Techniques of Prolongation
The meat of a Schenkerian analysis is in showing how a background structure may be expanded step-by-step until it results in the succession of musical events on the surface of the composition itself. We refer to this as the process of prolongation. There are many techniques for prolonging musical structures, and it is impossible to make a complete list of them given the unlimited nature of compositional ingenuity. This section includes most of the more common techniques one might encounter in a Schenkerian analysis. The first few focus on those techniques, arpeggiation, interruption, and neighbor note, which are important techniques at the earliest levels of prolongation—that is, those that may prolong the Ursatz itself. These techniques are common at later levels of elaboration also.
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“The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost.”
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