Analysis by Key: Another Look at Modulation

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ANALYSIS BY KEY A reasonably comprehensive and faithful an-alysis, then, will balance moment-by-moment and global perspeciives by showing the connections among foreground tonicizations, large modulations belonging to the middleground and inclusive background structure. This procedure will be in no way contradictory to the spirit of Schenker's approach, even though it may give more attention to the fluctuations of the foreground than he did, especially in his later writings. Good analysts should be able with little difficulty to assimilate to their interpretaiions an acknowledgement of the expressive and form-making potential of key change. The problems of coherence and continuity that Schenker was the first to solve- often indeed the first to pose - will, I think, continue to be far more intractable. NOTES 1. Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition, trans. and ed. Ernst Oster (New York: Longman, 1979), p.9. There seems to be a misprint in the English edition: the word 'foreground' near the end ofthe first sentence should read 'background', as in my citation. 2. Heinrich Schenker, Harmonielehre (Vienna: Universal, 1906), pp. 162-73. Issued in abridged English translation, ed. Oswald Jonas, trans. Elizabeth Mann Borgese asHarmony(Chicago:UniversityofChicago,1954),pp.126-9. 3. Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1983), p.295. 4. J.S. Bach, Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues, Book I, ed. Donald Francis Tovey (London: Associated Board, 1924), p.85. 5. Heinrich Schenker, 'Joh. S. Bach: Sechs Sonaten fur Violine; Sonata III, Largo' in Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, 3 vols (Munich: Drei Masken, 1925, 1926, 1930; reissued in reduced facsimile, Hildesheim: Olms, 1974), Vol. 1, p.61. Reprinted as 'The Largo of J.S. Bach's Sonata No. 3 for Unaccompanied Violin', trans. John Rothgeb, The Music Forum, Vol. 4 (1976), pp.142-3. 6. This is an idea that seems to be gaining currency. See Charles Rosen, Sonata Fonns (New York: Norton, 1980), pp.295-6, and Jeffrey Kallberg, 'Chopin's Last Style', 3'ournal of the American Mfisicological Society, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer 1985), p.274. In an excellent recent article David Lewin has argued cogently about the dubious value of 'solving' theoretical problems by inventing new terms or slanting existing ones to make the problems disappear: see 'Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception', Music Perception, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Summer 1986), pp.327-92. 7. Rosen, Sonata Forms, p.251. 8. Ibid., p.255. 9. Ibid., p.258. 10. This interpretation of Op.79 is Ernst Oster's. See his note on sonata form in Schenker, Free Composition, p.l39. In Op.79, the expanded VI is expressed as a major chord (E major) and it appears at the beginning of the development. MUSIC ANALYSIS 6: 3, 1987 315
CARI SCHACHTER 11. David Beach, 'A Recurring Pattern in Mozart's Music', ffournal of Music Theory, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Spring 1983), pp. l -29. 12. Heinrich Schenker, 'Die Kunst der Improvisation', in Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, Vol. 1, p. l 5. For Schenker, Bach's formulation was in keeping with his own conception of keys as prolonged 'scale steps of the tonality' (Tonarten als Stufen der Tonalitat), a conception revealed in many of the graphs of Das Meisterwerk. The Bach citation is from Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, trans. and ed. William J. Mitchell (New York: Norton, 1949), pp.440-5. 13. Jean-Philippe Rameau, Treatise on Harmony, trans. Philip Gossett (New York: Dover, 1971), pp.267-9. In the original edition, Traite de l'harmonie reduite a ses principes naturels (Paris: Ballard, 1722), reprinted in facsimile as Vol. 1 of Jean- Philippe Rameau, Complete Theoretical Writings, ed. Erwin R. Jacobi (American InstituteofMusicology, 1967),pp.248-51. 14. Johann Philipp Kirnberger, The Art of Strict Musical Composition, trans. David Beach and Jurgen Thym (New Haven: Yale, 1982), pp.l21-37; the table with Roman numerals is on p. l 24. This publication includes Vol. I and Part I of Vol. II of Kirnberger's Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik, 2 vols (Berlin and Konigsberg, 1771-9; photographic facsimile bound in one volume, Hildesheim: Olms, 1968), pp.103-20. The table with Roman numerals is on p.106. 15. Gustav Jenner, 3ohannes Brahms als Mensch, Lehrer und Kunstler: Studien und Erlebnisse (Marburg in Hessen: Elwert, 1905), p.38. 16. H.K. Andrews, 'Modulation', in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th edn, ed. Eric Blom (London: Macmillan, 1954), Vol. 5, p.807. 17. Ibid., p.810. 18. Schenker, Harmonielehre, pp.396-9; English translation, pp.299-300. The English version translates 'Diatonie' as 'diatonic system' and 'Scheintonarten' as 'simulated keys'; the divergent translations in my text conform to Oster's terminology in Free Composition. 19. Ibid., pp.391-4 (German edition); pp.295-8 (English edition). 20. Ibid ., p.397 (German edition); pp.299-300 (English edition). 21. Tovey reads exactly the same key succession: see his A Companion to Beethoven's Pianoforte Sonatas (London: Associated Board, 1931), pp.36-7. 22. See Arnold Schoenberg, Structural Functions of Harmony, rev. edn (New York: Norton, 1969), pp.20, 68 and 75. Incidentally, Schoenberg regards diatonic II in major (which he calls dorian) as belonging to the same class of regions as these E minor passages in C minor and as more distant from the tonic than, say, bIII in major. But are not both E minor passages far less normal than the tonicization of II in Beethoven's First Symphony, I, bs 19-23, or any of the numerous arrivals on II after the double bar in Bach's suite movements (e.g., Fourth French Suite, Sarabande, bs 13-16)? Schoenberg's classification of the distances from the tonic of the various regions sometimes seems counterintuitive and not in accordance with historical evidence, but I doubt that any other systematic account of 'distance' would be much of an improvement. 23. Schenker, Free Composition, pp.ll-12. Of course the octave line would yield the 316 MUSIC ANALYSIS 6: 3, 1987
Page 1 and 2: Analysis by Key: Another Look at Mo
Page 3 and 4: CARI SCHACHTER of modulation and to
Page 5 and 6: CARL SCHACHTER implicit in every mo
Page 7 and 8: CARL SCHACHTER part of the expositi
Page 9 and 10: CARI SCHACHTER Might we say that bs
Page 11 and 12: 11 CARI SCHACHTER historian and the
Page 13 and 14: CARL SCHACHTER linear, contrapuntal
Page 15 and 16: CARL SCHACHTER the movement.'20 Six
Page 17 and 18: CARI SCHACHTER of bs 181ff.) Unques
Page 19 and 20: CAR I SCHACHTER diatonic framework,
Page 21 and 22: CCARI SCHACHTER example, that the f
Page 23 and 24: CARL SCHACHTER rising to a climax a
Page 25 and 26: CARL SCHACHTER forms a common eleme
Page 27: CARL SCHACHTER My derivation of the
Page 31: CARL SCHACHTER reappear until b. 80

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