"Little Tune" Lession |
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| Heirich Schenker's Ideas from "Emblems of Mind" |
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Heinrich Heinrich Schenker is credited with profound and influential examinations of music at the end of the nineteenth century. Henrich Schenker came to regard all tonal pieces as elaborations and prolongations of a basic melodic line descending by steps to "1" and all harmonies as elaborations and prolongations of a basic harmonic progression -- "I-V-I". He literally graphed compositions, showing which tones were structural and which ornamental at various perceptual levels of "layers". Schenker talked about the foreground and background of a composition, its basic line, its fundamental movement. The implication of his analysis was that not all notes of a composition are of equal significance. Some are ornament, some are structural; some are filigree, others are indispensable. One harmony may be the syntectic crux of a composition, another a more slight fancy. These concepts are not inventions of analysis but the sorts of required distinctions made by the composer in constructing the work and any performer attempthing to make sense of it. The process of making musical sense means making functional distinctions between tones and phrases and harmonies, perceiving that some are directly related and others are not, that some are transformations of others, and that some are punctuation. The composition must be decomposed, quite literally, so that the processes of construction become evident in sound. The structure must be laid bare. There has been great controversy over Schenker's theories, mostly among analysts who believe that his vision of music is incomplete. But Schenker's attention to basic structures of tonal music and their transformations helps us understand all music. |