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panicGUIDE - Part Two

The Descent from
It is widely recognised that the most important relationship in tonal music is that between tonic and dominant (V and I). In virtually all tonal pieces, perfect cadences (full closes) are used to establish the main key, confirm any modulations and bring the music to an end. Schenker recognised that most works follow the same basic pattern:

initial tonic

 movement away from initial tonic perfect cadence in tonic
I V (and possibly other key areas) V-I

There is nothing particularly original or controversial about this, but Schenker's theoretical aims were much more ambitious. He gradually developed the idea that this pattern could be represented by a two-part contrapuntal progression that, with only small changes, formed the background of all tonal pieces.

The bass part for such a structure more-or-less selects itself:

Any piece of tonal music can be seen as an elaboration of this pattern:

  • tonal pieces generally start with I
    (a clear statement of the tonic may be delayed e.g. Beethoven's First Symphony, where the tonic (C) initially appears as the dominant of F)
  • the V - I represents the final perfect cadence (full close) of the piece BUT
  • in a longer piece whole sections may prolong V (traditional theory would call this being 'in' the dominant Schenker calls it a tonicization of the dominant)
  • also in longer pieces, there may be other harmonic areas prolonged in between the initial I and the V of the final perfect cadence (full close)
  • the bass of the fundamental structure can appear in many different layers of a piece - as in Three Blind Mice (the example used in the next section)

This bass line is only a harmonic progression and Schenker's theory seeks to understand music in terms of a two-part contrapuntal structure.

He initially proposed that the upper voice (or part) of the fundamental structure consisted of a series of rising and falling linear progressions, but he gradually simplified this until he arrived at the following two-part structure:

Note the way that the fundamental structure is notated: various stems, beams and caretted numbers help the reader to see where it is when it is part of a more detailed analysis (see Notation Guide)

The top line of this progression is called the Urlinie or fundamental descent; the bottom line is called the Bassbrechung or bass arpeggiation; together they are called the Ursatz or fundamental structure

Schenker suggested that this progression (along with a number of variants) was the most basic expression of tonal music.

The fundamental structure is best discussed by way of example - the next section makes use of a simple and well-known tune to clarify how it works in practice.

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