Sound’s Arguments: Philosophical Encounters with Music Theory By Bryan J. Parkhurst A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Music Theory and Philosophy) 2014 Doctoral Committee: Professor Kendall Walton, Co-Chair Associate Professor Ramon Satyendra, Co-Chair Professor Kevin Korsyn Professor Victor Caston Table of Contents List of Examples iii List of Abbreviations iv Chapter 1: Aspects of Musical Analysis 1 Chapter 2: Schenker and Kantian Teleology; Or, Schenker’s Orcanicism Defended 70 Epilogue 1: More Thoughts on Dubiel’s Objections 167 Epilogue 2: The Place of Genius in Schenker’s Theory 171 Epilogue 3: Schenker’s Theory of Music as Ethics: A Criticism and a Suggestion 189 Bibliography 202 ii List of Examples Example 1 Double Cross 24 Example 2 Beethoven, Op. 27 no. 2, 3rd mvmt., beginning of recapitulation 26 Example 3 Beethoven, Op. 27 no. 2, 2nd mvmt., end of Allegretto section 26 Example 4 Beethoven, Op. 27 no. 2, 2nd mvmt., beginning of Allegretto section 28 Example 5 Beethoven, Op. 27 no. 2, 2nd mvmt., phrase expansion at the end of the Allegretto section 30 Example 6 Schubert, Morgengru∫, mm. 12-15 46 Example 7 Schubert, Morgengru∫, m. 14 49 Example 8 Schenker, Counterpoint Vol. 1, Example 44, p. 57 81 Example 9 Schenker, Counterpoint Vol. 1, Example 47, p. 58 81 Example 10 Schenker, Counterpoint Vol. 1, Example 35, p. 50 85 Example 11 Richard Cohn, “Neo Riemannian Operations, Parsimonious Trichords, and Their ‘Tonnetz’ Representations,” Example 4, p. 45 (Wagner, Parsifal Act III, Engelmotive) 151 Example 12 Schenker, Free Composition, Figure 5 157 Example 13 Tone sequence c1-b-a-b 160 Example 14 Schenker’s graph of the C-major Prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 161 iii List of Abbreviations Abbreviations of frequently-cited texts, in this chapter and throughout the paper: KPT / CPT = Heinrich Schenker, Kontrapunkt (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1910 [Vol. 1] and 1922 [Vol. 2]) / Counterpoint, ed. John Rothgeb, trans. John Rothgeb and Jürgen Thym (New York: Schirmer, 1987). FRS / FC = Heinrich Schenker, Der Freie Satz, ed. Oswalt Jonas (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1956). / Free Composition, ed. and trans. Ernst Oster (New York: Longman, 1979). MW / MA = Heinrich Schenker, Das Meisterwerk in der Musik 3 Yearbooks (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1925 [Vol. 1], 1926 [Vol. 2], 1930 [Vol. 3]) / The Masterwork in Music, ed. William Drabkin trans. Ian Bent et. al.. (Cambridge University Press 1994 [Vol. 1], 1996 [Vol. 2], 1997 [Vol. 3]). TW / WT = Heinrich Schenker, Der Tonwille (Vienna: Albert J. Gutmann, 1921 [Vol. 1], 1922 [Vol. 2], 1922 [Vol. 3], 1923 [Vol. 4], 1923 [Vol. 5], 1923 [Vol. 6], 1924 [Vol. 7], 1924 [Vol. 8-9], 1924 [vol. 10]). / Der Tonwille, ed. William Drabkin trans. Ian Bent et. al.. (Oxford University Press, 2004 [Vol. 1], 2005 [Vol. 2]). HL / H = Heinrich Schenker, Harmonielehre (Stuttgart and Berlin: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger, 1906). / Harmony, trans. Elisabeth Mann Borgese. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954). VMS / OMB = Eduard Hankslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, 11th ed. (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1910) / On the Musically Beautiful, trans. Geoffrey Payzant (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986). CPR = Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft), trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965). References to the first Critique, following established custom, give the page numbers of the first (A) and second (B) editions of 1781 and 1787 respectively. All German citations of Kant come from the “Academy edition” of Kant’s works, Kants gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902-1940). CJ = Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft), trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987). Citations from the third Critique give the page number of iv Pluhar’s translation, Kant’s own section number, and the volume and page number of the Academy edition (volume 5 is the Kritik der Urteilskraft), in that order. Thus: CJ, 248- 9/§64/5:370. For ease of reading, I place all German block quotes in SMALL CAPS. I also often use SMALL CAPS when referring to concepts. Thus: “the complementary concepts of FREE COMPOSITION and STRICT COMPOSITION.” Regardless of the order in which I introduce the German and English versions of a passage, citations of the passage will list the German edition first and the English edition second (this includes citations of works and translations that are not listed above). Thus: KPT. 1, p. 35 / CPT. 1, p. 37. In cases where I referred to an English translation other than the ones listed above, I give the abbreviated citation of the German followed by a full citation of the alternative English source. v CHAPTER 1. Aspects of Musical Analysis Overview: This chapter thinks about how to think about what one is doing when one is doing music analysis. I explain the scope and aims of the activity by detailing the relations among three concepts: Dewey’s concept of INTEGRAL EXPERIENCE, his concept of ARTISTIC PRODUCTIVITY (as contrasted with PASSIVE AESTHETIC APPRECIATION), and Wittgenstein’s notion of ASPECTUAL PERCEPTION (a.k.a. SEEING-AS). We can adumbrate what’s contained in those concepts and how they are related: 1) Dewey uses the label INTEGRAL EXPERIENCE to cover a diverse collection of human practical activities. However, we can identify the greatest common factor they share: every INTEGRAL EXPERIENCE consists in the successful deployment of skills in order to attain an end one holds to be worth attaining. For the one who undergoes it, an integral experience possesses what I shall call TELEOLOGICAL VALUE. 2) Within the aesthetic domain, TELEOLOGICAL VALUE looms large, Dewey notices, in the artist’s skillful production of beautiful objects. But, Dewey suggests, it can also manifest itself in one’s receptive appreciation of art objects made by others. 3) TELEOLOGICAL VALUE can arise for music’s listeners, I suggest on Dewey’s behalf, when they ASPECTUALLY PERCEIVE music, i.e. exercise their capacity for HEARING-AS. Further, we can think of certain music-analytical activities as aimed at bringing about such perceptions and developing such capacities. Music analysis, so understood, endows acts of musical listening with TELEOLOGICAL VALUE. 1 In the first section of this chapter, I give a prospectus of Dewey’s discussion of integral experience. Much of his discussion centers on the way in which such experiences have both an active and a passive side. Kant, whose works Dewey studied intensely,1 also famously probes the connection between activity and passivity within experience (Erfahrung). I use Kant as foil in order to throw into relief several key features of Dewey’s account. In the second section, I find musical analogues to Wittgenstein’s examples of visual aspectual perception, using Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata as a case study. I then offer a conceptual analysis of the overarching phenomenon of perceiving-as. In the third section, I situate one of David Lewin’s essays within the framework of the hearing-as model. In the fourth section, I bring the first, second, and third sections together by unfolding the idea that we should prize music analysis for its potential to turn our experiences of music into integral experiences thereof. ************** Introduction: What’s the point of music analysis? A good deal of ink has been spilled attempting to demonstrate that music analysis can, does, or should explain things, after the manner of the canonical natural and social sciences.2 Since its 1 Dewey’s 1884 Johns Hopkins dissertation was entitled “The Psychology of Kant.” It was never published and is now lost. “Kant and Philosophic Method,” an article Dewey published that same year in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, is likely drawn from his dissertation. 2 A few of the loci classici of music-theoretical scientism are: Matthew Brown and Douglas Dempster, “The Scientific Image of Music Theory,” Journal of Music Theory vol. 33 (1989): 65-106; Matthew Brown, “Adrift on Neurath's Boat,” Music Theory Online 2.2 (1996); Benjamin Boretz, “Meta-Variations: Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought,” Open Space (1991); Milton Babbitt, The Collected 2 inception, this platform has always had more notoriety than credibility. There is little cause, therefore, to challenge it in quite the revolutionary spirit with which one challenges the received wisdom and its entrenched orthodoxies. In many corners of the discipline of music theory, the “wisdom” of scientism was not received, and its “orthodoxies” never looked very orthos. Still, scientism in music theory has enjoyed enough of an ascendancy, and remains a big enough part of the field’s ideological patrimony, for its specter to continue to haunt those of us music theorists who feel drawn toward a sharply opposed perspective.3 That alone provides me with a reason to begin this essay by wondering: is it a good idea, even prima facie, to try to gather together the various facets of the music analyst’s vocation beneath an experimental-scientific rubric? The idea isn’t utterly misconceived. On the one hand, it behooves us to figure out what important commonalities and continuities there are between what scientists do and what music analysts do. Figuring that out could be a matter of seeing how far we can get by trying to assimilate the latter to the former, taking as our starting point those cases where we have no qualms saying that one and the same theoretical exercise is both scientific (i.e., would be recognized as science by those we recognize as scientists) and music-analytical (i.e., would be recognized as Essays of Milton Babbitt, eds. Stephen Peles et. al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); and Milton Babbitt, Words About Music, eds.