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14. Analysis as an Epistemological Tool:
An Informed Position

Music is a complex web of interconnected musical entities like melodies, rhythms, harmonies and expressive characters. We perceive and identify them and can take pleasure in following for example one line of a sole melody with a beautiful timbre, but the real potential lies, as we have seen, in the organization of the multitude of entities in a structure. This gives us the opportunity to find more aesthetic pleasure in recognizing that structure and what roles the parts play within it, which is not possible if one only hears individual entities by themselves. However, this recognition is not something that we perceive naturally, because it’s not present for ordinary sounds in the world. There is an element of cognition required, which is formed somewhere between the conscious and unconscious. Our minds can only deal with a limited number of tasks simultaneously, at least at the conscious level, and as the music progresses in our listening experience, our ability to process all musical entities and their connections can never keep up with their exponential growth. This is exactly the way music is supposed to work – it presents us with a new world that we can only feel from the perspective of linear time. The power of the experience comes from following the journey in this world as it continues and unfolds, constantly changing and developing. It’s basically there for us to enjoy the ride through it.

Developing Analysis Tools

However, we can improve the ride with some experience extensions: cognitive Analysis tools at our disposal. Music analysis is really nothing harder than breaking up the complex web of music into its smaller parts (which we have seen throughout this framework) and show how they relate to each other. This can be called the Analysis process and is executed by isolating the parts in question without all the other aspects of the music that is normally there, so it reduces the music to that aspect. For example, a Harmonic analysis removes all other aspects except for the harmony, so it reduces the music to the chords. The real, “full” music contains a specific set of melodic, rhythmic and textural features that are important for our total perception, but not for understanding the harmonic progression. Then when we look at only the chords next to each other we can identify their root, coloring and scale degree in the present key, and gain insights as to how the music progresses. However, we need to have knowledge about the style of the music in question to do this, because a big part of the structural meaning of harmonic progression is conventional and not universal. Harmony progresses quite differently in Bach and Beatles, and only an existing familiarity and knowledge of each style can provide an answer to what a specific progression means. The only way to gain such a familiarity and knowledge is to be exposed to the style and try to understand it by using analysis tools. It may seem like a paradox, but it is actually only an upward-going spiral: the Hermeneutic circle. The first time we hear a new style we use tools from whatever music we know that seems closest to it, and then we base our understanding of the new style in relation to that. Then with continual exposure our analysis tools for the new style will grow ever sharper and more precise, and they can also function as a starting point for yet further new styles.

This process can be done with all aspects applicable for analysis (harmony being just one). In order to show how melodic material is developed through a piece we use Motivic analysis that points out only those instances of motivic elements that are relevant and then show how they are connected throughout the piece. On the large-scale structure level we have Formal analysis, which tries to understand how all different sections and material in one piece fit together. On an even higher level we have Narrative analysis in order to see how the different parts of a piece form a narrative by their expression and order. Contextual analysis looks more in depth in relevant contexts to see how one piece behaves in relation to them. This is the most advanced form of analysis because it can include all underlying levels of the music as well, and is done by academics in universities and published in books, magazines and articles on music. After the analysis process is completed on whatever parameter, we put all parts back together for the full experience again. This time we still hear everything we heard before doing an analysis, with the addition of also hearing the specific function that we analyzed within the music clearer. It was always there, but because it was on a higher level of complexity, we couldn’t follow it when we didn’t know what to look for. This is the way analysis works as an epistemological tool – it gives us knowledge about the musical composition by highlighting specific aspects of the web in a specific order. This added knowledge in turn puts us in a more informed or competent position when we listen to the music again, which finally provides us with an increased appreciation of it.

Doesn’t It Spoil the Magic?

There is an argument to be made against analyzing music to increase our appreciation for it, namely that a Pre-competent awe of the music fades away. This is an important problem to contest with: why should we learn to listen better if we lose our pre-competent awe in the process? This awe is a very positive experience, a feeling of being touched by the music in a way that is unexplainable. It can be compared to seeing a magic trick performed and how knowledge of how it is done ruins the effect.

My solution to this problem is to accept that a pre-competent reaction and appreciation may in fact fade, but that this appreciation is only part of a greater appreciation that is possible to feel from an informed, competent position. From such a position, the appreciation can instead be increased. This also solves the problem of repeated listenings – why we can, and should, listen to the same pieces repeated times. Every listening is part of our learning of that piece, which in turn contributes to an even greater appreciation of it. There are limits to this iteration though: when our potential for learning is reached, we can only stay on the same level of appreciation until our potential for learning has increased with ever finer adjusted tools. If we are subjected to a piece on this level too many times, a tiredness for the music may emerge, which musicians can all too well confirm.

The listening experience also evolves and is transformed by repeated listenings. Eventually, one can come to know the piece as a personality, and even if one knows exactly how it goes, it may still prove valuable and assuring to spend time together with. There is then a switch in meaning, from that of meeting a new acquaintance with all its exploration, curiosity, open-mindedness and confrontation in place, to that of spending time with an old friend and its reliable trust, confirmation, reassurance and celebration (and nostalgia). This conclusion is shared by Christopher Small in his major contribution to the debate about music and meaning “Musicking” (1998), although by a different route. Small derives three meta-values of all music activities: those of exploring, affirming and celebrating our collective values and experiences of a culture (49). If we hold on to all sides here, we find value in exposing ourselves to new music as well as spending time with the “friends” that we have chosen because we like them. There is so much music written throughout history that no one lifetime is enough to explore it all, which fundamentally also is an argument for exploring classical music in the first place. However, if one only concerns oneself with music from the past, one will eventually and inevitably fall prey to obscurity, because ancient music will never be a substitute for actual cultural manifestations of one’s own times. We need to make friends with the cultural entities alive in our own times as well.