Heinrich Schenker and Musical Form
Frank Knight Dale · Bulletin of the American Musicological Society · 1943
Musical theory has long suffered from a tendency to focus attention upon the details of a work at the expense of the conception of it as a whole. Schenker realized the need for elucidating the principles of organic coherence. Of first importance in this connection is his treatment of the toneline. Here he deals with the twofold relationshipmelodic and harmonic-between adjacent tones. A real line is only that which is expressed in a stepwise progression, since all skips represent harmonic entities, and are understood as representing two or more contrapuntal parts. (Neue Musikalische Theorien und Phantasien: Der Freie Satz, Fig. 43.) In the downward sequence: E-C, D-B, C, we hear a line from E to D to C, the first tone of each group being imaginatively prolonged until the next conjunct tone. This observation becomes important for our understanding of organic structure when we perceive the operation of the same principle over the entire span of a work. (Ibid., Figs. 42-2, 49, etc.) The aesthetic value of hearing linear connections over extended time-intervals lies in a resulting increase in sensitivity to what happens between the points connected. Thus we also achieve a far more comprehensive grasp of musical form than that permitted by the usual approach.