CHAPTER 2 Criteria for Analysis I

51
Beginnings, Middles, Endings
Aristotelian poetics bequeathed an enduring representation of the structure of
any expressive, temporally bound utterance: it has a beginning, a middle, and an
ending. Tis formal model or paradigm has an immediate, intuitive appeal. In
poetry as well as in music, composers and listeners/readers regularly attend to the
manipulation of or play with beginnings, middles, and endings. And throughout
the history of thought about music, ideas relating to these functions exist. Mat-
theson described the shape of a musical oratory in terms that recognize these
functions,
17
Koch developed a compositional theory of form featuring appendixes
and suf xes,
18
and Schenker located a defnitive close of a composition in the
moment in which

1 appears over I.
19
More recently, Dahlhaus has put forward a
tripartite structure consisting of an initial phase, evolution, and epilogue.
20
My
own earlier study of classic music postulated a beginning-middle-ending para-
digm,
21
while William Caplins infuential theory of formal functions recast ideas
pertaining to beginnings, middles, and endings. Tus the formal unit or theme
type known as sentence consists of a presentation phrase in which a basic idea is
stated and repeated (beginning), followed by a continuation phrase featuring frag-
mentation, harmonic acceleration, liquidation, and sequential repetition (middle)
and a cadential idea (ending). Similarly, the fundamental harmonic progressions
that defne the classic style are said to belong to one of three categories: prolon-
gational, cadential, and sequential. Sequential processes are most characteristic
of continuation phases or middles, cadences mark endings (including endings of
beginnings as well as endings of endings), while the stasis of prolongation may
initiate the structure, prolong it at its middle, or close it.
22
And yet, but for a handful of attempts, the beginning-middle-ending model
has remained implicit in music-theoretical work; it has not come to occupy as
central a place in current analytical thinking as it might. Tere are two reasons
for this. One is that the model seems so obvious and banal (Craig Ayreys word)
23

that it is not immediately clear how the analyst can explore its ramifcations in a
rigorous fashion. But only if one understands beginnings, middles, and endings
solely as temporal locations rather than as complex functions with conventional
and logical attributes that operate at diferent levels of structure would the model
seem banal. A second, more signifcant reason has to do with the unavoidable
17. Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister, trans. Ernest Harriss (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
Research Press, 1981; orig. 1739).
18. Heinrich Christoph Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, vols. 2 and 3 (Leipzig: Bhme,
1787 and 1793).
19. Schenker, Free Composition, 129.
20. Carl Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism, trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1980), 64.
21. Agawu, Playing with Signs, 5179.
22. William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Teory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 35 and 24.
23. Craig Ayrey, Review of Playing with Signs, Times Higher Education Supplement 3 (May 1991), 7.
52

PART I Teory
fact that, as a set of qualities, beginnings, middles, and endings are not located
in a single musical dimension but cut across various dimensions. In other words,
interpreting a moment as a beginning or an ending invariably involves a reading
of a combination of rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic factors as they operate in
specifc contexts. In an institutional climate in which analysts tend to work within
dimensions as specialists, theories that demand an interdimensional approach
from the beginning seem to pose special challenges. Tese dif culties are, how-
ever, not insurmountable, and it will be part of my purpose here to suggest ways
in which attending to beginnings, middles, and endings can enrich our perception
of Romantic music.
For many listeners, the impression of form is mediated by beginning, middle, and
ending functions. Tchaikovskys First Piano Concerto opens with a powerful begin-
ning gesture that, according to Edward T. Cone, dwarfs the rest of what followsa
disproportionately elaborate opening gesture that sets the introduction of as an
overdeveloped frame that fails to integrate itself with the rest of the movement.
24

Some openings, by contrast, proceed as if they were in the middle of a process pre-
viously begun; such openings presuppose a beginning even while replacing it with
a middle. Charles Rosen cites the long dominant pedal that opens Schumanns Fan-
tasy in C Major for Piano, op. 17, as an example of a beginning in medias res.
25
And
an ending like that of the fnale of Beethovens Fifh, with its plentiful reiteration of
the tonic chord, breeds excess; strategically, it employs a technique that might be
fgured as rhetorically infantile to ensure that no listener misses the fact of ending.
Ending here is, however, not merely a necessary part of the structure; it becomes a
subject for discussion as wella meta-ending, if you like.
26
As soon as we begin to cite individual works, many readers will, I believe, fnd
that they have a rich and complex set of associations with beginnings, middles,
and endings. Indeed, some of the metaphors employed by critics underscore the
importance of these functions. Lewis Rowell has surveyed a variety of beginning
strategies in music and described them in terms of birth, emergence, origins, pri-
mal cries, and growth.
27
Endings, similarly, have elicited metaphors associated with
rest and fnality, with loss and completion, with consummation and transfgura-
tion, with the cessation of motion and the end of life, and ultimately with death
and dying. No more, we might say at the end of Tristan and Isolde.
How might we redefne the beginning-middle-ending model for internal
analytic purposes? How might we formulate its technical processes to enable
exploration of Romantic music? Every bound temporal process displays a begin-
ning-middle-ending structure. Te model works at two distinct levels. First is the
pure material or acoustical level. Here, beginning is understood ontologically as that
which inaugurates the set of constituent events, ending as that which demarcates
24. Cone, Musical Form and Musical Performance (New York: Norton, 1968) 22.
25. Rosen, Te Classical Style, 452453.
26. Donald Francis Tovey comments on the appropriateness of this ending in A Musician Talks, vol. 2:
Musical Textures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), 64.
27. Lewis Rowell, Te Creation of Audible Time, in Te Study of Time, vol. 4, ed. J. T. Fraser, N.
Lawrence, and D. Park (New York: Springer, 1981), 198210.
CHAPTER 2 Criteria for Analysis I

53
the completion of the structure, and middle as the necessary link between begin-
ning and ending. At this level, the analyst is concerned primarily with sound and
succession, with the physical location of events.
Tere is a second, more qualitative level at which events (no longer mere
sounds) are understood as displaying tendencies associated with beginnings, mid-
dles, and endings. Tese functions are based in part on convention and in part on logic.
A beginning in this understanding is an event (or set of events) that enacts the nor-
mative function of beginning. It is not necessarily what one hears at the beginning
(although it frequently is that) but what defnes a structure qualitatively as a begin-
ning. A middle is an event (or set of events) that prolongs the space between the
end of the beginning and the beginning of the ending. It refuses the constructive
profles of initiation and peroration and embraces delay and deferral as core rhe-
torical strategies. Finally, an ending is an event (or set of events) that performs the
functions associated with closing of the structure. Typically, a cadence or cadential
gesture serves this purpose. An ending is not necessarily the last thing we hear in
a composition; it may occur well before the last thing we hear and be followed by
rhetorical confrmation. Te task of an ending is to provide a decisive completion
of structural processes associated with the beginning and middle.
Te frst level of understanding, then, embodies the actual, material unfolding
of the work and interprets the beginning-middle-ending model as a set of place
marks; this is a locational or ordinal function. Te second speaks to structural
function within the unfolding. Distinguishing between location and function has
important implications for analysis. In particular, it directs the listener to some
of the creative ways in which composers play upon listeners expectations. For
example, a locational opening, although chronologically prior, may display func-
tions associated with a middle (as in of-tonic beginnings, or works that open with
auxiliary cadences) or an ending (as in works that begin with cadences or with a

1 or

1 melodic progression). Location and function would thus be

nonaligned, creating a dissonance between the dimensions. Similarly, in a loca-
tional ending, the reiterative tendencies that index stability and closure may be
replaced by an openness that refuses the drive to cadence, thus creating a sense of
middle, perhaps an equivocal ending. Creative play of this kind is known in con-
nection with classic music, whose trim procedures and frmly etched conventions
have the great advantage of sharpening our perception of any creative departures
that a composer might introduce. It is also frequently enacted by Romantic com-
posers within their individual and peculiar idiolects.
Although all three locations are necessary in defning a structure, associated
functions may or may not align with the locations. It is also possiblefunctionally
speakingto lose one element of the model by, for example, deploying a loca-
tional ending without a sense of ending. It would seem, in fact, that beginnings and
endings, because they in principle extend in time and thus function as potential
colonizers of the space we call middle, are the more critical rhetorical elements of
the model. In certain contexts, it is possible to redefne Aristotles model with no
reference to middles: a beginning ends where the ending begins. It is possible also
to show that, in their material expression, beginnings and endings frequently draw
on similar strategies. Te stability or well-formedness needed to create a point of
54

PART I Teory
reference at the beginning of a musical journey shares the material formsbut not
necessarily the rhetorical presentationof a comparable stability that is needed to
ground a dynamic and evolving structure at its end. It is also possible that endings,
because they close of the structure, subtend an indispensable function. From this
point of view, if we had to choose only one of the three functions, it would be end-
ing. In any case, several of these functional permutations will have to be worked
out in individual analyses.
It is not hard to imagine the kinds of technical processes that might be associ-
ated with beginnings, middles, and endings. Techniques associated with each of a
works dimensionsharmony, melody, rhythm, texturecould be defned norma-
tively and then adapted to individual contexts. With regard to harmony, for exam-
ple, we might say that a beginning expresses a prolonged IV(I) motion. (I have
placed the closing I in parenthesis to suggest that it may or may not occur, or that,
when it does, its hierarchic weight may be signifcantly less than that of the initiat-
ing I.) But since the beginning is a component within a larger, continuous struc-
ture, the IV(I) progression is ofen nested in a larger IV progression to confer
prospect and potential, to ensure its ongoing quality. A middle in harmonic terms
is the literal absence of the tonic. Tis ofen entails a prolongation of V. Since such
prolonged dominants ofen point forward to a moment of resolution, the middle is
better understood in terms of absence and promise: absence of the stable tonic and
presence of a dependent dominant that indexes a subsequent tonic. An ending in
harmonic terms is an expanded cadence, the complement of the beginning. If the
larger gesture of beginning is represented as IV, then the reciprocal ending gesture
is VI. Te ending fulflls the harmonic obligation exposed in the beginning, but
not under deterministic pressure. As with the beginning and ending of the begin-
ning, or of the middle, the location of the beginning and ending functions of the
ending may or may not be straightforward. In some genres, endings are signaled by
a clearly marked thematic or tonal return or by a great deal of fanfare. In others, we
sense the ending only in retrospect; no grand activity marks the moment of death.
Similar attributions can be given for other musical dimensions. In doing so, we
should remember that, if composition is fgured essentially as a mode of play, what
we call norms and conventions are functional both in enactment and in violation.
On the thematic front, for example, we might postulate the imperatives of clear state-
ment or defnition at the beginning, fragmentation in the middle, and a restoration
of statement at the ending, together with epigonic gestures or efects of reminiscence.
In terms of phrase, we might postulate a similar plot: clarity (in the establishment of
premises) followed by less clarity (in the creative manipulation of those premises)
yields, fnally, to a simulated clarity at the end. In addition to such structural proce-
dures, we will need to take into account individual composerly routines in the cho-
reographing of beginnings and endings. Beethovens marked trajectories, Schuberts
way with extensive parentheses and deferred closure, Mendelssohns delicately bal-
anced proportions, and the lyrical infection of moments announcing home-going
in Brahmsthese are attitudes that might be fruitfully explored under the aegis of a
beginning-middle-ending scheme. We have space here for only one composer.
As an example of the kinds of insights that might emerge from regarding a
Romantic work as a succession of beginnings, middles, and endings on diferent
CHAPTER 2 Criteria for Analysis I

55
levels, I turn to Mendelssohns Song without Words in D major, op. 85, no. 4 (repro-
duced in its entirety as example 2.1). Te choice of Mendelssohn is not accidental,
for one of the widely admired features of his music is its lucidity. In the collection
Andante sostenuto.
p
4
sf
7
sf
sf f
10
p
cresc.
13
cresc.
16
f
pi f
19
p
Example 2.1. Mendelssohn, Song without Words in D major, op. 85, no. 4.
(continued)
56

PART I Teory
of songs without words, each individual song typically has one central idea that
is delivered with a precise, superbly modulated, and well-etched profle. Te com-
positional idea is ofen afectingly delivered. And one reason for the composers
uncanny success in this area is an unparalleled understanding of the potentials of
beginning, middle, and ending in miniatures. I suggest that the reader play through
this song at the piano before reading the following analytical comments.
We might as well begin with the ending. Suppose we locate a sense of home-
going beginning in the second half of bar 26. Why there? Because the rising minor
seventh in the melody is the frst intervallic event of such magnitude in the com-
position; it represents a marked, superlative moment. If we follow the course of the
melody leading up to that moment, we hear a physical rise in contour (starting on
F-sharp in 24) combined with an expansion of intervals as we approach the high G
in bar 26. Specifcally, starting from the last three eighth-notes in bar 25, we hear, in
succession, a rising fourth (AD), a rising sixth (GE), and fnally a rising seventh
22
sf
cresc.
25
cresc.
dim.
f
28
p
cresc.
f
dim.
31
p
34
Example 2.1. continued
CHAPTER 2 Criteria for Analysis I

57
(AG). Ten, too, this moment is roughly two-thirds of the way through the song,
is underlined by an implicative 6/5 harmony that seeks resolution, and represents
the culmination of a crescendo that has been building in the preceding 2 bars. Te
moment may be fgured by analogy to an exclamation, an expected exclamation
perhaps. It also marks a turning point, the most decisive turning point in the form.
Its superlative quality is not known only in retrospect. From the beginning, Men-
delssohn, here as in other songs without words, crafs a listener-friendly message
in the form of a series of complementary gestures. Melody leads (that is, functions
as a Hauptstimme); harmony supports, underlines, and enhances the progress of
the melody; and the phrase structure regulates the temporal process while remain-
ing faithful in alignment. Te accumulation of these dimensional behaviors pre-
pares bar 26. Although full confrmation of the signifcance of this moment will
come only in retrospect, the balance between the prospective and retrospective,
here as elsewhere in Mendelssohn, is striking. Luminous, direct, natural, and per-
haps unproblematic (as we might say today), op. 85, no. 4 exemplifes carefully
controlled temporal profling.
Ultimately, the sense of ending that we are constructing cannot be understood
with respect to a single moment, for that moment is itself a product of a number
of preparatory processes. Consider bar 20 as the beginning of the ending. Why bar
20? Because the beautiful opening melody from bar 2 returns at this point afer
some extraneous, intervening material (bars 1219). For a work of these modest
dimensions, such a large-scale return readily suggests a reciprocal sense of closure
within a tripartite formal gesture.
If we continue to move back in the piece, we can interpret the passage begin-
ning in bar 12 as contrast to, as well as intensifcation of, the preceding 11 bars. Note
the quasi-sequential process that begins with the upbeat to bar 12. Phrase-wise, the
music proceeds at frst in 2-bar units (11
4
13
3
, 13
4
15
3
; these and subsequent des-
ignations of phrase boundaries in this paragraph all include an eighth-note prefx),
then continues in 1-bar units in the manner of a stretto (15
4
16
3
and 16
4
17
3
), and
fnally concludes with 2 relatively neutral barsneutral in the sense of declining
a clear and repeated phrase articulationof transition back to the opening theme
(17
4
19
3
).
28
Te moment of thematic return on the downbeat of bar 20 is supported
not by tonic harmony as in bar 2 but by the previously tonicized mediant, thus
conferring a more fuid quality on the moment and slightly disguising the sense of
return. Te entire passage of bars 1219 features rhetorically heightened activity
that ceases with the thematic return in bar 20. If, in contrast to the earlier hearing,
the passage from bar 20 to the end is heard as initiating a closing section at the larg-
est level of the form, then bars 1219 may be heard as a functional middle.
Finally, we can interpret the opening 11 bars as establishing the songs prem-
ises, including its material and procedures. A 1-bar introduction is followed by a
4-bar phrase (bars 25). Ten, as if repeating (bar 6), the phrase is modifed (bar
7) and led through B minor to a new tonal destination, F-sharp minor (bars 89
3
).
28. Bars 17
4
18
2
begin in the manner of the previous 1-bar units but modify their end in order to lead
elsewhere.
58

PART I Teory
In what would normally be a confrmatory gesture (bars 9
4
11
3
), F-sharp minor is
replaced by the more conventional dominant, A major. Tis is a deliberate shifing
of gears, as if to say, Tis is really where we want to be.
If we now return to our initial proposition to hear bar 26
3
as the beginning of
the end, we must still reckon with the fact that this moment is still some way from
the ending. How does Mendelssohn sustain the compositional dynamic between
bars 26 and 37? By creating a web of events, all of them promoting the larger
agenda of closure. Te indispensable technique is none other than repetition,
which Mendelssohn uses in exact and varied forms. Let us follow the main events
from bar 26 on. Afer the high point on G at bar 26
3
, a preliminary attempt to close
is made in bars 28
3
29
1
. But the cadence is evaded: melodically, we hear not

1
but

5 (FEA not FED), the

1 sounding in an inner voice so that the less

conclusive melodic

5 can initiate a second attempt at closure. Te local harmony at

28
3
29
1
is not V6/45/3I (with the second and third chords in root position) but
the more mobile V6/4V4/2I6.
29
Part of Mendelssohns strategy here is to embed
the more obvious gestures of closure within a larger descending-bass pattern that
will lend a sense of continuity to the closing moment. Tis line starts with bass A
on the third beat of 28, passes through G (also in 28) then falls through F-sharp,
F-natural, and E before reaching a mobile D on the downbeat of 30, making room
for an intervening A at 29
4
. A similarly directed bass line preceded this one and
served to prepare the high point of bar 26. We can trace it from the third beat of
bar 23: DCB (bar 23), AAGF (bar 24), then, transferred up the octave,
EDCB (bar 25), and fnally A (downbeat of 26), the whole spanning an octave
and a half.
Unlike the attempt at closure in bars 2829, the one in bars 3132 reaches its
destination. A conventional

1 over a VI ofers what was previously denied.

Many listeners will hear the downbeat of bar 32 as a defning moment, a longed-for
moment, perhaps, and, in this context, the place where various narrative strands
meet. Schenker would call this the defnitive close of the composition;
30
it marks
the completion of the works subsurface structural activity. Syntactic closure is
achieved. We might as well go home at this point.
But syntactic closure is only one aspectalbeit an important oneof the full
closing act. Tere is also a complementary dimension that would secure the rhe-
torical sense of the close, for although we have attained

1 over I, we need to savor

D for a while, to repose in it, to dissolve the many tensions accumulated in the
course of the song. Tis other dimension of closure can be described in diferent
ways: as rhetorical, as gestural, or even as phenomenal. In this song without words,
Mendelssohn writes a codetta-like segment (bars 32end) to meet this need. Tese
last 6 bars are a tonic prolongation. We sense dying embers, a sense of tranquility,
the serenity of homecoming, even an aferglow. We may also hear in them a sense
of reminiscence, for the sense that death is approaching can be an invitation to
29. Here and elsewhere, I follow Schenkerian practice in understanding cadential 6/4s as dominant-
functioning chords featuring a double suspension to the adjacent root-position dominant chord.
Hence the symbol V6/45/3.
30. Schenker, Free Composition, 129.
CHAPTER 2 Criteria for Analysis I

59
relive the past in compressed form. It is as if key moments in the form are made
to fash before our very eyes, not markedly as quotations, but gently and subtly, as
if in a mist, as if from a distance. One of the prominent elements in this ending is
a simple neighbor-note motive, ABA or

5, which was adumbrated in the very

frst bar of the song, where B served as the only non-chord tone within the tonic
expression. Subsequently, the notes B and A were associated in various contexts.
Ten, in bars 3233, the ABA fgure, now sounding almost like a wail, presses the
melodic tone A into our memories. Te V6/5 harmony in the second half of bars
32 and 33 may also remind us of the high point in bar 26. Ten, too, we experi-
ence a touchingly direct

1 descent across bars 3335. Tis collection of

scale degrees was introverted in bars 2
1
3
3
, sung in V but without

4 in bars 1011,
introverted again in bars 20
1
21
3
, embedded in bars 2829, heard with

5 playing
only an ornamental role in bars 3132, before appearing in its most direct and
pristine form in bars 32
4
35
3
. Even the dotted-note anacrusis at bar 32
4
has some
precedent in bars 1112, where it energized the frst major contrasting section in
the song. And the extension of the right hand into the highest register of the piece
in the penultimate bar recalls salient moments of intensifcation around bars 16
and 17 and of the high point in bar 26 and its echo in 29. Tese registral extensions
aford us a view of another world. Overall, then, the last 6 bars of Mendelssohns
song make possible a series of narratives about the compositional dynamic, among
which narratives of closure are perhaps most signifcant.
We began this analysis of Mendelssohns op. 85, no. 4, by locating the beginning
of the ending in bar 26; we then worked our way backward from it. But what if we
begin at the beginning and follow the course of events to the end? Obviously, the
two accounts will not be wholly diferent, but the accumulation of expectations
will receive greater emphasis. As an indication of these revised priorities and so
as to fll in some of the detail excluded from the discussion so far, let us comment
(again) on the frst half of the song (bars 119). Bar 1 functions as a gestural pre-
lude to the beginning proper; it familiarizes us with the sound and fguration of
the tonic, while also coming to melodic rest on the pitch A as potential head tone.
Te narrative proper begins in bar 2 with a 4-bar melody. We are led eventually to
the end of the beginning in bar 11, where the dominant is tonicized. Mendelssohns
procedure here (as also frequently happens in Brahms, for example, in the song
Wie Melodien zieht es mir, op. 105) is to begin with a head theme or motif and
lead it to diferent tonal destinations. In the frst 4-bar segment (bars 25), the
harmonic outline is a straightforward IV. A second 4-bar segment begins in bar
6, passes through the submediant in 78, and closes in the mediant in bar 9. But,
as mentioned before, the emphatic upbeat to bar 10, complete with a Vii6/5 of V
(thinking in terms of A major), has the efect of correcting this wrong destina-
tion. If one is looking to locate the end of the beginning, one might assign it to the
emphatic cadence on the dominant in bar 11. Yet, the end of the beginning and the
beginning of the middle are ofen indistinguishable. Te exploratory potential sig-
naled by A-sharp in bar 7, the frst nondiatonic pitch in the song, confers a gradual
sense of middle on bars 711. Tis sense is intensifed in a more conventional way
beginning with the upbeat to bar 12. From here until bar 20, the music moves
in fve waves of increasing intensity that confrm the instability associated with a
60

PART I Teory
middle. Example 2.2 summarizes the fve waves. As can be seen, the melodic profle
is a gradual ascent to A, reached in wave 4. Wave 3 is interrupted in almost stretto
fashion by wave 4. Wave 5 begins as a further intensifcation of waves 3 and 4 but
declines the invitation to exceed the high point on A reached in wave 4, preferring
G-sharp (a half step lower than the previous A) as it efects a return from what, in
retrospect, we understand as the point of greatest intensity. Wave 5 also adopts the
contour of waves 1 and 2, thus gaining a local reprise or symmetrical function. It
emerges that the tonicized mediant in bar 9 was premature; the mature mediant
occurs in bars 1920.
16
17
18
14
12
wave 1
wave 2
wave 3
wave 4
wave 5
Example 2.2. Five waves of action across bars 1220 in Mendelssohn, Song with-
out Words in D major, op. 85, no. 4.
Stepping back from the detail of Mendelssohns op. 85, no. 4, we see that the
beginning-middle-ending model allows us to pass through a Romantic composi-
tion by weighing its events relationally and thus apprehending its discourse. Te
model recognizes event sequences and tracks the tendency of the musical material.
In this sense, it has the potential to enrich our understanding of what musicians
normally refer to as forma complex, summary quality that refects the particular
constellation of elements within a composition. Tere is no mechanical way to
apply a beginning-middle-ending model; every interpretation is based on a read-
ing of musical detail. Interpretations may shif depending on where a beginning
is located, what one takes to be a sign of ending, and so on. And while the general
features of these functions have been summarized and in part exemplifed in the
Mendelssohn analysis, the fact that they are born of convention means that some
aspects of the functions may have escaped our notice. Still, attention to musical
rhetoric as conveyed in harmony, melody, phrase structure, and rhythm can prove
enlightening.
Te beginning-middle-ending model may seem banal, theoretically coarse,
or simply unsophisticated; it may lack the predictive power of analytical theories
that are more methodologically explicit. Yet, there is, it seems to me, some wis-
dom in resisting the overdetermined prescriptions of standard forms. Tis model
CHAPTER 2 Criteria for Analysis I

61
substitutes a set of direct functions that can enable an individual analyst to get
inside a composition and listen for closing tendencies. Musicology has for a long
time propagated standard forms (sonata, rondo, ternary, and a host of others) not
because they have been shown to mediate our listening in any fundamental way,
but because they can be diagrammed, given a two-dimensional visual appearance,
and thus easily be represented on screens and blackboards and in books, articles,
and term papers. A user of the beginning-middle-ending model, by contrast,
understands the a priori functions of a sonata exposition as mere designation;
a proper analysis would inspect the work afresh for the complex of functions
many of them of contradictory tendencythat defne the activity within, say, the
exposition space. To say that a dialogue is invariably set up between the normative
functions in a sonata form and the procedures on the ground, so to speak, is an
improvement, but even this formulation may overvalue the conventional sense of
normative functions. Analysis must deal with the true nature of the material and
recognize the signifying potential of a works building blocksin short, respond
to the internal logic of the work, not the designated logic associated with external
convention. Reorienting thinking and hearing in this way may make us freshly
aware of the complex dynamism of musical material and enhance our apprecia-
tion of music as discourse.
High Points
A special place should be reserved for high points or climaxes as embodiments of
an aspect of syntax and rhetoric in Romantic musical discourse. A high point is a
superlative moment. It may be a moment of greatest intensity, a point of extreme
tension, or the site of a decisive release of tension. It usually marks a turning point
in the form (as we saw in bar 26 of example 2.1). Psychologically, a single high point
typically dominates a single composition, but given the fact that a larger whole
is ofen constituted by smaller parts, each of which might have its own intensity
curve, the global high point may be understood as a product of successive local
high points. Because of its marked character, the high point may last a moment,
but it may also be represented as an extended momenta plateau or region.
No one performing any of the diverse Romantic repertoires can claim inno-
cence of high points. Tey abound in opera arias; as high notes, they are sites of
display, channels for the foregrounding of the very act of performing. As such,
they are thrilling to audiences, whose consumption of these arias may owe not a
little to the anticipated pleasure of experiencing these moments in diferent voices,
so to speak. Te lied singer encounters them frequently, too, ofen in a more inti-
mate setting in which they are negotiated with nuance. In orchestral music, high
points ofen provide some of the most memorable experiences for listeners, serv-
ing as points of focus or demarcation, places to indulge sheer visceral pleasure.
Indeed, the phenomenon is so basic, and yet so little studied by music theorists,
that one is inclined to think either that it resists explanation or that it raises no