University of Southampton, 1999

FACULTY OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC

UNIVERSALITY VERSUS CULTURAL SPECIFICITY IN ANALYTICAL AND

PERCEPTUAL APPROACHES TO MUSIC: THE CASE OF UNITY AND COHERENCE

by Cristóbal L. García Gallardo

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements fo MA in Musicology by

instructional course.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface 3
I. Introduction 5

PART ONE
II. The theory of Schenker 8
III. The theory of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff 15

PART TWO
IV. The debate about the pertinence of musicological
analysis of popular music 25
V. Application of Schenkerian theory to popular music 28
VI. Application of Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory to
popular music 36
VII. Conclusions 43

Bibliography 47

Appendix: Musical Examples 53

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 PREFACE

The purpose of this dissertation is to discuss the universal validity of Heinrich

Schenker´s and Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff´s theories. I will focus on the concept
of unity and coherence developed in these theories.

I have chosen these theories for three reasons. First, Schenker´s theory is
probably the most disseminated approach in order to analyse Western tonal music, and
Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s one is well-known among music perception researchers.
Second, there are important relationships between them, since they share significant
features in their concept of unity and coherence, and Lerdahl and Jackendoff
acknowledge that they are “profoundly indebted to Schenker´s work” (Lerdahl and
Jackendoff 1983: 338, footnote 1 to chapter 5). Third, despite their similarities, they build
their theories from different perspectives: whereas Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory is
claimed to adopt a perceptual approach to the music, Schenker´s one belongs to the field
of music theory. This fact permits us to investigate whether the scope of these
approaches to music – that is, either their universal or cultural validity – varies according
to their perceptual or theoretical perspective.

The introductory chapter addresses in a general way two issues which are
important for the dissertation. On the one hand, it briefly sketches some characteristics of
the development of the concept of unity and coherence in music theory. On the other
hand, it summarises the recent debate about the relationship between the disciplines of
music theory and music perception.

The first part of the dissertation analyses the concept of unity and coherence in
Schenker´s and Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theories. In these chapters, some comments
will be made about the universal validity of the theories – especially as regards the degree
of universal validity assumed by the authors themselves; however, this issue will be
mainly addressed in the second part.

The second part examines the application of the theories to popular music. In order
to test the universality of the theories, it seemed reasonable to look at the results obtained
when extended to other repertories than the one they were created for – that is, Western
art tonal music. Popular music seems to be especially interesting because, on the one
hand, an interesting debate about the pertinence of musicological analyses against the

3
most traditional sociological ones has developed within the discipline – this issue will be
dealt with in chapter four; on the other hand, there have already been attempts to apply
Schenkerian analysis to this field. Since there has been no attempt to apply Lerdahl and
Jackendoff´s theory to popular music, I will try to apply it to a popular song in order to
obtain conclusions about such a possible extension of the theory. I think that looking for
the concept of unity and coherence, as developed in both theories, in the analysis of
popular music, will yield significant information about their universality.

I am profoundly indebted to my supervisor Nicholas Cook because of the many

suggestions he has made for this dissertation and the facilities he gave to me. I have tried
to follow most of these suggestions and even some of them have been included here
literally. However, I was not able to develop many others, so that all responsibility for the
faults that remain is mine.

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 I. INTRODUCTION

The concern of music theorists with the unity and coherence of musical works
arose, as an essential element in the construction of the theory of musical form, in
specific historical circumstances. It is a theoretical reaction to a specific musical genre
(classical instrumental music) which had developed a specific discourse (mainly the
sonata form) and which was heard in a specific way (aesthetic contemplation by a silent,
attentive listener). Basically, the theory of musical form was first articulated for
composition teaching from Heinrich Christoph Koch in the last quarter of the eighteenth
century to Adolf Bernhard Marx in the middle of the nineteenth century. It become a basic
tool of musical analysis, which aimed to serve an interest in musical objects themselves
rather than to supply models for the study of composition, in the second half of the
nineteenth century, as in Hugo Riemann, for example. Musical analysis had a specific
purpose: to explain to listeners what they could not easily hear; so, music analysis
focussed on the non-obvious unity of works that underlay their obvious, apparent
diversity.

Several theories of musical form – and, consequently, several models of unity in

music – were developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to analyse
eighteenth and nineteenth century music. On the one hand, the traditional formal analysis
of a musical work as a functional coherence between parts and components has become
the mainstream. On the other hand, some analysts have looked for a primary constituent
or substance of music that guarantees the unity and coherence of a musical work through
its continuous presence. Carl Dahlhaus, in his article “Some models of unity in musical
form” (1975), identifies three of such theories, which rely on three different primary
constituents: dynamics (for Ernst Kurth), rhythm (for Alfred Lorenz) and diastematics (for
Rudolph Reti), and I would add harmony and voice-leading (for Heinrich Schenker).

All of them seem to have little concern with listeners, since they speak about the
“work itself” or, sometimes, about the psychological process of the creation of the work,
but rarely about its perception; in other words, they are concerned with the neutral level
rather than with the poietic or esthesic levels, to use Jean-Jacques Nattiez´s terminology1

1
Nattiez briefly defines in his article “What is the pertinence of the Lerdhal-Jackendoff theory?” (Nattiez
1997) the neutral, poietic and esthesic levels as “the immanent structures of a piece of music”, “the
compositional strategies which produce it”, and “the strategies of perception to which it gives rise.” (page
413). The distinction between the three levels is explained in depth in Musicologie générale et sémiologie
de la musique (Nattiez 1987).

5
. However, it would not be right to suppose that they consider their findings about the
unity of the works as inaudible; rather, they usually assume their analyses reveal
perceivable relationships among the sounds, even if only by “good” listeners.

In the last decades, much more attention has been paid to the listeners. Many
researchers, as for example Robert Gjerdingen (1999), Jay W. Dowling (1989), David
Clarke (1989) and Carol Krumhansl (1990), believe that there is a common field between
the disciplines of music theory and music perception, since both try to explain how music
works. Their argument is that relationships among sounds that are not heard by listeners
should not been used by analysts; instead, they should rely on what the listeners actually
perceive, as demonstrated by the experiments of the psychologists. Lerdahl and
Jackendoff seem to have a similar opinion: “a piece of music is a mentally constructed
entity, of which scores and performances are partial representations by which the piece is
transmitted... In our view, the central task of music theory should be to explicate this
mentally produced organization.” (1983: 2). Consequently, they develop a theory of
music explicitly based on cognitive models of music perception.

However, not all scholars believe that music theory must embrace experimental
science and that theorists should collaborate with psychologists: some defend the
independence of these fields to each other. This stance is assumed by most analysts,
since they still do their job by focussing on the work itself, rather than in its perception;
and it is explicitly defended by, for example, Nicholas Cook. He sees as dangerous the
acceptance by music psychologists of “music-theoretical concepts and categories” and
the influence on them of “music theorists’ preoccupation with issues of formal structure”
(Cook 1994: 92), since it is not clear how far are people engaged in reconstructing
structure when they listen to music.

In the following chapters, we will see how a theoretical concept such as unity and
coherence is translated by Lerdahl and Jackendoff to the field of psychology, and what
are the results of this process.

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 PART ONE

7
 II. THE THEORY OF SCHENKER

This chapter will mainly address three points about Schenker´s theory – and,
basically, the same can be said about next chapter on Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory.
First, it will deal with the degree of concern of Schenker with perceptual matters. Second,
it will try to analyse in depth the concept of unity and coherence implied in his theory,
since this is the starting point for the subsequent attempts to apply it to popular music that
will be dealt with in chapter five. Third, the issue of universality, which is the main one in
this dissertation, will be approached only in a partial way in this chapter: we well see here
Schenker´s assumptions about that, whereas other considerations will be made in
chapters five and seven.

Schenker´s theories were in a state of constant evolution, and there are important
differences between his thought as expressed in his early writings – such as Harmony
(Schenker 1954), published in 1906 – and in the late ones – such as Free Composition
(Schenker 1979), published in 1935 shortly after his death. I will refer here to Schenker´s
theory as it appeared in the final stage of this evolution, mainly in Free Composition,
though I will comment on some of his earlier conceptions closely related to the issues
discussed hear.

Schenker´s theory aims to explain, by means of the analyses of “masterworks”,

how good music is. He believes his theory reveals some natural principles or laws that all
music must observe; otherwise, it can not be good, aesthetically valuable music.. His
concern is not primarily with composition, performance or perception of music, but with
the musical object; even the specific musical objects, the works of art, are mere
materialisations of something more abstract and important: “The natural idea of triad, the
artistic idea of composing out this sonority, the perfection achieved by transforming one
sonority into many by means of voice-leading prolongations, the creation of form as a
consequence of the Urlinie: all this goes into a masterwork. Idea, perfection, masterwork
are one concept: by achieving perfection, the masterwork partakes of the eternal life of
the idea, it is elevated beyond all ages, it becomes timeless” (Schenker 1994-97: I-1).

However, it does not mean that Schenker did not have any interest in composition,
performance or listening. His writings are full of criticisms and suggestions to theorists,
composers, performers and listeners – as, for example, section four of chapter one of
Free Composition, entitled “The Significance of the Fundamental Structure for
Composition, Instruction and Performance”. Schenker´s opinion of the musical culture –

8
and of the culture, in general – of his time is very negative: “We stand before a
Herculaneum and Pompeii of music: All musical culture is buried. Even the tonal material
is ravaged – that foundation of music which artists, drawing from within themselves (and
going beyond the scanty instruction of the overtone series), have completely
reconstructed! Music – the most dream-like and “created” of the arts, the one that most of
all experienced severe pangs of discovery, and therefore the one that was the latest given
to us – this youngest of the arts, is lost!
To be sure, the world is still totally unaware of this dismal state of affairs; people
are still enchanted by big words and grandiloquent phrases. Emphatically people discuss
the “twentieth century” and “progress”; ecstatically they extol the “spirit of the time”, “the
modern.” All around they see “geniuses” in abundance: “genius” composers, “genius”
conductors, and “genius” virtuosi.
...in reality the decay is the deplorable fact, whereas positive, artistic strength is
virtually nonexistent.” (Schenker 1983: 79).

In fact, much of Schenker´s theory can be seen as an attempt to beat the “falling
standards of musical culture” (Cook 1989: 417). The basic problem was, according to
Schenker, one of lack of coherence. The strong coherence that his theory revealed in the
masterworks, was neither projected by performers nor heard by the audience, and
composers since Wagner failed to achieve this coherence: “Thus, in the foreground, the
coherence lies behind the tones, as, in speech, the coherence of thought lies behind the
words. Consequently, one can understand that the layman is unable to hear such
coherence in music; but this unfortunate situation obtains also at higher levels, among
musicians of talent. Even they have not yet learned to hear true coherent relationships.
Since most people today lack coherence themselves, they are quite unable to bear the
tension of musical coherence.” (Schenker 1979: 6).

Therefore, as to perception, Schenker is not at all interested in describing how

people listen to music – unless he wants to make some criticism of this – but in how
people should listen to music. So, any attempt to employ Schenker´s theory as a theory of
actual, everyday perception is far from Schenker´s own stance.

The theory of Schenker is itself a theory about unity and coherence; in the
Introduction to Free Composition, Schenker describes the main topic of his book in these
terms: “I here present a new concept, one inherent in the works of the great masters;
indeed, it is the very secret and source of their being: the concept of organic coherence.”
(xxi). Music is strongly unified because it emanates from a very simple structure – the
fundamental structure, which consists of the fundamental line and the bass arpeggiation:
“The fundamental structure represents the totality. It is the mark of unity and, since it is

9
the only vantage point from which to view that unity, prevents all false and distorted
conception. In it resides the comprehensive perception, the resolution of all diversity into
ultimate wholeness.” (Schenker 1979: 5). This fundamental structure is originated in turn
from the triad, which is “the chord as it exists in Nature” (Schenker 1994-97: I-112).

The fundamental structure must be “prolonged” in order to generate actual music,

and this happens by means of the process of diminution – that is, elaboration or
ornamentation -, which is ruled by the principles of voice-leading: “the basic voice-leading
events, such as passing tones or neighbouring tones... through the process of diminution,
were to become form-generative and would give rise to entire sections and large forms”
(Schenker 1979: 128). Thus, successive transformations of the fundamental structure -
which is the content of every background – are shown in later levels – the middleground
and the foreground. The pervasive presence of the fundamental structure guarantees the
coherence: “Musical coherence can be achieved only through the fundamental structure
in the background and its transformations in the middleground and foreground.”
(Schenker 1979: 6).

Diminution can not happen not matter how. It must reinforce the coherence of
music, by means of “organic relationship”. The exposition of the “achievement of organic
relationship in genuine diminution” in Free Composition (pages 98-101) is worth to be
quoted at length, since it is a good summary of some very important elements of the
concept of unity and coherence in Schenker´s theory. Schenker describes only “the most
essential” means to achieve this organic relationship:

“(1) Through the whole

... First, all diminution must be secured firmly to the total work by means which are
precisely demonstrable and organically verified by the inner necessities of the voice-
leading. The total work lives and moves in each diminution, even those of the lowest
order. Not the smallest part exists without the whole.” (98).

So, the principles of voice-leading, observed at all the levels of the music – the
background, middleground and foreground – provide organic relationship. For example,
the movement in seconds – which for Schenker represents “true song”: “True song is
given to diminution. It is born with the movement in seconds of the fundamental line, and
develops further life through the seconds of the lines which evolve from it. So it sings its
way through all these seconds, the conveyors of the melodic, into the foreground and
within it further and further.” (98).

“(2) Through repetition

10
 An enormously long time was required before music incorporated the principle of
repetition... Repetition presented itself as a symbol of organic life in the world of tones, as
though statement and variant were connected by bonds of blood. The ever stronger inner
desire of music to follow its own course, to strive toward expansion of content, found its
counterpart in the pleasure the ear derived from repetition – a joy in recognition itself.”
(99).

These early, simple repetitions lay on the surface. They are not the most important
ones: “New types of repetition then revealed themselves to composers of genius.
Although these new types seem to lie just as clearly before eye and ear as the repetitions
that occurred within the imitative forms, they remained less accessible because they did
not offer creator and listener the same ease of perception... Yet it was precisely these
concealed repetitions which freed music from the narrowness of strict imitation and
pointed the way to the widest spans and most distant goals; thus even very extended
tonal structures could be based upon repetition!” (99). These “concealed repetitions” are
the motivic relationships in the middleground or even between middleground and
foreground that Schenker frequently points out in his analyses.

“(3) Through preparation

Diminution at the foreground level is often open to misunderstanding, for it
frequently makes use of concealed repetitions in the middleground rather than obvious
repetitions in the foreground. When such foreground diminutions occur, they require
additional relationships in order to obviate misunderstanding.
...such relationships can also be established by preparing a diminution. Preparation
makes the subsequent diminution organic. It is frequently so delicate that it hardly need
penetrate into the artistic consciousness; one can almost assume a sort of self-
generation.”(100-1).

“(4) Through enharmonic restatement” (101).

Basically, this procedure consists of the use of a chromatic tone foreign to the
tonality which is subsequently transformed enharmonically, leading to the restoration of
the main tonality.

Schenker´s theory leads to an approach to form very different to the traditional

theories of form: “All forms appear in the ultimate foreground; but all of them have their
origin in, and derive from, the background... I have repeatedly referred to form as the
ultimate manifestation of that structural coherence which grows out of background,

11
middleground, and foreground; but here I reiterate in order to stress the difference
between this new theory and all previous theories of form.” (Schenker 1979: 130).

He especially rejects those theories which emphasise the role of motif (in the
surface) as generator of form: “Coherence in language does not arise from a single
syllable, a single word, or even a single sentence; ... every coherent relationship in
language depends upon a meaning hidden in a background... Similarly, music finds no
coherence in a “motive” in the usual sense... My theory replaces all of these with specific
concepts of form which, from the outset, are based upon the content of the whole and of
the individual parts; that is, the differences in prolongation lead to differences in form.”
(Schenker 1979: 131).

Repetition is important for the form, but only the “concealed” repetitions above
mentioned: “Obviously, we do meet repetitions, but, in contrast to the motivic repetitions in
the conventional theory of form, those which I describe are usually hidden. Such
repetitions make possible far-reaching extensions and the organic connections of distant
points.” (Schenker 1979: 132).

Schenker´s stance about the role of motivic relationships (at the surface) in this
final stage of his thought as appeared in Free Composition, was very different from that of
thirty years earlier. Thus, in Harmony, he says: “The motif, and the motif alone, creates
the possibility of associating ideas, the only one of which music is capable... Any series of
tones may become a motif. However, it can be recognized as such only where its
repetition follows immediately... Repetition thus is the basis of music as an art. It creates
musical form, just as the association of ideas from a pattern in nature creates the other
forms of art.” (4-5).
“The principle of repetition, once successfully applied to the understanding of the
microcosm of musical composition, now could be applied on a larger scale as well.” (9).

Moreover, the tonal system is considered as somehow subordinated to the motif:

“Thus the motif constitutes the only and unique germ cell of music as an art. Its [historical]
discovery had been difficult indeed. No less difficult, however, proved to be the solution of
a second problem, viz., the creation of a tonal system within which motivic association,
once discovered, could expand and express itself.” (20).

This striking evolution in Schenker´s thought is best realised when comparing his
claims about motives in sonata form. In Harmony, he states: “The sonata represents the
motifs in ever changing situations in which their characters are revealed, just as human
beings are represented in a drama.” (12). On the contrary in Free Composition, he says

12
about the development section: “...for the great composers the development section is
primarily a purposeful motion... and not merely an area in which “motives” drawn from the
exposition are “developed”. The very concept of “development” can only be a hindrance to
the aspiring musician in arriving at the true significance of this section. Certainly it is
undesirable and unnatural continually to place new diminutions in this path, ignoring the
familiar ones from the exposition; after all, the constant employment of new elements
would be contrary to the concept of diminution.” (138-9). So, the only role conceded to
motives is to avoid the excessive use of new elements.

It is interesting to see how in this evolution, Schenker goes away from a universal,
style-independent principle (the principle of repetition as generator of form) to an
elaboration of such principle (hidden or concealed repetition, originated from the
background or middleground) which is clearly style-specific. In fact, most Schenkerian
principles in the final stage of his thought are culturally, stylistically specific: the
availability of just a few forms of the fundamental structure, the voice-leading principles,
and the emphasis on triads, among other constraints, make it applicable just to a very
specific repertoire. He only analyses German instrumental music of the 18th and 19th
centuries, mainly by Händel, J. S. and C. P. E. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven,
Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms. The only (remarkable) exceptions are
the foreign composers Chopin and Scarlatti and the vocal music by J. S. Bach (chorales)
and Schubert and Schumann (lieder).

However, Schenker assumed his theory to have universal validity. As based on

nature – the harmonic series – it would be applicable to any good music. Therefore,
Schenker believes that only the music above mentioned is good music. He usually
dismisses non-Western music and Western folk music as primitive; considers Western
music before 1700 to be just a early stage which would lead later to “true” music; rejects
the composers of his own time; and scorns most European non-German music –
especially Italian opera.

These aesthetic implications are hardly assumed nowadays by those who practice
Schenkerian analysis. They acknowledge Schenker´s theory to be culturally specific and,
as such, only applicable to a very limited repertoire. Attempts of application to other kinds
of music require important changes in the theory. This issue will be discussed in the
second part of the dissertation.

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 III. THE THEORY OF FRED LERDAHL AND RAY JACKENDOFF

This theory was exposed by the authors in their book A Generative Theory of Tonal
Music (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983; henceforth, it will be referred as GTTM) and further
developed in a number of articles: Jackendoff 1983, 1987, 1989 and 1991; Lerdahl 1987,
1988a, 1988b, 1989, 1991a, 1991b, 1994a, 1994b and 1996; and Lerdahl and Halle 1991.
In this chapter, I will refer mainly to the core of the theory as described in GTTM, and to
Lerdahl´s extensions about compositional systems (1988a), musical schemas (1991), and
pitch space and tonal tension (1988b and 1996).

The theory takes an overtly perceptual approach: “We take the goal of a theory of
music to be a formal description of the musical intuitions of a listener who is experienced
in a musical idiom.”2 (GTTM: 1). It tries to explain, by means of a set or rules, how
listeners assign heard structures – mentally constructed entities – to musical surfaces.
However, this perceptual approach has some important limitations because of the
idealisations it makes.

First, the theory addresses the listener´s mental representation as a fixed structure
which can only be totally completed after the whole piece of music has been heard:
“Instead of describing the listener´s real-time mental processes, we will be concerned only
with the final state of his understanding.” (GTTM: 3-4). This is supposed to be “only a
methodological choice” (GTTM: 4), but in my view it reveals in fact a very specific
conception of music perception, since it strongly emphasises a “structural” mode of
listening – that is, a mode of listening which focusses on form and syntactical
relationships at large-scale level, and which is experienced “spatially” and not just
temporally.3 Even when in some extensions of the theory these two aspects of listening –
the temporal or sequential aspect, concerned rather with musical surfaces, and the
structural aspect, concerned rather with “deep structures” – are considered, the structural
one is given more importance. Thus, in “Calculating Tonal Tension” (Lerdahl 1996b), the
author deals with both sequential and hierarchical tension: “Listeners understand music
both sequentially and hierarchically. They inevitably hear one event after another; they
also organize the surface in terms of structural events and their elaborations” (326);
however, he only uses hierarchical tension when he actually faces the analysis of a piece
(in the section “A Hierarchical Tension Analysis of K. 282, Bars 1-9, pages 334-342 of the
same article).

2
All the emphasis in the quotations are by the authors.
3
About the historical emphasis in this mode of listening by music theorists, see for example Subotnik 1988,
Frith 1996 and Cook 1992 – specially chapter 1 “Musical form and the listener”.

14
 It can be argued in favour of this focussing on “final states of understanding” rather
than on “real-time processes” that “the distinction underlying this idealization corresponds
to one sense of Chomsky´s... distinction between competence and performance” (GTTM:
333, footnote 3 to chapter 1), so that Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory is not a theory of
performance (time-bound perceptual process), but a theory of competence (the state of
knowledge resulting from it). However, the distinction between competence and
performance is not easy to maintain in a theory of perception of music: if, according to the
aesthetical approach adopted by Lerdahl and Jackendoff (see chapter seven), musical
“meanings” are only in the music itself – that is, in the unfolding of sounds throughout the
time – how can be separated “final states of understanding” from “real-time processes”?
They can be separated if the “meaning” of music is not the musical flow itself, but the
musical structure, which is an abstraction that would remain in the final state of
understanding, according to the theory; therefore, the distinction
competence/performance in Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory is itself a consequence of
their structural, spatial approach to music.4

Second, the theory aims to describe the musical perception of a “experienced

listener”. It seems reasonable to resort to “those musical judgments for which there is
substantial interpersonal agreement” (GTTM: 3) between experienced listeners, since
“once a listener is familiar with a musical idiom, he is highly constrained in the ways he
hears a piece in the idiom” so that “a theory of musical understanding needs to
characterize these common constraints as a foundation for the study of individual
differences in hearing” (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983-84: 230). But it is much more
arguable to refer to an ideal or perfect listener: “In dealing with especially complex artistic
issues, we will sometimes elevate the experienced listener to the status of a “perfect”
listener – that privileged being whom the great composers and theorists presumably
aspire to address.” (GTTM: 3).

In fact, much of the theory seems to rely on this “perfect” listener, since she or he
is often making difficult decisions about hardly perceivable musical events; moreover, the
abilities of the “merely” experienced listener often equal those of the perfect one: “The
experienced listener... integrates all the parts into a whole, while at the same time hearing
the aspect of wholeness within each part.” (GTTM: 197). Why do Lerdahl and Jackendoff
choose to describe the perceptions or ideal – and improbable – listeners, instead of
“average” experienced ones?. The probable answer is: because they are primarily
concerned with the “best” perception of music. Again – as in Schenker´s theory – it seems
that they are describing how music should be heard, rather than how it is actually heard.

4
Other arguments against the ditinction competence/performance are exposed in Cook 1994: 76-81.

15
So, music-theoretical concerns overlap music-perceptual ones, and Lerdahl and
Jackendoff´s theory, which in principle purports to focus on the listener (esthesic level), in
fact is strongly determined by the composer´s strategies (poietic level) or, at best, by a
musical system supposedly emanated from the music itself (neutral level). Though
Lerdahl and Jackendoff introduce the “perfect”listener as a fiction, it becomes, almost
contrary to their intentions, a theoretical reality in their book because of their structuralist
approach (according to which perfection is the normative form of listening).

The critique to this fact is obvious; Jean-Jacques Nattiez formulates it in this terms:
“in giving their theory the objective of describing not only the perceptual strategies of the
ideal listener but the strategies of the perfect listener which the composer and the theorist
seek to reach, the authors, even though they are theoretically aware of the “discrepancy”
between the poietic and the aesthesic, seem, in practice, to place an “equals” sign
between the description of perceptual strategies and the composer´s ideal predictions
regarding perception, which, themselves, refer to compositional strategies” (Nattiez 1997:
415). This view is shared by Michel Imberty: “The aesthesic is conceptualised within, by
means of the poietic” (Imberty 1997: 430). In short, too often the theory seems to fit in
better with a previous conception of the tonal system than with listeners´ intuitions,
despite their authors´ claim that “our approach emphasizes that there is a crucial
distinction between the principles by which a piece is composed and the principles by
which it is heard... As theorists, we are concerned only with the latter.” (GTTM 300).

There are other kinds of limitations in the theory. It accounts only for “classical
Western tonal music”, though it is “worked out with an eye toward an eventual theory of
musical cognitive capacity” (GTTM: 4) – this issue will be discussed below. In fact, all the
examples are taken from instrumental German music of the 18th and 19th centuries and
J. S. Bach´s chorales – curiously this is the same repertory analysed by Schenker.
Moreover, only homophonic music is accounted for in the theory: “we are treating all
music as essentially homophonic... For the more contrapuntal varieties of tonal music,
where this condition does not obtain, our theory is inadequate.” (GTTM: 37); and there are
problems even in the case of a melody accompanied by an Alberti bass, where “the bass
undergoes fusion while the melody undergoes ordinary reduction. Although the intuitions
are clear, we have no attempted to incorporate such situations into our theory, for the
same reasons we avoided contrapuntal grouping structures: a formalism to represent
independent structures for separate voices becomes much too cumbersome to work with
it.” (GTTM: 339, note 3 to chapter 7).

More problematic seems to be the restriction to “those components of musical

intuition that are hierarchical in nature... Other dimensions of musical structure – notably

16
timbre, dynamics, and motivic-thematic processes – are not hierarchical in nature, and
are not treated directly in the theory as it now stands.” (GTTM: 8-9). It is hard to imagine
how a mental representation of the music that gives us an idea about the final state of its
understanding can be approached, even in a partial way, without taking into account
motivic and thematic relationships, for example.5

The theory works in this way: the music is segmented by the listener into rhythmic
units – or time-spans – of various sizes at different levels; at local levels – smaller than a
measure – the metrical structure determines such segmentation, whereas grouping
structure works at intermediate and large levels. For each time-span, a single event – the
head – is chosen as the most important one by means of stability conditions and all the
other events in the same time-span are considered as subordinated to the head; this
process is called time-span reduction. Both grouping and metrical structures are
hierarchical and, therefore, so is time-span segmentation and in turn time-span reduction.
There is, however, another step in the perception of music: after having perceived the
time-span reduction, the listener organizes the heads of time-spans according to patterns
of tension and relaxation in a new hierarchical structure called prolongational reduction;
this prolongational reduction proceeds from global to local levels, contrary to what
happened with the other hierarchies, so that the listener assigns an event – usually a
chord – to the beginning of the piece and another to the end, and then other events at
lower levels. The prolongational reduction is the goal of the analyses carried out by
Lerdahl and Jackendoff, and it is quite similar to the results obtained by Schenkerian
analyses.

The concept of hierarchy is central to the theory. It is defined by the authors as “an
organization composed of discrete elements (or regions) related in such a way that one
element may subsume or contain other elements. The elements cannot overlap; at any
given hierarchical level the elements must be adjacent; and the relation of subsuming or
containing can continue recursively from level to level.” (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983-83:
231). The theory is summarised in the Strong Reduction Hypothesis: “The listener
attempts to organize all the pitch-events of a piece into a single coherent structure, such
that they are heard in a hierarchy of relative importance... Pitch-events are heard in strict

5
Motivic-thematic parallelisms are actually taken into account in Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory as inputs
to time-span reductions. However, this does not exhaust at all the role of this kind of relationships, as the
authors themselves recognize: “In developing our theory of musical cognition, we have found it
methodologically fruitful to concentrate on hierarchical structures at the expense of associational and
implicative structures... With this relatively firm foundation, it may be possible to approach the other, more
open-ended dimensions in a rule-governed way”, associational aspects being those which “are perceived as
related, but not in a subsuming or containing manner” (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983-84: 251-252), that is,
motivic-thematic aspects.

17
hierarchy... Structurally less important events are not heard simply as insertions, but in a
specified relationship to surrounding more important events.” (GTTM: 106).

There are some problematic points in the processes developed according to the
theory. Though the perception of some events – usually chords – as more important than
others seems to be an obvious intuition in many cases, the representation of this fact by
means of a strict hierarchy faces important problems. First, by subordinating every event
to one – and only one – other, the theory forces us to make some difficult and somehow
arbitrary decisions. Second, it is not clear why only one event – the head – must be
chosen as the most important in every time-span; in fact, this constraint compels Lerdahl
and Jackendoff to make an important exception: in full cadences, two events – the two
members of the cadence – are chosen as heads. One wonders why this is only possible
in this case. Third, the application of hierarchical structure to patterns of tension and
relaxation is arguable. Leonard B. Meyer makes this critique: “even when music creates a
clearly articulated arched hierarchy... it by no means follows that the listener´s experience
of tension-fluctuation is hierarchic. The problem is that, like temperature, tension
constitutes a continuum from very low (relaxed) to very high. And because such continua
need not involve functionally related parts, I would not include them in the class of
hierarchies.” (Meyer 1983-84: 456).

Another problem is posed by the recursivity of hierarchies. At phrase and period

levels, some hierarchical relationships between events may be clear, but extending this
kind of relationships to larger levels and even to whole piece is controversial. According to
Burton S. Rosner and Meyer: “Analysts such as Schenker... and Lerdahl and
Jackendoff... may well produce hierarchical diagrams of quite long musical passages. But
if “higher” events exert increasingly tenuous perceptual influences, the psychological force
of the outputs from such analytical machinery will dwindle quickly, whatever may be their
value for the theory of music.” (Rosner and Meyer 1986: 37). This weakness is
acknowledged in GTTM only for the metrical structure: “not all these levels of metrical
structure are heard as equally prominent. The listener tends to focus primarily on one (or
two) intermediate level(s) in which the beats pass by at a moderate rate. This is the level
at which the conductor waves his baton, the listener taps his foot... we call such a level
the tactus. The regularities of metrical structure are most stringent at this level. As the
listener progresses away by level from the tactus in either direction, the acuity of his
metrical perception gradually fades.” (21).

Obvious perceptual facts – unless we are dealing with a very perfect, ideal listener
– seem to point out that this phenomenon affects to other hierarchical structures as well,
so that harmonic events that are clearly perceived at small or intermediate levels are not

18
so easily perceived at large levels. In fact, Lerdahl himself seems to be aware of this
when, in the article about tonal tension above mentioned, he states: “The inadequacy of
the sequential model at surface levels has a reverse counterpart: the hierarchical model´s
predictions are perceptually attenuated at global levels. This suggests that listeners are
best able to assess degrees of tension at a middle range in which both sequential and
hierarchical measures have perceptual forces. Such a progressing pattern would
correspond to that of the grouping and metrical structures, in which the intermediate
levels of the phrase and the tactus are perceptually most salient” (Lerdahl 1996b: 334).
However, this claim is an exception in Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s writings, and it is not
further developed, since it strongly contradicts the Strong Reduction Hypothesis, which
leads to the conclusions that every piece of music is in short the elaboration of a single
event.6

Therefore, the issue of unity and coherence is at the heart of the theory, articulated
in the hierarchical structure of the four components: meter, grouping, and especially time-
span reduction and prolongational reduction. Though dynamics, register, articulation,
duration and motivic parallelism are considered as inputs to time-span reduction, the
harmonic component is the basis of the theory, and, therefore, of the unity of the piece.

The question why listeners should seek such a degree of coherence when they
listen to music – or why composers show such a degree of coherence in the music they
write, if the question is posed from a poietic perspective – is not directly answered in
GTTM. We are offered a clue when the authors speak about the rule that states the
preference for the normative prolongational structure: “It [the rule] produces a higher
degree of coherence. Each event has a specific and unique function in the whole... It may
be inferred from other areas of cognition, such as vision and language... that this strong
structuring of the parts into the whole enhances comprehension and memory.” (GTTM:
241). The issue is later directly addressed by Lerdahl: “It is hardly fortuitous that our
theory concentrates on hierarchies. Most of human cognition relies on hierarchical
structuring... Studies in music psychology have indicated that the absence of perceived
hierarchy substantially reduces the listener´s ability to learn and remember structure from
musical surfaces” (Lerdahl 1988a: 239). Therefore, the aim of the theory is to describe
how listeners perceive a strongly coherent mental representation of the music that permits
them to comprehend and remember it. This process allows highly complex music to be
understood; moreover, this complexity should be considered, according to Lerdahl, as an
aesthetic requirement: “The best music utilizes the full potential of our cognitive
resources” (Lerdahl 1988a: 256).

6
This is clearly formalised in GTTM by means of the rules GWFR2, TSRWFR2 and PRWFR1.

19
 The main difference between Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s approach to unity and
coherence and Schenker´s one is that the latter, besides purely harmonic factors,
considers as well voice-leading and hidden motivic aspects. However, Lerdahl and
Jackendoff´s theory is clearly indebted to Schenker´s, as they acknowledge; the concept
of elaboration, the process of reduction from the musical surface to the background and
the consequent idea of a hierarchy of levels, and the similar roles of the Ursatz and the
normative prolongational structure are the most important parallelism between both
theories. In fact, Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory can be seen as an attempt to translate
to the field of music perception many of the concepts developed by Schenker in the field
of music theory.

Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory is developed to account for Western classical

tonal music. However, most rules are said to be universal by the authors, and they are
largely concerned with musical universals – chapter 11 of GTTM is entitled “Musical
Universals and Related Issues”. This corresponds with their general approach to music
theory: “Beyond purely musical issues, the theory is intended as an investigation of a
domain of human cognitive capacity. Thus is should be useful to linguists and
psychologists...Our approach has led to the discovery of substantive as well as
methodological connections among music, language, and vision.” (GTTM: xi).

The theory shares important features with linguistic and psychological theories.
First, like Chomsky´s generative-transformational grammar, it is formulated in terms of
rules of (musical) grammar; this rules are “intended to express a generalization about the
organization that the listener attributes to the music he hears. The grammar is formulated
in such a way as to permit the description of divergent intuitions about the organization of
a piece.” (GTTM: x). It also takes from Chomsky the belief that all natural (musical)
languages have the same structure at a deep level, the concept of deep structure – which
is approximated to Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s underlying structure -, the idea of
hierarchical organization – of the sentence for Chomsky, of the whole piece for Lerdahl
and Jackendoff – and the graphs that represent it.

Second, the theory relies on some principles of Gestalt psychology, mainly the
“fundamental claim of Gestalt psychology: that perception, like other mental activity, is a
dynamic process of organization, in which all elements of the perceptual field may be
implicated in the organization of any particular part.” (GTTM: 303). It means that the
listener – as the viewer – plays an active part in determining what she or he perceives;
moreover, she or he will produce a mental representation of the perceived object as
“good” as the conditions allow – for Lerdahl and Jackendoff, she or he will select a

20
structure that is maximally stable. The grouping rules are determined by the search of
regularity, symmetry and simplicity.

Third, the comparison made in the final chapter of GTTM between Lerdahl and
Jackendoff´s theory and the theory of prosodic structure developed mainly by Mark
Liberman and Alan Prince and the parallelisms found, leads the authors to claim:

“Given that both theories are attempts to account for human cognitive abilities, the
existence of parallelism between them implies a claim that these areas are a respect in
which human musical and linguistics capacities overlap. In other words, both capacities
make use of some of the same organizing principles to impose structure on their
respective inputs, no matter how disparate these inputs are in other respects.

However, if this claim is true, it would be surprising if music and language were the
only human abilities so structured. Rather, we should be led to look for something closely
analogous to time-span structure in many human abilities under the rubric of “temporal
patterning”, from event perception to motor control to the planning of extended strategies
of behavior. In particular, we should expect a hierarchically articulated notion of
head/elaboration to figure prominently in psychological theories of temporal organization.”
(GTTM: 330).

Because of this alleged competence in the domain of human cognitive capacity,

the theory can make claims about musical universals. This concept is delimited in the
following way: “A musical universal need not to be readily apparent in all musical idioms.
We are concerned here rather with universals of musical grammars – the principles
available to all experienced listeners for organizing the musical surfaces they hear, no
matter what idiom they are experienced in.” (GTTM: 278). Most of the theory is
hypothesised to be of universal validity: the organization of musical intuitions along the
four dimension (grouping, metrical structure, time-span reduction and prolongational
reduction), each of which is a strictly hierarchical structure; the way those four dimensions
interrelate; the application of well-formedness, preference and transformational rules; the
existence of criteria for the relative stability of pitch-events, which presuppose a tonal
centre and a scale of distance of other pitch-events from it; and the articulation of a
piece´s structure by means of structural beginnings and endings – marked by
conventional formulas – of groups. Even such a specific structure as the normative
prolongational structure could be universal according to the authors: “is it a Western
cultural convention, or does it originate in biological factors?” (GTTM: 201).

21
 The authors provide a “Rule Index” where they specify which rules are universal
and which ones are idiom-specific – that is, only applicable to Western tonal classical
music. All grouping structure rules, nine out of fourteen metrical structure rules, thirteen
out of seventeen time-span reduction rules and seven out of ten prolongational reduction
rules are considered to be universal.

To sum up, the whole view of unity and coherence implicit in Lerdahl and
Jackendoff´s theory is said to have universal validity. We will explore the correctness of
this assumption, at least as regards popular music, in chapter six.

22
 PART TWO

23
 IV. THE DEBATE ABOUT THE PERTINENCE OF MUSICOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF
POPULAR MUSIC

Popular music become an object of study in academic spheres as a field

completely separated from the field of “classical” or art music, which had already a long
tradition – basically, musicology initiates in the nineteenth century. Unlike art music,
popular music was studied not because of its supposed aesthetic value, but because of
its importance as a sociological phenomenon. So, when musicologists got interested in
popular music – mainly in the last decades – there was already an important tradition of
studies in this field from a sociological approach. The debate about the pertinence of
musicological analyses of popular music that arises from this clash of academic traditions
is specially interesting because it reveals significant assumptions which are difficult to see
from inside the discipline of musicology.

Since a musicological perspective, the question seems to be: should popular music
be studied? Since a sociological perspective, the question is: is it appropriate to study
popular music since a musicological perspective which focuses mainly on the sounds?

When compared to art music, popular music appears as being too repetitive and
simplistic to traditional musicologists: “Popular musics, with their apparently simplistic
uses of the most banal harmonic and rhythmic material, have simply not been thought
worthy of any effort.” (Moore 1993: 17-18). The orthodox musicological view is well
depicted by the following statement of Jack Westrup: “The world of pop is largely a
featureless desert. It is hardly surprising that the life of a ‘pop’ song is so short. This is not
simply because most of the performers have unlovely and insignificant voices, which
would be inaudible without the aid of a microphone. The reason lies rather in the appalling
poverty of melodic invention, which is not relieved by a persistent rhythm or even by
harmonic ingenuities which serious critics mistakenly attribute to the singers instead of the
expert musician who write the ‘backing’.“7

These attacks on the aesthetic value of popular music are often answered by
calling in question the pertinence of musicological analysis of popular music: “much
musicological analysis of popular music misses the point: its object of study, the
discursive text it constructs, is not the text to which anyone listens.” (Frith 1998:26). Two
kinds of arguments support this claim. First, what have traditionally been considered as
the main musical parameters in Western art tonal music, maybe do not have such an

7
Jack Westrup. “Editorial”, Music and Letters 49 (1968): 1. Quoted in Frith 1998: 64.

24
important role in popular music, whereas other musical parameters considered as
secondary can be more important: “In many kinds of popular music, for example, harmony
may not be the most important parameter; rhythm, pitch gradation, timbre and the whole
ensemble of performance articulation techniques are often more important” (Middleton
1990: 104). For this reason, it has been posited an opposition between “extensional” and
“intensional” musical practices (see Chester 1970). Intensional music is defined as “music
taking place within relatively rigid harmonic, melodic and perhaps rhythmic archetypes
(almost in the sense of an external skeleton), within which performers can utilize a great
degree of freedom, particularly with respect to aspects of sound production that defy
analysis by notation.” (Moore 1993: 21); in contrast, extensional music is not constrained
by such “rigid archetypes”, but the performer is much less free, since she or he has to
keep fidelity to the score. Therefore, the performer is given much more relevance than in
traditional musicology, which focuses mainly in composers and scores: “Voices, not
songs, hold the key to our pop pleasures; musicologists may analyze the art of
Gershwins or Cole Porter, but we hear Bryan Ferry or Peggy Lee.” (Frith 1998: 201).

Second, musicological analyses focus on musical meanings as if they were

inherent in the sounds; the belief that the internal logic of music represents its essence
stems from the concept of absolute music – instrumental Western art music – and the
purely aesthetic approach to music.8 However, the meanings people obtain from music
are conditioned by “extramusical” factors as much as by internal ones: the evaluation and
understanding of music is tied up with social structures and with the social functions
music fulfils. Much popular music is probably less intended to provide formal, internal
meanings than art music; instead, it can produce more “extramusical” meanings and
serve other functions than static aesthetic contemplation – such as provoking a physical
response, providing an adequate frame for the story told by the lyrics, or constructing
social identities, for example. Therefore, inasmuch as musicological analyses focus on
purely musical meanings, they lose explanatory power when dealing with music in which
these meanings are not so important.

I will return to this issue in the last chapter. Before that, we will see in chapters five
and six how the construction of unity and coherence by exclusively internal musical
factors that Schenker´s and Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theories focus on, has been – for
the former – or could be – for the latter – applied to popular music.

8
This issue will be further discussed in the last chapter.

25
 V. APPLICATION OF SCHENKERIAN THEORY TO POPULAR MUSIC

Schenker did not attempt to apply his theory to modern – that is, Americanized or
jazz-influenced – popular music. To be sure, he would have considered such an attempt
aberrant. His theory was only concerned with “masterworks”, and his judgments about
popular music was very negative. Jazz was the closest to the popular music of our time
that he was acquainted with in his own time. These are some of the opinions he wrote
about it: “jazz possesses as little genuine rhythm as a metronome or a train wheel”
(Schenker 1994-97: III-7), and “Jazz stirs the bones, not the mind” (Idem: III-77).

Despite Schenker´s scorn of other kind of music than Western art music from J. S.
Bach to Brahms, there have been attempts to apply Schenkerian analysis to such
repertoires as mediaeval and twentieth century Western art music, non-Western music
and popular Western music. As for popular music, such attempts include American
popular ballads (Forte 1995) and songs by Gershwin (Gilbert 1984 and 1995), Jimi
Hendrix (Brown 1997), the Beatles (Everett 1986, 1987, 1992, and 1995, and Moore
1997), K. D. Lang (Burns 1997) and Paul Simon (Everett 1997).

No one of these analyses intends to apply the whole Schenker theory. At least, the
aesthetic implications of Schenker´s theory are not assumed in them, since they usually
try to “demonstrate” the aesthetic value of the popular music they are dealing with 9 : “The
aim of this essay is to expose the musical means of expression of geniality and
exuberance in the Beatles´ simple early song, “She Loves You”, using the “serious” tools
of academic analysis that pertain to issues of voice leading and harmony.” (Everett 1992:
19); and “The popular music with which this book is concerned enjoys an international
reputation as an American cultural artifact of highest quality. Not all the popular music
written in the period 1924-50 is worthy of consideration... In a very real sense, these
songs are the American “Lieder” of a particularly rich period in popular music.” (Forte
1995: 3).

However, the amount of Schenkerian principles adopted in these analyses varies

broadly among them; some try to apply most of them, whereas others can hardly be
called Schenkerian analyses.

9
To be sure, these analysts usually assume Schenker´s aesthetic implication that their analyses reveal, at
least in part, the aesthetic value of the music, as we well see below. What they do not assume is that only
music from Bach to Brahms is aesthetically valuable since only this music can be successfully analysed by
means of Schenkerian techniques.

26
 As we have seen above, Schenker´s theory aims to explain the organic coherence
of the “best” pieces of the so-called “common-practice” tonal music – though Schenker did
not use this term. In short, this coherence is mainly achieved through directed tonal
motion – where the relationship between dominant and tonic harmonies is the basic
principle – as synthesised in the fundamental structure. Therefore, the main assumption
Schenker makes is the subordination of some tones to others as their elaborations, and
the recursivity of this phenomenon at different levels of musical structure; this assumption
permits Schenker to represent music in a hierarchy of levels from foreground to
background – or to generate music from background to foreground, as he does in his
Free Composition. Other important assumptions' by Schenker concern: the nature of
structural harmonies, which must be triadic and diatonic; the fundamental line, which must
be a step-wise descent from ^8 , ^5 or ^3 to ^1 in an octave (obligatory register); and the
application of the rules of counterpoint – such as the generation of dissonances from
motions between consonances and the prohibition of parallel fifths and octaves – at all
hierarchical levels.

I have already commented that Schenker believed these constraints to be

universal, as based in the physical phenomenon of the over-tones. The majority of
Schenkerian analysts acknowledge the style-specificity of this set of principles as a whole
and they feel free to change some of them in order to apply Schenker´s theory to popular
music. The less the analysts consider that the music they are dealing with shares features
with “common-practice” tonal music, the more important these changes will be. At the
same time, there is a certain resistance among theorists to renounce to Schenker´s
principles, and sometimes the discrepancy of such principles with the features of the
music analysed leads to unconvincing analyses – this point will be dealt with below.

Therefore, it seems that the application of Schenkerian analysis to popular music is

less problematic when the music shares the main features of “common-practice” tonal
music – that is, when this music is tonal since it uses basically the same chords, though
maybe modified, and in the same way, so that directed motion based in dominant-tonic
relationships can be clearly perceived; hence, there is a certain tendency among analysts
to favour this kind of music. This fact is overtly acknowledged by many analysts, even if
they think that some changes must still be made in Schenkerian analysis in order for it to
be applied to this music. So, for example, Walter Everett chooses to analyse “She Loves
You” because “The Beatles ardent early works cohere by virtue of a greater degree of
structural tension than is heard in most of their later work.” (Everett 1992: 19). Allen Forte
says: “Many of the concepts and techniques covered in this chapter derive from the
writings of Heinrich Schenker...In this book, the primary relation between Schenker´s
remarkable and path-breaking work is to be found in the analytical approach, not in any

27
shared interest in musical repertoire, except insofar as the American popular ballad
exhibits the basic structural characteristics of classical tonal music. Although I wish to
acknowledge Schenker´s influence, I emphasize at the same time that the adoption of the
linear-analytical procedures he developed is modest in scope and does not begin to
engage the full range of his formulation.” (Forte 1995: 42). Lori Burns claims. “While the
application of Schenkerian analysis to a popular song may raise methodological
questions, I believe that the analytical results prove the validity of this approach. Tonal
harmonic function carries with it a code of predictable idioms and relationships. This
popular song [“Johnny Get Angry”] works within and plays upon well-known harmonic
conventions” (Burns 1997: 99). And Steven E. Gilbert states: “Since Gershwin wrote
basically tonal music, it is reasonable that we adopt a modified Schenkerian approach.”
(Gilbert 1984: 423).

The above cited analyses by Forte, Gilbert, Brown, Everett and Burns in fact apply
most of Schenker´s principles. Some adaptations are needed. According to Gilbert, “the
main point of difference is that in Gershwin´s harmonic language the dissonance had at
least been partially... emancipated. The triad was still necessary for closure, but
dissonances such as ninths and so-called thirteenths did not require resolution.” (Gilbert
1984: 423). There are some other “irregularities” in the songs analysed by Gilbert. For
instance, in the end of “ ´S Wonderful”, scale degree ^2 of the fundamental line is lacking,
and there is not a structurally supported ^3 in the vocal line; the same happens in “I Love
You, Porgy”, where there is a missing scale degree ^2 (Gilbert 1995: 21-22). This forces
the analyst to consider “implied notes” in order to maintain the Schenkerian fundamental
line, which can be problematic: “The matter of implied notes is open to question, more so
in twentieth-century music than in the standard tonal repertoire of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.” (Idem: 13). But, at least for the mentioned examples, “Implied notes
under these circumstances... should be understood as logical (or intellectual) rather than
aural phenomena.” (Idem: 22). Another interesting issue in Gilbert´s analyses for our topic
is the use of the “secondary” – besides the generative force of the background –
Schenkerian means to achieve organic coherence in music, such as concealed
repetitions: “Whether conscious on the composer´s part or not, concealed repetitions such
as these contribute greatly to the organic structure of a composition. The opening of
Rhapsody in Blue, no doubt an intuitive creation, is nonetheless rich in concealed
repetitions.” (Idem: 18). These are mainly found in Gershwin´s “serious” compositions, but
there are also some instances of motivic relationships between different levels of the
music structure in such songs as “ ´S Wonderful” (see Idem: x); Gilbert adds: “Such
features make for an organic piece of music and demonstrate that the composer lavished
the same care on his songs as he did on his concert works.” (Ibidem).

28
 The aesthetic aim of Gilbert´s analyses is overtly acknowledged: “I also believe
that Schenker provided not only an analytic method, but a test of quality – in that a good
piece of music will be rich in the kind of organic, hierarchical relationships that were the
focus of Schenker´s work. The result is that the best of Gershwin´s melodies submit very
well to the scrutiny of a Schenkerian (or at least Schenker-influenced) analysis – and it is
hoped that the examples presented here have shown precisely that.” (Gilbert 1984: 455-
456). This belief in the power of Schenkerian analysis to demonstrate aesthetic value
seems to be implicitly assumed by most theorists. This issue will be further discussed in
the last chapter.

Allen Forte, in his study of the American popular ballad, also modifies Schenker´s
assumption that every structural harmony must be a consonant chord: he allows for an
extension of Schenker's concept of consonsance, speaking of “in the case of our
vernacular repertoire, a consonant chord that is enhanced by one of the stable
dissonances, such as a ninth.” (Forte 1995: 43). Again, Schenkerian fundamental line do
not always fit in these songs. Forte´s attitude to this is less scholastic, so to speak, than
Gilbert´s one; instead of resorting to implied notes, he simply states: “some ballads may
have long-range melodic configurations that are not stepwise lines” (Idem: 51). Forte´s
analyses try to demonstrate that large-scale melodic structures “contribute in the most
elemental fashion to the shaping of the ballad and to its detailed affects, often down to the
level of the setting of individual components of the lyrics.” (Idem: 333).

Gershwin´s songs and American popular ballads can be seen as somehow close
to the “common-practice” tonal harmony; at least, there is a clear feeling of directed tonal
motion in this music. Things can be different when we are dealing with pop or rock 10
music. Though tonal harmony can be useful to describe some rock music, much jazz and
rock harmony is probably better explained as modal. Modal system is widely used by jazz
and rock musicians and by analysts who deal with this kind of music. Allan Moore in
particular, advocates a modal approach in his book Rock: The Primary Text (Moore 1993:
47-50). However, other analysts try to apply functional tonal harmony to the rock music
they are dealing with.

Among the Beatles´songs, it is not always possible to find the clear directed tonal
motion that Schenkerian backgrounds represent. Walter Everett has devoted a number of
articles to analysing some Beatles´ songs. In general, he tries to make a rather strict
Schenkerian analysis. Sometimes, this stance leads him to conclusions which are distant
from the actual music. Thus, for example, in his analysis of “She´s Leaving Home”, he
builds a Schenkerian background where the final structural dominant is a non-existent

10
These terms will be used here without distinction.

29
(elided) chord (Everett 1987: see graph in page 10). Something similar happens in his
analysis of “Strawberry Fields Forever”, where “the cadential V is minimized nearly to the
point of not happening”, and the fundamental line progression “^2-^1 actually occurs
above I” (Everett 1986: 372-373); in fact, the strong sense of directed tonal motion that
Everett´s background suggests (Idem: 372) does not seem to correspond to the music.

Things are rather different in Everett´s analysis of side two of Abbey Road (Everett
1995). Though Allan Moore claims that “The most recent example of the strict
Schenkerian approach is probably Walter Everett´s reduction of the entire second side of
the Beatles´Abbey Road to an Ursatz” (Moore 1997: 88, footnote 4 to chapter 4), in fact
Everett is forced here by the features of the music and the obvious intuitions in its hearing
to move away from a strictly Schenkerian background. Probably the clearest example is
the end of “You Never Give Me Your Money”, where the bass line in Everett´s reduction
finishes with the chords C major, G major in the first inversion, and A major – a
progression whichs is not at all explanable through functional harmony – in parallel
octaves with the fundamental line (Everett 1995: 218). Everett offers the following
explanation: “The pentatonic system does not know the harmony of the major-minor
system; triads are usually all major... because they are simply heard as doublings, in
natural overtones, of the pentatonic ‘roots’. These do not normally have
harmonic/contrapuntal relationships between them, other than the powerful but primitive
passing functions... and neighbor functions... Therefore, the song can end with ^3-^2-^1 in
parallel octaves (a doubled single voice) in the outer ‘parts’. “ (Idem: 221).

The problem in using Schenkerian backgrounds when dealing with music where
modal relationships are important is the fact that Schenkerian background emphasises
dominant-tonic relationships while relegating any other ones. These relationships are
essential in “common-practice” tonality, but in much rock music, the dominant chord is not
more important than others. So, for example, in the very usual twelve-bar blues pattern | I
| I | I | I | IV | IV | I | I | V | IV | I | I | , there seems to be no reasons to think that the V chord
is more important than the IV one, and there is not a strong feeling that the V chord must
resolve directly into the I one, as it happens in the omnipresent full cadence of “common
practice” tonality.

Therefore, no good results are obtained when a strict Schenkerian analysis is

imposed on such music as blues. In his analysis of “Little Wing” by Jimi Hendrix, Matthew
Brown claims: “blues pieces essentially conform to the principles of common-practice
tonality” (Brown 1997: 161), so the compositional strategies of Jimi Hendrix are limited by
the rules of tonal harmony and counterpoint. This belief that Hendrix´s music is governed
by the rules of tonal harmony leads to an implausible interpretation of a eight-bar blues

30
open-ended pattern | e | G | a | e | b | a | G F | C d | as a I-IV-I-V-I background in E minor
(Idem: see graph in page 162, reproduced in the Figure 1 in the Appendix of this
dissertation). If it is possible to consider the III chord of bar three as a neighbouring chord
in relation to the IV chord in bar four, it is much more unconvincing to consider the whole
second half of the pattern as a prolongation of the V chord; moreover, this V chord is a
minor chord, so that its intended role as a dominant harmony is much more arguable.

A very different attitude to Schenkerian analysis is that of Allan Moore in his book
The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper´s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Moore 1997): “much of my graphic
vocabulary is borrowed from Schenkerian analysis. The diagrams are not, however,
intended to function as Schenkerian analysis of these songs” (Idem: 27). His analyses do
not attempt to reduce the musical surface to a Schenkerian background and do not even
show a large-scale structure based in dominant-tonic relationships. So, directed tonal
motion is not supposed to be in the music as a prerequisite. In fact, songs are usually
classified according to the modal system. One can not even speak of backgrounds in
these analyses, since the reductions are not carried out at deep levels: Moore presents
just a middleground quite close to the musical surface. The criteria to make these
reductions are only partially the same as those of Schenker's theory. He favours triad and
triad-derived chords, recognises such basic voice-leading principles as neighbouring and
passing tones and selects stressed or “salient” tones – for example, the tonic is identified
by means of “metric, rhythmic and accentual modes of stress” (Moore 1992: 77).

In which sense can these analyses be called Schenkerian analyses? We have

seen how in its applications to popular music the principles of Schenkerian theory have
been considered as axioms that may or may not be used, according to their fit with
stylistic features of the music. But there are still some important Schenkerian principles
that remain even in the least Schenkerian of these analyses. First, Schenkerian symbols,
graphs and terminology prove to be useful in all these analyses. Second, there is still a
search for consistent, mainly step-wise lines – especially in the upper-voice or melody –
which in fact is meant to provide some coherence to the music. Third, hierarchical,
generative, transformation-based structure of music is assumed by all of them in some
degree, since some sounds are always selected as being more important than others,
which elaborate them. However, this hierarchy is looser in the freest Schenkerian
analyses: the number of possible structural chords and of possible combinations of them
grows; the voice-leading rules are not so strict; and there is not a strict hierarchy of tones
– that is, diatonic triad are not necessarily more important than other chords, and neither
dominant harmonies nor step-wise descents in the upper voice are emphasised in, for
example, Moore´s analyses. Therefore, it can not be so easily applied to deep levels of

31
the musical structure. Another kind of hierarchy is the reduction of music to two main
lines, the bass and the upper voice, which is the same as in Schenker´s theory.

In short, the strong unity and coherence that Schenker´s theory reveals in music is
retained in these Schenkerian analysis insofar as they are faithful to Schenkerian
fundamental structure and voice-leading principles. So, when Schenkerian principles are
partially leaved in order to approach other kind of music than the one Schenker dealt with,
such unity and coherence must be either found by other means or given up.

So far, we have seen what Schenkerian analysts do when approaching popular

music, but it is also interesting to see what they do not do. Some significant aspects of
rock music are not emphasised by Schenkerian analyses because of their intrinsic
limitations. First, rhythmic analysis of rock can hardly be carried out by Schenkerian
analysis: the repetitive rhythmic patterns, the slight variations they undergo in the
repetitions, and the contrast between, on the one hand, the rhythmic section and, on the
other hand, the melody which avoid the beats by means of frequent syncopation, can not
be properly addressed by a theory that sees rhythm as emerging from middelground pitch
structure. Second, and more generally, all “secondary” parameters are considered just as
“projecting” pitch structure, so that they can not be considered as much significant as they
frequently are in rock music. And third, issues of form in rock music are neglected in
Schenkerian analyses when form, as it often happens, does not emerge from large-scale
linear-harmonically induced directed motion. I will comment on this in the following
chapters.

32
 VI. APPLICATION OF LERDAHL AND JACKENDOFF´S THEORY TO POPULAR
MUSIC

Much recent research in music perception has been devoted to the study of
listeners´ responses to Western art music. Things are completely different as regards
popular music. It is really difficult to find a piece of work about perception that addresses
popular music. This fact has been voiced by some scholars: John Sloboda (1999)
complains about music psychology focussing mainly on the passive reception of classical
tonal music and dismissing the rich variety of music which is experienced in every day life;
David Hargreaves claims: “Psychologists have woefully neglected the ‘mundane,’ or ‘lay’
aspects of musical experience. They have dealt largely with serious ‘art’ music, which is a
minority interest relative to the many different forms of ‘folk,’ or popular music” 11; and
Matthew Brown says: “One area... in which rock music remains largely ignored is music
cognition.” (Brown 1997: 155).

Lerdahl and Jackendoff also developed their theory for Western art tonal music.
Later, Lerdahl extended their theory to another Western art music repertoire: atonal music
(Lerdahl 1989). They do not seem to have any special interest in popular music; in fact,
Lerdahl considers that rock music in general can not have a high aesthetic value, since
“Rock music fails on grounds of insufficient complexity” (Lerdahl 1988a: 256) whereas
“the best music utilises the full potential of our cognitive resources.” (Idem: 255).

This attitude of music perception researchers towards popular music is a bit

surprising. It seems that if the aim of music psychologists is to explain human behaviour
as to music, they should take in account the most consumed music of our time – popular
music. There is a possible explanation for this fact: besides the higher social status of
Western art music, complex music theoretical systems have been developed for it, which
are a tempting standpoint for research in music cognition; the problem is that “music
psychology risks losing the ability to pose fundamental questions through too ready an
acceptance of music-theoretical concepts and categories” (Cook 1994: 92).

Therefore, it is not strange that such attempts to develop a perceptual theory such
as Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s one, have not been applied to popular music even if, insofar
as they claim it to have universal validity, it should be easily applicable. To my knowledge,

11
David J. Hargreaves, The Developmental Psychology of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986) 7-8. Quoted in Brown 1997: 155.

33
there has been no attempt to apply Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory to popular music. So,
for this chapter, I will try to explain the problems that arise when using Lerdahl and
Jackendoff´s theory – at least that part of the theory they consider to be universal – to
analyse a pop song. It is not my purpose to develop a complete analysis or to discuss
every rule of the theory, but rather to comment on some global problems.

Western popular music shares important features with Western art tonal music.
Both use basically the same selection of pitches (the diatonic and/or chromatic scales)
and chords (triads and triad-derived chords) and even metric patterns are rather similar.
Within this common frame, I have tried to find a kind of music quite different from Western
art music, in order to test the universal validity of Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory. I think
that hip-hop is a useful genre for this purpose; this is mainly dance music where a rhymed
text is recited rhythmically in a musical frame characterised by continuous repetitions of
simple harmonic patterns and melodies.

“Affirmative Action”12 is a song by Nas, AZ, Cormega and Foxy Brown. It is about
four minutes long and has a quite simple musical structure. The harmonic pattern consists
just of two chords – Ab minor and Eb minor – which is repeated without interruption
almost since the beginning of the song to the end; each one lasts a bar in a four-beat bar
metre – say 4/4. The basic instrumentation is: electric bass, which slightly elaborates the
roots of the chords (see Figure 2a in Appendix); kit, with snare drum on the back-beat
(that is, beats two and four), hi-hat on every quaver and bass drum which slightly
elaborates a pattern on beats one and three (see Figure 2b); melodic section by electric
keyboards which develop three different two-bar melodic patterns – the first of them,
based in the arpeggiation of the chords, remains throughout the whole song (Figure 2c),
whereas the second one appears frequently (Figure 2d) and the third one just once
(Figure 2e); and some other sporadic electronic sounds which play the chords in
semibreves – again this produces a two-bar pattern. Over this musical background, the
vocalist delivers the text in a recited fashion; most times the syllables fit in the metrical
structure: unstressed syllables usually are uttered in semiquavers and stressed syllables
in quavers, though looser rhythms are not rare.

This musical structure produces a rather static musical flow. Important changes are
perceived at the beginning of the performance of every reciter, following this order: Nas,
AZ, Cormega and Foxy Brown. Besides the change of vocal timbre – and register for
Foxy Brown, who is a women – these entrances are emphasised by other factors:
stopping in the kit and/or bass patterns; appearance of the sporadic electronic sounds in
semibreves; and sound effects such as echo or doubling of voices. So, four sections, one

12
It appeared in Nas´album It was written (Columbia 67015, 1996)

34
for each reciter, can be easily perceived. There are sometimes little changes inside the
section, usually suspension of the kit pattern for two or three beats and addition of the
second or third – this latter only happens once – melodic patterns by the electric
keyboard.

There is just one section where it would be possible to speak about directed motion
or increase in tension – the first, introductory section. It begins with a dissonant static
chord (D3-G3-Ab3) which “resolves” in the mentioned two-bar pattern of chords in
semibreves; the delivery of the text in a very free rhythm, the gradual addition of
instruments, the change in the voice to a more strict rhythm when it is doubled13 , and
finally the appearance of the bass and kit, produce the feeling of an introductory section
where a sort of crescendo leads to the “real” – structural – beginning of the song in line
four of the verse one.

As for the tonal centre, there is not a strong tendency towards one of the two
chords. However, some facts lead to the perception of Eb minor as the tonal centre: the
first presentation of the chords at the beginning of the song happens on a maintained Eb
in the lower part, and Eb is the lower tone in the two-bar pattern of the bass (see Figure
2a). Moreover, the Eb minor chord is perceived as the final, more stable one of the two
chords, since the harmonic pattern is rather heard as Ab minor – Eb minor than as Eb
minor – Ab minor for two reasons. First, the second melodic pattern (Figure 2d) of the
electric keyboard elaborates a descent | C-Bb-Ab | Bb-Ab-Gb | , which clearly ends on
the Eb minor chord; second, the bass pattern strongly ties up the end of the Ab minor
chord to the beginning of the Eb minor chord by means of a slurred descent, whereas the
connection between the end of the Eb minor chord and the beginning of the Ab minor
chord is not so strong (see Figure 2a) Moreover, I-IV is a stereotypical and functional
progression, whereas V minor-I is not.

What happens when we apply Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory to this song? I
should begin with a caveat. Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory, as developed in GTTM,
does not adequately account for polyphonic music, as the authors acknowledge. In this
case, we have at least two important and quite independent lines: the voice and the rest
of the music. Moreover, the voice does not present clearly defined pitches – at least
according to the diatonic scale used in the music – , sometimes not even clear rhythmic
designs, and its delivery is mainly governed by extra-musical facts – breaks and
intonation respond to syntactic and semantic events of the language, though there is a
loose connection with the music. Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory does not provide

13
This doubling effect is usually achieved in pop music by means of the recording in two different tracks of
the same fragment by the same singer/reciter.

35
means to incorporate the voice within a meaningful musical structure of this song.
Therefore, it will not be taken into account here. This is an important shortcoming in the
analysis of the song, though it could be argued that the analysis can firstly address the
purely musical facts and then try to find possible connections with the text – in fact, this is
what Schenkerian analyses of popular songs usually do.

Much of my above description of the song can be considered as the application of

some Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s rules. Many of the grouping and metrical rules seem to
apply in our perception of the song, even some of them which are marked by the authors
as idiom-specific – this seems reasonable, since popular music shares important features
with Western art tonal music, as it has been mentioned above. Thus, for example, we
perceive a four-beat metre where each beat is in turn divided in two beats because:
“Every attack point must be associated with a beat at the smallest metrical level present
at that point in the piece” (MWFR 1)14 ; “At each metrical level, strong beats are spaced
either two or three beats apart” (MWFR 3); “Where two or more groups or part of groups
can be construed as parallel, they preferably receive parallel metrical structure” (MPR 1);
“Prefer a metrical structure in which beats of level Li that coincide with the inception of
pitch-events are strong beats of Li” (MPR 3); “Prefer a metrically stable bass” (MPR 6);
and “Prefer metrical structures in which at each level every other beat is strong” (MPR
10).

Likewise, clear grouping structure is perceived at bar and two-bar levels. At the bar
level, there are changes in register between bars and not inside the bars (GPR 3a),
besides GPR 5 (“Prefer grouping analyses that most closely approach the ideal
subdivision of groups into two parts of equal length”) and GPR 6 (“Where two or more
segments of the music can be construed as parallel, they preferably form parallel part or
groups”); at the two-bar level, GPR 5 and 6 again operate, and the above mentioned slur
connection (GPR 2a). Intermediate grouping levels do not seem to correspond to obvious
intuitions. Grouping structure is again clear at section levels. The already discussed
changes in vocal timbre and register and additions – or stopping – of melodic and
rhythmic patterns are group boundaries according to GPR 4 (“Where the effects picked
out by GPRs 2 and 3 are relatively more pronounced, a larger-level group boundary may
be placed”), though timbral changes should be added to GPR 3.

However, GWFR 2 (“A piece constitutes a group”), which at first seems to be a

truism since “in European classical music... there is almost invariably a pre-ordained end”
(Van der Merwe 1989: 107), is in fact problematic in this case. The end of the song is
rather a “fortuitous” one, since it could have perfectly well gone on with a new section. In

14
All the rules quoted here are taken from GTTM. They are listed in the “Rule Index”, pages 345-352.

36
fact, the cyclic musical structure of the piece – continuous repetition of two-bar patterns –
does not permit a clear, pre-ordained end. This is usual in popular music, where many
songs finish with a fade-out. Instead of considering the whole song as a piece, it would be
equally possible to construe that the piece is just the two-bar pattern: since Lerdahl and
Jackendoff´s analyses, like Schenker´s ones, do not take into account the repetition
symbols – despite the the fact that the performer rarely plays a repetition exactly in the
same way – we can say that the piece consists of just two bars, which are repeated with
slight variations.

This issue become the more important when dealing with time-span reduction
rules. According to Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory, we have to choose just an event for
every time-span. There is no problem at the bar level: each chord is the head in each bar.
At the two-bar level one chord should be chosen; this would be Eb minor, since this
seems to be the tonic. Then, subsequent time-span reduction would show just the same
event repeated at each level. This does not seem to be a good representation of our
perception since the very important Ab minor chord disappears very soon from the
analysis as a “surface” event. This means that the surface/depth metaphor (and the
reductive practice it supports) isn't very appropriate here.

Something similar happens with the prolongational reduction. It is possible to

interpret the Ab – Eb pattern as a left branching strong prolongation, since there is some
feeling that the “tension” of the first relaxes in the resolution on the second. If these two
bars are considered as the whole piece, then that is right. But what about the four
sections? What about the above mentioned increase in tension in the introduction, which
contains ten two-bar time-spans? On the other hand, if we consider the whole song as the
piece, the introduction would be a left branching weak prolongation of the group that
begins with the appearance of the bass and kit; the problem then is how to interpret the
rest of the song. I can not hear any section as more important than other, and the slight
changes that happen inside the sections are not perceived as indicators of any strict
hierarchical structure, but just as “surface” phenomena that provide some variety to the
music.

Therefore, Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory does not seem to provide a good
model for, at least, this kind of “cyclical” musical structures, which are very common in
popular music and the most common in aural-tradition music cultures – that is, folk
Western music and most non-Western music. It can be argued that if these music cultures
had non-cyclical musical forms, the theory would be applicable to them: Lerdahl and
Jackendoff claim that the non-ocurrence of a phenomenon does not argue against the
universality of the rules, since “to invalidate our claims, it is necessary to demonstrate that

37
our principles of grammar cannot be applied to the idiom to yield analyses that
correspond to the intuitions of experienced listeners” (GTTM: 279). That is possible, but
the fact is that most music in the world is out of the domain covered by Lerdahl and
Jackendoff´s theory – at least, as to intermediate and large-level structure – so it
becomes an untestable hypothesis whose explanatory power does not seem to be very
important in universal terms.

Another important problem is that, as we have seen above, Lerdahl and

Jackendoff´s theory does not provide the means to take into account the voice. In some
way, an analysis which discounts the voice will misinterpret the song's structure, since the
voice is the element which is actually responsible for its large-scale form. In fact, Lerdahl
and Jackendoff´s theory is only capable of dealing with 'purely musical' structure, where
music which may involve words but in which the musical is autonomously responsible for
large scale structure. So, for example, in the analyses of Bach´s chorales featured in
GTTM and in “An Overview of Hierarchical Structure in Music” (Lerdahl and Jackendoff
1983-84), the text is not at all taken into account.

The analyses of “Affirmative Action” suggested here has been carried out
according to those Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s rules claimed to me universal and a few
idiom-specific rules or Western art tonal music which are clearly applicable to this case.
Therefore, I do not think it can be argued against the conclusions exposed here that they
result from applying style-specific rules to other style than the one they were created for.
However, there are still two arguments that could be proposed against this extension of
Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory. First, it could be said that I have chosen something that
is not “music" (i.e. autonomous music) at all, really just an acoustic background for a
poetic performance, so that the expectation that Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory should
reveal a musical structure that simply isn't there is not a reasonable one. This critique can
only be right in the case that one equals music to absolute, autonomous music; but
autonomous music is just a single historically and geographically defined repertoire, so
that the claim of universality for the theory becomes hollow.

Second, it can be argued that this music is music but not good music. This is
possible, but Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory claims to be a theory which describes the
perception of music, and there seems to be no reason to think that the perception of bad
music follows a different process than the perception of good music – and the authors do
not make any statement in this sense.

Finally, three main points can be made about the extension of Lerdahl and
Jackendoff´s theory. First, the metaphor of music being made up of surfaces and depths

38
(on which this theory depends as much as Schenker´s one) is not a universally applicable
one, so that the implicit analogy between it and the universal and cognitively grounded
properties of language is a rather misleading one; second, not all music works in terms of
the tension/relaxation structures that lie at the heart of the theory; and third, the theory
hardly apply to music in which the primary generative parameters are other than pitch and
possibly rhythm (here, primarily the voice).

39
 VII. CONCLUSIONS

Both Schenker´s and Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theories have been developed for
Western art tonal music. Both seek to unveil a “deep structure” of the music which
reduces a whole composition or movement – maybe twenty minutes long – to a few
important “structural” events. This deep structure – the fundamental structure of
Schenker´s background or the normative prolongational structure of Lerdahl and
Jackendoff´s highest prolongational reduction levels – symbolises a clear sense of
directed motion from the beginning to the end of the piece. Therefore, music is strongly
unified and coherent.

We have seen how the attempts to extend Schenker´s theory leave its most
obviously style-specific principles and try to retain the general structural framework of
Schenkerian analyses – the hierarchical, generative, transformation-based structure –
which is often implicitly understood as having some psychological validity. This
assumption is explicitly adopted in Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory – which in this way
can be seen as a Schenker´s extension itself – where it is underwritten by the parallel with
transformational linguistics. The connections of this theory, emphasised by its authors,
with transformational linguistics and with Gestalt psychology, and the belief that
psychology theories have universal validity, leads Lerdahl and Jackendoff to make claims
about the universality of their theory. However, many of what are assumed to be
perceptual or cognitive universals, in fact originate from aesthetic norms tied up with
Western art tonal music.

Schenker´s and Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theories emphasise the fact that music
tells us a story, with its beginning, development and end; a complete story, which does
not need any other source than the music itself to be meaningful. But this kind of
sustained musical flow is not characteristic of all music, but a historical contingency
associated with absolute, autonomous Western “classical” music since the eighteenth
century onwards.

However, even when dealing with this kind of music, there are some problems in
the application of these theories. They focus on harmony and voice-leading at a large
level and consider any other musical parameters of musical form to be secondary or
“surface” events. Now, the deep structure on which they are based is not an obvious
musical event: it must be discovered through analysis, and its effects on the music are not
easily perceivable – except in the case of very short compositions. By contrast, the

40
“secondary” parameters can be much more obvious. Therefore, these theories are the
more useful when the “secondary” parameters of musical form enhance the deep
structure; that is, when, for example, in the classical sonata form “the tonal plan... governs
the disposition of themes and textures, the patterning of loud and soft and high and low,
the pacing of climax and relaxation” (Cook 1994: 89).

But, since the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, simple, coherent
deep structures of this kind are not so easily found. As an example, in his analysis of a
passage from Stravinsky´s Concerto for Piano and Winds, Schenker himself “succeeded
in proving – to his own satisfaction – that Stravinsky´s voice-leading, though it mimics
tonal procedures, fails to create any kind of organic tonal hierarchy: the various
prolongation spans just do not cohere at any level.” (Fink 1999: 114). So, it seems that
even for absolute Western art music, the search for deep structures by means of harmony
and voice-leading is just one of the possible ways to organise large-scale structure. As for
the repertory that Schenker´s and Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theories focus on, the
existence of this kind of organisation of musical structure does not mean that music must
be perceived in a way that emphasises this large-structure. Despite the efforts of analysts
to show these non-obvious connections, most listeners seem to hear music in a way very
much closer to musical surfaces15 : “The view of a Beethoven symphony as a chaotic and
shifting assemblage of surface ‘flows’ – transient, intense energy connections between
‘partial objects’, some in the piece, some in a listening consciousness – ... does capture
the fundamental contingency of musical experience.” (Fink 1999: 137).

Surface events also seem to be more important than deep structures in most
popular music. In rock music, for example, the continuous repetition of a short musical
structure – usually composed of versus and refrain – and the use of very short harmonic
and melodic patterns, guarantees a strong, obvious unity that does not need to be
emphasised by means of any hidden relationships. As we have already seen, the
absence of directed tonal motion in much of this music makes problematic the application
of Schenker´s theory. Modified Schenkerian theory and Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theory
still develop hierarchical models based on harmony and voice-leading and they also focus
on musical parameters which for popular music could in fact be considered as
“secondary”: when the music repeats the same harmonic and/or melodic patterns over
and over again, the “surface” parameters become the more important. Thus, it can be
said that these kind of analyses, and the aesthetic evaluation they imply, “leaves
untouched those very factors where rock can be seen at its most interesting (and complex
and profound): timbre, textures, sound manipulation, performance practice etc.” (Moore
1993: 18).

15
This argument is widely developed in Cook 1992.

41
 Popular music has frequently been despised by Western theorists because of its
“too” obvious unity and coherence, which is achieved by means of incessant repetition.
The same can be said about most Western folk music and non-Western music, where
“cyclical” forms are widespread16 . But in these musical cultures, the aesthetic value
probably does not lie in the unfolding of a “musical” story from the beginning to the end;
rather, the pleasures people obtain from listening to music lie in the slight but important
variations performers make on the basic patterns. The limits on the universality of such
theories based on the characteristics of Western art music as Schenker's and Lerdahl and
Jackendoff's, then, are fundamentally those imposed by the model of the unified and
coherent narrative.

However, maybe this is not even the most important point. Music is not always
meant just to be listened to. Our Western art tonal music is the product of a music culture
which approach music aesthetically – that is, which “interpret it in terms of a specific
interest in sound and its perceptual experience” (Cook 1992: 7); and this is a “distinctly
restrictive approach to music” which “leads to an unbalanced interpretation... of ritual,
religious, and easy-listening music – all of which are intended not so much to be listened
to, as to be experienced within a larger social context from which they derive much of
their significance. Again, it finds little use for a great deal of Renaissance and baroque
music, whose interest lies in the plying rather than the listening. And it is not even
adequate as an approach to twentieth-century art music... while a work such as this [one
of Stravinsky´s serial compositions] can be experienced simply as a succession of
sounds, it is evident that the composer´s aesthetic attention was directed as much to the
imaginary musical object delineated by the sounds as to the sounds themselves. It may
be impossible for the listener to grasp this musical object without an analytical reading of
the score.” (Idem: 8).

Thus, music fulfils several different functions, and the function of “aesthetic
enjoyment” is just one of the possible ones17 . It seems that our evaluation of music is
related to how well it serves particular functions: “many of the arguments concerning the
relative merits of different musics can be resolved into arguments concerning the relative
merits of different functions, which thus becomes an ethical rather than an explicitly
musical issue.18 ” (Moore 1993: 27).

16
This issue has been discussed in the previous chapter.
17
Alan Merriam proposes ten categories of function of music in Merriam 1964: 217-218.
18
Simon Frith develops a similar argument in Frith 1998.

42
 Therefore, the idea of unity and coherence achieved by purely musical – audible –
means which lies at the core of Schenker´s and Lerdahl and Jackendoff´s theories, is
strongly cultural-specific, and the translation of this idea to other musical cultures creates
the risk of neglecting more important features of their music.

Málaga, 28 August 1999

Cristóbal L. García Gallardo

43
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