Michael Zywietz: Komponisten als Analytiker

Since musicological discourse is impossible without the aid of analysis, a composer’s own analyses are preeminent documents of music history. The examples chosen here, ranging from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, illustrate an understanding of analysis that intentionally goes beyond a technical analysis in the strictest sense. The issue of subjective interpretation is prominent in the musical analyses of Burmeister, Mattheson, Liszt, and Lachenmann. The frequent criticism that music theory lags behind compositional technique does not apply to the analysing composer. It becomes evident that these four composers follow a tradition of analysis geared towards extra-musical elements; they deliberately use subjective approaches and methods that stand in obvious contrast to a practice that entertains the illusion of objectivity based on scientific criteria. Their methods reveal that analysis is also possible and meaningful beyond the conventional definition of parameters like harmony and motives, etc. in that they offer clearer contours to the distinctive features belonging to musicological interpretation.

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