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 ans ...

developed in the 1950s by the

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

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 (German: Help:IPA/Standard German, �joːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety ...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

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. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

and

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

. Several were broadcast on

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

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 and

Rudolph Reti Rudolph Reti, also Réti (; November 27, 1885 – February 7, 1957), was a musical analyst, composer and pianist. He was the older brother of the chess master Richard Réti, but unlike his brother, Reti did not write his surname with an acute acc ...

, 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 seen as originating fro ...

'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 Mark Doran 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, Peter Lang AG, 2001, 500 pp.

References

{{Musical analysis Musical analysis