Music 10400
Introduction to
Music Analysis
and Criticism

Lawrence Zbikowski
University of Chicago
Department of Music
Autumn Quarter 2004
MW, 1:30—2:50
Goodspeed Hall 402

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This course is an introduction to the analysis and criticism of music. The course is unique in that its primary ‘texts’ are musical recordings. An exploration of the works represented on these recordings will be the basis for the discussion and writing undertaken in the class. We’ll also use the recordings to gain insight into topics like the use of words to describe music, the strategies composers use to shape musical works, the conditions of musical performance, interactions between music and text, and the relationship between music and ideology.

Kevin McKenna [e-mail: kmckenna]
Office hours: Wednesday, 3:00-4:00 in Goodspeed 202

Our exploration of the analysis and criticism of music began on 9/26 with an introduction to the class and to the perspective on music it aims to develop. I remarked that one of the challenging things about the class was developing a style of listening against which numerous forces in our culture conspire. It is a tired truism that we are, in these modern times, saturated with music, but I am not convinced that this is really a significant problem: music admits of many different uses (as it always has), and the notion that there is a "proper" way to regard music is one that should be viewed with skepticism. The real difficulty is that well-crafted music hides its complexity in its accomplishment, and that to get any sense of how it is well-crafted or why musicians (and others) labored over it requires holding some of our usual listening habits in suspension and developing other habits aimed at getting music to give up at least a few of its secrets.

As an example of some of ways to cultivate these new habits I offered for our consideration an aria from Henry Purcell's 1689 opera Dido and Aeneas. The aria, known most commonly as Dido's Lament, brings the opera to a close (notwithstanding the following Chorus of Cupids), and is constructed over a repeated, chromatically-descending bass pattern that was known in the 17^th century as a lamento bass. But before we looked at this bass or the aria in any detail we considered why Dido was singing a lament, to whom she was singing it, and the complex range of emotions Purcell meant to evoke. When we then gave the music a close inspection we saw that it was sending some subtly mixed messages: Dido was, at one and the same time, acceding to the necessity of her death and fighting against it, as her upward gestures and lapped entrances against the bass pattern proved. Close listening, then, revealed a bit of how Purcell worked his magic and also the more profound messages of which music was capable. And that, in short, is the topic of this course.

We got down to business on 9/28 with small-group work on a list of terms, including major, minor, key, scale, interval, arpeggio, chord, harmony, piano, forte, concerto, and dodecahedron. (I didn't say they were all musical terms. . .) Each group defined the terms as best as they were able, and we then gathered as a class to discuss the results. One thing that emerged was that many of these terms are interrelated (chord and arpeggio, for instance), that each belies a certain perspective on music (save for dodecahedron), and that there is consequently much to learn about how and why such terms are used. From here we commenced with a discussion of the assigned reading from Christopher Small's Musicking, focusing in particular on questions related to Small's basic project and how he hoped to go about realizing it. The main goal here was to introduce additional complications into how we think about music (adding in particular the social and cultural dimensions), and so to broaden even more the range of questions we would ask about (or perhaps ask of) music.

In the latter portion of class we narrowed scope considerably and worked through some of the details of the first movement of Concerto no. 2 (in C major) from those Antonio Vivaldi presented to Emperor Charles VI (also known as Track 1 on the English Concert CD). This not only provided an introduction to the concerto as a genre but also to a style of listening that can, on occasion, prove useful: attending very closely indeed to the events that unfold in a piece of music, and objectifying these through timings and descriptions. As we shall soon find, this is not the only way one should listen to music, and yet it reveals interesting things about pieces and about habits of listening: what was a formless wash starts to emerge as differentiated by important events, events which serve as a precondition for a kind of discourse distinct from that of language.

Assigned material

On 10/3 we received a visit from David Douglass, who plays violin with the Newberry Consort, one of the resident ensembles in the Department of Music. David spoke on a range of subjects, including historical performance practice (once aimed at "authenticity," now focused on revivfying music of the past), performance style on the violin (which developed over the course of the 17^th century), improvisation (which relies on inspiration guided by various formulae, including a ground bass of the sort we saw in Dido's Lament), and musical expressivity.

In the latter portion of class we turned to Jerome Kern's “The Way You Look Tonight,” which first appeared in the movie-musical Swing Time, featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. After expressive readings of the words for the song by random members of the class and a bit of poetic analysis we viewed a clip from the movie with the objects of (a) watching Astaire sing and Rogers shampoo her hair but also (b) figuring out how Kern shaped the music to the words. The initial answer was pretty straightforward: the song, as are the words, is in an AABA form (also known as song form). We then looked more closely at the structure of the song, with special attention to a repeating harmonic pattern that is prominent in the tune (what jazz players would call a I-vi-ii-V progression—in this case, F-G^m7-D^m7-C⁷) and the privileged relationship between tonic and dominant (that is, I and V). By this means we got a bit closer to understanding the notion of musical form, and the role harmonies can play in defining that form, both of which have relevance for the Vivaldi concerti that are our main focus during these weeks.

The erstwhile Kevin McKenna took over the first portion of class on 10/5, providing an overview of performance venues during the early 18^th century and the genres associated with these. This provided a way to link the work of Vivaldi with that of J.S. Bach (looking ahead to next week), and in particular to Bach's unique contributions to the world of music. In the second portion of class I returned to the topics of harmony and form, went over “The Way You Look Tonight” in just a bit more detail, and then connected our ideas about harmonic form with the second movement of concerto no. 7 from our collection: in this movement Vivaldi barely sketches in the melody, a melody that Andrew Manze, in his performance, fleshes out considerably, achieving the kind of embellished surface that Vivaldi actually notated in the slow movement of concerto no. 11. I further illustrated the contrast between tonic and dominant by playing portions of Fernando Sor's op. 9 variations, and gave an example of dynamic process in music through the opening of Sor's A major etude in thirds (which describes a marvelous arch-like shape).

I also went over, in fairly short order, some of the main things that we've learned to concentrate on in our listening thus far, including relationships between harmony and melody, structural events (like the contrast between tutti and solo in the concerti, or the arrival points associated with the return of the ritornello), contrasts between major and minor keys, rhythmic character (especially noticeable in the contrast between fast and slow movements), texture (the comparative thinness of the solo parts compared with the sonic mass of the tutti), dynamics (which, to some extent, are related to texture but are also independent of it), and the overall dynamic process described by the music.

Assigned material

After our first listening exercise, on 10/10, we considered connections between Vivaldi and J.S. Bach: Vivaldi's op. 3 L'estro armonico concertos, for instance, were not only broadly influential during the first half of the 18^th century but were of more than passing interest to Bach, who transcribed five from the op. 3 set for keyboard. Our interest, however, was more specifically in Bach as a composer for the church. The Bach biographer Christoph Wolff, has proposed that it was in fact Bach's interest in writing, on a regular basis, music for religious services at Weimar starting around 1714 that marked a change in how he viewed himself. In undertaking this challenge he moved from being a straightforward musician to becoming a composer. With this in mind, as well as some of the specifics of the court chapel at Weimar, we glanced at portions of the manuscript for the cantata "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland" (BWV 61, in Bach's own hand). The work was written for performance on December 2, 1714, and bore evidence not only of the slightly messy side of musical composition but also of some of the practical concerns that Bach kept in mind when composing.

I also discussed, briefly, the text painting that Bach makes use of in the fourth movement of BWV 61, where he sets the words "und klopfe an" ["and knock"] so as to evoke the act of knocking. This text painting is in fact connected with a larger process that he explores in this movement, in which the music moves from a dissonant, static state in the opening bars to a consonant and forward-moving one. This motion reflects the notion of redemption implicit in the text (from Revelations), a notion that requires a similar sort of transformation on the part of the sinner.

In the course of class we also discussed the introductory chapter of Edward Rothstein's Emblems of Mind, which not only explored relationships between mathematics and music (relationships which also fascinated Bach), but also made a strong argument for the importance of metaphor in our descriptions of both domains. This topic is one we shall return to again—for the time being it cast our descriptions of music in a somewhat different light, suggesting that the presence of metaphor in these descriptions was not simply accidental but in fact necessary.

I began, on 10/12, by reviewing Monday's listening exercise, the better to emphasize the importance of metaphor in musical descriptions. This importance is not simply that metaphor should be there—again, this appears to be inevitable—but that we need to explore the musical basis for our metaphorical descriptions. In doing so we will come to a better understanding of the means through which music makes its points.

In the course of class I also reviewed basic aspects of Bach's biography (since these got short shrift in the previous class), and then explored the Italian operatic style that Bach sought (in part) to emulate through an aria from Allesandro Scarlatti's opera Griselda. The important point here is the centrality of musical processes to the rendering of the text: it is through such processes that we come to understand Griselda's defiance of Ottone, a defiance only hinted at in the words she sings.

Another important topic was the contrast between polyphony and homophony. I illustrated the former with a short bourreé that Bach wrote for lute (but which guitarists love to steal), and the latter through the chorale (from the eponymous cantata) "Was frag’ ich nach der Welt." Bach's chorale, while largely homophonic, also bore evidence of polyphonic thinking (especially in his moving bass line), and I emphasized that, rather than being mutually-exclusive compositional strategies, polyphony and homophony were closer to points along a continuum. At one end (the polyphonic end) voices are markedly independent from one another, even as they realize a larger harmony. At the other end (the homophonic end) the independence of the voices is attenuated, but to the extent that we still hear voices (in all their plurality) there is something of the independence that marks polyphony.

Assigned material

Class on 10/17 (a Larry-less day) began with a reminder of the fluid influences between secular court-sponsored opera and sacred music as we listened to a piece from the early 18^th Century Ursulines Convent Manuscript of New Orleans (back in the good ol’ days when the city really was one of the great musical centers of the New World). The piece we heard was originally found in the opera Atys by Lully, but was given a new set of words for the nuns to sing that exalted a fairly militaristic God. Later in the class, we noted how the large-scale musical structure of Bach’s cantatas were modeled directly off opera (though more of an Italianate design), especially in the alternating pattern of “recitatives” that progress the drama, and “arias” that provide a place for stopping and reflecting upon the affectual quality present at that point in the “narrative.” The musical settings of the arias are exquisitely tailored to the text; recall how amateurish the horn player sounded on the recording of Cantata BWV 77 that we heard, but how appropriate it then sounds for Bach to write out of an instrument’s normal and comfortable range when the text is reflecting upon the imperfections inherent in being human.

To really get a sense of the narrative in Bach’s cantatas, we looked at the texts and saw how the recitatives do articulate some kind of action, even if it seems as simple as opening a door, or the coming forth of the Savior. The musical language of the recitatives is no less important than that of the arias, even while having a much more speech-like declamation and more limited accompaniment. We noted how the harmonic motion of the penultimate movement of BWV 62 moves from the opening major mode to a minor mode at the end; that minor mode is the same key (B minor) in which the cantata begins and ends. Although the symmetry in the large-scale design of Bach’s cantatas does not always take this nice and tidy form, there is always an adherence to a design in the cantatas that provides a musical drama that supports and enhances the textual narrative. The “process” inherent in experiencing the drama and narrative of all of the combined movements of the cantata is directly related to the Lutheran emphasis on experiential faith processes; faith was a lifelong process, as we saw from Bach’s late exercises in counterpoint.

We can note examples of processes on many levels of our discussion: from the smallest level of the ritornello and solo alternations in a specific movement, to the harmonic motion of a movement within immediately surrounding movements, to the (musical and textual) narrative of an entire cantata, to an entire year’s cycle of cantatas, to an entire life, to the forces governing the entirety of the cosmos. If it seems presumptuous to liken a brief musical passage as simple as B-A-C-H to all of creation, we must recall that this was simply how the hierarchical connections of the universe were perceived in the 18^th century. The comparison to Newton is a particularly fruitful one, especially in the notion of systematization that both Bach and Newton cultivated.

During the first part of class on 10/19 we worked in small groups, exploring Bach's text setting in the fifth movement of cantata BWV 62. In particular, we considered the musical resources Bach used, significant relationships between text and music (such as pausing on a word of the text, or setting it in a striking way), and how the given text fit within the liturgy as a whole. From here we went to the first movement of a cantata not included on our recordings—the Christmas cantata "Christen, ätzet diesen Tag" (BWV 63)—and explored in some detail how Bach presented liturgical ideas through the music. One intriguing aspect of this presentation was Bach's setting of the text "Denn der Strahl" ["for the rays of light"], which had the voices of the choir leaping over one another in cascading entries. By this means Bach not only portrayed the abundance of the light (brought by the Christ child) but also the excitement and tumult associated with its arrival.

In the latter portion of class I took up the matter of the relationship between Bach's religious music and his instrumental music. Although we frequently consider one and not the other (with a special emphasis on the instrumental music), there is ample evidence that for Bach the distinctions between the two were not hard and fast. Of course, the majority of the religious music is also vocal music, but within this music we can see the same intellect that is behind the instrumental music. I illustrated this point by noting that the cantata "Wer da gläubet und getauft wird" (BWV 37, from 1724) encompasses 283 measures, which is the exact same number yielded by translation of the title for the cantata into numbers (where a=1, b=2, and so on through the 24 letters of the German alphabet). In a different, although still numerological, vein, Bach's Goldberg Variations consists of 30 variations grouped in ten groups of three. The third of each of these groups is a canon; the first canon is at the interval of the unison, the second at the interval of a second, and so on through the last canon (in variation 30) at the interval of a tenth. A superficial comparison, perhaps, but the main point was that Bach was comfortable with this sort of play in both cases, suggesting that "music" was an activity that could take many forms as could, for that matter, professions of faith.

Assigned material

Béla Bartók the musician; the string quartet in the 20th century; listening to musical structure and musical form. A visit from the Pacifica String Quartet. Repertoire: the Bartók string quartets.
Listening exercise #2.

We were treated, on 10/24, to a visit from the Pacifica Quartet, another of the Department of Music's resident ensembles. The quartet discussed a wide range of topics, including what it means to be in a string quartet, how they rehearse, and what they look for in repertoire. With regard to the latter they brought out some of the special features of the Bartók 4^th quartet, including special techniques it requires (for instance, the "Bartók pizz," a note that is plucked [played pizzicato] such that it resounds against the fingerboard with a bit of a slap), folk influences in the music, aspects of its rhythmic organization (which often belied the influence of the native Hungarian music that intrigued Bartók), and the large-scale structure of the work. Their illustration of this last aspect was particularly telling, for although their program notes mentioned relationships that obtained between the first and last movement, it takes a very strong ear to hear those relationships across the time span of the quartet as it is performed. In their visit the Pacifica was able to play excerpts that put one theme from the first movement right up against its reappearance in the fifth movement. This demonstration pointed to the importance of the identity of musical materials across the span of compositions like the 4^th quartet: beginning in the later 18^th century composers started to organize their instrumental compositions with this sort of identity in mind, which gave them the opportunity to create compositions that defined their form as they unfolded.

Heady stuff, this, but as I noted after we bid the Pacifica goodbye, with the Bartók we had moved aggressively into the domain of musical modernism, which assumed that each composition would be markedly different from the previous composition. We concluded class with our second listening exercise, which returned us to Bach and his cantatas (also engaged by the writing assignment due Wednesday).

We began, on 10/26, where we left off on Monday, with the listening exercise on the Bach cantatas, an exercise which brought to the fore a number of interesting issues. One was the relationship between the resources used to portray amorous situations and those used to summon particular spiritual states. Although such a relationship strikes us as odd today, in Bach's time it was not a highly fraught one: the soul could easily be understood as the bride of Christ. I also noted the important relationship between recitative and aria within the operatic tradition that Bach drew on, and the way (in BWV 36) he re-interpreted the text "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland" through the use of a soprano and mezzo-soprano rather than a choir (as in BWV 61 and 62). Finally, I turned to the strong rhythmic drive that opened cantata BWV 36, and proposed that this was best heard in terms of a kind of physical enactment: bringing music to life through performance was simply a given in Bach's time, and the engagement of the body with such performances was, if not emphasized, at least not exceptional.

This perspective led us to Agustín Barrios's Vals op. 8 no. 4, a concert waltz that embodied much of rhythmic framework of the ballroom dance. The notion of dance in turn raised other issues, among them the relationship between rhythm (as the flow of music through time) and meter (as the "measuring" of music through successions of strong and weak beats), and the connection between metered music and the sort of periodic physical motions that are basic to most higher organisms (enabling us to do things like walk and run). From Barrios's waltz we moved to the first movement of Richard Rodney Bennett's Impromptus, which not only lacked the periodic rhythms of the dance but also the sense of tonal organization that made Barrios's music easily comprehensible. What Bennett's piece did provide was an example of highly expressive music of a sort common in the twentieth century. And from the Bennett we moved to Lennox Berkeley's Theme and Variations, focusing most of our attention on a theme which offered some of the rhythmic regularity and regular formal structure typical of an AABA song form, but which still used a much more expressive musical language.

All of this was a prelude to further discussion of the Bartók string quartets, which we shall turn to in earnest next week, as well as to the larger topic of music in the twentieth century.

Assigned material

Instrumental music in the 20th century; the notion of absolute music, and discussion of the value of classical music; introduction to 18th-century opera. Repertoire: the Bartók string quartets.

Our discussion on Hallowe'en was wide ranging, taking as its point of departure the title of the first of our readings for today, Cook's "An imaginary object" (the fourth chapter of his Music from the Oxford "Very Short Introduction" series). We began with the seemingly contradictory "imaginary object" and explored what it means to "imagine" something (which I argued should be seen as a cognitive process that draws on various modes of perception and proprioception, and is thus not limited to the visual). This led, ultimately, to recognition of the curious position occupied by music: a cultural product that seems to be, in some sense, "out there" (such that we can talk about musical "pieces" and musical "works"), but that must be breathed into life through performance (a contingency that argues for the primarily cognitive—or imaginary—status of the 'musical object'). One factor that mitigates against the apparent ephemerality of music is the possibility of "preserving" music through notation, but as Cook points out this sort of enregisterment must be viewed in practical terms: notation has to be, at some level, interpreted before performance can occur. Nonetheless, the concreteness of notation was something viewed with skepticism by some writers during the 19^th century for it went against the notion that music—or at least absolute music—was a pure expression of the spirit. (In this connection, see Lydia Goehr's The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998].)

It might be argued, superficially, that a similar sort of perspective (music as the highest form of philosophy) was behind Julian Johnson's argument in Who Needs Classical Music? (or at least the "Understanding Music" chapter that we read), for Johnson wishes to argue that understanding music is a profound activity. Like all profound activities, it requires work: listening passively, for pure pleasure, without some sort of introspection is, for Johnson, not how one understands music. We had a lively discussion about this perspective, not the least because it was not easy to delimit what counted as knowledge about music (a delimitation that would seem to be key to understanding the stuff). Is it the case that knowledge about popular music can never rise to the level of knowledge about "classical" music? Is understanding as an intellectual activity the only kind of understanding possible, or can we imagine other sorts of understanding (appropriate for other forms of knowledge)? And could these other forms of knowledge combine immediacy with contextual depth (a combination that seems precluded by Johnson's approach)?

The discussion of these issues absorbed a fair amount of our class time, such that poor Bartók once again got short shrift. I did, however, prepare discussion of the scherzo from the 5^th quartet by noting that this kind of movement—inherited (or borrowed) from Franz Joseph Haydn's quartets—typically had an ABA structure, with the middle section contrasting not only in mood but also to some extent in texture. (In the Minuet and Trio movements of the 18^th century—retitled scherzos by Haydn and others—the Trio is typically just another minuet, but making use of reduced musical forces and offering contrasting musical material.)

Assigned material

On 11/9 we spent a good deal of time with some close listening to Mozart’s music, and we tried to discover just how the music might be used to elaborate and contribute to our perceptions of the characters and their relationships with each other. However, the musical language that Mozart uses depends heavily on conventions of the time (specifically, Vienna of the 1780s), so we first discussed a bit more background of Italian opera. Opera seria, remember, was the “serious” opera of the time, dealing with characters of an upper-class literary register and their often tragic problems. Opera buffa, meanwhile, used lower-class characters in lighter or more comedic situations; one of those characters is the “buffa” himself, usually a bass, that rattles along pompously in rapid declamation. (We also touched briefly on the “Reform operas” of the 1750s-1770s, best exemplified by C.W. Gluck, that integrated the overture into the rest of the opera, and generally tried to present large-scale unity throughout the opera.) True to his efforts at “synthesis,” Mozart created an opera in Don Giovanni that largely defies simple classification in either of the two broad categories; the music is certainly light and comedic in many ways, yet the situations themselves are often jarringly serious behind that music. Donna Anna’s musical language when she returns on stage in Act One with Don Ottavio reveals an angry yet firm character, and although Don Ottavio tries to use her moments of grief to bring her around to his own perspective (whatever that might be), she quite clearly shakes off his musical meandering and instead brings Don Ottavio around to a minor-mode pledge of vengeance. Although she is certainly emotionally invested in the situation as it has unfolded, she is still resolute in her feelings when she returns with the aria “Or sai chi l’onore;” Don Ottavio’s subsequent aria, “Dalla sua pace,” uses a quite different musical setting, one that seems to avoid clear and decisive closing to his thoughts.

When we moved to the lower class characters, especially Zerlina and Masetto, we noted some very different musical characteristics. The music seemed much more evocative of dance-rhythms (much more “oom-pah” than what we heard from the nobles), and the melodies themselves, especially by Zerlina, are much more step-wise (and easier to hum along with!) than the often angular melodies of Donna Anna and Donna Elvira. The duet between Don Giovanni and Zerlina (“Là ci darem la mano”) was clearly part of this “lower class” music, yet Don Giovanni is obviously a nobleman; what’s he doing? Mozart gives Don Giovanni a remarkable aptitude in appropriating the music of those around him, including the melody of Donna Anna after he kills her father, and the peasant style of Zerlina, who can’t help but be affectually moved by his singing. The song-within-a-song technique exhibited in their duet is only one way in which music manifests itself as self-referential in this opera. Recall, for example, the three orchestras on stage at the party during the finale of Act One, and the three melodies that appear in the finale of Act Two. Don Giovanni’s unfortunate habit of calling to “strike up the band” (to say nothing of his questionable taste in inviting mysterious dinner guests) does seem to immediately precede significant and climactic events. With that in mind, we closed class ready to strike up the DVD player on Sunday, with some preparatory thoughts regarding how we, as imaginary stage directors, might choose to stage this opera. Presumably, this was meant to be set in a previous historical era even in Mozart’s day; how should we stage this? And how do we use our analysis of the musical language to represent the interactions between characters?

Assigned material

Assigned material

The art song in the 19th century; Franz Schubert the musician; the origins of the song cycle. Repertoire: Schubert, Winterreise.
Listening exercise #4.

Class on 11/21 began with a listening exercise through which M. McKenna explored aspects of Don Giovanni (and even a little Marriage of Figaro). We then turned to the Lied—that is, the art song as it was developed in 19^th-century Germany—and one of its greatest exponents, Franz Schubert. We started, however, with Goethe's poem "Erlkönig" ("Erlking," which is sometimes rendered "The Elf King"). After reviewing the basic plot of the poem and its dramatis personae (the father, the child, and the Erlking) we listened to and then discussed Schubert's setting. What was immediately evident was the way Schubert breathed life of a very particular sort into Goethe's poem, creating a dramatic situation and narrative trajectory that complemented Goethe's art.

I sketched a few of the biographical details of Schubert's short life (noting, along the way, his prodigious output, which included, among many other major compositions, 600 songs), observing that he composed his "Erlkönig" when he was but 18. Rather sobering for all of us. It also suggested that Schubert had access to an understanding of emotional and psychological situations available to but few. It is this understanding that is in full display in his Winterreise (1827), an observation that brought us to the very first song of the cycle, "Gute Nacht." Although we had only a few moments to discuss it, here too we could see how Schubert's music shaped the work of another poet: Wilhelm Müller, who provided the text for both of the song cycles Schubert completed during his lifetime (the other being Die schöne Müllerin of 1823-24).

Music and poetry; the discourse of Winterreise. Repertoire: Schubert, Winterreise.
Listening exercise #5.

Assigned material

Policies:

Late assignments are not accepted for grade.

Grades

The final grade will be determined on the basis of the following distribution:

Listening exercises (five total)	30%
Papers (four total)	60%
Participation in classroom work	10%
Total	100%