Musical Syntax (II)

Abstract

Here we enter the domain of musical systems, the normal subject matter of what is traditionally thought of as music theory, though it is still metatheory relative to the foreground layers of theoretical discourse. It is at this stage that a point of divergence from maximum generality is reached by our music-structural system; the necessity of such a divergence arises as a direct consequence of the implementation of certain of our systematic objectives which, as the preceding section reveals, are mutually incompatible within a single system at a single functional level in particular, the systematic incorporation of both content-determinacy and order-determinacy presents a difficulty of this nature. Further construction, moreover, awaits the explicit articulation of such syntax-building objectives as are essential for the conceptual guidance of our systematic formulations, if those formulations are to lead us to a system offering ranges and types of functions adequate to the construction of, say, tonal and 12-tone syntactical models into which we could cleanly plug adequate analytic models of, respectively, the Schenker-tonal and Babbitt-serial types. Such syntaxbuilding objectives are perhaps better represented as extrasystematic than as systematic notions, since they may be favorably viewed as concepts whose observable implementations are practically enabled by, rather than formally generated by, or generative of, the constructions under consideration.