Abstract

Explores the various approaches to the analysis of music, and the kinds of questions they are designed to answer. Analysis is relevant only if it explores the intentional order of a piece of music rather than its acoustical order; this means that theories of analysis are ultimately theories of what is or can be heard, and are best understood as attempting the ‘emendation of the ear’. Vindicates motivic and related forms of musical analysis against the charge that they are indifferent to musical meaning.