Society for Music Theory

Analysis as Interpretation: Interaction, Intentionality, Invention

Author(s): Marion A. Guck
Source: Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Autumn, 2006), pp. 191-209
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society for Music Theory
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4499859
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cAnalysis as Interpretation:Interaction,
Intentionality, Invention
MARION

A. GUCK

This essay advocates analysis of the human-music interaction that articulates what the music does
to or for someone (e.g., that it confuses, astonishes, or moves a listener), and how it does so. To
connect analysis to musical sensibility, I reframe it as interpretation in the everyday sense in which
things are "open to interpretation," or in which an interpretation is an account of something that
might be taken in a number of ways. I draw together four ideas under this umbrella; analysis as:
(1) a meeting between an individual and some music; (2) a characteristic expression of its author;
(3) experiences with music; and (4) conceptual and verbal invention. What I advocate might also
be called a humanistic psychology of music.
Keywords: Analysis, Interpretation, Criticism, Intentionality, Meaning

THE FIRST VOLUME OF Counterpoint, Schenker prohibits "intervals resulting from mixture" in species counterpoint but accepts them in free composition, where he
justifies them, usually by recourse either to progression from
one chord to the next or to linear "polyphony."' There we
find:

counterpoint compelled to go along with the two harmonies and, in

this case, form a diminished fourth (or augmented fifth).2

IN

The invocation of beauty and temper in this paragraph is

startling. The surrounding text, both before and after, primes

its readers only for the information about the harmonydivided motives. Yet the footnote that accompanies the
quoted paragraph confirms Schenker's commitment to the
dramatic interpretation:

The gruesomely beautiful and overpowering diminished fourths in the

development section of the last movement of Mozart's G-minor
Symphony [Example 1] come about when Mozart, having up to now
formed the motive in question from just a single harmony (for example
[Example 2]), now adapts the motive to two different harmonies
(within a single measure, in fact), as though in a most furious temper
tearing apart the original unit(y) with monstrous vehemence, with the

I would like to thank Joseph Dubiel, Catherine Costello Hirata, and

Charise Hastings for their perceptive, critical readings of drafts of this
paper.
Schenker 1910, 97-101; 1987, 68-71.

When I heard Richard Strauss conduct this symphony recently, I was

appalled to realize that he did not fully take in this horrible experience
of the main motive, and apparently regarded the diminished fourths
like the purest fifths or thirds! But what do the diminished fourths of a
"classic" matter? thinks a "modern," who credits only himself with
blood, pain, dissonance, temperament, and therefore takes only his own

191

Schenker 1910, 98-99; 1987, 69-70. I am grateful to Joseph Dubiel for

the translations of the Kontrapunkttexts used in this paper.

MUSIC THEORY SPECTRUM 28 (2006)

192
190

Violin 1

(C

C)

Bass

- .

..

(A

(E
-

B)

'
''.

FO)

197

(F#

(E

(B

A)

E)

(D

E)

(D

EXAMPLE
I. Mozart, Symphony 40, iv, 191-202 (Schenker1910, 1987, Example 72).

"'
5.J
I

do r,, I
3

. . . , , ,-

G3FE

D7

?
I

EXAMPLE2. Mozart, Symphony 40, iv, 1-2, 5-6 (Schenker1910, 1987, Example 73).

D)

ANALYSIS AS INTERPRETATION:

INTERACTION,

diminishedfourths seriously!Didn't the classicremainat all times "in

equilibriumas man and artist?"he banallythinks,and doesn'tthe genuinelyhumanand passionatein musicbeginwith him, the modern?

In most other examples in this section that subscribe to similar reasoning, Schenker really provides only an assignment of pitches to chords,
not reasons why the particular succession of melodic pitches was chosen from those chords.
Schenker makes Mozart the agent who tears the motive in two.
However, the only action available to be taken as furiously "tearing ...
with monstrous vehemence" is that of the music. I therefore assume
that Schenker has transferred the agency he perceives from the music
to Mozart.

INVENTION

193

standing out against its textual backdrop, its vividness

quickly captures my imagination. In this example, and not its
companions, Schenker actually explains the peculiar interval
by conjuring up a way to hear it not merely as correct but as
creating a specific "effect," as he was inclined to say, in or for
its listeners. This example, and not its companions, tells us
what the diminished fourth is there for.
I know that I'm not alone in appreciating analyses that
communicate this kind of engagement. Some theorists, myself included, purposefully put listener response at the center
of their analytical work; I find experiential, expressive description in the writing of other analysts as well. Such analyses might be said to model the relationship between a work
and an involved listener, by contrast with analyses that appear to take an observational approach that represents the
musical work as an interesting or beautiful sound structure to
be appreciated. The appeal of relational analyses is sometimes accompanied, I suspect, by uneasiness about their personal or subjective qualities. Perhaps exposition of some
ideas and values on which the relational approach relies can
rationalize it and reduce uneasiness. That is my aim.

Strauss's offense is to miss the "horrible experience," "the

genuinely human and passionate in music," and thus to play
right through the passage as if the peculiar fourths were
typical triadic fifths or thirds.
Indeed, without his highly charged emotional descriptions, Schenker's argument makes no sense at all: breaking
the motive into two harmonies in no way necessitates the diminished fourth.3 What constrains Mozart is more particular: he extends the motive in the violin in mm. 192-93. This
takes the line to a leading tone, which doesn't resolve, but instead leaps the diminished fourth while the other voice of
the pair reiterates and resolves the leading tone. That is, by
choosing to extend the motive, Mozart sets up a situation
that might bring the possibility of parallel octaves or unisons
to a listener's mind (probably subliminally), from which
"danger"the leaping line twists away. Obviously, in the music
of so accomplished a composer, if the voice leading is rough,
it is because Mozart wanted rough voice leading. There is no
justification for the diminished fourth to be found by appealing to the necessities of harmonic change. Thus Schenker
and vehemenceturns to a psychological motivation-fury
that he imagines Mozart might have felt, given the rough
sound of the voice leading, a sound Schenker also invests
with terrible beauty.4
While I am first startled by Schenker's highly dramatic
rationale for the Mozart symphony's diminished fourths,
3

INTENTIONALITY,

To begin, I want to reframe analysis as interpretation.5

My idea of interpretation depends on the everyday sense in
which things are "open to interpretation," the sense in which
interpretation is accounting for something that might be
taken in a number of ways, or the sense in which one tries to
put one's finger on something difficult to pin down. I want
to emphasize as well the notion of personal account that is
inherent in interpretation.
I identify the objects of musical interpretation not as
works but as "hearings."6 The idea of a distinction between a
work and a hearing lines up, more or less, with a distinction
5
6

Hirata 2003, 3-8, also reformulates analysis as interpretation.

"Hearings" draws an analogy with the "readings" of reader response
theorists. The implications of the analogy can be discerned especially in
Iser 1978.

194

MUSIC THEORY SPECTRUM 28 (2006)

object; even if they are so widely agreed upon as to be taken

as observable facts, they require a listener's interpretive participation to hear them in the sounds.
The intentionality of a hearing is perhaps more evident
when the objects are less conventional. For example, I might
hear "a change of harmony simultaneous with the resolution
of a suspension" (already an intentional object) "as welcome
change, in one case, or as deflection in another."9 Qualities of
"welcome change" and "deflection" are not as widely applicable as ideas of intervals, motion, and suspension, nor are they
conventionally agreed upon. Schenker's characterization of
"gruesome beauty" and the dramatic scene of furious and vehement tearing are more complex instances of intentional
objects that are not conventional. These are all more evidently (personal) interpretations of musical situations, and,
as is often the case, they are characterized in expressive
terms.
The idea that music is created between some musical
sounds and a person is the fundamental premise of this
paper. To put it another way, music is designed to affect the
state of mind of its listeners, as Schenker shows that Mozart
designed the G-minor Symphony passage. Showing that the
passage is well-formed is less instructive than showing how
it is formed to have an effect on its listeners. If we are to understand music, we must investigate how music and listeners
interact. You might call what I advocate a humanistic psychology of music.10
I draw together four ideas under the umbrella of interpretation: (1) analysis as a meeting between an individual and
some music; (2) analysis as a characteristic expression of its

one might make between a "real object," the material sounds

or notations comprising the work, and an "intentional object," the music as a listener has heard and understood it.7
Even to speak in terms of simple "aural observables" such as
"two voices sounding notes at a certain distance (a seventh)
followed by those two voices sounding notes at a second
smaller distance (a sixth)" (or Schenker's description of the
diminished fourths resulting from adapting the motive to
two harmonies) is to begin to make something of the

sounds.

I clearly describe an intentional object when I say, of the

same succession, that I hear two voices creating the sound of
a (dissonant) seventh followed by those two voices creating
the sound of a (consonant) sixth. The qualities of consonance and dissonance or of seventh-as-sound and sixth-assound result from my fusing the pairs of pitches; I am, in
Wittgenstein's well-known formulation, "hearing as."s If I go
on to describe the succession as a contrapuntal motion from
a seventh to a sixth, I transform interval succession into an
imaginary entity that persists and acts from sound to sound.
The notion of "motion" makes something more of the succession of intervals, layering intentional state on intentional
state. These conventional notions (e.g., of interval quality
and contrapuntal motion) are all aspects of the intentional

The possibility of such a distinction is suggested by DeBellis 1995, 139.

The definitions of real and intentional object are mine. Scruton 1982
discusses intentional objects and intentionality in aesthetic response
and Walton 1993 considers intentionality framed in terms of music. A
related way of thinking is Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotic process as it
is explained in musical terms in Turino 1999, Lidov 2004, and Cumming
2000. Peirce distinguishes the sign (sounds in the musical case), object
(a concept or object brought to mind by the sign), and interpretant
("what the sign creates in the observer; the effect the sign has in/on the
observer, including feeling and sensation, physical reaction, as well as
ideas articulated and processed in language" [Turino 1999, 223]).
Wittgenstein 1967 discusses "seeing" or "hearing as"; see 37-40. Also
relevant is the discussion of "seeing an aspect" in Wittgenstein 1958,
especially 193-215.

io

Most of the examples of intentional objects in these three paragraphs

are taken from Guck 1993b, 45-46 (the original includes italics that I
have omitted), which also includes an analysis articulating a sequence
of intentional states.
I emphasize "humanistic." The usual kinds of psychology of music
study human perception and cognition only as features of a generic entity. That won't serve the purpose I've proposed.

ANALYSIS AS INTERPRETATION:

INTERACTION,

author; (3) analysis as concentrating on experiences with

music; and (4) analysis as conceptual and verbal invention.
I'll develop each of these in turn, relying on a variety of texts
to exemplify interpretive possibilities. Since the four ideas
are thoroughly entangled with one another, each of the sections that follow centers on one idea while continuing the
threadsbegun in earliersections.
A MEETING

BETWEEN AN INDIVIDUAL

AND SOME MUSIC

12
13

See DeNora 2000, 36; the italics are added. The discussion includes
34-36 and 38-43.
DeNora 2000, 40.
DeNora 2000, 41. DeNora 2003, 94-95, again discusses Lucy's use of
Schubert to exemplify the listener as agent.

INVENTION

195

[T]he works are mostly quiet [e.g., the opening of the G6-major
Impromptu, which DeNora cites], they are highly melodic and songlike,
they do not make a feature of sudden rhythmic or dynamic changes
(they are "peaceful") and they call for a pianist who is "gentle," for nuanced rather than pyrotechnic virtuosity. The pieces also feature a kind
of musical ambiguity and so may be associated with connotations of
detachment or wistfulness .... For example, they shift, unobtrusively,
from minor (the conventional "sad" or "dark" modality) to major
("happy," "light") . . . The ways in which these pieces are phrased in
performance serves [sic] to heighten this ambiguity, through slight
hesitations at cadence points . . . and at the apex of melodic arches. The
performative rendering of these works then tends to intensify what
might be read as gentle acquiescence (harmonic, rhythmic, melodic) implicit in the score, the dissipation of tonal and rhythmic force through a
variety of musical forms of reticence, or gentle "pulling away" from
(musical) exertion, exuberance, and definition.14

As Tia DeNora theorizes it, music is a particularcase of

interaction between a human agent and a cultural artifact.
The two are thought of as engaged in a "mutuallystructuring" process:the music is taken or "used"in a particularway
by the human agent, and the human agent is affected or
changed by the music.11 Following J. J. Gibson 1966, she
explicates how artifacts have properties or "affordances"
that facilitate their use for an agent's particular purposes.
Affordances are not fixed but are, quoting the ethnographers
Robert Anderson and Wesley Sharrock (1993), "constituted
and reconstituted" through their uses in differing circumstances. Moreover, DeNora says that "usersconfigurethemselves as agents in and through the ways they relate to objects" while they also "configureobjects in and through the
ways they-as agents-behave towards those objects."12For
example, her informant Lucy listens to SchubertImpromptus
when feeling stress,using the music as "acatalyst"or "accomplice"that is "activein ... 'de-stressing'."13
It is easy to imagine what features of the Impromptus
might afford Lucy the stress reducing qualities she seeks,and
DeNora points out some of them:

II

INTENTIONALITY?

By showing how Lucy, wishing to be de-stressed, might take

the Schubert as soothing, DeNora illustrates how a human
agent and music "mutuallystructure"each other. Or, to express it slightly differently, putting herself in Lucy's shoes,
she provides an account of the Schubert that reflects what
she hears in the frame of mind induced by Lucy's hearing of
Schubert as soothing. While doing this she is also making an
analysis, not of the music alone, but of the interaction between the music and Lucy. Usually the human agent in the
interaction will also be the author of the analysis, but here
DeNora places herself in sympathy with Lucy and tries out
Lucy's interpretation.Finding that she can hear in its terms,
she goes on to tell us how.15

A related view of interaction is proposed, with different

emphases, by psychoanalystChristopher Bollas. The interactions he considers have the purpose of enacting an individual's personal "idiom,"but for the interaction to succeed he
emphasizes that it is crucial that the human agent respect
the "distinct structureof the object,"that is, its own separate
14
15

DeNora 2000, 41.

DeNora thus demonstrates that those intentional objects that I've
called "personal"are of course also intersubjective.

196

MUSIC THEORY SPECTRUM 28 (2006)

"integrity."'"Such "evocative objects" express, play out, or

alter some current self state, or they allow an individual to
experience a new self state; they "createa particularself experience by virtue of [their] intrinsic character"(27). In short,
we meet or seek out objects, like musical works, which,
thanks to their particularcharacter,have the power to engage
us in experiences that express our character.
Bollas writes about the way in which an individual
"speaks the self's aesthetic through his [or her] precise
choices [of object] and particularuses of its constituents."
Choosing a recording elicits different inner experiences from
choosing a book. This is because each object "has a potentially different evocative effect by virtue of its specific form
which partly structures the subject's inner experience and
constitutes the eros of form in being" (21-22). Thus Lucy
chooses the Schubert Impromptusfor the sake of the ways in
which their form can play a part in structuring and changing
her inner experience from stressed to soothed.17
DeNora suggests that a different guiding concept, question, or purpose would be likely to constitute the Schubert
Impromptusdifferently.A clear contrast with Lucy is offered
by Charles Fisk, who uses Schubert'smusic in a longstanding effort to understand the psychological stresses of life as
an outcast, Schubert'slife among others. Hearing Schubert's
op. 90 Impromptusas the musical expression of a troubled
"protagonist,"Fisk attends to some of the same and some
different qualities as Lucy/DeNora.18 For example, he hears
"the persistence of E6 minor as a troubling presence, a tonal
threat, in the third Impromptu"(47), eventually relating it to
Edward T. Cone's idea of a disturbing promissory note.19
Over the course of the second and third Impromptus,he
16
17

18
19

Bollas 1992, 4. Bollas, like DeNora, uses "object" for what I referred to
above as a "real object," that is, the sounds of music.
See also Bollas 1992, 5 and 54-61.
Fisk's notion of"protagonist" is influenced by that found in Cone 1974.
See Fisk 2001, 22-23.
See Cone 1982 and 1986.

associatesthe chord and tonality with disillusionment, crisis,

and anxiety.20When it occurs early in the third Impromptu:
The Eb-minortriadwithin the Gb-majortheme registersnot only its
dependenceon the ending of the precedingpiece but also the vulnerability that this dependenceimplies. As alreadypointed out, this E6minortriadalso looks aheadto the turbulentEb-minorcentralepisode:
it anticipates,in exactlythe samevoicing,the chordfromwhich the first
phraseof that episodewill unfurl(cf mm. 2 and 25). Although simply
andgentlyexpressive,this initialprogressionencapsulatesboth the tonal
structureof this piece and its tonal relationshipto the precedingone. It
concretizesin musicthe way a particularemotionallychargedimage,embodied in a single progression,can gatherand hold togetherthe memories andanticipationsof experiencesseparatedin time (139).

Both authors tell us what a particular individual wants

from engagement with Schubert'smusic. Fisk is involved in
an extended study of Schubert'spersonal and musical preoccupation with the character of the alienated Wanderer. He
wants to understandhow the music representsthe Wanderer's
painful situation. Lucy seeks out Schubert's Impromptusto
de-stress and DeNora, in sympathy,tells us how the Schubert effects the change of mood.
I can imagine awarding Fisk's account of the Schubert a
higher status than Lucy and DeNora's, and I'd like to forestall that by showing how Lucy's use of the Impromptusrewards closer examination. I'll take the move to the EB-minor
triad in m. 2 of the third Impromptuas I imagine that Lucy
does. Were I Lucy, I think that I would wish to stay very
much in the music's present and I would hear the Er-minor
triad for what it is at the time it's heard.21
In the brief period since the piece began I have been
hearing a very full-voiced Gb-major triad. The sonority of
the slowly repeating outer voices, sounding a tenth between
the bass Gk and the treble B%,is sustained by arpeggios
rolling in the space between them. It is a mildly active,
warmlyresonant sound. Still, by the time that E6 enters I am
20
21

See Fisk 2001, 46-47, 117-22, and 136-39.

This way of listening is suggested by Hirata 1996.

ANALYSIS AS INTERPRETATION:

INTERACTION,

EXPRESSION

With the analyses by Fisk and Lucy/DeNora I have

shown how interaction with music is shaped by both the
music and the concerns that the human agent brings to it.
Characteristic differences in how Fisk and Lucy/DeNora
take the Schubert Impromptuhave made themselves evident
in their representations of the music. In this section of the
paper I turn to another side of analytical communication
that is likely to individuate an author:intellectual,social, and
disciplinarycommitments.
Analyses necessarily bear the traces of the personal sensibilities, experiences, and inclinations of their authors, or
their public personae. At the same time, analystsuse the vo-

INVENTION

197

cabularies, concepts, and methods we've learned or chosen.

Our personal inclinations and commitments shade into our
interpersonal and cultural backgrounds and commitments.
An analysis celebrates the personal significance of the music
that it takes as its subject and it engages in intersubjective
social relationships, including those of our disciplines.
To exemplify these claims, I'll examine analyses of a
phrase of Monteverdi's Lamentod'Ariannaby Peter Westergaard and Suzanne Cusick, using each as a foil to highlight
the individuality of the other.22 (See Example 3.) The
melody of the refrain affords a registral discontinuity that
can be further interpreted (still conventionally) as forming a
compound melody to anyone who cares to hear it. Both authors do. Indeed, Cusick refers to Westergaard's having
"pointedout that the melody has, in effect, two simultaneous
but conflicting goals: a rise from 3 to 9, and a descent
through 3-2-i" (25). Thus Cusick's contrapuntalrepresentation in the lower three staves of Example 3 closely coincides
with the music of Westergaard's.23
However, what interests them about the counterpoint
differs significantly. The differences could be attributed to
the fact that Westergaard is a formalist and Cusick a cultural historian, but they are more particularthan that: intellectual personality, even singularity, plays a role. Westergaard makes a show of formulating a very plain system,
based on just a few simple concepts, which magically solves a
contrapuntalpuzzle. Cusick recounts how the text's dramatic
predicament is enacted musically in terms of modal-melodic
theory as Monteverdi might have understood its expressive
implications.

readyfor a change. I appreciateits being as small a change as

can be, made as smoothly as possible. The treble B%persists
and the bass'sfall from i to 6 is gentle. Altogether, I hear the
treble Bb undergo a change of color or atmosphere rather
than movement or progression.That will come as the music
continues, and, even then, gently.
Lucy, I've imagined, may be fully absorbedin the sound
of the E6 chord itself, colored by the trace of the G1 chord.
Fisk hears the opening progression as "simplyand gently expressive,"too, but because his aims are differenthis E6 chord
is shaded with portent. Both Lucy and Fisk find something
gentle in the E6 chord, but hear that as having different
implications.
Both Lucy, as I've representedher, and Fisk are engaged
in close listening. Lucy intimates the possibility of close listening that hears deeply and comprehensively into each
passing present moment, which is quite different from Fisk's
creation of relational networks over a whole movement or
more. Close listening is very nearly synonymous with aesthetic listening, which I suspect is usually imagined to be a
haven from everydaylife. From my point of view, this too is a
"use"of music, one we take very seriously and honor as the
object of analysis.
CHARACTERISTIC

INTENTIONALITY,

22

See Westergaard1972, 239-41, and Cusick 1994, 25-26.

23

I have thereforeincluded only the Cusick example. In Westergaard's

example,the sopranoline of the scoreand the analyticalrepresentation

include a C0 between B1 and C#. His example also includes text, the
relevantparts of which I will summarize.The examplesare found in
Cusick 1994, 25, andWestergaard1972, 239 and240.

MUSICTHEORYSPECTRUM
28 (2006)

198

La-scia

te-mi

mo-ri - re,

La-scia - te- mi

mo - ri - re.

-X3
(4)
g~~~~

EXAMPLE

I can assumethat I will be ableto explainall the consecutiveand simultaneous connections in terms of a relativelysmall vocabularyof two
Westergaard 1975.

(4)

3. Monteverdi, Lamento d'Arianna, refrain (after Cusick 1994, Example 1).

The purpose of Westergaard'sanalysis is to "explain[the]

seventh between F and G in the second measure"of the score
in Example 3. He specifically rejects two "popularkinds of
explanation":that F is the seventh of a subdominant-seventh
chord, or that the "seventh is motivic" (240). His distinctively imaginative proposal is motivated by a desire to account for the temporal conjunction of F and G in two dimensions, both harmonically and melodically. It addresses
two aspects of the music:pitch and time. The analysisis conceived entirely within the framework of counterpoint;in fact
it adheres quite closely to the conceptual framework provided by his formulation of species counterpoint.24He proceeds in three stages.
First, generalizing about Renaissance vocal music,
Westergaardexpects that:

24

dimensionalintervallicpatterns.These patternsincludenot only those

involving dissonant simultaneities-passing tones, lower neighbors,
and suspensions-but also many more involving only consonant
simultaneities-parallelthirds or sixths, 5-6-5's, etc. That is, the patterns would consist of various"waysof getting from one place to another," where place means consonant simultaneity,getting means
progressby secondsin at least one line, and way includesthe idea of all
possible rhythmicdispositions.Furthermore,I would expect connections formedbetweenprominentpitches to favorsome intervalsat the
expenseof others(239).

Second, putting these ideas into practice, Westergaard

suggests that F is the opening pitch of a compound melody's
lower line and it is consonant with the opening pitches of
the upper line and the bass, as shown in the lower three
staves of Example 3. He supports this proposal by noting
that the opening and closing pitches of the three lines are
consonant with each other, as are the collections of highest
and lowest pitches in each line and in the three lines collectively. The pitches in question all belong to D-F-A. F is
therefore"stable"and G is "alower neighborto the A's"(240).

ANALYSIS AS INTERPRETATION:

INTERACTION,

This account of things does not quite suffice, finally,and

Westergaardgoes on: "it is as if the F had sounded backwith
the other notes, before the G, so that the three lines could be
thought of as involved in a chain of suspensions where the
top line beginning its upward motion first moves to the Bb
forcing the bass down to G, which in turn forces the middle
line to begin its downward motion by moving to E" (24041). This then-the idea that F has begun late, when it is
alreadydissonant-is the payoff of his carefulwork.
When I first read it, so systematic and understatedis his
formulation of the situation that the single unregulated
move of displacing F almost passed unnoticed, but then it
suddenly reshuffled my mental configuration of notes and,
unexpectedly,F emerged with a particularsound in relation
to G. Westergaardmethodically creates a train of analytical
thought which leads readersfrom obscurityto clarityabout a
sound, something he could not have accomplishedby merely
telling us the punch line.
Cusick'sanalysis of the phrase is the beginning of a reading of the entire Lament heard as a dramatizationof the
"publicmusical chastening"of Arianna, who, being "promiscuous," must lose "her passionate self" in order to be marriageable (25). The purpose of the analysis is to account for
the strong emotional responses of women in the Lament's
contemporaneous audience, which, Cusick proposes, is due
to the compelling musical dramatizationof this loss of self, a
loss each of them would have suffered. The analysis integrates musicalwith textual meaning.
The first "Lasciatemi morire" begins both contrapuntal
lines, upward in the grieving 3-b6, then breaking to leap
down a fourth to the lower line. The second "Lasciatemi"
clarifiesthe first and advancesthe drama:
morire"
[T]hecontourof thisphraserereadsthe line"Lasciatemi
("You
leavemeto die")so asfullyto separatetheaccusation
directed
atTeseo
of Teseo'saction-Arianna's
death.
... fromthe apparent
consequence
The
adbetween
them
is
here
as
well
rupture
represented
already
...
vancedbeyondthe conditionsrepresentedin the first phrase,for
Monteverdi's
musicrepresentsthe respectiveactionsof Teseoand

INTENTIONALITY,

INVENTION

199

Arianna as directed toward opposite ends of the octave species that

defines the D-Dorian mode. Thus, Teseo's action, representedby a
durusascentto the tonic, leads Arianna'svoice up 6-7-8^into a register
Monteverdihimselfwould laterassociatewith "ira"-excitability,instability,rage....
Arianna'spredicteddeath, the "collapse"of her melody toward a
register Monteverdi associated with "humiltai,o supplicatione,"is
reachedaftera rest and a descendingmajor-6thleap,the latteran interval contemporarytheoryidentifiedas particularlypathos-laden.It is as
though this partof Arianna'srange,and thus of her song and her character,is alreadyseparatedfrom the prior relationshipwith Teseo and
from the passionatepartof her character... (26).

In fact, Cusick reads the music of "morire"as "the death of

Arianna's passionate self" (26).
Cusick invariably represents the melody as Arianna's psychologically expressive singing.25 Her contradictory and
evolving emotional state motivates much of Cusick's musical
commentary. Arianna, angry and grief-stricken at once, is
emotionally torn; her melody's "rupture" between the two
contrapuntal lines is perhaps its signature dramatic feature.
The line sounds both her rage and her grief: stretching upward from S to A in a vocally and emotionally intense part of
the octave, falling disastrously across the rupturing sixth, to
die away in a vocally relaxed and emotionally quiescent part
of the octave. Cusick's analysis is replete with descriptions of
the vocal line's registral, intervallic, and modal features integrated with expressive interpretations through the vehicle of
Arianna's singing.

25

Cusick 1999 proposes the development of "a performance-centered

rather than a listening-centeredmusic criticism,"to understand"the
ways musicalbehaviorsand regimes of gender and sexualityinteract"
(25). For instance,in her 1998 studyof songs aboutthe VirginMaryby
FrancescaCaccini,she asksreaders"tothink not only throughthe composer'sbody and subjectivitybut also throughthe body and subjectivity
of a potential performer"to understandhow "the act of performing"
might "causethe performerto reenact (ratherthan simply describe)a
miracleof the Virgin'sbody"(25-26).

200

MUSIC THEORY SPECTRUM 28 (2006)

Obviously, both Westergaard'sand Cusick's analyses examine intentional musical objects, and it is striking just how
different they are, how characteristic of widely divergent
concerns. Westergaard'sanalysis concentrates on explaining
a single perplexing dissonance. To do this he presents a
model of a consonant sonority that is then activated through
the contrapuntalrules covering suspensions.The complexity
of the account he constructs around the occurrence of F
against G draws attention to and indicates how musically
meaningful it is. Cusick's analytical focus spans the passage
to explain how the melody might have been meaningful to a
listener of Monteverdi's time. To do so she spells out how
that listener might have heard Arianna'sstate of mind in her
singing. By extension we might hear something of this expressivenesstoday, if less intensely.
Three further interpretive issues strike me upon examining these texts. First, notice again the parsing of the melodic
line into two contrapuntallines. We accomplish the registral
separation so effortlessly that we don't notice that doing so
requiresan act of imagination. As I noted in introducing the
concept of an intentional object, a similar state of affairsobtains for many of the most common entities we hear in musical sounds. We interpret without noticing because we
"erasethe work [we] do of configuring objects," as DeNora
says, and we take agreement among members of a cultural
community for fact, though hearing such things is a culturally supportedindividual-by-individualachievement.26
Second, consider the relation between the analysis and
analytical method or system of these two authors. Westergaard's answer to the problem he sets is conceived entirely
within a formulation of Renaissance counterpoint. Every
statement adds to that picture; it is entirely consistent. It
yields an interpretation of the F-G seventh as a conclu-

sion.27 Cusick's narrative, though it incorporates only the

singer's melody in the drama, embraces any feature of the
melody that contributes to Arianna'sexpressionof anger and
grief. Arianna'sstory, like Westergaard'scounterpoint theory,
determines what Cusick notices about the music. Though
it uses the insights of modal theory, it is a dramatic (not
modal) analysis of the Monteverdi phrase. Thus both authors have analytical theories, but one is general, the other
particular;one is musically consistent, the other dramatically
consistent.
Third, observe the intentional objects and states represented. Westergaardwrites about musical configurationsand
refrainsfrom expressive interpretationwhile Cusick assimilates the two.28I might say that Westergaardproposes a way
to organize a listening almost entirely in terms of the aural
observablesand there he stops. He might be said to leave the
identification of affective response open to individual introspection. Cusick organizes the aural observablesin terms of
an emotional narrativethat directs or shapes a sympathetic
listener'sattention more determinedly.
Cusick and Westergaard differ in intellectual inclinations
and disciplinarycommitments; Lucy/DeNora and Fisk differ in what they wish to take from Schubert. Each of these
four analystsoffers us an individual perspectiveon the music
in question. In my view, this abundance and diversity is desirable, since I look for ways of hearing or understanding
that I have not noticed on my own. I hope for articulations
of experiences I've had but not quite recognized or suggestions about something I haven't heard but might try for. I
find these things in analyses that are purposefullydistinctive.

27

28
26

DeNora 2000, 40.

Westergaard, fully aware of the "dangers"of this approach, recommends

examination of each step, and suggests questions that might be asked
on p. 241.
In their treatment of expressivity both authors are following the contemporaneous practice of their disciplines.

ANALYSIS AS INTERPRETATION:

EXPERIENCES

INTERACTION,

Isenberg 1973, 163. Isenberg is writing about criticism in the visual

arts. I think it is adaptable to criticism generally and thus to musical
analysis as a type of criticism. I have dealt with this essay at greater
length in Guck 1993a. See also Walton 1993, which looks at analysis as
an effort to understand musical experience, or "how [a piece] works on
orfor listeners"(35).

201

...

to have certain sorts of feeling experiences."30These in-

clude: "feelingcertain events as points of instability,feeling

certain progressions as increases in tension, feeling certain
events as points of resolution"(369; italics in original), as
well as feeling "the tonic as the most stable pitch in the scale,
or a 4-3 suspension as moving from a point of tension to a
point of rest, or the downbeat as the strongest beat in the
bar"(371).31 Musical feelings, according to Raffman, are located in listeners: "beat strength is something the listener
feels," and she quotes Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff making a similar claim: "[Meter] is the ... regular alternation of

30

31
29

INVENTION

don't have the "determinatefeel" of dominant, to use Benjamin Boretz's term, you don't have the idea of dominant.
Diana Raffman drives this point home in arguing that
"musical understanding is the ability to 'use' musical strings

WITH MUSIC

I might propose, borrowing a phrase from Arnold

Isenberg, that analysis is intended "to bring about communication at the level of the senses."29An analyst directs the
reader'sattention toward a way of hearing the music in question. In turn the readeruses the analysis as guidance for approximating the experiences recommended. Most often the
experiences are those of the analyst, though they might be
derived in sympathy with another individual,as in DeNora's
analysis,or with a different audience, as in Cusick's.
Experiences happen in the imaginative space between the
interacting human agent and the music. As the analyticalexcerpts have already shown, there are many kinds of musical
experiences.They might be either of sound qualities directly
(e.g., harmonic or contrapuntalrelations and modal lines), or
of felt qualities emergent in the sounds (e.g., motion and
feeling), but it is not clear that a distinction between "heard"
and "felt"can be maintained.
Consider, for example, what we do when we identify a
chord. Obviously, to hear any chord is not merely to identify
the pitches, scale degrees, or intervals that make it up. Take
the dominant: the specific scale degrees are essential, of
course, but we don't take the time to assay the parts;we fuse
them into a single, highly evocative sound with a specific
meaning. In the case of a dominant this might include the
desire to hear a tonic follow and resolve the tendencies heard
in V. "Dominant"or "V"is as much shorthand for that complicated, instantaneous, highly contextualized perceptionsensation as it is a name for the collection of notes. If you

INTENTIONALITY,

Raffman 1991, 369 (italics added). Raffman's argument can be summarized in four points: first, the purpose of engaging in musical activities,
including listening, is to have experiences; second, at least some conventional musical figures, like suspensions, are associated with feelings,
like tension; third, assignment of structure-hearing a configuration as
a suspension-is bound up with having or recognizing the relevant musical feeling (my preference is for both, that is, for a listener's having a
feeling which is recognized as associated with a musical configuration);
and, fourth, musical feelings guide determinations of musical structure.
Raffman's ideas also help to clarify the fact that technical terms face in
two directions: they are associated with and are used to label particular
configurations of notes on the one hand, and they point toward specific
musical feelings on the other. "Feeling" for Raffman is not synonymous
with "emotion." In fact, she is unsympathetic with the association of
musical meaning with emotion. My use of the word feeling throughout
this presentation is intended to be consistent with hers.
Raffman (1991) thinks that the concept of musical "feeling" may extend to more distinctive qualities, such as "feelings of tautness, peacefulness, and restfulness" (370), and therefore to qualities such as "soothing," but her argument begins to diverge from mine in order to reject
such feelings as "joy and sadness" (371) as incapable of close coordination with musical structure and therefore not candidates "for musical
meanings" (372-74).

202

MUSICTHEORYSPECTRUM
28 (2006)

strong and weak beats ... that produces the sensation of

meter" (369).32 For them the sensation of meter is meter.
Musical feelings correlate qualities of sound like tonic,
suspension, or metric location with sensations of tension,
rest, stability, strength. The latter are literal somatic sensations, literal feelings. The technical terms that we think of as
identifying sounds, Raffman shows us, also cryptically refer
to the feelings associated with them. Hearing is not limited
to audition; it also includes somatic and physical responses to
sound, in other words, feeling and movement. I might say
that we hear with our whole bodies, not just our ears.
Roman numerals and the like may even be the most precise ways we have to refer to some of these feelings. Raffman's examples are illuminating principally just in pointing
out that musical feelings arise in response to so many familiar musical configurations. What we so often refer to as
musical structure is thus correlated with a web of musical
feelings that we experience and understand as tonic, V, sus3
pension, 4, etc.

sounding in particular rhythms.33 Both are heard and felt,

though listeners may notice feeling soothed more immediately than they identify the ways in which the sounds make a
soothing effect.
The analyticalprocess,when such a feeling is identified, is
likely to include investigation of the ways in which the music
creates the effect of soothing, which is done by specifying
the layersof intentional states or objects that go into creating
the feeling. In the analyticaltexts discussed earlier,the analysis proceeds by a kind of dialogue between expressive and
conventional objects, each drawing the other out. This is
most constantly present in DeNora, who crosses back and
forth to flesh out the qualities of soothing behaviors and associate them with particular musical ways of behaving so
that someone will be soothed. Cusick's analysis repeatedly
reinterpretsthe notion of "rupture,"operating in both expressive and sound terms: the rupture between Arianna and
Teseo is representedby rupturein the melody, and the musical form of the ruptured line by implication expresses
Arianna's contradictory, ruptured emotional state. On the
other hand, my reshuffled, more precise (if still inarticulate)
hearing of F in relation to G comes as a consequence of listening in terms of Westergaard'saccount of the F-G conjunction in "Lasciatemimorire."I have had an experience of
a quality's emergence, but one that remains unnamed. You
might say that crossing back and forth between layers of intentional objects and states, whatever the entry point, helps
to identify the content of the objects or states while also ensuring the "integrityof the [real, musical] object,"as Bollas
might say.

Musical feelings, it seems to me, are instances of intentional states. In my exposition of intentional objects, which
drew in intentional states, I distinguished two types, calling
the first "conventional" and noting that the second is not
conventional and tends to be given verbal articulation
through expressive descriptions. I also implied that an intentional state could take another as its intentional object, creating layer upon layer of intentional states or objects. Raffman's correlation of such things as tonic with stability is such

a layering.
To be soothed, as Lucy was, is a musical feeling or intentional state. The musical feeling is emergent from more conventional intentional objects or states: it results, unpredictably, from the conjunction of such things as sonorities
33

32

Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983, 69; the italics are in the original.

An emergent or supervenient quality arises in consciousness as the

resultant of the combination of other qualities. There are no rules for
creating such a combination, hence I've characterized the process as
"unpredictable."

ANALYSIS AS INTERPRETATION:

CONCEPTUAL

INTERACTION,

AND VERBAL INVENTION

The cartoon of analysis is that one takes one's method to

some piece, applies its concepts and follows its rules, and at
the end one produces a correct construalof the piece. Rarely
is this true, and, when it is, the analysis is only too likely to
be unenlightening. Often in analysis, the concepts don't
quite apply and the rules don't quite work. Instead, we use
them to show that something unusual is happening, we extend their definition a bit, we move from one system to another,we give them up in favor of tailor-madenotions.
Westergaard'sanalysis provides a clear example of using
rules to understand something unusual. First, he outlines a
simple form of strict composition that relates consonant
sonority, compound line, and suspensions. He constructs a
three-voice phrase conforming to the rules that begins with
an alto F simultaneous with soprano and bass A's. All three
move in successive suspensions. But in Monteverdi's free
composition F never sounds until it is already too late to
comply with the rules of consonance. Understanding F as
stable requires an extension of the counterpoint rules, and
that is the special insight Westergaardoffers.
His analysis has something else to teach us, too. Having
establishedhis D-F-A lattice, he introducesthe idea of lines
movingby step, a common enough idea, but striking by contrast with his writing about the immobile consonant simultaneity.Musical motion and animation, more generally,tend
to be extra-theoretical.34They are handled by conventional
language-like "motion"--which we don't pay much attention to, or by verbal invention-concepts created for the oc-

34

By "extra-theoretical" I mean that we do not have explicit, systematic

theories of musical motion and animation. Cumming 1997 takes a step
in the direction of theorizing them in proposing a systematic association of gesture (conceived as similar to musical figure) with the characteristic features of human affect as formulated by Manfred Clynes, et al.

INTENTIONALITY,

INVENTION

203

casion. Both are particularlyimportant to the communication of musical experience.

In short, interpretationinvolves inventive use of analytical
concepts and rules and it involves invention of concepts.
This inventiveness addresses two facets of musical experience which have emerged repeatedly in this paper: its temporal passage and its expressiveness, either heard "in the
music"or felt by listeners who hear it. To proceed I will present analyses of music from two Haydn piano sonatas that
illustratethese points.
I can't quite identify the harmony on the downbeat of
m. 24 of the Andante of Haydn's Piano Sonata in E Major
(XVI: 22), shown in Example 4. To describe the situation,
though, I have to begin at m. 22. The key is G major,and the
downbeat sounds E-G-C with the sense of an E-minor
triad waiting for its fifth. In my mind is also the G-major
triad for which the E-minor triad is a substitute.In short I'm
hearing a deceptive resolution of V.
In m. 23, the music, repeating m. 21, sets me up to hear
either the suppressed G-major chord or, possibly, the Eminor chord again, and at the downbeat of m. 24, when I
hear E-G-C, I again hear a suspension-colored E-minor
triad. The music must count on the sonority getting me to
follow this train of thought again. C even moves again to B,
but too soon, and it's accompanied by D: is the bass moving
in parallel sixths or beginning to undo the E-minor chord?
Or is this actually a G-major chord?
The bass passes onward down to B, as if extending the
downbeat E. But I hardly hear it: my attention is caught up
in the fast-paced exchange of motives between the bass and
the soprano and I can't quite settle my mind in them. On
the one hand C and E, especially in the upper voice,
seem the focal points of a voice exchange, retrospectively
reinterpretingm. 24's downbeat E-G-C as a C6 chord. But
the persistence of the weak-strong reiteration of the C
chords makes me wonder: does C(6)arriveon the beat, having been anticipated,or is it suspended on the beat, resolving

MUSIC THEORY SPECTRUM 28 (2006)

204

20

A_ 1

_me

-F

_4

- 3

I
3

EXAMPLE

3/II

4. Haydn, Piano Sonata in E Major (XVI.:22), ii, 20-28.

on the second triplet sixteenth to an inversion of G? Playing

the passage,I reach for the C chords as a framework,and yet
I feel the physicality of resolution into the G chords. I think
I experience the same shifting of perspective in listening, a
flickeringbetween hearings that, with the playfullyrepeating
melodic figure, carriesme forward until both lines break out
of the pattern at the upbeat to m. 26.35
Afterward, on reflection, I wonder what happened back
on the downbeat. I think I heard an E-minor chord then,
but what followed seems to have reached back to claim it for
C6, but in turn it seems to resolve-momentarily, unstably-to G4. I've been tricked, and left in a quandaryat that, but I
don't mind because I appreciatethe finesse with which it was
done and it leaves me smiling.
In this passage the music is in charge, priming me with
m. 22's conventional yet complicated imaginings, getting
that train of thought started again with just the first sixteenth or two of m. 24, and then effortlessly undermining it,
though I don't quite know when or how. The music can play
its trick because my attention is first attracted to the harmony, then away from it to voice leading and metric location. When I turn back to harmony, the downbeat has been
magically transformed.
35

At this break-out point, weak-strong reiteration seems to suggest

anticipation-arrival at-or escape into-a dominant and, with it, movement in the phrase toward cadence.

The analysisnarratesthe music's control of my attention

and shows the sleight of hand. The invention is in accepting
my uncertaintyabout the harmonic identity somewhere near
the beginning of m. 24 as a legitimate musicalfeeling (intentional state) and taking it as an analytical premise.36It is in
the willingness not to be systematic, that is, not to stick with
harmony but to shift from harmony to voice leading and
rhythm then back to harmony to understand how the elusiveness comes about. It is in framing the analysisin terms of
the interaction,representing both what the music seems to
do and how I respond. Finally, it is in representingthe music
as the more influential partner,taking meaningful actions.37
By contrast,I can easily identify what featuresof the second Haydn passage interest me. They are the F1 appoggiatura in the first measure of Example 5(b), from the first
movement of Haydn's Piano Sonata in AbMajor (XVI: 46),
and the suspensions that follow in the second measure.
However, identifying these melodic figures as "appoggiatura"

36

37

Other analyses that accept uncertainty as a response to some music include Dubiel 2004, Jordan and Kafalenos 1989, and Kielian-Gilbert
2003.
On musical action and agency, see Maus 1988. (A note of caution: I
have been attributing intentionality to listeners throughout this paper.
In the analysis just completed I have also attributed it-as purposeful
action-to the Haydn. Maus's use of the concept of intention is of the
latter sort.)

ANALYSIS AS INTERPRETATION:

INTERACTION,

(a)

If

205

r-4l I I
r--7"

I,: V F F
EXAMPLE

INVENTION

__

6.

(b)

INTENTIONALITY,

F F

..
"

5. Haydn, Piano Sonata in AbMajor (XVI: 46), i, 1-3; (a) Two-voice simplification, (b) Score.

and "suspension"doesn't tell me enough about how they

sound and, especially,how they feel when I play the passage.
In particular,the appoggiaturaseems crucial to my sense of
the melody.To investigate I'll begin with a simplerversionof
the music and layer on its distinctive qualities, returning
again to the appoggiatura.
Playing the simplification of the music in Example 5(a), I
hear a basic line that sounds self-assured in its leap up from
tonic to dominant. It invites me to open out in its chorddefining fifth, strong and proud, then to step down lightly
through 4, and finally with metric emphasis, as I did with i
and 3, through the remaining steps. These impressionsremain in the sonata'smelody, but more subtly.You might say
that I play off them.
When I play the sonata, the opening mordent gives i a
snap, and the bigger leap to 6 lets me come down into the
tonic triad'sfifth space from above-beyond-in a way that
takes the edge off 3. I play the tonic figure smartly,then float
into the dominant. By dislodging 3 from the beat, the appoggiatura very slightly off-balances the line and sets it in
motion-nudging the downward steps as well as their suspensions into existence.

The melody's suspensions, curiously, seem to secureeach

step for me as much as they make me wait for the next. Each
resolving step holds my attention in the trill, but then the
move back up to the prior suspension note turns away from
the line's tendency.The return downward, even if now a suspension, secures my place while I think ahead to the next resolving step down. If strings of suspensions typically direct
one's attention always ahead in the line toward the resolution
and next step, Haydn's trills and decorations counteract that
inclination-I'm caught up as I play each step.
Still the appoggiatura requires further thought, though
I am nearly at a loss for words to describe all that it does.
The step beyond the tonic-dominant outline is hugeout of proportion-to my finger and ear. I hear-and feelpossibility in it: I don't reach from below up to it, I seem
to light on it from above. I am buoyed up and the tonicdominant outline softens. When I play, the music asks me
for strength with lightness and agility at the appoggiatura
and through the following steps.
The most unusual feature of this analysis is the fact that a
detail--something we learn to dismiss as "just"an appoggiatura
-is the center of analytical attention. It may be a small

206

MUSIC THEORY SPECTRUM 28 (2006)

thing, yet I don't recognize the melody without it. On reflection I realize that is because it does so many things for the
passage. Modeling this realization, I write about the appoggiatura at length and trust that the phrase's "structure"can
take care of itself.
Thus identification of the figures is only the beginning of
analyticalengagement with them. The analysis of the appoggiatura is accomplished principallyin the repeated returns to
notice another meaning or musical feeling I sense in it. The
suspensions are analyzed through articulating the particular
ways in which the melody moves around each of them to
create a specific effect of finger security and present time.
The point is to articulate as precisely as possible what this
appoggiatura and these suspensions are like in just this
context.
This idea of the appoggiatura and suspensions having
sounds unique to this context is what I have learned from
Catherine Hirata's notion of the "sounds of the sounds
themselves," that is, not of the sounds on their own but of
the sounds "having a certain integrity"that results from their
surroundings"infusing"them with certain qualities.38This is
a reversalof the usual analytical procedure,I think. Take, by
contrast, Milton Babbitt's analysis of the Bach chorale "Nun
ruhen alle Wilder," in which he notes the curious D? against
C where a cadential 6 might have been expected in the final
cadence. Babbitt immediately bounces off that chord to trace
the history of Db-against-C throughout the chorale.39That
is what I think we usually do-bounce off the focal event to
point away from it toward the other events that implicate it.
We create what we take to be lines of causality or inference,
and imagine ourselves to be making explanations. We also
take some events to be related while others drop away.
Hirata's approach is different. Everything in the musical
surroundingsgo into creating the sound of the focal event.

38
39

See Hirata1996, 11.

Babbitt1987, 138-43.

Resemblance is one way of infusing the sound with its particular qualities but so is difference. It is through this comprehensive understanding of its surroundings that my appoggiaturacomes to have its intensive individuality.It is also
the way in which Westergaard'sF comes to have its particular qualities. Both analyses create interpretations that draw
the focal event's surroundings into its particularsound and
meaning.
CLOSING

While music analysts remain busy with new ideas about

repertoiresto be analyzed and new analytical strategies, in
recent years there has been less scrutiny of what analysis is
and why we do it. When we theorists last examined our
methodological inclinations it was under the auspices of a
now outmoded scientific model of reasoning and, as a result,
that model remains an undercurrentin our thinking. Contrary to currenttendencies to make music mathematicalin a
new way or to view it as a mechanistic kind of cognition or
perception, I have advocated here a more humanistic, interpretive approachto analysis that is sympathetic to scholarsin
other music disciplines.
Musical experience happens in the negotiation between
an individual's sensibility and some music's affordances. It
happens in the individual's imagination, which additionally
brings sensations of action and intensity to the sounds.
Under this conception, musical analyses alreadyreflect interpretive activities that use musical feelings to create intentional objects.I have suggested that analysiscan benefit from
making this state of affairs explicit. I think that understanding analysis as interpretation might induce a frame of mind
more encouragingto exploration of this interaction,though I
have not insisted on the term here.
Because music is designed to be used by people and to
effect change in us, I look for analysis of the human-music
interaction that articulateswhat the music does to or for us
-for instance, that it confuses, astonishes, or moves us-and

ANALYSIS AS INTERPRETATION:

INTERACTION,

how it does so. One way in which this might happen is

shown in Cusick's study of "Lasciatemi morire"; by examining the piece in light of prevailing cultural ideas about
women, it shows how the music would be likely to make any
acculturated woman cry. By contrast I have taken a more
personal approach in exploring the way that measure 24 of
the Haydn Andante movement distracts and fools me.
Others may respond differently to the Haydn passage, of
course; that simply means that the passage affords different
people different experiences. It is open to interpretation.
In order to be responsive to the variables of experiences
elicited by music, I've suggested that we take an adaptive,
eclectic approach to method and terminology. Such an approach is intended to suggest openness to the situation one
finds; it is by no means intended to suggest taking a casual
approach to reflection or writing. We need to be responsive
to the individuality of musical works and to variability
within works as well as in our apprehension of music-to the
fact that music may draw our attention from one place to
another and may ask for different kinds of attention from
moment to moment. There may be technical ways to describe what happens or we may have to invent something
tailored to the condition we find ourselves in. Invention is
difficult and calls for very careful introspection about what
one hears and how one responds, along with equal care in
choosing words to articulate what exactly is happening.
Musical analysis can be seen as a way that analysts work
on themselves to understand and improve their experiences
of music they have chosen, as well as offering the possibility
of musical self improvement to their readers. The musical interpretations I have considered offer this possibility, but by
consciously addressing the experiences that occur in the interaction between music and its human partners, they suggest
other possibilities as well. DeNora, Bollas, and Fisk indicate
the ways in which music is a more broadly psychological or
social resource for personal understanding. Cusick's analysis
shows how music participates in the cultural formation of
individuals.

INTENTIONALITY,

INVENTION

207

Here, only a few lines from the end of my paper, I feel

myself shrinking from the conclusion to be drawn from the
paragraphabove. I imagine readerscringing at "self improvement," "personalunderstanding,"and "formationof individuals."These are things that the explanatory, structural account of analysis defends us against. Yet, music is designed
to create effects like gruesomeness, designed to puzzle and
soothe, designed for personal and social ends. It's all very
well to understand and appreciate the niceties of musical
structure,but if we don't also understand these other things,
do we understand music?
REFERENCES

Anderson, Robert and Wesley Sharrock.1993. "Can Organizations Afford Knowledge?"In ComputerSupportedCooperativeWork1: 143-61.
Babbitt, Milton. 1987. WordsaboutMusic. Edited by Stephen
Dembski and Joseph N. Straus.Madison: The University
of Wisconsin Press.
Bollas, Christopher. 1992. Being a Character:Psychoanalysis
and SelfExperience.New York:Hill and Wang.
Voice.Berkeley: UniCone, Edward T. 1974. The Composer's
of
Press.
California
versity
. 1982, 1986. "Schubert's Promissory Note: An
Exercise in Musical Hermeneutics."19th-CenturyMusic
5.3: 233-41. Revised in Schubert.Critical and Analytical
Studies. Edited by Walter Frisch. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 13-30.
Cumming, Naomi. 1997. "The Subjectivities of 'Erbarme
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Music TheorySpectrum,Vol. 28, Issue 2, pp. 191-210, ISSN 0195-6167,

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