Herndon's Verdict on Analysis: Tabula Rasa

Abstract

In her article Analysis: herding of sacred cows? Marcia Herndon stresses need for exposing, discussing, and evaluating various methods of musical analysis, in particular those employed by number of ethnomusicologists (Herndon 1974a). While this is certainly most timely and relevant endeavor, author does not seem to display sufficient of objectivity to deal adequately with delicate subject matter. At least, this is case with her treatment of general concepts and of assumed of chosen song from Madagascar. Some sections of this hypothetical analysis must give unsuspecting reader impression that I merely indulge in sterile and unintelligible manipulations. A case in point is her presentation of what I call By this I simply mean ordering, according to pitch, of tone material employed in melody plus additional information concerning initial and final tone, differentiations in structural importance of tones, and steps by which they are connected. This is by no means a major factor of analytical approach nor is it intended to be a representation of main features of tonal (p. 232). But far more serious than these misstatements is distortion beyond recognition of my scale formula. Although author justly assumes (p. 232) that I would apply it only to vocal part and that scale comprises major-sixth area f G b c d, hypothetical scale formula, presented on page 233, stretches over an area of one octave plus minor seventh (D3-C5) and includes eleven different pitches. My first impression was that tone material employed by voice and zither has been lumped together, but closer look revealed an even more confused situation. For some unexplained reason tones A3 and D4, which frequently occur in vocal (and instrumental) part, are omitted, while tones D3, E4, F4, G4, A4, B4, and C5, although produced only by zither, are included. But why then omit Gs, reached by zither in measure 13 (p. 225)? And why are tones distributed between two staves? The statement that the tonal structure is both closed and open is nonsensical because these two features are mutually exclusive; moreover, I have no idea what is meant by the 13th degree and by contention that thirteen tones are omitted (p. 233). Regarding information, contained in scale formula, about