ABSTRACT
The most interesting and convincing analytical work addresses a clearly defined question or issue. It may do so explicitly, as in Schenker’s short polemic “Abolish the phrasing slur”1 or implicitly as in the case of his Five Graphic Analyses (Schenker 1969), which are offered without any commentary. Whether an analysis is presented as prose or in diagrammatic form, it is ultimately a technical description of the music; it is only when this is evaluated and interpreted that it becomes really interesting.
