theory, analysis and criticism

8/13/2019 Theory, Analysis and Criticism

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ROBERTP. MORGANThe listing of theory, analysis, and criticism as three separate disci-plines would probably seem odd to scholars working in the otherarts. For them the three would be joined together under the encom-passingheadingof criticism ;and those workingwithin the field wouldbe critics, whether their concern were primarilytheoretical, analytical,or evaluative. The assumption, then, would be that the three areas areinseparable, that one cannot pursue one without of necessity pursuingthe others. Whyshould it be different in music?The answer I suspect lies in the nature of musical material itself.The basic components of pitch and rhythmic relationships - intervallicdistances, durational lengths, and so forth - are measurable, and thusthey are in part quantifiable. They lend themselves to ordering withinhighly structured relational systems of an essentially abstract andtheoretical nature - that is, within systems that to some extent canbe (and, over the course of music history, to a remarkableextent havebeen) developed without reference to actual music. Moreover, thesesystems give rise to specializedtechnical vocabulariesthat arespecificallyinvented for the description and categorization of the individual ele-ments and internal relationships they encompass.This systematic aspect, along with the technical languageit fosters,is both the joy and bane of music. On the one hand, it makes possiblea degree of precision in certain types of musical discourse that couldwell be the envy of those working in the other arts. Whole sets ofrelationships, such as those among the triadic structures of functionaltonal music or the set structures of post-tonal music, can be codifiedwith impressive exactitude and called upon for the immediate andunequivocal characterizationof a wide range of musical events. On theother hand, the highly specialized quality of technical musical languagetends to isolate musical discourse from the largercommunity of sharedintellectual commentary on the arts and on culturein general.Moreover,just because of its specificity, technical musical language suggests adegree of explanation that far exceeds its actual attainment. To describesomething as a Neapolitan, for example, or as a set of four ele-ments comprising a chromatic scale segment, even when these termsare ordered within the larger set of relationships made possible by a

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generaltheory, is a ratherrudimentarydesignation. It leavesunansweredall questions of meaning, at least those aspects of meaning (and theyare arguablythe most significant ones) that go beyond mattersof purelyinternal relationships. For these and other reasons, music theory hasdeveloped largely in isolation from other musical disciplines, a pointthat no doubt accounts for the somewhat rarefied atmosphere of somuch theoretical writing, as well as for the widespread lack of interest(and even trust) in theoretical matters shown by other musicians.Musical analysts are in this respect the exception, since their workhas always rested heavily upon a general theoretical foundation of onesort or another. They view particular compositions largely as concreterealizations of relationships defined within some general theory. Thishas at least two important advantages. First, it supplies an efficientmeans for taking into account, and in part accounting for, the technicalfeatures of a composition. Any analysis that fails to do this will inevita-bly seem compromised. Music does, after all, deal with measurablerelationships; the analysis that ignores these relationships will seem atbest insufficiently specific and at worst simply misinformed. Second, itprovides a means of linking the individual features of a single compo-sition to principles assumed to be applicable to a largebody of music -for example, in the case of tonal theories, to the music of the commonpractice period.Technical analysis, then, is useful, even essential; and most of thebest analytical work published in this country over the past quartercentury has belonged exclusively to this category. One problem withsuch analysis, however, is just that it does lean on a general theory.Theories of music, tonal or otherwise, necessarily focus on the constantelements within a given repertory, for only these lend themselves tosystematic categorization and generalization.Thus much recent analysisseems to be largely content with showing that yet another composition,no matter how individual and quirky it may appearon the surface, hasat its base the same tried and true relationships (be they Schenkerianlinear formations or Fortean set relationships) found in countless otherworks. The gain, of course, is that the piece is shown to make sense,despite its peculiarities, according to the logic of a generalized andwidely applicable musical grammar.The loss is that the peculiarities,which are presumablythe most interesting thing about the composition,tend to be smoothed out in the analytical process. This is admittedlyexaggerated. The idiosyncrasies of a particular surface linear motionare, for example, retained in the more foreground evels of a Schenkeriananalysis; but the latter's final focus, and thus the primary force of itsdirection, is in the last analysis (in this case, literally) aimed at therevelation of conformities.The problem is that music, while containing quantifiable elementsthat lend themselves to generalization(and which, indeed, canbe treatedefficiently only through generalization), is created - like other arts- byhuman beings who differ in ways that are not quantifiable:in personality,

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social and historical environment, inherited stylistic conventions,artistic aims, and in other ways too numerous to list. All of thesedifferences are reflected in the music in some mysterious way; yetdespite the mystery, or perhaps even because of it, the issues, bothmusical and extramusical, brought forth by these differences call forour most thoughtful consideration. In other words, if one thinks of amusical composition not just as an autonomous object, an isolatedembodiment of an abstract musical language, but also as a record ofhuman thought and reflection of human concerns, then the dimensionsof analysis must broaden significantly. Yet most analysts, at least inthe United States, seem uncomfortable when confronted with largerquestions of intentionality, social and psychological context, or supra-musical influence. The reason, I suspect, is that such matters are notmeasurable,and thus not subject to precise explanation ; and analysts,like the theorists they rely upon (and they are of course often one andthe same), have become accustomed to dealing with only those aspectsof music that are. These other matters, however, are not beyond thepurview of analysis, at least if it is understood more broadly. They maynot be susceptible to measurement, but they are susceptible to inter-pretation and, thus one may hope, to illumination.In another field it would no doubt be unnecessary to make thesepoints. But the curse of musical measurement, perhapseven more thanits blessing, has left its mark, inhibiting our reactions and narrowingourperspective. We need to learn (relearn?) to be more responsive to thevaried ramifications of music, to see the individual work as part of avast and only partly penetrable network of connections andassociationsthat encompasses other compositions, other musics, and other spheresof thought.This brings me to criticism, the last of my three disciplines. I amnot referring,of course, to journalistic criticism. (It is symptomatic ofwhat I have been saying about music that here, and only here, the wordhas been appropriated for such a limited body of discourse.) I use itrather in the wider and more generally accepted sense of informedcommentary on the arts that encompasses description, analysis, inter-pretation, and evaluation. Indeed, in criticism properly understood,these all depend upon one another and are, finally, inseparable. Everyanalysis, for example, implies an evaluation, just as every evaluation ofworth is based upon analysis. We have been inclined to forget this inrecent years, preferringto treat compositions as fixed entities capableof being pinned down precisely and objectively once and for all. Butour understanding of musical compositions changes as we change. Agood piece is open to endless interpretation and to investigation fromany number of different viewpoints. There is no single critical truth,nor a final one.Of course, by the same token, our conception of the proper studyof music is also subject to change, and there are in fact encouragingsignsthat a coalition of theory, analysis, and criticism may be forming itself

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within the various musical disciplines. Forceful arguments to thiseffect have been put forward recently by such prominent figures asJoseph Kerman, Leo Treitler, Edward T. Cone, and Leonard B. Meyer(who might all be said to be approaching a common ground fromvery different directions). Charles Rosen, who has emerged in recentyears as one of our most perceptive and influential commentators onmusic, cannot be adequately characterizedas a theorist/analyst, or forthat matter as a historian. Indeed, within the larger field of musicalstudies I have the impression that historians, for instance, arebecomingmore interested in theory and analysis,just as theorists and analysts arebecoming more interested in history. There seems to be more and moreconcern with issues that cut across fields, with questions that defysimple classification and categorization. To my mind this augurswellfor the work of the coming years.

University of Chicago

theory, analysis and criticism

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