In very general terms, musical analysis strives to understand the formal structure of its objects from the functional standpoint of internal coherence. Analyses of popular songs fluctuate between textual and contextual approaches, yet displaying certain proclivity for the later. This is not surprising, considering that attention to context has been the plea to contemporary analysts made from the podium of ‘new musicology’. In this regard, Joseph Kerman’s position is exemplary. He argues for a peculiar distinction
between analysis and criticism, according to which the former concentrates on internal formal abstractions (deep structure), while the latter approaches music holistically as to mull over its external aspects too, considering elements such as intentions and biographies, genres and styles, or actual performances (Kerman 1980: 323ff). Some authors see in this divide a polarity of objective and subjective intentions as regards the comprehension of musical meaning (Brackett 2003; Tagg 1982). The musicologist believes that analysis, as understood by traditional scholarship, ‘exists to articulate the concept of organicism’—namely the natural functional concatenation of parts that integrate the musical whole—‘which in turn exists as the value system of the [ruling] ideology’, viz. the inherent superiority of instrumental Austro-German art music (Kerman 1980: 318). This view suggests an enlargement of the canon under ‘new’ musicological analysis, but is inconsequential regarding the problematic West-centred standpoint inherited from ‘traditional’ scholarship:
‘Musicologists deal with Western art music before around 1900, theorists [analysts] with the same after 1900, and ethnomusicologists with non-Western musics and Western music outside the elite tradition—folk and popular music (Kerman 1985: 15).
Such a ‘division of labour’ does not amount to radical isolation. In the spirit of contextual analysis characteristic of his project, Kerman observes that ‘new’ musicology does profit greatly from examining Western popular music as ancillary material to understand the intricacies of art music (Kerman 1985: 175-177). In any case, notice that the argument
against organicism suggests the circularity of ‘traditional’ analysis, for the principle that legitimises the greatness of the canon is drawn from the canon itself. The problem is that, within such parameters, it is difficult for analysts to remain in touch with ‘true’ musical meaning, and it is here where context comes in handy.
Although the newness of the contextual position has been called into question (Agawu 1997, 2004; Fallows 2011; Stefani 1987), it is true that contextual approaches saw a significant boost ever since the 1970s in the musicological scene. This is evident not only in the subfield of contemporary musical analysis, but also in ethnomusicology and representation studies, as manifestations of like preoccupation in different settings. Furthermore, popular music scholars share the distrust in traditional analysis. For example, McClary and Walser 1990 have observed that ‘aesthetic approaches per se are incompatible with studies that treat music as socially constructed’ (281), understanding musical aesthetics as based on claims of transcendental greatness that ‘eliminate the possibility of political struggle over discourse’ (id.). When it comes to popular music, the argument goes, what is relevant for grasping meaning and relevance lies at the blind spot of traditional musicology (ibid. 282ff). Brackett agrees with Kerman, McClary and Walser: ‘the metalanguage of music analysis is not transparent […] it is a medium that comes with its own ideological and aesthetic baggage’ (2003: 19), namely concepts of distanced appreciation, autonomous art and absolute music without clear social foundations. Following Carl Dahlhaus, the author explains that early analysis focuses on European ‘concert hall music’, which instances became ritualised and sacralised by virtue of the prevalent mode of reception and the spatially fixed nature of the listening practices at the time. In the same vein, Philip Tagg (1982, 1987) argues for the impossibility of analysing popular music via traditional devices. That is because, in his
view, its material ‘is neither conceived nor designed to be stored and distributed as notation’, which results in ‘a large number of important parameters of musical expression being either difficult or impossible to encode in traditional notation’ (1982: 41). This joins other inherent limitations of traditional analysis, the musicologist claims, such as its incapacity to relate to extra-musical realities (cf. McClary and Walser 1990).
Although I shall not go too far with formal intricacies, notice that some analysts of popular music have been mentioned already in the course of this dissertation, each of them being an exponent of a different analytical style. I am loosely following Brackett’s (2003) characterisation of the methodological spectrum by tracing a continuum from formal analysis to semiotics to subjective criticism (cf. Kerman 1980 above). It is important to realise that the relevance of the context for the analytic apparatuses at work in each case is not ‘all or nothing’, but always a matter of degree.
At one end of the spectrum, the formal quarter of popular music studies finds its ideal representative in Covach (1997, 2000), whose work was referred to in previous sections of this chapter. In the occasion of demonstrating the connection between art music and American progressive rock, the author utilises the methodological tools inherited from traditional formal analysis in order to establish structural parallelisms. Therefore, the discussion is based on a technical vocabulary that may seem rather arcane to those not versed in it. Likewise, the use of musical notation is significant. In this case, context is relevant as the starting point for grasping the meaning of the creative efforts at stake, i.e. the musicians’ motivations and the intellectual milieu from where they arise. Nevertheless, meaning takes the back seat for the sake of structural scrutiny in a comparative spirit. These features are, to a greater or lesser degree, common to all formal studies that belong to this line of popular music analysis.
Interestingly, Covach’s findings reveal the extent to which popular musicians attempt to dignify their work by relating it to classical music, which echoes the ideology referred to by Kerman. They also hint, in a way, at the prevalence of a similar ethos on the scholarly side, manifest in the careful selection of the analysis objects. Fair enough, the formal style tends not to advance value judgements, but it is conspicuous that only complex popular compositions are selected for analysis, and that complexity itself is usually the centre of attention. This mode of analysis could be criticised, then, for falling back in ethnocentrism, a case that has been made against comparative ethnographies of music as well. I shall come back to this in the next section.
At the other end of the spectrum, musical criticism has been represented in our account of the Culture and Civilization tradition, where the work of Mellers on American popular music has been referred to in some detail62. There, as elsewhere63, the author brings many important points home with the help of formal analytical devices. Even though the use of traditional terminology and staff notation is certainly recurrent in Mellers’ oeuvre, it remains an ‘early example of music analysis used in the service of criticism’, as Brackett (2003: 88) puts it. There the role of the analyst as critic is exemplified in ways that evidence both holistic hermeneutics and subjective interpretation.
In Music in a New Found Land (1964), Mellers goes on to analyse the production of renowned popular stars, not without poignant criticism. For example, he reproves the formal ‘machine-like’ nature of Glen Miller’s Band: ‘there is no melody, no rhythmic
62 Adorno’s work fits the category of musical criticism as well. For the sake of concision, I will limit my
discussion to Mellers.
63 In this connection, it is worth mentioning Mellers’ Twilight of the Gods (1974), where musical analysis
becomes the weapon of choice for discussing popular music—more specifically, the work of The Beatles. I am not discussing that work here for the sake of brevity.
interest, and only the most rudimentary harmonic progression; such effect as it has on an audience […] depends entirely on repetition and on sudden changes of dynamics: substitute excitement as a part of substantive living’ (372). Likewise, the allegedly shallowness of Count Basie, whose music ‘relies on the riff for its own sake’, is also worth lamentation: ‘Basie’s tension between the riff and the melodic-harmonic identity of the solos has gone—and with it the human truth of music’ (id., italics mine). Mellers was not always antipathetic to the formal features popular music. Worth considering, in this regard, is his view on Billie Holiday’s singing (380), which I shall refer to in the next Chapter. I am highlighting these reproving passages in particular because they contain number of important tropes that will remain at the heart of scholarly discussions during the second wave of popular music studies at large, e.g. repetitiveness, simplicity, internal consistency, and truthfulness.
Instead of exemplifying undesirable biases, I maintain that subjective stances as illustrated above may open up possibilities of dialogical engagement with analysis as criticism, and in so doing, invite the reader to listen critically to the music at stake. This is, of course, at odds with the authoritative position of traditional analysis. Despite that fact, Mellers was influential for the analysts that came after, formalists and critics alike. For instance, based on his remarkable mastery of European music history and theory, he argued for formal connections between classical, pop and jazz repertoires, as he did for the development of a concert hall attitude in rock music propelled by The Beatles (Mellers 1974), features that were significant for later formal and contextual analyses (e.g. Covach 1997; Goodwin 1995).
Occupying the middle ground, as it were, semiotic analyses focus on the communicational dimension of popular music on the level of connotations. The idea
running through this research line is that the units of meaning constitutive to popular songs (sound events) are answerable to certain structural form and the expression of certain extra-musical content, and that such associations constitute the musical codes to be scrutinised to cast light on musical meaning. The work of Brackett (2003), referred to above, is obviously concerned with those matters, in that the question leading his efforts is how to analyse the meaningful effects of popular music. His theorisation feeds from key semiotic models, e.g. Middleton’s (1990) primary and secondary levels of signification, and Stefani’s (1987) five levels of musical competence. Yet, his methodology brings his research closer to cultural studies.
Another variant of semiotic analysis of indisputable relevance for popular music studies is represented by the work of Philip Tagg (1982, 1987), whose proposal sets forth useful methodological tools to deal with the complexities of popular music meanings. The author advances what he calls a hermeneutic-semiotic method through which meaningful structural elements (items of musical code IMC), are extracted from pre-constituted repertoires (inter-objective comparison material IOCM) via procedures of comparisons that detect correspondences on the levels of formal structure and extra- musical association. On such a basis, preliminary results are drawn from the musical material regarding its collective meaning. The validity of such conclusions are then tested by means of falsification, operated through hypothetical substitutions that aim to evidence the factuality of the connections made during the first phase of the analysis. By systematically altering the parameters of musical expression, the analyst attempts to find out which of them really hold sway over the extra-musical associations and collective meanings they purport to represent. The interplay between form and meaning at the core of this method makes of hermeneutic-semiotic analysis a powerful research
tool, although its level of complexity, next to the jargon and the acronyms, may prove somewhat discouraging.