Musical analysis is the attempt to answer the question how does this music work?. The method employed to answer this question, and indeed exactly what is meant by the question, differs from analyst to analyst, and according to the purpose of the analysis. According to Ian Bent (Bent, 1987), analysis is "an approach and method can be traced back to the 1750s ... it existed as a scholarly tool, albeit an auxiliary one, from the Middle Ages onwards." A.B. Marx was influential in formalising concepts about composition and music understanding towards the second half of the 19th century.
The principle of analysis has been variously criticized, especially by composers, such as Edgard Varèse's claim that, “to explain by means of is to decompose, to mutilate the spirit of a work” (quoted in Bernard 1981, 1).
Read more about Musical Analysis: Analyses, Techniques, Analytical Situations, Divergent Analyses
Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or analysis:
“Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at “hateful ragtime” no longer passes for musical culture.”
—Scott Joplin (1868–1917)
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)