Analyzing
the Tone Structure
Gradual Transformation of the Musical Form into the Meaning
Refining the
Surface Structure of the Musical Sound-Space
Refining the Surface in Order to Gather the Musical Meaning
Superficial Deduction
The relative musical process of knowing, we find, is a systematic scanning of the musical surface, an analysis of the outer musical shape.
This
superficial deduction leads us listeners systematically from the musical form
to the musical meaning.
This means that here, during the relative musical process of gaining knowledge,
the form is systematically transformed into the meaning.
Superficial deduction, or the deduction on the level of the surface-structures of music respectively, therefore is to us the appropriate technique to gain relative musical knowledge, and leads the listener from the surface-structures of the musical sound-space to its depths, in that it allows the listener to systematically refine the musical surface-structure until it has reached such a degree of subtlety that it belongs structurally to the world of the motifs, and is identified by him as such.
This process of systematically refining the surface-structure in the musical fields of cognition we now understand as the extraction of the musical sense, and it is based practically on a refinement of the tools of cognition with our listener, a refinement which is brought about by the energies that are increasingly released in these tools as the music unfolds.
© AAR EDITION INTERNATIONAL 1982