A Theory of Musical Analysis: On Segmentation and Associative Organization

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Notes

¹ This review grew out of a seminar at Stony Brook University during the Fall Term 2013 whose topic was recent trends in music theory. As a seminar we read the theoretical chapters of Hanninen's book and then individual members of the seminar studied in more detail one of the analyses. This review begins with an overview of the theory written by Lochhead and then includes discussion/critique of each of Hanninen's analyses—authorship is indicated in the text. While individual sections of this review have sole authors, the content of each of the sections was approved by all members of the seminar.

² I return to the roles of these constraints and their relation to analytical outcome shortly.

³ Hanninen uses several terms with meanings specific to the theory. When I first refer to and define these terms here they will be italicized.

⁴ The interested reader may enjoy comparing Hanninen's schematic with recent humorous accounts of organizational structures at major US technology companies. See http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/

⁵ Hanninen also defines ‘associative configurations’ that are relations between segments of an associative set reflecting an analytical determination of ‘associative adjacency’.

⁶ Hanninen refers to this aspect of music as a ‘node “P”’ that could be represented on her schematic (Figure 1 here) as ‘attach[ed] to the arrow embracing all of “the music”’ (p. 8). We return to node P later in the review.

⁷ Roger Sessions, The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, and Listener (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, [1950] 1974), 62–3.

⁸ These sentences have remained through the various iterations of Bent's ‘Analysis’ article for Grove, from its earliest version in New Grove of ca. 1980 through its current online version. See Ian D. Bent and Anthony Pople, ‘Analysis’, Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press (Accessed 8 March 2014), http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/41862

⁹ Christopher Hasty, ‘Segmentation and Process in Post-Tonal Music’, Music Theory Spectrum 3 (1981), 54–73.

¹⁰Ibid., 59.

¹¹ Hanninen cites other authors as important contributors to current thought about segmentation—in particular, Lidov, Lerdahl and Jackendoff, and Zbikowski (p. 3); but Hasty's work is most relevant for our purposes here.

¹² Hanninen refers to the associative sets and landscapes as operating at ‘higher levels of organization’ (p. 12), using a hierarchic concept of level. This reference to hierarchic level occurs during a presentation of the five levels of the theory that are defined as a non-hierarchic ‘chain of conceptual prerequisites’ (p. 9). Such contradictory usage of the term level is confusing.

¹³ Hanninen may be implying that an observation language is inherently theory-laden with her subjunctive and italicized qualifiers: ‘as if observation language’ (p. 32). But she does not necessarily understand the ‘theoretical’ nature of an observation language as a constraint on interpretive freedom, probably because of the requirement that criteria must be based in predicable properties.

¹⁴ This includes Neo-Riemannian theory and other geometrical approaches: see Richard Cohn, ‘Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Theory: A Survey and a Historical Perspective’, Journal of Music Theory 42/2 (Autumn, 1998), 167–80; Edward Gollin and Alexander Rehding, The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Riemannian Music Theories (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Dmitri Tymoczko, A Geometry of Music Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); and for transformation theory, see David Lewin, Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1987; reprinted Oxford University Press, 2007). Holly Watkins has offered high-level critical commentary on this recent trend in music theoretical thought: see Holly Watkins, Metaphors of Depth in German Musical Thought: From E. T. A. Hoffmann to Arnold Schoenberg (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

¹⁵ Sometimes the criteria for segmentations are shown as annotations on musical examples and sometimes they are given in the text.

¹⁶ Heinrich Schenker, Five Graphic Analyses (New York: Dover, 1969); Schenker, Free Composition, trans. Ernst Oster (New York and London: Longman, 1979); William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); and James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

¹⁷ Hanninen represents relative registral relations of the canonic voices using the standard set-theoretical approach to contour.

¹⁸ John Rahn, ‘Aspects of Musical Explanation’, Perspectives of New Music 17/2 (1979), 204–24.

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Notes on contributors

Judy Lochhead

Judy Lochhead is a theorist and musicologist whose work focuses on the most recent musical practices in North America and Europe, with particular emphasis on music of the western classical tradition. Her work builds upon concepts and methodologies of post-phenomenology and cultural theory, and she is currently involved in two interdisciplinary research groups at Stony Brook University: Applied Aesthetics and Embodied Cognition. Lochhead has articles appearing in such journals as Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music Theory Online, Theory and Practice, In Theory Only, and in various edited collections. With Joseph Auner, Lochhead co-edited Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought (Routledge 2001). Some recent work includes: ‘Technē of Radiance: Kaija Saariaho's Lonh’, ‘Difference Inhabits Repetition: Sofia Gubaidulina's Second String Quartet’, and ‘Chaotic Mappings: On the Ground with Music’.

Michael Boerner, Matt Brounley, Felipe Ledesma-Núñez, Anna Reguero, Hayley Roud and Laura Smith are current postgraduate students in the Department of Music at Stony Brook University. Email: [email protected]