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Schenkerian Analysis: Interaction between Tonal and Rhythmic Structures

This guide is an introduction to Schenkerian Analysis sources. It will help you retrieve primary and secondary sources

Books and Articles

Rothstein, William Nathan.  Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music.  New York: Schirmer Books, 1989.

A groundbreaking account of how phrases of irregular length can be understood as modifications of a four-unit “basic phrase,” and the expansions to which a basic phrase can be subjected.  Much of Rothstein’s book is devoted to individual examination of these techniques of expansion, which are demonstrated to pervade the common-practice tonal repertory.  Phrase Rhythm also includes in-depth illustrative analyses of works by Haydn, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Wagner, demonstrating the great flexibility of the theory.

 

Samarotto, Frank.  “A Theory of Temporal Plasticity in Tonal Music: An Extension of the Schenkerian Approach to Rhythm with Special Reference to Beethoven’s Late Music.”  PhD diss., City University of New York, 1999.

Invokes a set of “temporal plasticity conditions” unique to each musical work, which can be broken by “temporal disjunctions.”  Many of the transitional points in such phrase expansions as Rothstein identifies are, in fact, temporal disjunctions of the kind Samarotto theorizes.  Thus the two scholars’ theories dovetail.

 

Schachter, Carl.  Unfoldings: Essays in Schenkerian Theory and Analysis.  Edited by Joseph N. Straus.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

A series of essays categorized by subject, including “Rhythm and Linear Analysis” (pertinent to the proposed paper) and others.  Contains a thorough discussion of the implicit and explicit role of rhythm in Schenker’s own writings, contra those who would assert that Schenker failed to address rhythm adequately.  Goes on to develop a theory of “tonal rhythm” and to outline a method of “durational reduction” in which rhythm articulates, but remains subordinate to, the arrhythmic fundamental structure.

 

The section "Interaction between Tonal and Rhythmic Structures" was prepared by John Muniz