Unit 1: What is musical analysis? Analysis of melody and harmony
- Analysing Melody
- Analysing Greensleeves
- Larger scale structures within the melody
- Analysing harmony
- Interpreting harmony
- Chords that are not part of the harmonic progression
Unit 2: Traditional techniques
- Methods of analysing harmony
- Analysing the 1st movement of Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata
- A closer look at Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata
- Segmenting music into chords - analysing Beethoven’s Pathétique sonata
- Labelling chords
Unit 3: Schenkerian analysis of tonal music – 1
- Bach: Prelude in C from Book 1 of the ‘48’
- Schenkerian graphs
- Some principles of Schenkerian analysis
- Prolongation
- Neighbour notes
- Linear progressions
- Voice leading
- Fundamental structure
Unit 4: Schenkerian analysis of tonal music – 2
- Bach: Chorale Ich bin’s, ich sollte büssen from the St. Matthew Passion
- Significant moments in music
- The importance of context
- Schenkerian graphs as interpretation
- Debussy: Puck’s Dance from Preludes, Book 1
- Fundamental structure
Unit 5: Psychological approaches to analysis – 1
- The term ‘psychological’ as it is used with reference to musical analysis
- Phenomenology and phenomenological reduction
- Thomas Clifton’s phenomenological analysis of Bach’s C major Prelude from Book 1 of the ‘48’
- Background and prolongation
- Pattern in music and its perception. The work of Leonard Meyer
- Leonard Meyer’s analysis of Schubert’s Das Wandern from the song-cycle Die Schöne Müllerin
- Meyer’s vs. Schenkerian analysis
- The analysis of rhythm in Meyer’s work
Unit 6: Psychological approaches to analysis – 2
- The psychology of motivic interrelationships. The work of Rudolph Réti
- Réti’s analysis of Beethoven’s Pathétique sonata, Op. 13.
- Critical reaction to Réti’s theories
- Motivic constituents
Unit 7: Case studies in musical analysis: Selecting the right approach
- Starting an analysis
- Schumann: Auf einer Burg
- The Song of Simeon
- Musical ‘pieces’
- Britten: Pan
Unit 8: Analysing sonata forms - 1
- What is ‘form’?
- ‘Surface pattern’ and ‘underlying process’
- Mozart’s opera: The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro)
- The traditional view of sonata form
- Comparing two sonata forms by Beethoven
Unit 9: Analysing sonata forms - 2
- Comparing symphonic movements by Beethoven and Berlioz
- The Symphonie Fantastique
Unit 10: Analysing a problem piece
- First impressions of Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie
- Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie “problem piece”:
- The analysis by Paul Hamburger – motivic relationships
- The analysis by Paul Hamburger and Gerald Abraham – formal segmentation
- An alternative segmentation
- As a ternary form