Middle-Out Music Analysis: Unreflected Methodological Problem

Abstract

The problem of bringing into wide scientific and educational and methodological use a still little-known, but in some cases extremely productive type of music analysis—Middle-Out Music Analysis (MOMA) has been updated. The relevance of the study is that, against the background of outdated methodological approaches often used in music analysis, a number of advantages of middle-level analysis oriented to cognitive and psychological methods have been revealed.
 The purpose of the study is shown the advantages of the integrated use of MOMA with other types of music analytics, especially with discourse analysis, perception analysis and communicative analysis. The productivity of the use of successive rise or fall in the consideration of the analytical procedures involved in the process of the levels of the structure of the work from the initial median is noted—in accordance with the set goal. The position-hypothesis of the first developers of MOMA about its optimal suitability for studying the communicative and discursive features of the analyzed works and the psychological foundations of the processes of perception and understanding of music has been established. The practical effectiveness of middle-level analysis has been tested on the example of completed analytical etudes of well-known and accessible musical works.
 The methodological basis of the article is the musical-psychological approaches proposed by doctors R. Parncutt and R. Pascall in the understanding of analytical, cognitive and speech activity in the perception of music, as well as the functional method and basic provisions of the systemic approach and stylistic analysis (when considering musical works) primarily of tonal music.
 The results and conclusions. The Ukrainian-language name of this type of music analysis, which in English is defined as Middle-Out Music Analysis (MOMA; according to the proposal of its main promoters R. Parncutt and R. Pascall), is proposed. An overview of the scientific basis used by the first developers of the theoretical foundations of Middle-Out Music Analysis is given. The advantages of using this type of musical analysis for the study of tonal and tactometric patterns of music are noted. The opinion of doctors R. Parncutt and R. Pascall about fixing in the analysis various types of repetitions of intonation, timbre, tonal-harmonic and metrorhythmic nature, which occupy an important place in the process of perception, comprehension and interpretation of the studied musical works, is supported.