Schenker and Analytical Theory — Reducing a Work to Background Structure

A New Pillar of Theory — “Analysis”

The theory up to here (Articles 1-6) was mainly rules for “how to make music / how to organize it.” Entering the 20th century, “analysis” — how to deeply understand an existing masterpiece — rises as a major pillar of theory. The one who established its most influential method was Schenker.

Schenker — Reduction to Background Structure

Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935) — an Austrian music theorist. His central claim was astonishingly bold:

Great tonal music is the grand ornamentation (prolongation) of a very few root structures (Ursatz).

The masterpieces from Bach to Brahms are, on the surface, made of hundreds or thousands of notes, but a remarkably simple skeleton lies hidden beneath — so Schenker thought.

The Three Levels

Schenkerian analysis grasps a work at three levels:

• Foreground (Vordergrund) — all the notes actually sounding (the score itself)
• Middleground (Mittelgrund) — the intermediate skeleton with the ornamentation peeled away step by step
• Background (Hintergrund) — the ultimately reduced root structure = Ursatz

The Ursatz (fundamental structure) consists of two elements:

• the fundamental line (Urlinie) — a descent of the upper voice (descending to the tonic, like 3̂-2̂-1̂ or 5̂-…-1̂)
• the arpeggiation (Bassbrechung) — the I-V-I motion of the bass

That is, ultimately, any grand masterpiece reduces to “a melody descending to the tonic + an I-V-I bass.” Analysis is the work of peeling away surface ornamentation step by step to reveal this skeleton.

What Was New

Analysis before Schenker was horizontal — “labeling chords with Roman numerals” (Riemann-style, Article 6). Schenker introduced a vertical hierarchy (surface ↔ depth):

• music is seen not as “a succession of chords” but as a nesting of structures
• the large-scale tonal arch (the tension and resolution running through the whole piece) is valued over local chords
• one distinguishes “is this chord a passing ornament, or a structural pillar?”

This idea that “there is a deep structure behind the surface” resonated with the linguistics of the same era (structuralism) and became a typical mode of 20th-century analytical thinking.

Merits and Faults

Schenkerian theory had enormous influence in the English-speaking world (especially American music schools) and remains one of the standard tools for analyzing tonal music. But there are criticisms:

• Narrow range of application — it works only on the tonal music of Bach to Brahms. The framework does not fit atonal music (Article 8), non-Western music, or popular music
• Mixing in value judgments — Schenker himself made the normative claim “a piece that reduces to an Ursatz is a masterpiece” (a kind of canonism). Modern theorists extract only the analytical method and separate it from his value judgments and political biases
• Suspicion of circularity — is it “there is structure because it is a masterpiece,” or “a masterpiece because there is structure”?

Even so, the very perspective of “reading a work deeply as a hierarchical structure” brought an irreversible advance to analytical theory.

From This Article to the Next

Schenker perfected “the deep structure of tonal music.” But the very tonality he analyzed was about to be dissolved in the same early 20th century. The next article turns to Schoenberg, who denied tonality and established a new constructive principle — the twelve-tone technique of “treating the 12 notes equally” — the moment music theory lifts off from “the gravity of tonality.”