Performative Analysis: Theorizing the Interpretation of Tonal Music.

Abstract

This study seeks to redress two related concerns. First, scholars of classical music have traditionally viewed the musical work as an abstract entity, as conceptually prior to its performances. I propose instead a music-ontological model that includes interpretation, both analysis- and performance-based, as integral components of the musical work. Second, many older studies in performance/analysis, and some recent ones, mandate that a performance must somehow instantiate analytical assertions to be cogent, on the assumption that those assertions are factual. I argue that, on the one hand, analytical features are metaphorical and contingent rather than factual and immanent; and on the other hand, performed music, due to its semantic indeterminacy, cannot convey concepts, only the sentient states underlying them.

The first chapter identifies some academic trends that instantiate these deficiencies, in particular the authentic-performance movement and Platonic music ontologies. Against the latter, I propose that the musical work is not some idealized entity transcending performances but rather a repository of potentialities, both structural and emotive, that require interpretation to be actualized. In support of this view, I invoke Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response theory, which deems the literary text performative, as always engaging the reader and relying on his capacity to make, rather than excavate, meaning. The second chapter expounds on two ways in which analysis—Schenkerian analysis in particular—is performative. First, it unearths ambiguities that elicit the performer’s response. Second, it poses metaphors for sentient experience that the performer can sonically embody. The third chapter applies the theory to the first movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 18, no. 4, the fourth to Schumann’s “Du Ring an meinem Finger.” In the latter, I use analysis not just performatively but provocatively, using it to generate subtexts by which the singer can implicitly critique the evident misogyny of Schumann’s chosen text.