BY MATTHEW LORENZON
Music analysis isn’t just something you do for a semester in third year uni. It happens whenever you’re curious about the music you’re listening to or playing. Being structured in your approach to a piece can help you appreciate why it’s special, and other works that share its structure. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of analysis.
1. Find a piece that grabs your attention
This is the easy part. Every analysis begins with a question like ‘Why do I like this piece so much?’ or, in Bob Dylan’s immortal words, ‘Something is happening here but [I] don’t know what it is’. Trying to figure out the music won’t break it, but you might find a bunch of new things to love about it.
2. Make copies of the music. Lots of copies.
Every music analyst has a file bursting with so much paper you’d think they were hoarding the lost Bach Passions. When you ask them, they’re actually analytical notes on twelve bars of music. It can take a long time and plenty of scribbling to settle on an interpretation of what makes a piece tick.
3. Time to get scientific
Once you’ve got your copies, it’s time to start analysing in earnest. Write a list of the work’s interesting characteristics. Does it have striking rhythms, harmonies, or an unusual form? Treat the items on this list like hypotheses. Test them by identifying them in your scores, differentiating your notes by using separate pages or different colours. If you changed one of the elements, would the piece still sound good/bad/interesting? It’s okay to try out a bunch of different ideas at this point.
4. Time to get biographical
Well, that brainstorm might have been fun, but maybe you didn’t get anywhere. This can (frustratingly) be the case when analysing contemporary music. This one’s controversial, but do yourself a favour and find out what mattered to the composer. Not much music happens by accident and even if a piece is aleatoric or freely composed, its final form might be influenced by decisions made early in its composition. Try out some more hypotheses based on your understanding of the piece’s style.
5. Keep those copies
Analysing a piece might sometimes feel like blind man’s bluff, but inevitably you’ll discover something that will come in handy later, even if it doesn’t form part of your final analysis. When you decide to return to it, you’ll wish you kept that page of notes.
6. Start thinking of other pieces that do the same thing
You don’t need to try for this one. Once you’ve identified what grabbed you about the first piece, you’ll start hearing it everywhere. Keep track of these musical Nessies and ask yourself: ‘What makes these the same and what makes them different?’. Before you know it, you’ll have a Theory of Music going.
7. Don’t forget context
Now that you’ve spent a few hours (or days, or months, or years) with your nose half an inch from a sheet of manuscript paper, it’s time to stretch your legs. Were there loads of other composers at the time who did that great thing you just found (probably yes)? Why don’t we know about them? And you’ve got a context too. Get into it and share the analysis love.
Oh and look, the Melbourne Music Analysis Summer School is running a Winter Intensive on Claude Debussy’s La Mer on June 25 with renowned pianist and scholar Roy Howat. Howat’s initial curiosity about form in Debussy’s orchestral suite has led (many scribbled scores, graphs, and diagrams later) to a range of incredible insights into French piano music of the early 20th Century, published in the books Debussy in Proportion and The Art of French Piano Music. The intensive seminar will cover how his analysis relates to performance and critical editing, and include plenty of excellent refreshment and an awesome reception afterwards.
This feature is part of CutCommon Young Writers’ Month. About the author:
Described by an ANU guitar student as “the musicologist who gets it,” Matthew Lorenzon writes about contemporary music for both academic and journalistic contexts. His doctoral studies completed at the Australian National University focussed on a collaboration between the composer Xavier Darasse and the philosopher Alain Badiou and featured lots of crazy diagrams explaining arcane versions of Messiaen’s interversions. With interests in Australian colonial music he also contributes to the small but dedicated field of Marshall-Hall studies. As a journalist he has written for numerous publications including Music and Literature, RealTime, and Limelight Magazine. He likes to keep in touch with the music of his generation, founding the Partial Durations blog in 2013. In 2015 he founded the Melbourne Music Analysis Summer School after a successful crowdfunding campaign
Images supplied by Matthew Lorenzon.
