ABSTRACT
It seems safe to assume that the effect of music depends not only on its individual sounds, but also on how the sounds are put together. This assumption gives us a subject of study. Often the subject is called musical structure, and the study of it analysis (if the focus is on individual cases) or theory (if the focus is on generalization). The terms’ vaguely scientific aura reflects the idea that patterns and relationships in musical compositions play a role in causing the experiences of music that fascinate us, which is reasonable enough. But obviously the causal power is not all within the sound. We get musical experiences only if we go along with the music, by paying attention in certain ways, believing and wanting certain things, and participating in the appropriate contexts. For this reason, the work that we call analysis of music might also be understood as interpretation of music, focusing on attributes of compositions likely to matter to listeners with certain interests. Rather than liken music analysis to a chemical assay, we might liken it to close reading of literature. This is not a perfect analogy, either: compared to close reading, the analysis of music is usually more overtly technical, often engaging issues of perception that have no close parallel in literary study. And music analysis tends not to address questions of biography or historical context to the degree that is routine in literature. There is no deep or compelling reason why it could not, but, in the world of music scholarship as we find it, analysis is recognized, at least informally, as primarily the study of patterned sounds and their perceptual interpretation.
