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<TITLE>Re: [Smt-talk] Music theory on Wikipedia</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>I’ve been following the argument over how to define “prolongation” on Wikipedia with some interest. Some of you may know I authored an article in the Journal of Music Theory 17 years ago called “Schoenberg on Ornamentation and Structural Levels.” (Volume 38/2) One of the main purposes of the article was to compare and contrast Schenkerian and Schoenbergian notions of structural levels (Yes, indeed, Schoenberg DID have a notion of structural levels, though he claimed that what constitutes the levels changes as history progresses).<BR>
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>From what I discovered while researching that article, it seems to me that Y-X-Y represents better Schoenberg’s notion of ornamentation as he discusses it in the Harmonielehre, particularly the infamous chapter on non-harmonic tones. X has all the same characteristics as Y, it’s a capital letter too, so that it could conceivably exist all by itself--X!-- or even take on ornaments of its own, X-Z-X. Likewise, dissonant intervals created by passing tones, neighbors, etc. are intervals in their own right, though they reside higher up on the harmonic series, and a progressive composer ought to think about “emancipating” them or even giving them their own ornaments, even though Bach and Mozart didn’t.<BR>
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Schenker’s viewpoint, which I understood through his response to Schoenberg, “The Dissonance is Always a Passing Occurrence, It is Never a Chord,” part of “Resumption of Urlinie Considerations” in Meisterwerk Vol. 2, and through his comments on the passing tone in second species in Counterpoint, was something different. To him, the sensitive listener shouldn’t understand dissonances as intervals with the bass at the level they are created—they have no vertical existence at all, only a horizontal one. Sure, at lower levels they can be harmonized and grow their own diminutions, but at the level they appear they do NOT have the status of intervals or chords. In other words, Schenker seems to be challenging us as listeners to take a music-cognitive step—to hear through the dissonant interval as if the consonant one that preceded it was still there. This is how I understand “prolongation”--a mental process of holding on to the consonance through the dissonance. My late colleague Steve Larson used to demonstrate this in his Schenker classes by singing the prolonged notes as he played musical examples. And I’ve incorporated this viewpoint into my Schenker teaching too with some success—whenever my students stem or beam a note and draw slurs from it, I ask them to find the consonant bass note and chord that supports it, then draw a box around the notes under the slur and ask, “could you hear the stemmed note/chord sustaining itself all the way through this box?” You wouldn’t believe how many mistakes that simple principle helps them avoid.<BR>
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So I’d represent Schenker’s understanding this way: “Y-(X)-Y, which later becomes Y-X-Y as we progress down closer to the surface.“ The parentheses represent the idea that X isn’t of the same status as Y originally, it’s “only a passing occurrence,” but it attains that status as we progress through the graph from back to front.<BR>
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Don’t ask me to write the Wikipedia article, however, I’m a little too busy right now. Jack<BR>
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Jack Boss<BR>
Associate Professor, Music Theory<BR>
Director, School of Music Summer Session<BR>
President, West Coast Conference of Music Theory and Analysis<BR>
1225 University of Oregon<BR>
Eugene, OR 97403-1225<BR>
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email: <a href="jfboss@uoregon.edu">jfboss@uoregon.edu</a><BR>
phone: (541) 346-5654<BR>
cell: (541) 556-6139<BR>
fax (shared): (541) 346-0723<BR>
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