Music Theory, Analysis, and Society: Selected Essays

377 Pages·2016·12.289 MB·English

by  Robert P. Morgan

MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY
Robert R Morgan is one of a small number of music theorists writing in English who treat
music theory, and in particular Schenkerian theory, as part of general intellectual life. This
volume of previously published essays encompasses a broad range of issues, including
historical and social issues, and is of importance to anyone concerned with modem Western
music. His specially written introduction treats his writings as a whole but also provides
additional material relating to the articles included in this volume.
ASHGATE CONTEMPORARY THINKERS
ON CRITICAL MUSICOLOGY
The titles in this series bring together a selection of previously published and some unpublished
essays by leading authorities in the field of critical musicology. The essays are chosen from
a wide range of publications and so make key works available in a more accessible form.
The authors have all made a selection of their own work in one volume with an introduction
which discusses the essays chosen and puts them into context. A full bibliography points the
reader to other publications which might not be included in the volume for reasons of space.
The previously published essays are published using the facsimile method of reproduction to
retain their original pagination, so that students and scholars can easily reference the essays
in their original form.
Titles published in the series
Music, Performance, Meaning
Nicholas Cook
Reading Music
Susan McClary
Sound Judgment
Richard Leppert
Music, Structure, Thought
James Hepokoski
Musical Belongings
Richard Middleton
Sounding Values
Scott Burnham
Musical Style and Social Meaning
Derek B. Scott
Music-in-Action
Tia DeNora
Music Education as Critical Theory and Practice
Lucy Green
The Work of Music Theory
Thomas Christensen
The Politics of Musical Identity
Annegret Fauser
Music Theory, Analysis, and Society
Selected Essays
ROBERT P. MORGAN
Yale University, USA
ASHGATE CONTEMPORARY THINKERS
ON CRITICAL MUSICOLOGY
O Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2015 Robert P. Morgan
Robert P. Morgan has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to
be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN 9781472462541 (hbk)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015932190
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction ix
Principal Writings xvii
PART ONE SCHENKERIAN AND OTHER THEORY
1. Dissonant Prolongation: Theoretical and Compositional Precedents (1976) 3
2. Schenker and the Theoretical Tradition: The Concept of Musical Reduction (1978) 47
3. Schenker and the Twentieth Century: A Modernist Perspective (2002) 73
4. Musical Time/Musical Space (1980) 101
PART TWO MUSIC ANALYSIS
5. Chopin’s Modular Forms (2008) 115
6. Circular Form in the Tristan Prelude (2000) 135
7. Ives and Mahler: Mutual Responses at the End of an Era (1978) 171
8. Chasing the Scent: The Tonality in Liszt’s Blume undDuft (1997) 181
9. Two Early Schoenberg Songs: monotonality, multitonality, and schwebende
Tonalitat (2010) 197
10. “The Things Our Fathers Loved”: Charles Ives and the European tradition (1997) 215
11. On the Analysis of Recent Music (1977) 239
PART THREE MUSIC AND SOCIETY
12. Tradition, Anxiety, and the Current Musical Scene (1988) 263
13. Secret Languages: The Roots of Musical Modernism (1984) 289
vi MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY
14. “A New Musical Reality”: Futurism, Modernism, and “The Art of Noises” (1994) 309
15. Rethinking Musical Culture: Canonic Reformulations in a Post-Tonal Age (1992) 333
Index 353
Acknowledgements
The chapters in this volume are taken from the sources listed below. The editor and
publisher wish to thank the original publishers and copyright holders for permission to use
their material as follows:
“Dissonant Prolongation: Theoretical and Compositional Precedents”, Journal of Music
Theory, 20/1 (Spring, 1976), pp. 49-91. The journal is presently published by Duke
University Press.
“Schenker and the Theoretical Tradition: The Concept of Musical Reduction”, College Music
Symposium, 18/l(Spring, 1978), pp. 72-96.
“Schenker and the Twentieth Century: A Modernist Perspective”, Reprinted from Music
in the Mirror: Reflections on the History of Music Theory and Literature for the Twenty-
first Century (2002), pp. 247-74, edited by Andreas Geiger and Thomas J. Mathiesen. By
permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright © 2002 by the University of
Nebraska Press.
“Musical Time/Musical Space”, Critical Inquiry, 6/3 (1980), pp. 527-38. Copyright © 1980
The University of Chicago.
“Chopin’s Modular Forms”, in Robert Curry, David Gable and Robert L. Marshall (eds.)
Variations on the Canon (2008), pp. 185-204. University of Rochester Press.
“Circular Form in the Tristan Prelude”, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 53/1
(Spring, 2000), pp. 69-103. Copyright © 2000 by the American Musicological Society.
Published by the University of California Press.
“Ives and Mahler: Mutual Responses at the End of an Era”, 19th-Century Music, 2/1
(July, 1978), pp. 72-81. Copyright © 1978 by the Regents of the University of California.
Published by the University of California Press.
“Chasing the Scent: The Tonality in Liszt’s Blume und Duft\ in James M. Baker, David
W. Beach and Jonathan W. Bernard (eds.), Music Theory in Concept and Practice (1997),
pp. 361-76. University of Rochester Press.
“Two Early Schoenberg Songs: monotonality, multitonality, and schwebende Tonalitaf\ in
Jennifer Shaw and Joseph Auner (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Schoenberg (2010),
pp. 53-67. Copyright © 2010 Cambridge University Press.
viii MUSIC THEORY, ANALYSIS, AND SOCIETY
“‘The Things Our Fathers Loved’: Charles Ives and the European tradition”, in Philip
Lambert (ed.), Ives Studies (1997), pp. 3-26. Copyright © 1997 Cambridge University Press.
“On the Analysis of Recent Music”, Critical Inquiry, 4/1 (Autumn, 1977), pp. 33-53.
“Tradition, Anxiety, and the Current Musical Scene”, in Nicholas Kenyon (ed.), Authenticity
and Early Music (1988), pp. 57-82. By permission of Oxford University Press.
“Secret Languages: The Roots of Musical Modernism”, Critical Inquiry, 10/3 (March, 1984),
pp. 442-61. Copyright © 1984 The University of Chicago.
“‘A New Musical Reality’: Futurism, Modernism, and ‘The Art of Noises’”, Modernism/
Modernity, 1/3 (1994), pp. 129-51. Copyright © 1994 The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Reprinted with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press.
“Rethinking Musical Culture: Canonic Reformulations in a Post-Tonal Age”, in Katherine
Bergeron and Philip V. Bohlman (eds.), Disciplining Music: Musicology and Its Canons
(1992), pp. 44-63. Copyright © 1992 The University of Chicago.
Introduction
Although I was trained as a composer (at Princeton University, AB in 1956, the University of
California, Berkeley, MA in 1958, and again at Princeton, MFA in 1960, Ph.D in 1969), I have
always been interested in writing. I started my professional writing career in 1963 when I
began my first academic position at the University of Houston, composing program notes for
the Houston Symphony Orchestra and articles for Opera Cues, the magazine of the Houston
Grand Opera Association. Shortly following 1966, after having been asked by Patrick Smith,
then book editor for Musical America, to write a review of four books on 20th-century music,
I was invited by Peter Smith, record-review editor for High Fidelity (published at that time
jointly with Musical America) to become a regular reviewer for his journal, which I readily
accepted. I continued writing for High Fidelity for some years, including the time following
my move to Temple University in Philadelphia in 1967.
While at Temple I began writing longer articles for Patrick Smith’s new journal The
Musical Newsletter, which he also edited; and these represented my first truly professional
pieces. The first article (at least completely original one), however, that was accepted by a
well-known journal was on the writings of the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen,
published by The Musical Quarterly in 1975. Thereafter I devoted less time to composing
and more to writing about music; and by 1979, after moving to The University of Chicago,
I had essentially stopped composing and was hired by them as a music theorist. Since I had
received tenure by that time, I was able to write on any subject about which I felt reasonably
comfortable, and continued to do so during my ten years in Chicago and in my final position
at Yale University. I retired from Yale in 2006; but since my health remained good, I kept
publishing up to the present time (and, I trust, beyond). In addition, I have written a great deal
for more general audiences.
Though my writings as a whole (including eight books, three original and five edited)
have thus been wide-ranging, they have remained closely tied to music theory and its related
areas: stylistic and historical studies, and the connections between these and social issues.
For the purposes of this collection, I have divided the fifteen articles chosen into three parts
under the headings: Schenkerian and Other Theory, Music Analysis, and Music and Society.
But since all three of these overlap significantly, the articles could easily be placed under
different headings and in a different order.
Beginning with the first part, its title alone indicates that I have written much about
Schenker, including six articles and one book that deal explicitly with him and his theory, plus
a number of others that at least mention him and touch upon his work. Three of the former
have been chosen for inclusion in this initial part: “Dissonant Prolongation: Theoretical and
Compositional Precedents” (1976), “Schenker and the Theoretical Tradition: The Concept
of Musical Reduction” (1978), and “Schenker and the Twentieth Century: A Modernist
Perspective” (2002). The first presents my initial attempt to expand Schenker’s repertoire to