Expressive Meaning and Musical Structure, Chapter 1 of Schenkerian Analysis: Pattern, Form, and Expressive Meaning

Abstract

A Note From the Guest Editors: At the time of his death, Steve Larson had competed roughly eleven chapters of a textbook on Schenkerian analysis. The book brings together three key elements not found in a textbook of its kind: 1) an emphasis on expressive meaning and musical forces, 2) a recognition of the central role of pattern in musical experience, and 3) step-by-step instruction in creating and correcting analyses (which Larson called the "strict use" of analytic notation, developed first in Larson 1996). The initial chapters walk students through the basics of his method, beginning with different types of diminution and building up to analyses of entire phrases. Later chapters-thirty-three were planned in all-were to cover the various tonal forms, late nineteenth-century chromaticism, jazz, popular song, and even world music.