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Hearing and representing melodic and harmonic elaboration lies at the heart of tonal analysis. We sometimes disagree about what exactly is ornamental or how tones are prolonged, but our widespread collective understanding of passing tones, neighbor tones, suspensions, and the like underscores the important notion that some notes are more structurally important than others. This article proposes ways to read ornamentation in atonal music, recasting ornamental categories gesturally and pragmatically instead of (or in addition to) tonally and metrically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines four jazz compositions by Wayne Shorter, "El Toro," "Iris," "Pinocchio," and "Face of the Deep," to determine the applicability of analysis based on harmonic prolongation, voice leading, and the derivation of structural levels to works whose tonality is ambiguous. The works, in the order listed, become progressively more ambiguous harmonically, and, accordingly, the application of such Schenker-based techniques becomes progressively less convincing. In the final piece, "Face of the Deep," the inference of harmonic prolongation becomes untenable. The author also proposes a series of style factors that can be rated from 0 to 10 to help determine the applicability of prolongational analysis to works in the jazz improvisational repertory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of Stravinsky's music elaborates two structural fifths separated by some interval. Typically, one of those fifths is deployed harmonically (with various possible harmonic fillings) and the other is deployed melodically as a perfect fourth (with various possible melodic fillings). The harmony and voice leading of Stravinsky's music thus often prolong a fundamentally bi-quintal structure. The analyses that appear in this article are drawn from a substantial Analytical Catalogue (available as an appendix to the online version of this issue of Music Theory Spectrum) that comprises ninety-five individual passages from forty-four different works—that is, from virtually every one of Stravinsky's compositions from Petrushka (1911) to Agon (1957). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Much of the debate over post-tonal prolongation has focused on non-triadic music, with less written about the triadic post-tonal repertory. Britten's music presents special challenges for prolongational analysis: it often features a triadic surface organized around one central pitch, hut its nonfunctional harmonic motion and free alterations of diatonic and non-diatonic scalar material create tonal ambiguity. In this article I will examine three pieces by Britten which employ surface-level triads to prolong middleground symmetrical interval cycles. These cycles, in turn, prolong pitches and structures, which help establish centricity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]