ABSTRACT
In Chapter 5, the authors consider another common criticism of Riemannian analysis: namely, its tendency to focus on functional description in the moment. If tonality is a totalising system that relates part to whole, then Riemann's prospective (as opposed to retrospective) listening bias is surely a handicap; one cannot get beyond rich descriptions of atomistic moments. In response to this criticism, the authors develop a hybrid notation, drawing on Schenkerian and Riemannian principles. To map the large-scale contrapuntal structures that are unfolded in a near one-hundred-bar excerpt from Wagner's Götterdämmerung, they draw on a proto-Schenkerian notation; but, because of the music's pervasive chromaticism, Stufen (scale-steps) are replaced by functions. An additional set of notational symbols are developed in order to show how a ‘pure’ function can be prolonged by chords that we describe (after Riemann) as ‘enriched’ or (following a more Wagnerian logic) ‘corrupted’. (These terms map onto the dark-side functions theorised in earlier chapters.) On their journey towards the formulation of this system, the authors critique and adapt famous Schenkerian analyses of Wagnerian opera by Patrick McCreless and Warren Darcy.
