Analysis methods

A recognized specialist in music theory, Claude Abromont has written an exhaustive guide to music analysis, aimed not only at connoisseurs, composers and musicologists, but also at enlightened amateurs, performers, music lovers and students. With pedagogy, it not only presents an almost complete panorama of methodical elements, but also practical analysis in action, from initial discovery to finalization, with all possible intermediate stages, not to mention useful reflections on the relevance and limits of investigations and their overcoming, on the analyst's position vis-à-vis the object of his observation. The first two preparatory phases deal respectively with how to approach a work and the search for documents, sources and context. The more developed part of the book goes into greater depth on the various technical notions and synthesizes a large number of analysis methods, both for harmony (historical, traditional, Riemann, Schönberg or Schenker systems, Set Theory, etc.), and for aspects as diverse as the music itself.), as well as aspects as diverse as form, motifs, modes, phrasing, narration, rhetoric, semiology, texture, spatialization, as well as through less frequently evoked points of view, such as genre identity, unwritten music or the paradigmatic method. This is followed by a synthesis of the approaches examined above, and a brief account of how the results of one's study can be communicated. There is also a concise historical overview of the various aims and functions of musical analysis in the West, and, among the appendices, an extensive bibliography. Finally, making full use of the possibilities offered by the web, Claude Abromont has created two video channels, which are likely to be enhanced at a later date, on which some seventy fully developed analyses, annotated scores synchronized with sound, or illuminations of this or that particular point, illustrate and usefully complete the book.

Claude Abromont: Guide de l'analyse musicale, 457 p., € 28.00, Editions universitaires de Dijon, 2019, ISBN 978-2-36441-318-4