Schenkerian Analysis - Schenker's Goals

Schenker's Goals

Schenker's primary theoretic aims were to prove the superiority of music of the common practice period (especially the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Fryderyk Chopin, and Johannes Brahms) over more modern music such as that of Richard Wagner, Igor Stravinsky, and Arnold Schoenberg, and to show that most of the established music theory teaching of the time, with an emphasis on the theories of his contemporary Hugo Riemann, was misleading and useless for an understanding of the "masterworks." These premises led Schenker to seek the key to an understanding of music in the traditional discipline of counterpoint, since this is the type of theory the "German Masters" themselves had studied. While Schenker's theory has been tremendously influential, particularly in North America thanks in part to his emigre students Oswald Jonas and Felix Salzer, most "Schenkerians" do not share his restricted and nationalistic view of musical excellence. This view, expounded in Schenker's original writings, claims that any music that does not follow traditional tonal practice—which Schenker saw as natural and naturally superior—was not music at all. These highly colored passages are often censored from English translations of Schenker's writings. Today, his ideas and methods have been applied to a wide range of composers.

Schenker's project, thus, was to show that free composition (freier Satz) was an elaboration of strict composition (strenger Satz), by which Schenker meant species counterpoint. He did this by developing a theory of hierarchically organized reductional levels, called prolongational levels, voice–leading levels (Stimmführungsschichten), or transformations (Verwandlungen), the idea being that at higher levels in the structure the musical materials conform more closely to those of strict composition (Schenker's theory of levels). A primary goal in constructing these levels therefore is to show linear connections between notes that may be separated by many measures on the musical surface (since linearity or step–wise motion is the most important characteristic of good voice leading).

The basic components of Schenkerian theory and analysis therefore are the nature of the background—that is, the highest voice–leading level—and the ways in which the background may be prolonged (elaborated, transformed) to arrive at the foreground—i. e. the musical composition. "Schenker analysis attempts to divine the middleground through the application of reductive techniques to the foreground, and finally the background through reduction of the middleground."