Structural level
In Schenkerian analysis, a structural level is a representation of a piece of music at a different level of abstraction, with levels typically including foreground, middleground, and background.[1] According to Schenker musical form is "an energy transformation, as a transformation of the forces that flow from background to foreground through the levels."[2]
For example, while details such as melodic notes exist at the lowest structural levels, the foreground, in the background the fundamental structure is the most basic structural level of all tonal music, representing the digression from and necessary return to the tonic that motivates musical form. It may be conceived of in a specific piece as the opening in the tonic and the return to the tonic with a perfect authentic cadence (V-I) after the development of sonata allegro form.
Strata is the translation given by John Rothgeb for Schichten ("Levels") as described by Oswald Jonas in his Introduction to the Theory of Heinrich Schenker.[3] This translation did not gain wide acceptance in modern Schenkerian literature and the translation of Schichten as "levels" usually has been preferred.[4]
"Structural level" may not exactly correspond to Schenker's own concept. Schenker thought that the levels were levels of elaboration of the piece of music, so that the first level was not the background itself (the starting point), but its first elaboration at the early middleground. He called levels "the voice-leading and transformation levels, prolongations, elaborations, and similar means."[5]
The image hereby shows Schenker's earliest presentation of levels in a figure, his analysis of J.S. Bach's Little Prelude in D minor, BWV 926, in Der Tonwille 5 (1923), p. 8. Schenker writes: Template:Quote
The expression "structural level" (completing Schicht, "level," by "structural") may have been created by Felix Salzer in Structural Hearing.[6] Salzer apparently never uses "level" alone to mean Schicht.
See also
Sources
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- ^ Bello, Juan Pablo, ed. (2008). Kirlin, Philip B. and Utgoff, Paul E. "A Framework for Automated Schenkerian Analysis", ISMIR 2008, p.363. Template:ISBN.
- ^ Heinrich Schenker, Der freie Satz, 1935, §301. See Free Composition, Appendix 4, text P (translation by J. Rothgeb).
- ^ Jonas, Oswald (1982). Introduction to the Theory of Heinrich Schenker, p.138. (1934: Das Wesen des musikalischen Kunstwerks: Eine Einführung in Die Lehre Heinrich Schenkers). Trans. John Rothgeb. Template:ISBN.
- ^ The word "strata" can be found in L. D. Blasius, Schenker's Argument and the Claims of Music Theory (Cambridge, 1996), alongside "level". It appears once in M. Brown, Explaining Tonality (University of Rochester Press, 2005), p. 138, in a quotation from J. Rothgeb's translation of a text from The Masterwork in Musik, vol. I; Brown otherwise prefers "level". It is not used in F. Salzer, Structural Hearing (Boni, 1952), in A. Forte and S. E. Gilbert, Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis (Norton, 1982), or in E. Aldwell, C. Schachter and A. Cadwallader, Harmony and Voice Leading (Schirmer, 2011), etc., where "level" is used exclusively.
- ^ Der freie Satz, 1935, p. 17: Stimmführungs–, Verwandlungsschichten, Prolongationen, Auswickelung u. ä. English translation in Free Composition, p. 5.
- ^ F. Salzer, Structural Hearing, Boni, 1952, pp. 119, 121, 122, 125, 155, 205 and 264.
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