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Le 6/05/2012 22:25, Stephen Jablonsky a écrit :
<blockquote
cite="mid:9E5E6344-F09E-4BFE-B00E-8618940666C9@optimum.net"
type="cite">[...]
<div>I have always felt that Schenker was wrong in his premise and
his technique but there were so many enthusiastic believers out
there that I didn't want to be the one to shout "The Emperor has
no clothes." As a composer/theorist I have little interest in
reducing a sonata form movement into a three-chord progression
with embellishing annotations.</div>
</blockquote>
Schenker, that I know, never suggested such a thing. What he did
suggest is that one should start by viewing the work as the
unfolding of a triad (but see below), that one should realize that
this unfolding soon produces a dominant (and a subdominant) triads,
and that the analysis further consists in reconstructing the whole
work up to its surface elements. To view the analysis as consisting
in a reduction to the "fundamental structure" indeed is a
caricature.<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:9E5E6344-F09E-4BFE-B00E-8618940666C9@optimum.net"
type="cite">On May 6, 2012, at 3:49 PM, Ildar Khannanov wrote:
<div>[...]<br>
Schenker was wrong saying that tonality is unfolding of a tonic
triad. In a very poetic metaphoric sense, it is true, but
practically, tonality in music is created not by unfolding of a
single triad but by interaction of several triads.</div>
</blockquote>
Schenker did not say this, or at least not in these terms. He may
not have been as clear as one might wish, but it can be deduced from
his usages and from his graphs that a true tonal affirmation often
consists in a T–S–D–T cycle. <br>
Having quoted two examples, by Mozart and Chopin, he explains in
<i>Harmonielehre</i> that "In both cases we see triads, unfolded as
such in a rather satisfactory way [...]. But since throughout these
four measures it is only one single triad that is asserted, it is
impossible for us to find any satisfaction, particularly considering
that the triads [...] may belong in three or six different keys" (E.
Mann Borgese's translation, p. 213; p. 283 of the German original).
And a few pages later, he adds: "If we consider such a step
progression, I–IV–V–I, from the harmonic angle alone [...] we find
that it emphasizes, first of all, the tonic and, second, the key of
the tonic" (p. 217 of the translation, p. 287-288 of the original).<i> </i>In
later writings, he names such progressions <i>Stufenrund </i>or <i>Stufenkreis</i>,
"cycle of the degrees". <br>
Schenker certainly stresses the dominant as the most important
elaboration of the tonic, but he also underlines the importance of
the progression to the dominant, for which he proposes several
models (<i>Das Meisterwerk in der Musik</i> II, p. 21; I
unfortunately do not have the English translation). It is there (<i>ibid</i>.,
p. 22, note 7)<i> </i>that he mentions for the first time the two
interlaced slurs, one of which doubly curved, which he uses to
denote <i>das Wegbahnen zur Dominante</i>, "the marking out of the
way to the dominant", either I–IV–V–I or I–II–V–I. This sign, as I
mentioned earlier, probably is taken over from Alfred Lorenz (<i>Das
Geheimnis der Form...</i>, vol. I, p. 16) where it represents a
kind of sinusoidal curve leading from the tonic to the subdominant
under it, to the dominant above, and back to the tonic.<br>
<br>
Nicolas Meeùs<br>
Université Paris-Sorbonne<br>
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