thereby articulating the octave progression in three third progressions: f2–d2, d2–b1, a1–f1; d) and e) show how, in the second chord of the octave series, the third c2 is not led up chromatically to c♯2, but is reached through a falling third progression from e2. It is the voice-leading that we also encountered in Prelude No. 3 (see Figure 1; Tonwille 1, p. 3), only here the contrapuntal octave progression of the lower voice is placed not on the divider at the upper fifth, as it was there, but on that at the lower fifth. Voice-leading errors threaten on the way to this divider: consecutive (contrary) fifths at d), open fifths at e);
f) finally shows the removal of the consecutive fifths by means of the exchange 6–5, which is also welcome to the diminution."[6]
The expression "structural level" (completing Schicht, "level," by "structural") may have been created by Felix Salzer in Structural Hearing.[7] Salzer apparently never uses "level" alone to mean Schicht.
↑ Bello, Juan Pablo, ed. (2008). Kirlin, Philip B. and Utgoff, Paul E. "A Framework for Automated Schenkerian Analysis", ISMIR 2008, p.363. ISBN978-0-615-24849-3.
↑ Heinrich Schenker, Der freie Satz, 1935, §301. See Free Composition, Appendix 4, text P (translation by J. Rothgeb).
↑ Jonas, Oswald (1982). Introduction to the Theory of Heinrich Schenker, p.138. (1934: Das Wesen des musikalischen Kunstwerks: Eine Einführung in Die Lehre Heinrich Schenkers). Trans. John Rothgeb. ISBN0582282276.
↑ The word "strata" can be found in L. D. Blasius, Schenker's Argument and the Claims of Music Theory (Cambridge, 1996), alongside "level". It appears once in M. Brown, Explaining Tonality (University of Rochester Press, 2005), p. 138, in a quotation from J. Rothgeb's translation of a text from The Masterwork in Musik, vol. I; Brown otherwise prefers "level". It is not used in F. Salzer, Structural Hearing (Boni, 1952), in A. Forte and S. E. Gilbert, Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis (Norton, 1982), or in E. Aldwell, C. Schachter and A. Cadwallader, Harmony and Voice Leading (Schirmer, 2011), etc., where "level" is used exclusively.
↑ Der freie Satz, 1935, p. 17: Stimmführungs–, Verwandlungsschichten, Prolongationen, Auswickelung u. ä. English translation in Free Composition, p. 5.
↑ Transl. by J. Dubiel, slightly modified to make it more literally conform to the German original. Der Tonwille, W. Drabkin ed., vol. I, Oxford University Press 2004, pp. 180-181.
↑ F. Salzer, Structural Hearing, Boni, 1952, pp. 119, 121, 122, 125, 155, 205 and 264.
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 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.
In music theory, a diminished triad is a triad consisting of two minor thirds above the root. It is a minor triad with a lowered (flattened) fifth. When using chord symbols, it may be indicated by the symbols "dim", "o", "m♭5", or "MI(♭5)". However, in most popular-music chord books, the symbol "dim" and "o" represents a diminished seventh chord, which in some modern jazz books and music theory books is represented by the "dim7" or "o7" symbols.
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.
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 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 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.
Carl E. Schachter is an American music theorist noted for his expertise in Schenkerian analysis.
Free Composition is a treatise by Heinrich Schenker, and possibly Schenker's best known work. The third volume of New Musical Theories and Fantasies, it was first published posthumously by Universal Edition in Vienna in 1935. A second German edition by Oswald Jonas appeared in Vienna in 1956. The American translation by Ernst Oster was published by Longman, New York and London, in 1979.
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, depending on 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.
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.
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, particularly Schenkerian analysis, 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."
In Schenkerian analysis, unfolding or compound melody is the implication of more than one melody or line by a single voice through skipping back and forth between the notes of the two melodies. In music cognition, the phenomenon is also known as melodic fission.
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, 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.
Oswald Jonas was a music theorist and musicologist, and student of Heinrich Schenker. Despite Schenker's conservative nationalist views Jonas was an admirer of Karl Kraus.
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.
Ernst Oster was a German pianist, musicologist, and music theorist. A specialist in the use of Schenkerian Analysis, he was the English translator of Heinrich Schenker's final work, Free Composition.
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