Wordless functional analysis is a method of

musical analysis Musical analysis is the study of musical structure in either compositions or performances. According to music theorist Ian Bent, music analysis "is the means of answering directly the question 'How does it work?'". The method employed to answer ...

developed in the 1950s by the

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n-born British musician and writer Hans Keller. The method is notable in that, unlike other forms of musical analysis, it is designed to be presented ''in musical sound alone'', without any words being heard or read, and without analytic diagrams of any kind. For this purpose, Keller would construct an analysis in the form of an ''analytic score'' written for the same forces as the work under consideration and structured as a succession of 'analytic interludes' designed to be played between its movements. The focus of such an analysis was the question of how a masterwork could incorporate strongly contrasting ideas and yet still produce the experience of unity and coherence. Keller's position on this issue was made clear in a number of articles: Thus his 'FA' scores are designed to demonstrate that the rich 'foreground diversity' of a piece of great music is 'unified' at a 'background' level. To this end the analytic interludes juxtapose passages of the original work with aural demonstrations of the links between the work's various ideas, seeking to make audible to the listener a normally hidden and unnoticed 'latent unity' underlying the 'manifest contrasts'. Keller produced more than a dozen of these analytic scores, with the works analysed being by

Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition r ...

Joseph Haydn Franz Joseph Haydn ( , ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions ...

Ludwig van Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

and

Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...

. Several were broadcast on

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radio and on the Continent in the 1950s and '60s, though only two were published during his lifetime. The development of the wordless method did not mean that Keller ceased to produce verbal articles and talks on music; in his view, however: Keller's investigations into 'the unity of contrasts' were influenced by the analytic writings of

Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...

and Rudolph Reti, both of whom he acknowledged. His discussion of 'manifest' contrasts and a 'latent' level of unity requiring to be revealed through analysis is explicitly indebted to

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

's model of dream-formation, which distinguishes between the 'manifest' content of the dream and the 'latent' dream-thought.

Publications

Articles: Scores: *Hans Keller: 'Functional Analysis No. 1' – of Mozart's String Quartet in D minor, K.421 (The Score and IMA Magazine, 22, Feb. 1958) *Hans Keller: 'Functional Analysis No. 2' – of Beethoven's String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95'. Score prepared by

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and Val Williams, with an introduction by Christopher Wintle, in Hans Keller, Christopher Wintle: 'Beethoven's String Quartets in F minor, Op. 95 and C# minor, Op. 131', Papers in Musicology, Department of Music, University of Nottingham, edited by Robert Pascall, 1995. *Hans Keller, Functional Analysis: The Unity of Contrasting Themes 957–62 ed.

Gerold Gruber Gerold W. Gruber (born September 6, 1958) is an Austrian musicologist, professor at the Institute for Musicology and Interpretation Research at the mdw - University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna, and head of the exil.arte Center for Banned ...

, Peter Lang AG, 2001, 500 pp. {{Musical analysis Musical analysis