ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns large-scale form and formal processes, it is worth revisiting the dialectic of experience and reflection briefly in this context. In this viewpoint, which Levinson terms 'concatenationism', large-scale connections and contrasts are distanced from the forefront of musical experience and relegated to one of two positions. Firstly, they can act as subconscious formal scaffolding within which moment-to-moment connections can take place, since some level of shared underlying material is crucial to the construction of continuity. Secondly, they can be noted at an intellectual level that goes beyond the intuitive awareness that constitutes Levinson's concept of 'basic musical understanding'. The chapter offers an overview of the ways in which this 'middleground' might be approached analytically, so that this important aspect of heard experience is neither overlooked altogether nor viewed solely as a distortion of an earlier approach, whether avant-garde or more traditional.
