An Applied Approach to the Descriptive Analysis of Music As Heard THESIS Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements Fo

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An Applied Approach to the Descriptive Analysis of Music as Heard

THESIS

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Alissandra Reed

Graduate Program in Music

The Ohio State University

2017

Master's Examination Committee:

David Clampitt, Advisor

David Huron

Eugenia Costa-Giomi

Copyrighted by

Alissandra Elise Reed

2017

Abstract

This document engages music analysis toward the aim of describing the experience of listening to a piece of music, specifically Franz Liszt’s “Il Penseroso.” In this analysis, music is considered strictly as an aural experience, an object that exists in its hearer’s brain. The document therefore takes a critical approach to descriptive analysis by combining Schenkerian reduction, tonal and neo-Riemannian harmonic analysis, phenomenology, and empirical participant-based musicology to describe the experience of listening to “Il Penseroso.” The term descriptive analysis, taken from David Temperley

(1999), refers to the description of how a piece of music is experienced; Temperley opposes this to suggestive analysis, which instead provides a new way of hearing a piece.

An analysis is thus given based on the analyst’s perceived experience of listening to “Il Penseroso,” with focus on the role that harmony and melody play in that experience. Next, a study is carried out to gather phenomenological accounts of “Il

Penseroso” from expert listeners. Their verbal descriptions are categorized using qualitative content analysis and the occurrences of the resulting categories are compared to the initial, score-based analysis. Liszt’s emotionally complex “Il Penseroso” highlights inherent differences between listeners’ experience of affect. The results demonstrate that an analysis can be, and often is, both descriptive and suggestive, as it may accurately describe one listener’s experience while suggesting a new way of hearing the music to another listener. ii

Acknowledgments

For their invaluable discussion and guidance throughout this project, I thank my adviser David Clampitt and my dear colleague Lindsay Warrenburg. I thank my committee members, David Huron and Eugenia Costa-Giomi, for the compelling conversations that led me to this project and for their insightful feedback on it. Finally, I thank the Ohio State University Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory for their never-ending support and cheerful participation in my study.

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Vita

June 2011 ...... Coral Glades High School

May 2015 ...... B.M. Music Theory, Florida State

University

2015 to present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, School of

Music, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Music

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... iii

Vita ...... iv

List of Tables ...... vii

List of Figures ...... viii

Chapter 1: Foundations for Musical Description ...... 1

Background ...... 2

Analysis and Description ...... 3

Music Psychology ...... 6

Phenomenology ...... 9

Description of “Il Penseroso” as Heard...... 12

Chapter 2: Listening-Based Analysis of Liszt’s “Il Penseroso” ...... 13

Melody and Harmony: Schenkerian Reduction ...... 14

Narrative Interpretation ...... 19

Harmony and the Penseroso Narrative ...... 20

Chapter 3: Method for Participant-Based Phenomenological Analysis ...... 27

Method for Collecting Participant Responses ...... 27

Participants ...... 29

Stimuli ...... 30

Procedure ...... 34

Instructions ...... 34

Data Collection and Content Analysis ...... 35

Results ...... 42

Limitations ...... 44

Chapter 4: Descriptive Strategies...... 47

"Thinking" Descriptions ...... 47

Expressive Categories ...... 49

Negative Emotion: Fate/Hopelessness ...... 55

Moments of Highest Agreement...... 55

Overall Emotional Trajectory ...... 57

Conclusions ...... 59

References ...... 62

Appendix A: Segmented Participant Responses ...... 64

List of Tables

Table 1. Segmented responses to Clip 1 ...... 36

Table 2. Researcher 2’s categorization process and category operationalizations ...... 38

Table 3. Experimenter’s categorization process and category operationalizations...... 39

Table 4. Correlation of two category lists and resultant new category list ...... 41

Table 5. Operationalizations for the final category list ...... 42

Table 6. Tallied number of participants who used each expressive category by stimulus 45

Table 7. Expressive categoric responses compared to intial analysis ...... 50

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List of Figures

Figure 1. Schenkerian and Neo-Riemannian reduction of “Il Penseroso” ...... 16

Figure 2. Chunking “Il Penseroso” ...... 32

Figure 3. Average affective trajectory of participant responses across 21 ordered clips. 58

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Chapter 1: Foundations for Musical Description

When I first heard Franz Liszt’s “Il Penseroso,” I was stricken. I had been passively listening to Alfred Brendel’s 1998 CD recordings of the entire Années de pèlerinage as background music, but when “Il Penseroso” came on, it demanded my attention. The music carried a certain emotional profundity that drove the analyst in me straight to the score. I wanted to analyze the notes so I could understand what it was about their combination that felt so deep, so emotionally compelling. My goal was to combine deep, reflective listening with the tools of harmonic and melodic analysis to construct an understanding of the profound affective nature of the piece. I sought to use the tools of music theory to analyze not the notes in the piece, but the experience of listening to it.

It did not go unnoticed, however, that, through analysis and targeted listening, my experience of the piece changed. Indeed, that is what analysis is meant to do; to give its practitioner a deeper understanding of a piece of music. Perhaps I noticed things in the printed score that I didn’t notice through listening. Perhaps too, looking at the score inhibited my ability to hear beyond the written pitches. Perhaps acquiring a visual representation of the music changed my mental representation of the sound. That reading a score is usually a substantially less emotional experience than listening to a performance is indicates that analysis of a score is, indeed, not analysis of a musical 1 experience. Yet to engage in an analysis using the tools of music theory is to use the score as a representation of the experience. Thus, the act of listening is confounded; it becomes an affirmation or critique of analysis rather than a sublime, unburdened artistic experience.

How, then, can a music analysis truly reflect the sublime, non-analytic, artistic experience of listening? An ideal analysis of listening experience should seek to explain what non-analyst listeners describe as affective. Therefore, after I crafted my analysis through a combination of reflective listening and score reading, I sought a method to focus the analysis back on the experience of non-analytic listening. I gathered qualitative data by asking participants to listen deeply and report on their perceptions of the piece.

By analyzing the content of their phenomenological responses, I could both fortify and critique my initial analysis.

Background

As a music analyst, with what tools can I dive into this piece in order to resurface with a firm understanding of what gives it its emotional profundity? Music theory has given analysts a garage-full of tools with which to examine and explain musical features.

The tool or tools of choice depend on the task that one hopes to accomplish. Some tools facilitate inspection of the musical surface, some prune away surface materials to reveal a more essential structure, some enable their users to plant new ideas into an existing piece.

My analysis requires tools that facilitate inspection and description of music as a listening experience, and not as dots on a piece of paper. Although written scores provide an invaluable entry into understanding the aural experience, they are themselves reductive.

There is much that they don’t show: notes indicate fundamental pitches but not harmonics, timbre is reduced to an instrument indication and some articulation markings

(which require a performer’s interpretation), and importantly, the score cannot convey the feeling of hearing the music performed.

To focus music analysis on the listening experience is to place analysis somewhere near the crossroads of music theory and music cognition. This, of course, is not a new concept; many music analysts, especially within the past few decades, have found themselves at that intersection. It is a bustling juncture with activity on every corner that has produced intriguing theories and analytic approaches. To arrive there, one must begin by asking oneself about the purpose of music analysis.

Analysis and Description

The truest answer to the query, “what is the purpose of music analysis?” is that it depends entirely on whom one asks. With even minimal research into this question, it becomes clear that, by and large, music scholars do not agree on an overarching purpose or goal for analysis. What appears to be the most widely agreed upon (and perhaps the vaguest) conception of analysis is that it somehow relates to musical structure:

“The study of musical structure applied to actual works or performances.” “Analysis” (Harvard Dictionary of Music)

“An analysis is an investigation of the structure of a single piece.” “The Question of Purpose in Music Theory” (Temperley 1999, 66)

“That part of the study of music that takes as its starting-point the music itself, rather than external factors. More formally, analysis may be said to include the interpretation of structures in music, together with their resolution into relatively simpler constituent elements, and the investigation of the relevant functions of those elements.” 3

“Analysis” (Bent and Pople)

“Analysis is thus concerned with structure, with structural problems, and finally, with structural listening. By structure I do not mean here the mere grouping of musical parts according to traditional formal schemata, however; I understand it rather as having to do with what is going on, musically, underneath these formal schemata.” “On the Problem of Musical Analysis” (Adorno 1982, 173)

The disagreements truly abound when one asks either, “where does the structure arise?” or, “how should analysis address the structure?” The question of how analysis should address structure appears overall to have been of more central concern to music theorists.

A common thread running through written investigations of the practice of analysis is the relationship of description to analysis of structure. Michael Rogers, in a book chapter about the pedagogy of analysis, writes, “the most basic problem in defining analysis is to distinguish it from description,” where description is the “fact-gathering enterprise that answers, ‘what happens [in a piece of music]?’ and ‘where does it happen?’” His objection to description, or “fact-gathering,” as analysis mirrors Adorno’s sentiment regarding the “mere grouping of musical parts.” The stance against description as analysis is indeed a shared sentiment among many other music scholars. To them, analysis is heralded as an achievement and held in much higher esteem than description of music. Authors who hold this point of view sometimes ascribe analysis rather lofty goals; for instance, Adorno writes, “works need analysis for their ‘truth content’

[Wahrheitsgehalt] to be revealed” (1982, 176). The more general – more grounded – conception amongst those who oppose description as analysis is that “analysis tells you more than you could find out by listening, description does not; and analysis tells you why things happen, description does not” (Dubiel 2000). 4

Joseph Dubiel laments this widespread opposition to description. In his 2000 exposition on the subject, “Analysis, Description, and What Really Happens,” he asks,

“what’s ‘mere,’ I’d like to know, about conveying the sense of what it’s like to listen to some music?” The examples Dubiel cites in his ensuing defense of description make clear that his idea of description differs from Rogers’s in a particularly telling way.

Where Rogers opposed the description of facts that can be gathered from looking at a score, Dubiel defends, instead, the description of the experience of hearing a piece. Both are descriptions of musical structure. They differ primarily in the conception of where that structure arises: for Rogers, structure is primarily discoverable in the composer’s notation; for Dubiel, structure exists in the listener’s brain.

Dubiel’s idea of description is representative of a camp of theorists who view music more as an aural or mental process than as a set of notated ideas. David Temperley, both a music theorist and a cognitive scientist, is part of this camp. In his article “The

Question of Purpose in Music Theory”, Temperley responds to Bent’s statement that analysis “is the means of answering directly the question ‘how does it work?’” (Bent and

Pople) by noting that to ask how something works might either be to ask, “what does it do?” or to ask, “how does it do what I already know it does?” He elaborates this dichotomy,

In the case of music, I could be saying, “This piece has certain effects on me (an emotional effect, a sense of conflict and resolution, etc.). How is it having these effects [e.g., how does it do what I already know it does]?” Or I could be saying, “I don’t feel that I’m fully understanding this piece; show me a better way of listening to it so that I can appreciate it more [e.g., what does it do].” (1999, 67)

The remainder of Temperley’s article paints the former statement as a starting point for description or “descriptive analysis” and the latter as one for “prescriptive” or

“suggestive analysis.” His line is thus drawn between analysis that explores and describes how a piece of music is heard and analysis that suggests particular ways of hearing a piece of music. To accomplish descriptive analysis, then, one must have some basis for understanding how a given piece music sounds to a population.

We return to the busy intersection of music theory and music cognition. Analysts who come to this crossroads in search of musical description remember that “music unfolds in time; we do not wait until the end of a piece to begin analyzing it, but rather, we interpret it as we go along, sometimes revising our interpretation of one part in light of what happens afterwards” (Temperley 2001, 2). Therefore, description of musical experience requires knowledge of cognitive and perceptual experience.

Music Psychology

In seeking Temperley’s brand of descriptive analysis, it is crucial to note that the same music sounds different to different listeners. A listener’s perception and experience can depend on their previous musical experience, their knowledge of the musical idiom, any external associations they might have with a sound stimulus, or their artistic preferences (Stewart 2008). Even a single listener might experience the same stimulus in different ways depending on the time of day, how much attention they give to the stimulus, or their mood. Therefore, issues of affective perception across an entire piece are essentially impossible to quantify or define when the piece is considered as experienced sound.

Nevertheless, some music theorists, Temperley included, have constructed theories that generalize aspects of musical experience. Because of principles like statistical learning, researchers can say with high degrees of certainty that listeners experienced in an idiom will have similar expectations associated with different musical sounds. Some models that have taken a scientific approach to generalizing musical experience across a population include the Generalized Theory of Tonal Music (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983), the implication-realization model (Narmour 1990), Temperley’s

“preference rules” in The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures (Temperley 2001), and the ITPRA model of expectation (Huron 2006). These models enable theorists and analysts to approach the analysis of a piece of music in terms of how a listener is likely to interpret some of its sounds.

Some traditional models of music analysis have also been said to describe psychological processes. For instance, in regard to Schenkerian analysis, Nicholas Cook wrote,

Schenker’s approach to analysis was “psychological” in the sense that he was interested in how musical sounds are experienced, rather than in the sounds themselves; so that he interprets one C major chord one way and another differently because the context is different and consequently the chord is experienced in a different way. (1987, 67)

Although the consideration of context and experience was central to Schenker’s theories, his reductive approach to analysis has been criticized for its questionable perceptual salience. Schenker’s approach to melodic interpretation at the foreground level is, in fact, quite similar to Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s “prolongational” analytic domain (Lerdahl &

Jackendoff 1983, Cross 1998, 7–8). However, Schenker had no empirical evidence for his

7 model, and his was not supposed to be generalizable beyond the “genius” of German instrumental music (Kerman 1980). Even Cook, quoted above, quickly backpedals to say of Schenker, “this is to use the word ‘psychological’ in a rather loose manner.”

In response to music theories’ claims to represent psychological experience, Ian

Cross criticizes the music theory community’s utilization of unproven “folk psychologies” as they oppose empirical cognitive psychology. In his 1998 paper “Music

Analysis and Music Perception,” Cross quotes Jerome Breuner, defining the term as “a set of more-or-less normative descriptions of how human beings ‘tick’, what minds are like, what one can expect situated action to be like, what are possible modes of life, how one commits oneself to them” (Cross 1998, 5). These descriptions are used by laypeople to describe perceived mental processes; they often do not accurately reflect the findings of empirical psychology research. Cross insists that “the ‘analytical idea’ of perception can be thought of as a partial ‘folk psychology’ of music analysis.” In other words, the way that many analysts conceive of musical perception is not consistent with the findings of cognitive science. Analysts often discuss perception as though it is subject to volitional intervention, while the broader domain of cognitive psychology, he writes, understands perception as “involving involuntary and non-conscious processes” (Cross 1998, 5).

Cross eventually concedes that it would not be reasonable to forgo “folk psychology” in music analysis entirely, but calls on music analysts to make clear whether their analysis makes use of an understanding of “folk” or empirical psychology. This may not be a realistic request on all fronts, but I will concede that the current study chiefly engages perception through “folk psychology.” By collecting and analyzing listener-

8 based data, I take an empirical approach to understanding the experience of listening to

“Il Penseroso” among a population. Since cognitive science considers perception an involuntary and non-conscious process, though, the act of reporting on one’s perception is necessarily confounding.

Whatever its challenges, the music cognition field has set a precedent and standard for the collection of participant-based data toward the goal of understanding how listeners perceive musical sounds. It has introduced to music analysts a rigorous, scientific, and empirical approach to describing music listening experiences. While most of the generalized music cognition models discussed above will not be directly applied in the forthcoming study, their philosophy of approach to uncovering satisfactory descriptions of musical experience will.

Phenomenology

When one looks outside the bounds of cognitive science for a method for reporting on one’s perceptual experience, one discovers the philosophic discipline of phenomenology. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes phenomenology as

“the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.” It elaborates:

We all experience various types of experience including perception, imagination, thought, emotion, desire, volition, and action. Thus, the domain of phenomenology is the range of experiences including these types (among others). (Smith 2016)

Phenomenology therefore accounts for the volitional aspect of music listening that cognitive science does not. Husserlian phenomenology, however, is not empirical. It depends on its practitioners to report on their experience by introspecting. 9

Phenomenology is wholly subjective and qualitative, but this does not mean its application cannot be rigorous.

A seminal application of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology to the description of music came in Thomas Clifton’s 1983 book Music as Heard: Studies in Applied

Phenomenology. As its title implies, Clifton’s book takes music as a listener-dependent object. His philosophy mirrors music cognition’s as they both consider music an artifact of the mind of the listener. In the following statement, Clifton makes an appeal to musicians to consider phenomenology as a valid and useful mode of theory and analysis:

…there is ample room in music theory for phenomenological description. There is no reason why music theory cannot feel free to deal with meanings which are significant to one’s consciousness of music, to the way one relates to, and in fact, recognizes music. Music theory need not feel that it is being unscientific by returning the experiencing person to center stage. The dichotomies have been dissolved, and we speak today out of ignorance when we oppose descriptive and objective methods. For this reason and others, it is possible to frame a phenomenological definition of music theory in which a surprising number of theorists may recognize their own efforts: let us say that music theory is not an inventory of prescriptions or a corpus of systems, but rather, an act: the act of questioning our assumptions about the nature of music and the nature of man perceiving music. … to perceive any object as an individual standing out from the background of the world is already to theorize about it. Perception does not precede thought, but a reflective attitude is needed if the thought in the perception is to emerge [italics mine]. (1983, 37)

The last statement confronts the conflict between cognitive science and “folk psychology’s” views of perception as involuntary or volitional. In his book, Clifton uses his carefully developed philosophy to discuss music that has challenged other theoretical approaches, such as aleatoric music. Chance music challenges analysts who seek to illuminate musical meaning in a work because there is no agent behind the notes.

Phenomenology, however, can account for the music purely in terms of how it is heard. 10

Therefore, Clifton “finds no experiential basis for distinction between indeterminate music and that which is highly specified” (Bowman 1989). Another insight arising from his discussion of aleatoric music is “that repeatability is as impossible for highly circumscribed compositions as for the aleatoric or improvisatory, since the listener's experiential modes vary even given an otherwise identical performance” (Bowman

1989). In other words, the phenomenological approach recognizes that repeated music or musical ideas will be experienced differently on each iteration. This is a concept that does not appear to pervade much music analysis, as writers often highlight recurrent structures each on the same level.

In David Lewin’s 1986 article “Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of

Perception,” he presents a decidedly formalized model for “a musical perception” based on Husserlian phenomenology. Lewin’s formula accounts for five elements of perception that occur at any moment in listening time: the sonic event, the musical context, a list of pairs of perception and relation, and a list of statements in a stipulated language. In the article, Lewin uses his five-element formula to write an analysis of a passage from

Schubert’s Morgengruss. He divides three measures into eleven “events” and defines the five elements for each event in order to track the phenomenon of listening to these measures. Lewin’s method employs phenomenology to make predictions about how an enculturated listener would interpret a musical event in terms of its context. The approach, like some empirical psychological approaches, produces a great amount of information with respect to each musical event. This rigor yields stimulating results and

11 discussion, to be sure, but perhaps it is not the most useful approach for a written descriptive analysis of an entire piece.

Description of “Il Penseroso” as Heard

The current study will employ phenomenological thought, participant-based data, and traditional music-theoretic concepts to construct a description of “Il Penseroso” as a heard experience. The analysis presented in Chapter 2 employs theoretic tools such as

Schenkerian reduction and neo-Riemannian transformational analysis to investigate the harmonic and melodic structures that underlie my experience of listening to the piece.

These tools are employed not for the purpose of understanding the composition, but for the purpose of understanding the listening experience. Since they necessarily do both, and since they were used for analysis prior to a thorough phenomenological approach, the act of analysis changes my listening experience in unknown ways. I then gather phenomenological data, or in other words, descriptions of the experience of listening to

“Il Penseroso” that are unconfounded by score-reading, in a participant-based study whose methods are detailed in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 presents an analysis of the phenomenological data, a comparison to my original listening-based analysis, and a concluding discussion on the goals, methods, and viability of descriptive analysis.

Chapter 2: Listening-Based Analysis of Liszt’s “Il Penseroso”

Franz Liszt composed “Il Penseroso” in the 1840’s as the second piece in his suite

Deuxième année: Italie (Second year: Italy) from his set of three suites entitled Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). The piece’s title, translating roughly to “the thinker,”

“the serious man,” or “the man deep in thought,” has a clear programmatic implication.

Because I read the title when I first heard the piece, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t associate the music with a man’s thought process. As I listen to the short piece, an affect of solemn, dark, negative contemplation overwhelms my experience. There seems to be a strong sense of introspective searching, perhaps as an internal quest for meaning or to reconcile difficult thoughts. Moments of sequence or process-based harmony particularly intensify the feeling of endless pursuit. Even moments of tonal, functional progression tend to feel noticeably less sure than usual. Harmonic and melodic analysis of the piece from both tonal Schenkerian and neo-Riemannian perspectives appears to reveal some of Liszt’s most affective compositional strategies. Solemnity and melancholy seem to manifest in slow – almost static – and descending melodic lines. Contemplation and mental process seem to be represented in occasional absences of functional harmony through harmonies related by neo-Riemannian transformations. Internal conflict is made evident by dissonant inflections on functional dominants. The sadness and yearning associated with lowered sixth scale degrees weighs heavily on the listening experience. 13

As I approached the construction of my analysis, my main goal was to explain how the piece achieved its strong affect. In effect, I attempted to answer Temperley’s question “how does it do what I already know it does?” In pursuing an answer, however,

I discovered new and clearer conceptions of “what I know it does” – evidence that the analytic process changed my perceptions and that therefore I could not truly use analysis to describe my initial, non-analytic listening experience. Nevertheless, I consistently used listening as my guide to interpret the notes on the page. As I got to know the piece more deeply, a narrative emerged. It is told through melody, harmony, texture, dynamics, range, and motivic development.

Melody and Harmony: Schenkerian Reduction

The original graph in Figure 1 provides a useful way to visualize both transformational and Schenkerian reductive information about the melodic and harmonic foreground. The graph’s two upper staves display a Schenkerian interpretation of relationships and hierarchies in the outer voices1. The graph therefore displays phenomenological information. The melody and bass notes with stems are experienced as structurally important; they are marked2 as moments of sectional beginning or ending, or as arrivals. Other notes are heard as relating to the stemmed notes. Flagged notes are heard as upper neighbors to their succeeding structural stemmed notes, always implying the expectation (and eventual satisfaction) of semitonal descent. The graph makes clear that the first half of the piece is characterized by two minor third ascents in both melody

1 Written bass notes do not always reflect their true composed octaves. 2 Markedness is here used as it is defined in Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (Hatten 2004). 14 and bass and a long descent to the first structural dominant at m. 21. This interrupting dominant results in a restart of directed harmonic motion in the second half, beginning with the recovery of the structural melodic scale degree 3. This time, the minor third ascents are forgone in favor of a melodic climax in m. 30 on 6 as the upper neighbor to 5.

This climax is followed by a descent to structural harmonic closure which is first attempted in m. 35 and finally achieved in m. 39. The final eight measures act as a coda to the closure, primarily reinforcing the tonic but including too a recall of the climactic 6

– 5 motion.

While all Schenkerian analyses aim to reduce a melody to a handful of notes at the background, applying the process to this piece hardly feels like reduction. One of the most noticeable experiences I have while listening to this piece is the stasis of the melodic line; for long stretches of time, the melody feels as if it has nowhere to go. The interrupted 3-line structure and the background pattern of descent seem to truly permeate the phenomena of the piece. That there are two moments of ascent in the first half is tempered by the fact that the melody never rises above 3 in the concurrent key; even the climax on 6 in the second half is heard as 3 in the concurrently tonicized key.

Continued

Riemannian reduction of “Il Penseroso.” reduction Riemannian “Il of -

Schenkerian 1. andNeo Figure

Figure 1 1 continued Figure

The lower part of each system on the graph shows a different kind of phenomenological reduction. Below each system are written roman numerals and figures to describe every discrete harmony in relationship to its local tonic. The lowest staff illuminates voice leading relationships in harmonies that do not satisfy the expectations of tonal function. To emphasize the neo-Riemannian transformations between them, the staff depicts harmonies without respect to inversion (i.e., without respect to bass note, which is shown on the staff above). These voice-leading transformations are illustrated with blue slurs indicating common-tones and purple dotted lines indicating half-step motions; in moments of non-tonal function in this piece, common tones and half steps are the only types of voice-leading motion to exist.

The types of triadic transformations are also labeled in brackets below or at the roman numeral level. Each of these refers to semitonal voice-leading motion from one harmony to the next. [P] refers to the parallel transformation – under [P] the third of a major triad moves down or the third of a minor triad moves up. [L] refers to the leittonwechsel transformation – under [L], either the fifth of a minor triad moves up or the root of a major triad moves down. Combinations of these should be read with right orthography (i.e., [LP] means first apply [L], then apply [P] to the result of [L]). [SL] refers to the slide transformation – under [SL] the root and fifth of a major triad move up or the root and fifth of a minor triad move down. Each of these discrete transformations results in a triad whose quality (major or minor) is opposite that of its originator.

Neo-Riemannian and Schenkerian approaches to analysis have sometimes been painted as opposing viewpoints. An understanding of the harmonic forces at work in this composition, however, unquestionably requires an integration of the insights from both

18 approaches. Both give phenomenological information about how harmonies relate to each other. The Schenkerian and roman numeral approach describe how harmonies relate to the local tonic. The neo-Riemannian approach describes how harmonies relate to their immediately surrounding harmonies. Listeners experience music in both ways, hearing both long-term, directional relationships and immediate ones. When a harmony does not fit within the key, it is useful to investigate where it does fit. Therefore, in a piece that stretches the bounds of tonality, a combined approach such as mine lends the most useful information for describing how harmony and melody are experienced.

Narrative Interpretation

In addition to the initial harmonic incompletion and the parallelism between the beginnings of each half, the piece is sectionalized by its texture. The first half is relatively sparse; with separated melodic and harmonic attacks, and harmonies realized as blocked or rolled chords with a single attack, the music feels like it is wandering (or, perhaps, wondering). There is a palpable uncertainty, a sense of being lost. The second half introduces moving eighth notes in the bass voice, usually moving in oscillating half-steps.

To me, this textural device invokes images of gears turning, or perhaps thoughts processing. The music sounds more connected, coherent, and goal-directed. The coda, beginning at m. 40, recalls the opening texture, but sounds more sure. The melody becomes registrally buried under the harmonies that now occur on strong beats and persist without rests. Through listening and analysis, the piece has led me to the following narrative interpretation: in the first half, a subject, il penseroso, contemplates new, negative, and confusing thoughts; at the start of the second half, he begins to be able to process those thoughts, arriving for a moment at a staggering realization (m. 30), and

19 by the end he fully accepts the subject of his contemplation, having gained the ability to integrate it into his prior understanding of the world.

Harmony and the Penseroso Narrative

A primary harmonic element of this interpretation is the use of harmonies without diatonic function throughout the piece. The first half particularly uses non-diatonic or non-functional harmonies within its keys to communicate confusion and negative emotional states. In fact, only about half of the twenty-nine discrete harmonic moments in the first half have clear, directed harmonic function, and even those are divided among four successive tonal areas.

The opening two measures use non-diatonic harmony to communicate an immediate affect of solemnity and confusion. David Huron noted, in his book Sweet

Anticipation, that even the initial tonic chord is likely to sound unexpected on first hearing.

On the basis of past statistical exposure, listeners are apt to assume that the initial octave E’s represent either the tonic or dominant pitches. At least initially, the most probable inferred key is either E or A major or minor. Listeners will tend to hear the first (C# minor) chord as a mediant chord evoking both surprise and seriousness. Repeating the pattern into the second measure, the ensuing (A minor) chord holds a chromatic mediant relation to the first chord and so will reinforce the qualia of surprise and seriousness. (Huron 2006, 274)

Roman numerals might be stretched to call this A-minor chromatic mediant “bvib,” but it is more usefully described by its neo-Riemannian, voice-leading relationship to the preceding tonic. Through the [LP] transformation, only one note is held in common between the two triads – the E of the static melody. On its initial hearing, the A-minor harmony makes little sense amid a phrase that is otherwise an entirely functional C#-

20 minor progression, despite being related by close voice-leading to both its functional neighboring chords. It is as if the melodic E is searching for options – both C#-minor and

A-minor are valid harmonizations (although, as minor triads, both are negatively valanced), but C# wins out as the stronger option immediately with its cadence. When I hear these opening measures, even though I now fully expect it, the A-minor chord still invokes a strong sense of emotional pain3. The second time the C#-minor – A-minor progression is heard, in m. 6, the ear is somewhat more prepared to understand it; its purpose becomes retrospectively clearer when it is reconciled as a functional predominant leading to the E-minor cadence in m. 8.

Parallel to the opening harmonies of the first and second four-measure phrases are the augmented triads in the following two phrases that tonicize E-minor and G-minor respectively. Both of these phrases open with augmented triads built on ↑7, 3, and 5, once again using semitonal and common-tone voice-leading to move between the non- functional chord and the local tonic. The augmented triad, which is equal parts dominant

(↑7 and 5) and tonic (3 and 5), and whose notes are equidistant from each other (each a major third or diminished fourth apart), invokes to me a feeling of emptiness, a needing to be filled in. They are strong purveyors of the sense of searching and confusion that permeates the opening half of the piece.

The final augmented triad prompts the “filling in” that I desired on hearing it, but perhaps in the least satisfying way. The major thirds (between ↑7 and 5 in the bass and 3 and ↑7 in the melody) are “filled in” with chromatic steps in mm. 17–19. This chromatic

3 This emotional response may also be caused particularly by Brendel’s performance. In the second measure, he strikes the low A1 a moment before rolling the rest of the chord. The resulting expectation of A-major makes the realized A-minor chord all the more painful.

21 descent is achieved through a chain of neo-Riemannian triadic transformations through which the triads alternate preservation of the root and fifth and preservation of the third.

Born out of an augmented triad and with no sense of tonic, the sequence sounds as if it might be an endless search. Every melodic or inner voice note within the sequence moving in descent creates a sort of sinking feeling and at this point, il penseroso’s search for understanding sounds fruitless and hopeless.

By contrast, the second half of the piece is more substantially made up of directed harmonic function. It begins with the same [LP] motion in the same harmonic phrase as the opening, though it should be noted that by this third hearing, the A-minor triad feels unquestionably less foreign. The fourth time the C#-minor to A-minor motion is heard, instead of modulation to E-minor, another voice-leading transformation occurs, [L], so that A-minor moves to F-major – the hexatonic pole of the global tonic (mm. 27–29). F- major is tonicized for three measures, marking the only non-tonic key area in the second half. The arrival on F-major sounds triumphant. It marks the first and only major key area in the piece, the first moment of melodic ascent in the second half, and its second measure, marked rinforzando, results from the first melodic ascent larger than a minor third in the whole piece. It is as if this triad, with only one semitone of difference from the recurrent A-minor, realizes the goal that that “bvib” had been striving to achieve the entire time. It sounds to me like an apex of realization for il penseroso, an exciting idea, perhaps a possible solution to dealing with the difficult ideas on which he was thus far focused. The achievement of this positively-valanced major triadic moment is satisfying, a triumph after 29 long measures of struggle. That sweet feeling of triumphant idealism, however, is abruptly swept away by the chromatic bass descent back to the tonic in m. 32

– il penseroso’s remembrance of a grave reality, perhaps. The triadic [LPL] transformation here moves every chord tone by half-step, creating that unique, disorienting feeling that tends to accompany any immediate transformation from a triad to its hexatonic pole. The other occurrence of the C#-minor – A-minor – F-major progression falls after the final achievement of tonic in a coda section, mm. 43–44. This time, instead of the abrupt move from F-major back to C#-minor, a common tone C/B# is held through a move to the functional dominant, effectively integrating the non-diatonic

F-major triad into the larger tonal C#-minor framework of the piece. Although C#-minor has been established as the inescapable tonic of reality, perhaps the F-major possibility need not be so distant as felt necessary after its initial presentation. Thus, without losing all hope, Il penseroso has become able to reconcile the short-lived triumphant discovery with his more somber, realistic view of the world.

Setting aside the implications of non-tonal harmonies, the narrative interpretation is also supported by an examination of functional dominants. The inclusion of a minor ninth above the root of a dominant chord can be understood as reflecting not only harmonic, but cognitive dissonance; thus, use of V7b9s versus V7s follows the same overall pattern of confusion, realization, and integration. No dominant in any key area in the first half is heard without its minor ninth. In fact, the extended dominant at the point of interruption (mm. 21–22) prominently features this ninth in its left-hand arpeggiation.

The global use of V7b9s does not let up until after the triumphant F-major moment.

Immediately after its [LPL] transformation back to tonic (m. 32) begins a chain of applied dominants leading to 2. For the first time here, the listener hears regular, uninflected V7s in between V7b9s. This reflects the moment of realization associated with

23 the F-major section, the consonance acting as an afterglow of the seeming clarity achieved in that moment. Unexpectedly, when this sequence is immediately repeated as a small-scale interruption of the structural cadence (expected on m. 36), each dominant includes a minor ninth. This, in conjunction with the prior denial of cadence, reflects a lingering uncertainty and need for further mental processing. The structural authentic cadence is finally realized in mm. 38–39, brought about by a plain V7, devoid of ninth inflection. This dominant’s relative consonance coincides with the moments of large- scale melodic and harmonic closure, and together these elements all point to il penseroso’s reconciliation and acceptance of his dissonant thoughts.

Not only did the V7b9s create dissonance, but they represented part of a thematic instantiation of tension-to-resolution that prevails throughout the piece. While I cannot say for sure whether all of the following was noticeable to me by ear, I notice a theme of

↓6 – 5 resolutions across the piece. At a deep background level, this is reflected by ↓6 as the ninth in the first structural dominant (m. 21) “resolving” to 5 in the last structural dominant (m. 38). At a more immediate level, both of these dominants are approached by iv6 so that there is ↓6 – 5 motion in the bass. However, this motion is not fully satisfied by the first dominant, since ↓6 persists through it; therefore, the ↓6 – 5 resolution is stronger at the final dominant. This and other moments of ↓6 – 5 outer-voice motion are denoted on the upper two staves of Figure 1 with flagged ↓6s. The melodic climax itself

(m. 30) is part of one of the most important ↓6 – 5 resolutions. Overall, it should be observed that ↓6s occur more frequently in the second half, and each of them resolves directly to 5. This once again points to the ability that il penseroso gains in the second

24 half to better process his thoughts and to move toward the acceptance and reconciliation of dissonance.

The idea that ↓6 – 5 motion represents an important aspect of resolution here is especially supported by the final melodic motion in the coda, after the structural achievement of tonic. Measures 44–46 elaborate ↓6 – 5 motion over the harmonic progression of F-major – V – I that I have said represents il penseroso’s integration and acceptance of his dissonant thoughts. It is unusual for a melody in a 19th-century concert piece to end off tonic; usually the tonic pitch is an indication of finality. Liszt emphasizes the decision to end the melody on 5 by preparing the listener to expect 1 by using a melodic 3 – 2. The expectation that the melody will end with 3 – 2 – 1 is created both through experience listening to European art music of a similar tradition and through the already-heard structural cadence in mm. 38-39. Thus, despite that the ↓6 – 5 motion usually represents resolution or closure in this piece, the melodic conclusion on 5 simultaneously represents a lack of closure. It draws attention to the importance of that

↓6 and F-major moment. The C#-minor that “won” in the first cadence is slightly thwarted in this final cadence by the denial of 1. To me, this indicates that il penseroso’s triumphant, climactic idea, represented by F-major and the ↓6 – 5 motion, has not only integrated into, but has changed his lasting view of the world. This small ray of positivity at the end of his thought process is still assertively grounded in the negatively-valanced

C#-minor, however, by means of the low C# octaves that end the piece.

Although the analysis presented in this chapter sought to explain my experience of listening to “Il Penseroso,” many of its details would not have come to light without

25 the analysis of the written score. As a music theorist who has spent years thinking about meaning in composed music, I am aware of a personal tendency to ascribe meaning to interesting harmonic and melodic relationships. At the time of writing, however, I do truly hear the narrative presented in this chapter when I listen to the piece. I hope that the tonal relationships and the narrative structure I have described here are not far removed from an experience that other expert listeners might have as they listen to the piece. In an effort to discover what type of experience my descriptive analysis truly describes, the following chapters present the methods and results of a study on the reported aural experiences of expert listeners hearing “Il Penseroso” with fresh ears.

Chapter 3: Method for Participant-Based Phenomenological Analysis

This chapter describes the methods used in the participant-based portion of the descriptive analysis of “Il Penseroso.” The goal of the study described herein is to collect data on trained musicians’ descriptions of the experience of listening to this piece without having seen the score. The data will be compared to the findings of my score- and listening-based analysis presented in Chapter 2.

Method for Collecting Participant Responses

Musicologists and theorists have developed different methods for probing what people experience when they listen to music. Joshua Albrecht has reviewed some of these methods in his 2012 dissertation that methodically chronicled affects in Beethoven’s

Pathétique sonata. The most common and simplest method to collect data on listener experiences is to have listeners self-report. Self-reported data contrast in two important ways with other experiential data, such as metabolic changes, that might be collected by taking measurements. First, self-reported data give researchers access to a listener’s feelings, which are subjective and cannot be measured. This fact points to the second contrast, that self-reported data are somewhat unreliable. For instance, some research has shown that listeners are relatively unreliable when rating their felt emotions (Albrecht

2012, 6–7).

There are two common approaches to collecting self-reported data from listeners. Albrecht notes that the most common is a “retroactive response paradigm” in which participants listen to a piece or passage and subsequently report their responses.

Reports in this paradigm might take many forms. Methods employed have included free response, choosing adjectives from a checklist, and rating affects on Likert scales. A benefit is that retroactive response data are relatively easy to read and analyze, even when they are quite detailed. Furthermore, participants are given time to think about their responses. A drawback is that a listener responding to a passage after it ends diminishes the researcher’s ability to track changes in listener perception over the time of the passage.

A second approach to self-reported data enables real-time responses to track changes in affect over time. In this “continuous response paradigm,” participants manipulate a scale or dial while they listen to the piece or passage to indicate their perception of how given variables change over time. Although real-time response is valuable, this method comes with its own drawbacks. First, the manipulation of a single slider or two sliders yields rather crude information about the complex experience of listening. Second, research has shown that listeners require different amounts of time to process different musical features. This discrepancy makes it difficult to attribute participant responses to specific musical features. Finally, tests using the continuous response paradigm have shown low reliability both between and within listeners.

Albrecht suggests that the continuous response task might be too difficult, placing an undue cognitive load on its participants.

As a sort of compromise between these two paradigms, Albrecht developed the

“progressive exposure method” (PEM). This method divides a work or passage into small, discrete chunks. Then, retroactive responses are collected for each chunk. The result combines the benefits of retroactive response with the benefit of tracking changes over time that had previously only been available through continuous response. PEM yields rich data at small time intervals.

One virtue that PEM lacks, and that continuous response has, is accounting for musical context and experience as it unfolds over the course of a piece. Participants in

Albrecht’s 2012 experiment listened to fifteen out of 56 five-second chunks from a recording of Beethoven’s Pathétique sonata, movement two. Albrecht chose to present the chunks to participants in a random order as an effort to minimize any effects of time over the course of participant responses. He calls this random ordering a mosaic presentation of the stimuli, but explains that for other experiments, a diachronic presentation – where stimuli are presented in the composed order – might be preferable.

Albrecht’s study and the use of his PEM served as the methodological backdrop for the participant-based portion of my analysis, detailed forthwith.

Participants

Because the initial analysis was based on my listening experiences, I sought a population of participants that could be reasonably expected to experience music in a similar way to me. Research has shown that musicians’ brains process music differently than do nonmusicians’, and furthermore that the type of musical experience a person has affects their mental processing (Stewart 2008). Therefore, I limited my sample to musicians with or near the achievement of at least one advanced degree in music. Five

29 members of the Ohio State University Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory were recruited to participate.

Stimuli

It is important to note that a composer’s music cannot be heard without also hearing the decisions of its performer. As this is the case, the influence that a performer has on a listening experience is essentially inescapable; therefore, any analysis informed by listening is in some part an analysis of a performance rather than just a written piece in abstract. In my theoretical analysis, the notes written on the score were created by Liszt, but my listening experience was created by Alfred Brendel’s 1998 recording on a Philips

Classics CD set of all three books of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage. It was that recording that inspired the analysis in the first place. While I listened to a handful of other performances during my exploration of the piece, I kept coming back to Brendel’s. Since my analysis is therefore influenced most heavily by Brendel’s recording, my participants listened to the same recording to maximize the opportunity for consistency between my analysis and their responses.

The process of “chunking” the recording presented some problems. Albrecht’s experiment used five-second chunks whose start and end points were purely a mechanical decision. Removing the influence of the experimenter in such a way is valuable in eliciting unbiased responses; it does not impose a way of hearing the music on the participants. For the slow-moving “Il Penseroso,” however, mechanically chunking didn’t seem to work as well. Musical ideas (usually about two measures) tend to last around ten seconds and to start or end a chunk in the middle of an idea felt jarring and unrepresentative of the typical listening experience. Additionally, the participants in this

30 study are highly trained in music; it is reasonable to assume that they themselves would divide the music according to beginnings and endings rather than time. Therefore, unlike

Albrecht, I manually divided the 47-measure piece into 21 discrete chunks. Most of the chunks are shorter than a phrase but might be described as subphrases. The paradigm for choosing start- and endpoints was that a chunk must either begin at the beginning or end at the end of a musical unit (both conditions were satisfied whenever possible), while aiming for units of approximately two measures. Phrase elisions, changing hypermeter, and long sequences made these goals challenging. The resulting chunks are illustrated in

Figure 2, although other solutions would certainly have been possible. I segmented

Brendel’s recording into 21 clips, cut at these points; to eliminate abrupt endings, the last attacked note or chord of each clip was elongated by 25% or less and faded out.

Although the PEM is the optimal method for obtaining rich data throughout the listening experience, it comes with the disadvantage of periodically stopping the music.

To maximize similarities between the progressive exposure experience and a typical listening experience, participants first listened to the entire 4’10” piece and gave a retroactive response. After this experience of the piece as a connected whole, participants were exposed to the 21 clips diachronically. While speaking in between each clip lessens the transfer of context from one clip to the next, the initial hearing of the whole piece followed by the diachronic presentation of clips enables more maintenance of context in the mind of each participant than would a mosaic presentation of the clips alone.

Continued Figure 2. Chunking “Il Penseroso,” page 1.

Figure 2 continued

Evidence for this appeared as participant responses made references to prior clips with relative frequency.

Procedure

Each participant was interviewed individually in a sound booth in the Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory. Participants listened first to the whole piece, and next to its twenty-one diachronic clips through headphones. After each hearing, they were asked to describe the music, what they thought it conveyed or expressed, and any emotional responses they experienced while listening. With the exception of the initial presentation of the whole piece, they were free to listen to each clip as many times as desired before responding. Because verbal responses were expected to elicit longer and more detailed descriptions than typed or written responses, participants were prompted to describe their perceptions aloud. The experimenter transcribed their remarks in real-time on a laptop and could ask for clarification or elaboration when necessary.

Instructions

The participants received the following instructions, both in writing and read aloud by the experimenter. The printed instructions were in participants’ view at all times during participation.

“The purpose of this research is to learn about experienced listeners’ perceptions and descriptions of a piece of music. You will be asked to listen through headphones to a recording of Franz Liszt’s “Il Penseroso.” The work’s title is an Italian phrase that roughly translates to something like “the thinker,” “the serious man,” or “the man deep in thought.”

First, you will listen to the whole piece which is 4’10’’ long. I’ll ask you to describe the piece, what you think it conveyed or expressed, and any emotional response you had while listening to it.

Next, you will listen to the same recording divided into 21 clips, averaging ten seconds each. You’ll hear the clips in their composed order. After each clip, I’ll ask you to describe the passage of music, what you think it conveyed or expressed, and any emotional response you had while listening to it. At times, you may want to use some of the same descriptors for different clips; you are encouraged to do so if it reflects your listening experience.

I may prompt you with a few questions to get you to describe as much as you can about what you heard. I will be transcribing your remarks on a laptop, so I might ask you to slow down or repeat what you said.

As you listen, please do your best to fully experience the piece and let it affect you.

Do you have any questions?”

Data Collection and Content Analysis

Participant responses were not transcribed verbatim, but each descriptive statement made was represented in transcription. For example, when a participant responded to Clip 17 saying something like, “This is its own action. The contemplation in the last one has now moved into a small action, like it’s crying,” the experimenter recorded, “Its own action. Contemplation in 16 moved into small action, as if crying.”

According to the experimenter’s judgement, no essential information was excluded in the transcription process. However, some information, such as whether participants perceived emotions as felt or evoked, was lost in the absence of verbatim transcription.

After all data collection was completed, the experimenter segmented each response into discrete thoughts by separating them with periods. As an example, Table 1 shows each participant’s simplified and segmented response to Clip 1. Segmentation of the participant responses resulted in 390 discrete thoughts, or bits of data. The complete table of responses can be viewed in Appendix A.

Participant 1 Participant 2 Participant 3 Participant 4 Participant 5

seriousness. the response to the like a call and knocking is response. like a a start. no very serious. proposition emotion so the chords are second chord is noble. [melody] and much as setting two different sadder. second determined. conclusion/result the stage. colors, both Clip 1 chord is feels like an [chord]. the darkness to important or Responses unexpected, at opening. melody asks come. serious least the first setting "what if i did negatively messages but time. dramatic. something up. this?" and the valanced with different chord responds, emotions. colors. as if to "that's what say, "life is would happen." multifaceted undertaking."

Table 1. Segmented responses to Clip 1.

The method used in analyzing the data collected from participant responses was

based both on Albrecht’s study and on Qualitative Data Analysis: A User-Friendly Guide

for Social Scientists (Dey 1993). Dey writes, “the core of qualitative analysis lies in these

related processes of describing phenomena, classifying it, and seeing how our concepts

interconnect” (Dey 1993, 31). Therefore, the first objective for analysis of the collected

data was to categorize each bit.

Independently, I and a researcher unfamiliar with the piece and my analysis of it

(henceforth “Researcher 2”) manually organized the 390 data into categories. According

to Dey, practitioners of qualitative content analysis should infer distinctions from the data

rather than imposing a priori categories (Dey 1993). Therefore, the resulting categories

tell us what exists in the data, rather than the data telling us about the relative existence of

each pre-selected category. Dey writes, “Categories are created, modified, divided and

extended through confrontation with the data, so that by the end of this initial

36 categorization we should have sharpened significantly the conceptual tools required for our analysis.” (Dey 1993, 143) Our only instructions, then, were to arrange the data into categories based on their content and to define the stipulations of each category we designed. We worked from an alphabetical list of the 390 bits abstracted from their stimulus and participant. Both researchers sorted the data two times before discussing their results.

Researcher 2’s categorization resulted in 14 categories and mine resulted in 23.

Tables 2 and 3 demonstrate our respective categories and their stipulations. The left column represents our initial categorizations (pass 1) and the right our final categorizations (pass 2). There was a strong tendency for the second pass to result in the breaking down of large categories into more specific constituent categories. This process is demonstrated in the tables: categories in pass 2 are positioned next to those in pass 1 from which they were derived.

Researcher 2's Data Categorization

Pass 1 Pass 2 Music Quotation - Response included quotation marks. No Music Quotation reference to the sentiment underlying the quotation. Previous Excerpt - Compares or refers to a previous excerpt Previous Excerpt in any way that is not strongly connected to another category. Negative Emotion 1: Serious/Somber/Gravitas - Discussion of fate, darkness, heaviness. These terms seem to carry more narrative significance than the more descriptive, other Negative Emotion terms. Negative Emotion Negative Emotion 2: Intense/Despair - Terms that are grief- or anguish-related (including emotions like anxiety).

Negative Emotion 3: Hopeless/Sad - Low-intensity negative emotion terms that contrast to the other two categories. More descriptive than narrative-driving. Other Emotional Terms 1: Positive Valence/Beauty/Hope - These tend to coalesce around "beauty" and "hope." Most of Other Emotion the terms seem to be in comparison to terms from the (Positive, Neutral) Negative Emotion categories. Other Emotional Terms 2: Neutral - Low-intensity/low- valence sections of the music. Progression 1: Movement, Drive, Expectations - Discussion of the progression of the music in terms of the feeling of moving the music forward. Uncertainty/Movement Progression 2: Uncertainty, Confusion - Discussion of the progression of the music in terms of uncertainty about where the music is going.

Progression 3: Progression: Arrival/Resolution - Arrival/Resolution Discussion of the progression of the music in terms of where it has actually gone. Narrative 1: Main Character - Relates to specific thoughts/actions/responses of the "main character." Interpersonal Narrative 2: Scenic, Non-associative - refers more to general comments about the narrative that are less emotional. These are mostly descriptive terms. Music Theory - Terms that referred to specific musical Music Theory moments like chords, cadences, etc. Words referring to the music without any sense of narrative attached. Thinking/Pensive - Terms related to thought. Table 2. Researcher 2’s categorization process and category operationalizations.

Experimenter's Data Categorization Pass 1 Pass 2 Action: Discussion of physical or musical motion, narrative action, or Action words that describe types of actions. Expectation: Discussion of expectations either created, satisfied, or denied Expectation by the clip. Hope: Any use of the word "hope." Negative Inevitability: Discussions of hopelessness, inevitability, fate, or Fate/Hope otherwise perceived inescapable negativity. Resisting Fate: The music or its subject are said to resist, attempt to avoid or escape a negative fate. Importance/Serious: The music is described as serious or said to be about Important/Serious something important. Low Valence Indication Affect: Descriptions that discuss or imply Low Valence emotionality with little indication of positive or negative, such as Indication Affect "dramatic," "complex emotions," or "mysterious." Negative Valence Negative Valence Affect: Negatively valanced emotional descriptions that Affect do not fall into Negative Inevitability, Importance, or Tension. Non-Affective Description: Non-interpretive information about the notes or performance, such as "descending" or "very low." Non-Affective Other Imagery: Imagery descriptions that do not suit any other categories nor contain strains that prompt the creation of another specific category. Positive Valence Affect: Positively valanced emotional descriptions that Positive Valence Affect do not discuss hope. Stability/Resolution: The opposite of tension, the music is said to be Stability/Resolution stable, relieving, or resolved. Tension: The music is described as tense, intense, or other words that Tension imply tension or instability. Descriptions Regarding Time: Discussions of aspects of length, relative formal placement. Descriptions regarding persistence or long-term change of musical features. Temporality Ending: Music is described as concluding, ending, or being in a state of resolution. Same As: Music is described as essentially the same as a previous clip. Start: Music is described as beginning or setting something up. Decision-Making: Discussions of either a character making a decision or the presentation of options. Thinking Determination: A character or the music is said to be determined or to be gathering determination Thinking: Descriptions of thought process conveyed by the music. Separate Voices: Differences between or separateness of melody and chords are highlighted. Solitude: Independence or aloneness of a single voice is described. Voices Synthesized Voices: Musical voices are discussed in terms of relative interaction or synthesis, or are said to have transformed each other to be more similar. Table 3. Experimenter’s categorization process and category operationalizations.

After these individual categorizations were complete, we shared our results and collated them into the final list of categories. That the two researchers had different ideals regarding the type of results seems evident in some respects, but our independent strategies for categorization were not essentially far-removed from one another. Table 4 contains our collaborative correlation of the two lists of categories; it also demonstrates the final categories in which these correlations resulted. In the end, we compromised our respective 14 and 23 categories into a final 18. These final categories are defined in Table

This process was advantageous for several reasons. For one, since the act of reporting one’s perceptions is difficult, the categorization process reflects the sentiment rather than the exact wording of the response. Another advantage was the use of two researchers with opposite levels of involvement in the project. I hoped for data that would correlate well with my own analysis while Researcher 2 had no preconceptions regarding the desired results. Since qualitative analysis is not wholly objective, it is often pliable enough to enable the discovery of some level of desired result, but incorporating an uninvolved researcher tempers the level with which the data might be skewed to create desired results.

Comparison Process

Experimenter Researcher 2 Final Category Name Action Progression 1: Movement, Drive, Action Expectations Decision-Making Progression 1: Movement, Drive, Action Expectations Descriptions Regarding Previous Excerpt; Music Theory Temporality: Comparison Time Determination Progression 1: Movement, Drive, Action Expectations Ending Progression 3: Progression: Temporality: End Arrival/Resolution Expectation Progression 1: Movement, Drive, Expectation Expectations Hope Other Emotional Terms 1: Positive Hope Valence/Beauty/Hope Important/Serious Negative Emotion 1: Negative Emotion: Serious/Somber/Gravitas Seriousness Low Valance Indication Other Emotional Terms 2: Neutral Neutral Emotion Affect Negative Inevitability Negative Emotion 3: Negative Emotion: Hopeless/Sad; Negative Emotion Fate/Hopelessness 1: Serious/Somber/Gravitas Negative Valance Negative Emotion 3: Hopeless/Sad Negative Emotion: Low Intensity Non-affect Description Music Theory Score Description

Other Imagery Narrative 2: Scenic, Non- Imagery associative Positive Valence Other Emotional Terms 1: Positive Positive Emotion Valence/Beauty/Hope Resisting Fate - Negative Emotion: Fate/Hopelessness Same As Previous Excerpt Temporality: Comparison Separate Voices Music Theory Voices: Individuals Solitude - Voices: Individuals Stability/Resolution Progression 3: Progression: Resolution Arrival/Resolution Start Progression 1: Movement, Drive, Temporality: Start Expectations; Progression 2: Uncertainty, Confusion Synthesized Voices Music Theory; Narrative 1: Main Voices: Synthesized Character Tension Negative Emotion 2: Negative Emotion: High Intense/Despair Intensity Thinking Thinking/Pensive Thinking

Table 4. Correlation of two category lists and resultant new category list.

Final Data Categorization Action Discussion of physical or musical motion, narrative action, or words that describe types of actions, such as “heroic.” Expectation Discussion of expectations either created, satisfied, or denied by the clip. The significant existence of this category will not tell us anything on the surface but indicates that its constituent statements may be worth analyzing. Hope Any use of the word "hope." Imagery Imagery descriptions that neither suit any other categories nor contain strains that prompt the creation of another specific category. Negative Emotion: Discussions of hopelessness, inevitability, fate, darkness, or Fate/Hopelessness otherwise perceived inescapable negativity. Negative Emotion: Negatively-valanced emotions with high arousal such as High Intensity “tension” or “despair.” Negative Emotion: Negatively-valanced emotions with low arousal such as Low Intensity “sad” or “somber.”

Negative Emotion: The music is described as serious, heavy, or said to be about Seriousness/Importance something important. Neutral Emotion Descriptions that discuss or imply emotionality with little indication of positive or negative, such as "dramatic," "complex emotions," or "mysterious." Positive Emotion Positively valanced emotional descriptions that do not discuss hope. Resolution Stability, arrival, relief, or resolution. Score Description Non-interpretive information about the notes or performance, such as "descending" or "very low." Temporality: Comparison to previous clips. Discussions of aspects of Comparison length, relative formal placement. Descriptions regarding persistence or long-term change of musical features. Temporality: End Music is described as concluding, ending, or being in a state of resolution. Temporality: Start Music is described as beginning or setting something up. Thinking Descriptions of thought process conveyed by the music. Voices: Individuals Differences between or separateness of melody and chords are highlighted or one voice is described as existing as an individual. Voices: Synthesized Musical voices are discussed in terms of relative interaction or synthesis, or are said to have transformed each other to be more similar.

Table 5. Operationalizations for the final category list.

Results

Definition of the categories enables uniform interpretation of the responses given to each stimulus. Several decisions regarding analysis of the categories were made post hoc. To compare the participants’ responses to my own analysis, I decided to analyze only the responses that fell into the following categories: Negative Emotion:

Fate/Hopelessness, Negative Emotion: Seriousness/Importance, Negative Emotion: High

Intensity, Negative Emotion: Low Intensity, Neutral Emotion, Positive Emotion, Hope,

Action, Expectation, and Resolution. I will henceforth refer to these selections as the

“expressive categories;” the first seven of them will be further specified as the “affective categories” leaving Action, Expectation, and Resolution as the “other” expressive categories. This selection excludes Thinking, Imagery, Score Description, and all constituent categories regarding Temporality or Voices because these don’t contain significant information regarding affective expression.

Due to the free nature of participant responses, a single response often contained multiple expressions of the same category. Therefore, in accounting for appearances of categories in a stimulus response, a category would receive a maximum of one count per participant. For example, Participant 4’s response to Clip 1 was, “Like a call and response. Like a proposition [melody] and conclusion/result [chord]. The melody asks,

‘what if I did this?’ and the chord responds, ‘that's what would happen.’” The response includes three data bits that each represent the category Voices: Individuals. For analysis, this would count as one Voices: Individuals response for Clip 1. In other words, the maximum number of times a category could occur for each stimulus was five, once per participant.

Additionally, some sentences expressed ideas that might equally belong in multiple categories. For the process of defining categories, the researchers had to choose only one placement for each bit. For analysis using the decided categories, on the other hand, I count all categories represented in a bit. That is, the distribution of bits in the creation of categories is in some ways different from the distribution of bits in the analytic application of categories. For example, I initially used the response, “more of a discussion with a negative conclusion,” as a member of my Negative Valance category.

Researcher 2 placed it in their Thinking/Pensive category. For analytic purposes, this statement can simultaneously represent the final categories Voices: Individuals

(“discussion”), Negative Emotion: Low Intensity (“negative”), and Temporality: End

(“conclusion”).

The tallied results of this approach to analysis of the expressive categories are shown in Table 6; from left to right, the affective categories are ordered from most negative to most positive, and the other expressive categories are shown on the right after

Hope. I will address this data’s collation to the musical content in the following chapter.

Limitations

The methodology used in this study generates some limitations regarding the power and reliability of the results. The participant population, both small and homogeneous, presents one significant limitation. This study only represents the reported perceptions of a few expert listeners. A larger and more diverse population might enable greater understanding of expert listeners’ perceptions of “Il Penseroso.” Furthermore, it would be very interesting to perform this study with non-expert listeners or those with a variety of musical experiences.

Fate/ Hopelessness Seriousness Importance Negative: HighIntensity Negative: LowIntensity Neutral Emotion Positive Emotion Hope Action Expectation Resolution III III I I I Whole Piece I II II I II 1 2 III I I I I I 3 III I I 4 II I II II 5 I I I III I 6 I I II I I 7 II I II I III I I 8 9 I I II II I 10 I I I IIII I 11 III I IIII 12 III I I I I III 13 III I I II 14 II II II II I III I I I II II 15 16 I II I II II 17 III I I II I 18 I II II II 19 IIII II II I II 20 I I IIII I I I I II 21 II I II II IIII

Total (excluding whole 36 14 17 12 10 10 7 26 20 16 piece):

Table 6. Tallied number of participants who used each expressive category by stimulus.

The number of times participants heard the piece might also present a limitation.

Participants only heard the piece in its entirety once due to considerations of experiment length. Repeated listenings might have changed interpretations, as might have listening only to the diachronic chunks. Evidence of this arose in one participant’s comment that their initial interpretation changed somewhat as they listened through the chunks.

Moreover, participants might have given different responses to an experimenter with whom they were unfamiliar. There may have been undetected social pressures that change the way participants discuss affect due to acquaintance with the experimenter.

Additionally, that the analyst-experimenter performed the collection and segmentation of participant responses indicates a consistent element of interpretation throughout the entire study. Despite all efforts on my part to be impartial, the results may certainly have differed had a different researcher or a computer performed these processes. After data categorization, again, all efforts to analyze the categories were post hoc decisions. Therefore, in this study, analysis of the data, much like analysis of the music, is, in part, an interpretive process.

Chapter 4: Descriptive Strategies

Recall that participants were asked “to describe the passage of music, what [they] think it conveyed or expressed, and any emotional response [they] had while listening to it.” This open-ended wording was chosen to encourage participants to freely describe their experience with somewhat of a focus on emotional or narrative impression.

The goal now is to construct an experiential descriptive analysis of the piece as heard by combining their responses with my own analysis. Each participant listened in the same conditions with the same knowledge of the piece (when asked, they each said they were previously unfamiliar with the piece) and yet each participant’s descriptions were substantially different. We can track significant similarities among listeners by examining the points at which participants most used the same categories of responses.

The very small participant pool results in data that are not generalizable to a population, but analysis of the data nevertheless tell us about how some expert listeners describe “Il

Penseroso” and what implications those descriptions might have for the practice of descriptive analysis.

“Thinking” Descriptions

The most prominent theme across all the responses was Thinking; this is almost certainly due to knowledge of the title. The idea that the music was “about” an internal thought process completely shaped some participants’ descriptive strategies. It is

47 probable that some affective descriptions depended on the participant’s overarching idea of narrative. This sense-making process of describing expression and emotion may not have occurred without the programmatic title. I provided listeners with the title and its translation because I was aware of them during my first experience of the piece and I assume this is the most likely context in which an expert listener would hear it. I am sure that the programmatic idea strongly influenced my narrative and therefore the way I interpret expression in each musical event. To me, this was an indispensable aspect of the listening experience and thus something I wanted participants to deal with as well. Some comments participants made reveal this process. One participant noted, “I tend to be a programmatic listener… For people like me, knowing the title sets up a story.” Perhaps too, knowledge of a programmatic title is the only thing that prompted any narrative response from some listeners. One participant noted that they are “not normally a very narrative thinker.” In fact, they said, “the process of listening in pieces prompts me to put together a narrative of the process.”

It would certainly be interesting to compare the expressive descriptions collected in this study with those from a population who do not know the work’s title. After responding to each of the stimuli, another participant noted, “It’s interesting that it’s called ‘Il Penseroso;’ it feels way more active than just sitting and thinking somewhere.”

This participant also gave a large majority of the responses in the Imagery category (this category contains imagery descriptions that neither suit any other categories nor contain strains that prompt the creation of another specific category). These responses imply that a variety of narrative stories might be perceived by listeners ignorant of the title.

Even among the current participants, despite knowledge of the title, there were strong narrative differences. Among the three listeners who initially heard long-term narratives about thinking, there remained plot differences. Participant 1 heard a story of a man struggling to decide between actions he must take to achieve a task; he reluctantly resolves that he must take an undesirable action but continuously tries to find other options. Participant 4 also heard a decision-making process but two possible stories: a thought process about a difficult decision in which the thinker felt trapped, or “a film scene” in which someone is being physically led to complete a difficult task. Participant 5 heard a “concentrated, on-track kind of reflection” in which a person is trying to answer a specific question, later specifying that it was one of “the big (important, profound) questions of life.” These narratives contrast, too, with my own. My penseroso’s thought process was one of sense-making after he was initially presented with new, confusing information. These discrepancies seem to point to an inability of narrative analysis, even in a clearly programmatic piece, to describe a generalized experience of listening. I will now turn to response data that appears to be more generalizable, at least to the participants of this study.

Expressive Categories

A detailed view of the expressive categoric responses as they relate to the musical progression is given in Table 7. The right-most column displays those expressive categories that were used by more than one participant in response to the clip represented in notation on the left. The number of categoric responses is shown in parentheses. The central columns reproduce the language used in my analysis from Chapter 2.

Continued

Table 7. Expressive categoric responses comparedinitial to categoric Expressive 7. analysis. Table

Continued

Table 7 Continued 7 Table

Continued

Table 7 Continued 7 Table

Continued

Table 7 Continued 7 Table

Negative Emotion: Fate/Hopelessness

Of the ten expressive categories, Negative Emotion: Fate/Hopelessness was by far the most prominent. This category included discussions of hopelessness, inevitability, fate, darkness, or otherwise perceived inescapable negativity. While the high concentration of Thinking responses was expected from the work’s title, the high concentration of Fate/Hopelessness responses comes from no stimulus other than the listeners’ mental representations of the music. This category was mentioned by three people in response to the whole piece and was mentioned by at least one participant for all but four of the clips. The category also shows the most agreement throughout the clips, appearing in three participant responses for six clips and in four for one. It would appear, then, that Fate and Hopelessness are the most pervasive themes that the participants hear in this music. Interestingly, this was not represented in my analysis. I wrote about hopelessness only in response to the chromatic descent in Clip 8. The data seem to suggest that a description of this piece is incomplete without discussion of the pervading senses of fate and hopelessness.

Moments of Highest Agreement

There were five clips that led to the use of the same expressive category by four different participants. I will consider these moments to be maximally powerful moments of agreement. In a set of data rife with disagreement and nuance, we should be able to consider these five examples as moments for which the participant approach has maximal utility for the description of a more generalized listening experience.

The first maximally powerful moment of agreement is, unsurprisingly, the discussion of expectation at the interrupting half cadence in Clip 10. However, even

55 among the four participants who agreed on the feeling of expectation, some responses were almost diametrically opposed. For example, despite agreeing on the expectation associated specifically with the last note, Participant 1 heard in Clip 10 “constant indecision; [the] character is thinking, ‘I don’t really know why I want this,’” where

Participant 5 heard that the “main character has gained the courage to act independently and shape his own future; [it’s] less reactive [and] more active.” These opposite responses may be a demonstration of the effect of narrative conception on affective description.

The next moment of maximal agreement immediately follows the half cadence; four participants discussed Action at the start of the second half, usually directly attributed to the moving bass line. In my analytic and narrative listening, I heard this bass line as representing gears turning, an active image that I understood as representative of a more active thought process. Two participants heard this bass line as representative of walking (“I picture that the person is walking around the room deep in thought,” and,

“this is when it starts to feel like a story with action… I feel like I’m watching someone walking”). Two other participants simply described its resulting sense of motion (“trying to… create momentum,” and, “sense of motion whereas before it was more static”). This sense of motion might be caused by the moving bass line in abstract or it might only be heard as opposition to the preceding music. Either way, the participant-based phenomenological approach demonstrates that action is probably a generalizable element of hearing this moment in this piece.

The next three moments of maximal agreement occur as the three successive sections of the coda. The progression through the coda should be described as initially

56 hopeless (Clip 19: “the thinker is trying, even now when he’s lost all hope, to change the outcome,” “hopeless,” “dark,” “the options that were present in the beginning are eliminated”), then tense (Clip 20: “ascending passage brings an increase in tension,”

“despair… third relation creates tension,” “very unsettling,” “there was also this horrible thing that happened over here! …crying”), and finally resolved (Clip 21: “much more obvious ending,” “conclusive, but not quite satisfactorily so,” “felt like an ending,”

“conclusion”).

Overall Emotional Trajectory

In general, the expressive categoric response data (presented in Table 6 at the end of Chapter 3) demonstrate a wide spread of affective descriptions per stimulus. Aside from the moments of maximal agreement, it is difficult to generalize an experiential description from the data. It does little to demonstrate a trajectory of affect over the course of either a few clips or the whole piece. To this end, Figure 3 shows a reduction of the information from Table 6 that enables the visualization of change in affective response from one stimulus to the next. The “average affective response” represents the mean response for each stimulus where:

Negative Emotion: Fate/Hopelessness = 1 Negative Emotion: Seriousness/Importance = 2 Negative Emotion: High Intensity = 3 Negative Emotion: Low Intensity = 4 Neutral Emotion = 5 Positive Emotion = 6 Hope = 7

Average Affective Trajectory of Responses

Affective Responses Affective More Negative More More Negative PositiveMore 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Figure 3. Average affective trajectory of participant responses across 21 ordered clips.

This is not to say, for instance, that we should think of the average of Hope and

Hopelessness as Low Intensity Negative Emotion, but considering the affective categories as a spectrum of negative to positive emotions does provide in an interesting way to abstractly view the disparate affective responses as a progression. The data points represent averages for each stimulus, but each stimulus did not receive the same number of affective responses; despite the interesting correlations with my analysis, this chart should be viewed critically. The trendline indicates an overall sense of rising positivity toward the end of the piece as compared to the beginning, though extremely slight.

Some points on this trajectory reflect my initial analysis well. For example, the spike in positivity at clip 4 coincides with the cadence in E-minor, the key in which I noted that the initially puzzling A-minor first makes tonal sense. The marked decrease at

Clip 7 coincides with the augmented triads I referred to as “empty” and the very slight

58 rise at Clip 8 coincides with their “unsatisfying” “filling in.” The final two clips also correlate to my analysis: in Clip 20 the triumphant F-major returns and in Clip 21, the melodic ↓6 from the F-major resolves to 5, representing a positive resolution.

On the other hand, some information here opposes my analysis. For instance, I wrote that the arpeggiated V7b9 at Clip 10 was a representation of confusion that il penseroso needed to resolve. Here, that moment is shown as the peak positivity of the entire piece. Staggeringly, I heard Clip 14 as the triumphant emotional apex of the piece whereas this reduction of responses shows Clip 14 as perhaps the least marked of the clips.

Conclusion

Considering the categoric descriptions of “Il Penseroso” given by the five participants and myself, there was low between-listeners agreement. Gathering descriptions from a larger population might reveal more obvious trends in thought and description. However, there are lessons to be learned from the obvious variation found in this study.

At the beginning of this document, I posed the question, “How, then, can a music analysis truly reflect the sublime, non-analytic, artistic experience of listening?” The truth is that a descriptive analysis cannot reflect non-analytic listening. Even without the score, the participants had to be analytic and critical in their listening activity to report on their experiences. Any act of intentional listening is inherently analytic.

As for the sublime and artistic aspects of experience, I posit that each person involved in this analysis did reflect a sublime and artistic experience of listening. Each of us gave sincere attempts to describe our perceptions of “Il Penseroso.” Although mine

59 was confounded by the score, each participant’s description was truly one of personal aural experience, of music as heard. As each participant described the music through a different lens, I could hear it the way they described it – a hearing experience that was different both from my initial hearing and from my post-analytic hearing. Therefore, their responses simultaneously described the experience of hearing the music and prescribed, or suggested, a new way for me to hear it. In Temperley’s 1999 article, he draws a hard line along the dichotomy of descriptive versus suggestive analyses, claiming that a single analysis cannot do both. In pursuit of a generalized descriptive analysis of this affectively profound and moving piece of music, I have found this dichotomy to be false.

This study indicates the high degree of difficulty involved in the generalization of experienced musical expression. This should not, however, discourage analysts from describing their experiences with music that has affected them. Leonard Meyer, who

Temperley cites as a practitioner of descriptive analysis, writes,

The primary goal of criticism [analysis] is explanation for its own sake. Because music fascinates, excites, and moves us, we want to explain, if only imperfectly, in what ways the events within a particular composition are related to one another and how such relationships shape musical experience. (Meyer 1973: 16–17)

This is the beauty of music analysis. While an analyst describes in what ways the musical events shape their experience, even when striving for infallibility, they cannot possibly describe all of the ways that those events shape someone else’s musical experience. They can estimate, they can use empirical tools, and they can find fascinating tendencies for the mental processing of a passage of music. But as music is an expressive entity that exists in the brain of its hearer, it cannot be wholly objectified. There will always be unknowable differences in listener experiences.

Despite their fallibility, descriptive music analyses are valuable. They give their author the opportunity to confront and define what about a piece of music affects them.

By focusing on the phenomenological hearing experience of music, we can learn what compositional strategies translate into affective and sublime music. Well-written descriptive analyses can create appreciation for their readers for whom perhaps there was a prior lack of understanding of the music or simply a different interpretation. These are the things that make music analysis a rich, enjoyable, and valuable activity for the musical community.

In “Il Penseroso,” I heard a man struggling with confusing thoughts, processing them, eventually reaching an exciting realization, and integrating it into his world. I did not know that the decision to analyze the piece would result in the same process for me. I struggled to pursue description of experience in music analysis, processed my thinking through participant-based study, and the process led me to a new way of thinking about descriptive analysis. Like il penseroso’s apex of realization changed the ensuing music, this realization will change the way that I practice and appreciate the descriptive analysis of music as heard.

References

Adorno, Theodor W. 1982. “On the Problem of Musical Analysis.” Translated by Max Paddison. Music Analysis 1 (2): 169–187.

Albrecht, Joshua. 2012. “Affective Analysis of Music Using the Progressive Exposure Method: The Influence of Bottom-Up Features on Perceived Musical Affect.” PhD diss., Ohio State University.

Bent, Ian D. and Anthony Pople. "Analysis." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed February 14, 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/41862pg1.

Bowman, Wayne. 1989. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education 99: 83– 90. http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/stable/40318327.

Cross, Ian. 1998. “Music Analysis and Music Perception.” Music Analysis 17 (1): 3–20.

Clifton, Thomas. 1983. Music as Heard: A Study in Applied Phenomenology. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Dey, Ian. 1993. Qualitative Data Analysis: A User-Friendly Guide for Social Scientists. London: Routledge.

Dubiel, Joseph. 2000. “Analysis, Description, and What Really Happens.” Music Theory Online 6 (3).

Hatten, Robert. 2004. Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Huron, David. 2006. Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Kane, Brian. 2011. “Excavating Lewin’s ‘Phenomenology’.” Music Theory Spectrum 33 (1): 27–36.

Kerman, Joseph. 1980. “How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get out.” Critical Inquiry 7 (2): 311–331.

Lewin, David. 1986. “Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception.” Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal 3 (4): 327–392.

Lerdahl, Fred, and Ray Jackendoff. 1983. A generative theory of tonal music. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Meyer, Leonard. 1973. Explaining Music: Essays and Explorations. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Narmour, Eugene. 1990. The analysis and cognition of basic melodic structures: the implication-realization model. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rogers, Michael R. 2004. Teaching Approaches in Music Theory: An Overview of Pedagogical Approaches. Carbondale: SIU Press.

Smith, David Woodruff. 2016. "Phenomenology." Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/phenomenology/.

Stewart, Lauren. 2008. “Do Musicians Have Different Brains?” Clinical Medicine 8 (3): 304–308.

Temperley, David. 1999. “The Question of Purpose in Music Theory: Description, Suggestion, and Explanation.” Current Musicology 66: 66–85.

Temperley, David. 2001. The cognition of basic musical structures. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Appendix A: Segmented Participant Responses

The following table contains the entire log of simplified, segmented participant responses referenced in Chapter 3. The left-most column lists the stimulus to which the participants in the right five columns respond. Periods in the responses represent decisions by the experimenter to divide the responses into discrete thoughts. The final row includes some comments that participants desired to share at the end of the participation process, unless otherwise noted.

1 2 3 4 5 whole like a man sad. brought heavy. serious. very from the title: piece struggling with me down. there was a cinematic. pensive his thoughts. depressive. feeling of dread/inevitabi definitely slow ascent in everything was descent lity, a pulling pervades. first half negatively through all of forward. feels constant sounds like valanced. if it. pretty dark. like a decision knocking trying to figure not sad, ponderous in is being made. motive that out serious. the sense that one of two stays there all possibilities, introspective. it's heavy too. things: it was the time. kind contemplate repetition of in someone’s of thought options for the motive head thinking process that's actions to sounds like about a not free achieve a task. rumination, difficult association. it's second half, obsessive but decision, very a concentrated descent, not high dark, or they on-track kind sounds like energy felt trapped. or of reflection. pacing but also obsessive. a film scene the person resolving to do linear. where reflecting has a an option that someone's specific they don't like, being led to do question that giving up. very something they are trying end, extended difficult. such to answer. cadential part, as the kings maybe the they're speech, when main character resolved to do he goes to give knocking on what they speech about the wall of life don’t want to war. heavy. and life is do, but they complex giving sort of still try to find emotions. answers back other options. that can have even when you all kinds of know you have colors. a wide to do variety of something you harmonies that have to, still meet you when try to find you knock on other options. the wall. the the ending big questions says "maybe? of life. no, i need to important/prof stop." ound questions/situa tion. Do you no No no no probably but i know this don't piece? remember

1 a start. no second chord noble. like a call and seriousness. emotion so is sadder. determined. response. like the response to much as second chord feels like an a proposition the knocking is setting the is unexpected, opening. (melody) and very serious. stage. darkness at least the setting conclusion/res the chords are to come. first time. something up. ult (chord). the two different negatively dramatic. melody asks colors, both valanced "what if i did important or emotions. this?" the serious chord messages but responds, with different "that's what colors. as if to would say, "life is happen." multifaceted undertaking." 2 length. sets up despair at the drive of similar to 1. the end expectation for end. not just increased two voices. redirects to a this to be sad, hopeless. seriousness. more of a more internal drawn out; this the cadence then a discussion reflection, experience is projects an reflective with a negative because it going to take a attitude of "it's moment or a conclusion. becomes while. more over". stepping back hopeless. quieter. darkness. at the chord agreement on contrast to 1. 1 right before hopelessness said "this is the last chord serious and and the last important," 2 chord says "but i’m also fragile" 3 almost exactly like 1 but the stable. not like 1 but less return to the the same as 1. effect of different like two first one but if anything, surprise on the affectively. separate with the more of the second chord more serious, entities. knowledge of feelings of isn't there not as noble or the second pain thoughts, anymore. determined as one. the serious 1. seriousness thought. this is here is a serious issue, tempered by something that the fragility requires a lot expressed in 2. of thought.

4 that the second exactly the toys back and like 2; internal sonority is same as 2 but forth between combined reflection major implies somehow not darkness and discussion. again. nothing that there is a as dramatic or light (I felt this conclusionary new. good (positive) as hopeless. through the thought. feels possibility. first chord is whole piece). like they have descent. brighter than there are agreed on the brevity. sounds 2, maybe moments when conclusion like the good because it's the clouds are more than in 2 possibility is rolled parting but and it's not a real they're always definitely option foiled and negative. anymore. there's never maybe less therefore fully light. negative than looking for the clouds parting in 2. lesser of two sound is evils. because of harmony and timing. 5 the higher sort of a yearning melodic the main interval sounds schism (new). chords are character like the man is between agitation. pleading, more knocking and resolving to melody and building desperate. as if life responding focus more. chords. agitation. asking lower are starting to facing reality. melody feels chords not to mix in a way. "i need to brighter but punish them. the response is determine chords are not a passive what it is I'm dark. the first response going to do chord is anymore, its about this." unexpected, more active. same motive perhaps a the texture: the idea but major chord is. response moved up. dissonant. not becomes much evoked knocking-like. emotion maybe a beginning of some kind of synthesis. 6 still higher cadence brings compared to 5, melody has continuation of interval but a sort of relief. it's decreasing finished its the eventually still negatively in agitation. case. two interactivity descends. valanced but harmony at voices still not between parts. because of not as dark as end is another agreeing. harmony is descent, part before. parting of driving the person is clouds. main character already kind of (melody) to resolved that move in a whatever different decision he direction. ends up making is not going to be happy/good. 67

7 up another similar to 5. noble. the sounds a lot the knock has interval. more melody and lower range like 5. new become an of a sense of chords seems like an hesitation octave knock, person really separate. keep introduction of because of that makes it doesn't want to expecting a a timing. more chord- make the resolution to heavier/disturb perhaps the top like; an wrong major, but it ing aspect that voice is example of decision, or do doesn't wasn't there making some how the two the bad thing, happen. before. kind of forces are because the progress. sort mixing. the motive of but not chords are ascends. really. more resistance. knocking-like and the knocking is more chord- like. more tense. the main character perhaps feels more vulnerable (the listener identifies with that).

8 descent from every time it another foiling the top voice the response is higher register. goes down, it of hope. gave up. they influencing the like a gets darker. descending. suggested main character resolution, but from not going the some things to slow down, still a need to emotionally way you want but were decrease figure out brighter to it to go. denied. the dynamic level. what’s darker with chromatic beauty happening every move descent and emerges and next. decrescendo that influences suggests the main acceptance. character to become less persistent and more appreciative.

9 more of the feels more anxious and emotionally this feeling from 9. mysterious or then neutral. like a development confusion and unknown. the suspenseful. conclusion but has made lack of note after the the second it's lost its things less confidence first N figure phrase is more intensity. i fragmented. implied by feels suspenseful. keep picturing you start overall descent particularly not agitated a courtroom. seeing longer but sometimes mysterious. but maybe this is like a phrases going up a bit. anxious/concer guilty verdict emerge. the mixture of ned. has been made last chord has tonalities, not and now expectations distinctly they're just attached. more minor as it has cleaning up the prospective - been. more paperwork. not driving lack of very forward. now a confidence emotional. simultaneous than retrospective confusion. reflection about things and starting to think what can happen differently in the future. 10 sounds like a expecting a it made me like a coda. an like a resolve, but cadence. feels feel very echo of what recitativo. that very last the narrative suspended, happened. not main character note sounds paused for a holding my any individual has gained the like it needs to moment. when breath waiting voice. like a courage to act resolve it starts, for what was narrator came independently upward. expecting it to gonna happen. on and and shape his constant go to major the music was summed up own future. indecision. (for some downward what thinking character is reason) but it motion but happened. forward. end thinking "i doesn’t. slow, sinking saying it was note has clear don't really to the bottom tragic. expectation know why i of an ocean (as attached. main want this." opposed to character is falling off a their own cliff). driving force. less reactive, more active.

11 i picture that more dramatic, implying (i like this makes me the person is almost too inevitability of part). more think about walking much. like something cinematic. like dies irae which around the phantom of the ahead. sense of an signifies fate. room deep in opera or motion accompanimen some kind of thought. something, whereas before t to action, not repetitive, reminds of 1 almost over it was more individual unavoidable but instead of the top. trying static. the voices thing. you feel quietly sitting, to evoke more repetition had anymore. more independent person is tension or that broad. more now, but there moving around create ruminating like a are still other room. momentum but quality before; soundscape of forces driving not sure if it's now it's emotion as you. successful or moving opposed to not. forward particular characters. the bass and the chords feel connected, like they're working together. same as the overall emotion: dread, ominous, heaviness, inevitability. this is when it starts to feel like a story with action. the bass line feels like walking. I feel like i'm watching someone walking. 12 continuing very low, hard inevitability. same as 11. searching movement. to pick up motion like a march. upwards. like 2 or 3. what's forward. sad. trying to get more serious. happening. toward the end procession. out of the person thinks most when the bass darkness and "i want to impressions by itself, it's hopelessness. devote more based on less dense and this excerpt time to this". register and more a sense transforms: it not harmony of aloneness. starts as anymore. fate/dies thing, dramatic. not and moves into especially sad. something dark. freer, more hopeful. 70

13 pretty much exactly the more procession. sinking down. same as 12. same as 12 determination dark. i feel like fluctuation devoting time and i'm watching between hope to importance inevitability. non-verbal and of topic. events. no hopelessness. words of any kind are being spoken. 14 the motive has more intense. building up of things got the fate thing moved into a emotional determination. intense. the is breaking major motion. relief based on gathering dynamics went through, the bass line is chords. heroic. conviction. up. the chords insisting that it loud and dramatic. felt more has the power. pounding. intense. i threatening. thinker is wouldn't say powerful. determined to triumphant, find a good but some kind way out. bass of climax. line means he something was still knows achieved, it there's no way was a negative out. the bass thing. maybe line says "stop not the final trying to focus goal. highest on what you'd emotional like to happen significance so and get back to far. reality of situation." 15 bassline heroicism dies the beginning the action that threatening slowing is a very quickly. makes me feel had led up to thing becomes stronger very dark and in the climax in projected into indication of sad again. suspense/suspe 14 is over. this the giving up or nded. very is the background. resolving to do unsettling aftermath with main character thing. when the no action. realizes that in accepting higher chords something bad spite of risks inevitability, come in. range happened. and fate, there also because is part of wrapping up are still bass line drops what's the action. beautiful out. unsettling as things that I well as can appreciate. dissonance. recall of the beginning. coming to terms with the fact that fate exists.

16 chromatic mysterious. suspended, not still the sequence is descending unstable. not knowing what wrapping-up perfect chords, clear where's to expect. feeling. more example of bassline is it's going wondering emotional than how the one gone. emotionally. when it's 15. emotional part of the chromatic interrogative. gonna stop aftermath. texture descent sounds asking sequencing. perhaps this is interacts with like an questions. the last person the other. unhappy left at the intertwined. acceptance. funeral. moving not angry but storyline is forward in a pained, "this is moving on. predictable gonna hurt". contemplative. way. not bad. it feels safe. 17 more of a same as 16 but angsty. its own action. continuation of fighting back, more hopeful, softening of contemplation the sequence. or anger brighter. last 2 angst but still a in 16 moved sequence is against thing chords give persistent into small perfect he has to do, expectation of sense of action. crying. example of because of the sadness dissatisfaction, there was an how the one dynamic both evoked action and then part of the increase at and invoked. it died, it was texture beginning. not very interacts with sudden drop of effective. the other. dynamics and despairing. one intertwined. sparser texture of the saddest moving sounds like clips. forward in a defeat (as predictable opposed to sad way. not bad. acceptance). it feels safe. defeat. 18 culmination. it gets sad resignation. conclusionary. very clear expect this to again at the fade to black. cadence. scale be final cadence. generally sad degrees 3-2-1 cadence. i expectation emotion. not is the clearest expected it to satisfied. intense. as if signal of end. resolution an echo. ending. of the defeat. resolution of this problem. ends as a very solitary thing. ending as an individual because of the lack of bass

19 motive comes feels like first serious. dark. like its own knocking back, excerpts. conclusion. (opening continues to despair. same general motive) comes show the hopeless. sad feelings back but is thinker is but the dread transformed. trying, even is over because more now when he's the action has cadential. lost all hope, already more to change the happened. conclusive. the outcome. commemorativ options that e. remorseful. were present in grave. almost the beginning more for the (represented audience than by different for whoever's harmonies) are in the piece. eliminated. 20 motive back, first half: very some detail importance/ser weaker. quiet despair, unsettling. a that the iousness has part says "i've hopeless. sense of arrival audience returned. new lost; whatever second half at the end. the forgot. or: "but state of happens, this seems like note it ends on wait! there was resolution. a is defeat." there's maybe is satisfying. also this more clear ascending some hope. the horrible thing mind is passage is third relation that happened mirrored in stronger and [L] creates over here!" this brings an tension and resurgence of seriousness. increase in gets unstable. action. crying clearer mind tension, expecting it out action. than beginning depicting that could go to seemed like it seriousness there's still a major again. would be an spark of hope. hoping it will echo but it go major. took off with an unexpected power. 21 much more not as sad as the first part felt like an conclusion. a obvious expected. still feels ending. the last bit of the ending. the negatively somewhat action was so beauty in the whole thing valanced but conclusive, but late, it feels a high notes has been a not as gloomy not quite little (referenced battle, but the as opening satisfactorily incomplete. beauty at 11). staccato here, where there so. like there's generally the knocking evenly spaced was no hope. no good hopeless. in a very slow out is the way probably options, so it's sadness. heavy version. the of saying "ok, because of the resigned. not weight. like it last notes like we really are 5th up. ideal. the moved from the knock but done. this is staccato notes dread through so extended. the way things had at least action and unified, are, this is the one less than despair to a without way things expected. mourning, contrastive are.." commemorativ response. e vibe. felt very story oriented. 73

Com- i tend to be a said at 12: the it's interesting ments programmatic process of this is called listener. i tend listening in penseroso. it to invent pieces prompts feels way more programmatic me to put active than just things. for together a sitting and people like narrative of the thinking me, knowing thought somewhere. the title set up process. when a story. the music started "moving forward" at 11, it started moving away from an obsessive thought and putting things together to arrive at some sort of conclusion which might be "the inevitable thing." I'm not normally a very narrative thinker.