No Crossing Branches? The Overlapping Technique in Schenkerian Analysis

Abstract

Schenkerian analysis brings two contradictory approaches to the concept of musical structure. The first focuses on developing the tools for unequivocal analytical statements. This approach, which dominant today, treats musical syntax as a system in which the function of each note in the musical structure may be defined in just way. It reflected in the title and contents of the valuable article by Carl Schachter, Either/Or.1 For example, Schachter presents three alternative Schenkerian interpretations of the beginning of a Chopin mazurka, and then points out that one of the three readings truer to the mazurka as a unique and individual work of art.... Schachter indicates that the function of ambiguity and multiple meanings is more narrowly circumscribed than some analysts, perhaps misled by false analogies to language, seem to believe.2 The second approach, reflected in studies by Wallace Berry and William Benjamin, seeks to express the immanent ambivalence of a musical work.3 It rests on the assumption that musical works are rich in ambivalent statements and that their analysis must reflect this. In other words, the very existence of a dilemma in choosing between different analytical interpretations of the structure of a given musical piece reflects the complexity of the piece and the many conflicting forces at work within it. The analyst may better contribute to an understanding of the work by elucidating the analytical dilemma than by actually resolving it in favor of interpretation at the expense of the other. Whereas the first approach attributes the richness and appeal of superior works to their structural complexity and the subtle interplay between different structural levels, the second approach identifies the excellence of the work in its multifacetedness, as reflected in the fact that several structures coexist concurrently, none more valid than another. One of the major differences between these two approaches their conflicting concepts of segmentation, the manner in which the boundaries of significant musical units are defined. Conflicting musical events in a passage often suggest overlapping patterns of segmentation.4 For a proponent of the either/or approach, the overlapping segments contradict each other and the analyst must resolve this contradiction by giving a preference to the segmentation most in accord with the musical context.

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