The phrase ‘musical analysis’, taken in a general sense, embraces a large number of

diverse activities. Some of these are mutually exclusive: they represent

fundamentally different views of the nature of music, music’s role in human life,
and the role of the human intellect with regard to music. These differences of view
render the field of analysis difficult to define within its own boundaries. (Such a
definition will be the concern of §§2 and 3 below.) Underlying all aspects of
analysis as an activity is the fundamental point of contact between mind and
musical sound, namely musical perception (see Psychology of music, §III).

More difficult, in some ways, is to define where precisely analysis lies within the
study of music. The concerns of analysis as a whole can be said to have much in
common on the one hand with those of musical aesthetics and on the other with those
of compositional theory. The three regions of study might be thought of as
occupying positions along an axis that has at one extreme the placing of music
within philosophical schemes and at the other the giving of technical instruction
in the craft of composition. There are complicating factors, however, concerning
theory and criticism. Music theories have been developed that find their practical
expression not in composition but in analysis; from the obverse point of view one
might say that such theories derive stable concepts by abstraction from the data
that analysis provides. The relationship is thus one of mutual dependency. A
similarly mutual though less dependent relationship might be thought to exist in
principle between analysis and criticism. Many writings that are intended primarily
as criticism and lie within its traditions are recognizably analytical in their
concern with the direct description and investigation of musical detail.
Conversely, analytical writing expresses a critical position, albeit sometimes
merely by implication, but often in a sophisticated manner through the multiple
connotations of the theories it applies and the comparisons it draws. Even a
wordless analysis – which would seem the least capable of doing so – passes a value
judgment in asserting that its musical subject is worthy of study and explication.

The analyst and the theorist of musical composition (Satztechnik;

Kompositionslehre) have a common interest in the laws of musical construction. Many
would deny a separation of any kind and would argue that analysis is a subgroup of
musical theory. But that is an attitude that springs from particular social and
educational conditions. While important contributions have been made to analysis by
teachers of composition, others have been made by performers, instrumental
teachers, critics and historians. Analysis may serve as a tool for teaching, though
it may in that case instruct the performer or the listener at least as often as the
composer; but it may equally well be a private activity – a procedure for
discovering. Musical analysis is no more implicitly a part of pedagogical theory
than is chemical analysis; nor is it implicitly a part of the acquisition of
compositional techniques. On the contrary, statements by theorists of compositional
technique can form primary material for the analyst’s investigations by providing
criteria against which relevant music may be examined.

Of greater significance is the fact that analytical procedures can be applied to

styles of performance and interpretation as well as to those of composition. But
the point at which composition ceases and interpretation begins is rarely incisive.
Most Western analysis takes a score as its subject matter and implicitly assumes it
to be a finalized presentation of musical ideas. If it is true that the notated
form in which a medieval, Renaissance or Baroque work survives is an incomplete
record, it is even more to the point that for the analyst of ethnomusicological
material, jazz improvisation or popular music recorded on tape, vinyl or CD, a
score is only an intermediary artefact which in no way marks off ‘composer’ from
‘performer’. It provides a coarse communication of a recorded performance, much of
which will have to be analysed by ear or with electronic measuring equipment.
Similar considerations apply to the analysis of performing practice in Western
music, though here the written score may be used as a constant point of reference
in measuring and comparing different realizations of it in performance.
Briefly, then, analysis is concerned with musical structures, however they arise
and are recorded, not merely with composition. Moreover, within the subject matter
that analysis and compositional theory have in common, the former is by definition
concerned with resolution and explanation, so that its reverse procedure –
synthesis – is no more than a means of verification; the latter is concerned
directly with the generation of music, and analytical method is only a means of
discovery. The fields overlap but with essential differences of subject, of aim and
of method.

Similarly, the analyst, like the aesthetician, is in part concerned with the nature
of the musical work: with what it is, or embodies, or signifies; with how it has
come to be; with its effects or implications; with its relevance to, or value for,
its recipients. Where they differ is in the centres of gravity of their studies:
the analyst focusses his attention on a musical structure (whether a chord, a
phrase, a work, the output of a composer or court etc.), and seeks to define its
constituent elements and explain how they operate; but the aesthetician focusses on
the nature of music per se and its place among the arts, in life and reality. That
the two supply information to each other is undoubted: the analyst provides a fund
of material which the aesthetician may adduce as evidence in forming his
conclusions, and the analyst’s definition of the specific furnishes a continual
monitoring service for the aesthetician’s definition of the general; conversely,
the aesthetician’s insights provide problems for the analyst to solve, condition
his approach and method, and ultimately furnish the means of exposing his hidden
assumptions. Their activities may overlap so that they often find themselves doing
similar things. Nonetheless, they have two essential differences, which may be
characterized in terms of the relative importance of empiricism and reflection:
analysis tends to supply evidence in answer to the empirical questions of
aesthetics, and may be content to explore the place of a musical structure within
the totality of musical structures, whereas the aesthetician’s concern is with the
place of musical structures within the system of reality. (For further discussion,
see Philosophy of music.)

Criticism is inseparable on the one hand from aesthetics and on the other from
analysis. Within criticism there has been constant debate as to the extent to which
it is a descriptive or a judicial activity. The ‘descriptive’ critic tries to do
either or both of two things: to portray in words his own inner response – to
depict his responding feelings – to a piece of music or a performance, or to think
his way into the composer’s or performer’s mind and expound the vision that he then
perceives. The ‘judicial’ critic evaluates what he experiences by certain
standards. These standards may at one extreme be dogmatic canons of beauty, of
truth or of taste – pre-set values against which everything is tested; or, at the
other extreme, values that form during the experience, governed by an underlying
belief that a composer or performer must do whatever he is attempting to do in the
clearest and most effective way. In none of the above does criticism differ
categorically from analysis: there is also a latent debate within analysis as to
whether the analyst’s function is descriptive or judicial.

There is perhaps a difference of degree. In general, analysis is more concerned

with describing than with judging. In this sense, analysis goes less far than
criticism, and it does so essentially because it aspires to objectivity and
considers judgment to be subjective. But this in turn suggests the other difference
between analysis and criticism, namely that the latter stresses the intuitive
response of the critic, relies upon his wealth of experience, uses his ability to
relate present response to prior experience, and takes these two things as data and
method, whereas analysis tends to use as its data definable elements: phrase-units,
harmonies, dynamic levels, measured time, bowings and tonguings, and other
technical phenomena. Again this is a difference only of degree: a critic’s response
is often highly informed and made in the light of technical knowledge; and the
analyst’s definable elements (a phrase, a motif etc.) are often defined by
subjective conditions. Where subjectivities are acknowledged to be inevitable, the
analytical mind will tend not to work with them directly, but to investigate their
nature in relation to definable musical phenonema, thus drawing closer to
aesthetics in general and to semiology in particular. To say that analysis consists
of technical operations and criticism of human responses is thus an
oversimplification, though it helps to contrast the general characters of the two.
(See also Criticism, §I.)

A rather different relationship exists between musical analysis and music history.
To the historian, analysis may appear as a tool for historical inquiry. He uses it
to detect relationships between ‘styles’, and thus to establish chains of causality
that operate along the dimension of time and are anchored in time by verifiable
factual information. He may, for example, observe features in common between the
styles of two composers (or groups of composers) and inquire by internal analytical
methods and external factual ones whether this represents an influence of one upon
the other; or, in reverse order, seek common features of style when he knows of
factual links. Conversely, he may detect features out of common between pieces
normally associated for one reason or another, and proceed to distinguish by
comparative analysis distinct traditions or categories. Again, he may use an
analytical classification of features as a means of establishing a chronology of
events.

In turn, the analyst may view historical method as a tool for analytical inquiry.
His subject matter is rather like sections cut through history. When under analysis
they are timeless, or ‘synchronic’; they embody internal relationships that the
analyst seeks to uncover. But factual information, concerning events in time, may,
for example, determine which of several possible structures is the most likely, or
explain causally the presence of some element that is incongruous in analytical
terms. Comparative analysis of two or more separate phenomena (whether separated
chronologically, geographically, socially or intellectually) only really activates
the dimension of time – becoming ‘diachronic’ – when historical information
relating the phenomena is correlated with the analytical findings. Historical and
analytical inquiry are thus mutually dependent, with common subject matter and
complementary methods of working. (For further discussion see Historiography and
Musicology, §I and Musicology, §II, 8.)