Music Theory, Analysis, and Society Selected Essays

Robert P. Morgan is one of a small number of music theorists writing in English who treat music theory, and in particular Schenkerian theory, as part of general intellectual life. Morgan’s writings are renowned within the field of music scholarship: he is the author of the well-known Norton volume Twentieth-Century Music, and of additional books relating to Schenkerian and other theory, analysis and society. This volume of Morgan’s previously published essays encompasses a broad range of issues, including historical and social issues and is of importance to anyone concerned with modern Western music. His specially written introduction treats his writings as a whole but also provides additional material relating to the articles included in this volume.

Contents: Introduction. Part I Schenkerian and Other Theory: Dissonant prolongation: theoretical and compositional precedents; Schenker and the theoretical tradition: the concept of musical reduction; Schenker and the 20th century: a modernist perspective; Musical time/musical space. Part II Music Analysis: Chopin’s modular forms; Circular form in the Tristan prelude; Ives and Mahler: mutual responses at the end of an era; Chasing the scent: the tonality in Liszt’s Blume and Duft; Two early Schoenberg songs: monotonality, multitonality, and schwebende Tonalität; ‘The things our fathers loved’: Charles Ives and the European tradition; On the analysis of recent music. Part III Music and Society: Tradition, anxiety, and the current musical scene; Secret languages: the roots of musical modernism; ‘A new musical reality’: futurism, modernism, and ‘the art of noises’; Rethinking musical culture: canonic reformulations in a post-tonal age. Index.

Robert P. Morgan is Emeritus Professor of Music at Yale University and has enjoyed a distinguished musical career. Among his numerous musical honors are grants from the German Government and the National Endowment for the Humanities, plus an award for graduate teaching from The University of Chicago. He has in addition served on the Advisory Board of the Fromm Music Foundation, the Executive Board of the Society of Music Theory, as Director at Large of the American Musicological Society, twice as a faculty member of the Mannis Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory, and as Chair of the Visiting Committee of the Department of Music at Harvard University. He has been on numerous editorial boards and he holds the distinction of being nominated as one of two candidates for President of both the Society for Music Theory and the American Musicological Society.