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<font face="Calibri">Ildar,<br>
<br>
I did not quite follow. Do you mean that Schenker is too stupid
for Wikipedia, or Wikipedia too stupid for Schenker?<br>
<br>
Schenker writes (<i>Harmonielehre</i>, p. 281): <i>In der
praktischen Kunst kommt es im allgemein darauf an, den Begriff
der Harmonien durch lebendigen Inhalt zu realisiren</i>, which
means: "in [music], it comes down in general to realize [to make
real] the concept of the harmonies through a live content". (E.
Mann's translation, <i>Harmony</i>, p. 211, reads</font><font
face="Calibri"> "the main problem is how to realize the concept of
harmony in a live content", which although not really incorrect,
seems to me slightly biased). Schenker</font><font face="Calibri">
further writes that the abstract concept of a triad "reaches but
the function of a provisionally merely sketched proposition", ...<i>allein
bloss etwa die Wirkung einer zunächst nur skizzierten Behauptung
erreicht </i>("would have the effect of an assertion merely
sketched for the time being", in E. Mann's translation)<i>.</i><br>
This idea is much in line with contemporary ideas of Husserl
or Saussure, about thoughts remaining chaotic (Saussure: "a
shapeless and indistinct mass") before they have been uttered.
Harmonies, Schenker believes, are at first ideal, shapeless,
abstract entities; they must be uttered, if only in a mental
process leading from an abstract <i>Harmoniebegriff </i>to a
sound-image of it, much as thoughts are turned into sound-images
of concepts, in Saussurean linguistics. Schenker's ideas on this
are by no means anachronistic; on the contrary, they are
extraordinarily modern.<br>
I can agree with you that a chord has no reality outside time;
but is that not exactly what Schenker says, namely that a <i>Harmoniebegriff
</i>is at firs but ideal and that it must be musically 'realized'
- that is, inscribed in time, in order to transform the concept,
the <i>Begriff</i>, into a 'real', musical chord?<br>
As to Y–X–Y as a "model of prolongation", I can only repeat
that this would form an excessively superficial view of the
process. There is only one "Y", that which is prolonged; the
prolongation does not consist in splitting Y in two in order to
insert X between the two parts, but in letting Y grow. "X", if
any, fully belongs to Y, of which it is an organic outgrowth.<br>
<br>
Schenker's thought is not an easy one; it certainly never is
"naive".<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Nicolas<br>
<br>
</font>Nicolas Meeùs<br>
Université Paris-Sorbonne<br>
<font face="Calibri"><br>
</font><br>
Le 16/07/2011 10:21, Ildar Khannanov a écrit :
<blockquote
cite="mid:1310804483.91918.YahooMailClassic@web45011.mail.sp1.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
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<div><br>
Dear Nicolas and Dmitri,</div>
<div> </div>
<div>yes, indeed, there are philosophical problems with
prolongation.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>"What is given is Y, at first a mere abstraction of a
chord, a mere image of the series of harmonic partials.
In order to become a musical chord, Y must be inscribed
it time, "prolonged", which may be done by a mere
arpeggiation – producing no subordinate chord. "</div>
<div> </div>
<div>This statement is problematic, as well. So, Schenker
perceived a chord as something outside time and, of
course, in order to be present in time, the chord had to
be "prolonged," that is, to be inserted into a
preexistent physical timeline. This understanding of
time is so naive that it renders all the following
system irrelevant. It is unforgivable for a person who
lived in Europe in the first third of the 20th century
and could read literature in German to have such a
skewed and anachronistic understanding of time.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Musical time does not exist outside the chord. The
chord is an entity which constitutes musical time. If
one keeps banging on a tonic triad, musical time does
not occur. The quality of the chord may initiate the
temporal process. However, simple arpeggiation is too
weak of an impulse to create a large-scale temporal
process. That is why rock musicians grow old and still
cannot produce anything larger than a tunelet.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>As for Y-X-Y as a model for prolongation, the first Y
is never the same as the last Y. It has been described
by Hegel and supported by a consellation of
philosophers. So, truly, prolongation should be taken
back to the old drawing board. It is not ready for
posting at Wikipedia.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Best,</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Ildar Khannanov</div>
<div>Peabody Conservatory</div>
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:solfeggio7@yahoo.com">solfeggio7@yahoo.com</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div><br>
--- On <b>Fri, 7/15/11, Nicolas Meeùs <i><a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:nicolas.meeus@paris-sorbonne.fr"><nicolas.meeus@paris-sorbonne.fr></a></i></b>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16,
255); padding-left: 5px; margin-left: 5px;"><br>
From: Nicolas Meeùs
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:nicolas.meeus@paris-sorbonne.fr"><nicolas.meeus@paris-sorbonne.fr></a><br>
Subject: Re: [Smt-talk] Music theory on Wikipedia<br>
To: "Dmitri Tymoczko" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:dmitri@princeton.edu"><dmitri@princeton.edu></a><br>
Cc: "SMT Talk" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:smt-talk@societymusictheory.org"><smt-talk@societymusictheory.org></a><br>
Date: Friday, July 15, 2011, 4:46 PM<br>
<br>
<div id="yiv773869424">Le 15/07/2011 19:26, Dmitri
Tymoczko a écrit :
<blockquote type="cite">I've always thought that the
notion of "prolongation" is freighted with really
serious philosophical complications. Anyone who
could remove these complications, and come up with a
non-circular definition of "prolongation," would be
doing the field a great service ...<br>
</blockquote>
I think that Schenker's own notion of "prolongation"
is without much problem in Schenker's own terms –
which must be read in the original German.<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>I've actually been thinking about this issue off and on for years. My current best guess is that "prolongation" is an intentional, rather than a grammatical concept: to say "X prolongs Y" is (roughly speaking) to make an intentional claim about how the composer used X as a means of getting to (or doing) Y. This contrasts with the formal or grammatical or descriptive concepts (e.g. "V7 chord") familiar from other regions of musical discourse.
</pre>
</blockquote>
To say that "X prolongs Y" fully contradicts
Schenker's own description, in that is presupposes, as
you say, that X preexists as "a means of getting to
(or doing) Y". What is given is Y, at first a mere
abstraction of a chord, a mere image of the series of
harmonic partials. In order to become a musical chord,
Y must be inscribed it time, "prolonged", which may be
done by a mere arpeggiation – producing no subordinate
chord. The prolongation, however, may involve filling
in the "tonal space" (the empty intervals) of the
initial chord and this, is special cases, may happen
to produce a subordinate chord X. This X by no means
is "doing Y"; it merely is a by-product of Y itself.<br>
I think that Roland Barthes' description of the
construction of discourses proposes something similar,
which I didn't reread recently enough to remind his
own terms. A discourse is a succession of nodes, each
of which may receive an ornamentation (I think his
term is <i>catalyse</i>)<i> </i>which certainly
smooths the succession and which possibly gives rise
to secundary nodes. This also has to do with how a
discourse can develop from a deep structure, in
Shomsky's terms.<br>
Schenker's conception of the "tonal space" is
developed in a text titled <i>Erläuterungen</i>, that
he published twice in the last volumes of <i>Der
Tonwille</i> and twice in the two first ones <i>Das
Meisterwerk in der Musik –</i> this fourfold
publication might suffice to stress how important this
short text was for him.<br>
<br>
Prolongation indeed is intentional – not in the sense
that the composer used X as a means to doing Y, but
that Y served as a means to produce X. This is the
intentionality of the work itself, not necessarily of
the composer. And, obviously, Schenkerian analysis has
nothing in common with a mere descriptive labeling of
chords with roman numerals. I am not sure that this
can be viewed in terms of intentionality <i>vs </i>grammaticality,
as you suggest. Roman numeral analysis is lexical at
best, and has little to say about grammar; I do not
see how a grammar could be conceived without a level
of intentionality.<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Interestingly, my digression couldn't be included in a Wikipedia article, since it hasn't been published anywhere. (Wikipedia has strict standards about avoiding "original" or "unpublished" research.) But nor could Wikipedia include a simple, uncontroversial summary of what "prolongation" means, because we in the field don't really agree about the issue at all. So about the best you could hope for is a survey of the various proposals that have been made, one that gets updated as the discussion proceeds.
</pre>
</blockquote>
Well, I would be tempted to consider that proposals
based on Schenker's own writings should gain
preeminence, at least in articles devoted to
Schenkerian concepts (prolongation, as a concept, may
have an existence as a non-Schenkerian, or
post-Schenkerian, or neo-Schenkerian concept, but that
is not my concern here).<br>
<br>
Yours,<br>
Nicolas Meeùs<br>
Université Paris-Sorbonne<br>
</div>
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