Displays the range and diversity of Schenkerian studies today in fifteen essays covering music from Bach through Debussy and Strauss. Explorations in Schenkerian Analysis is a collection of fifteen essays dedicated to the memory of Edward Laufer, an influential advocate of Schenker's method. The chapters are presented in chronological order by composer, opening with Charles Burkhart's contribution, which is presented as a letter to Edward Laufer (written before his death), and ending with excerpts from Stephen Slottow's 2003 interview with Laufer (in an appendix). Whilethe unifying focus is Schenkerian analysis, there is considerable variety in the approaches taken by the contributors. There is also variety in the composers represented, ranging from Bach to Debussy and Strauss. The volume thusdisplays the scope and diversity of Schenkerian studies today. CONTRIBUTORS: Mark Anson-Cartwright, David Beach, Matthew Brown, Charles Burkhart, L. Poundie Burstein, Timothy L. Jackson, Roger Kamien, Leslie Kinton, SuYin Mak, Ryan McClelland, Don McLean, Boyd Pomeroy, William Rothstein, Frank Samarotto, Stephen Slottow, Lauri Suurpaa David Beach is professor emeritus and former dean of the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. SuYin Mak is associate professor of music at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

This book re-examines the notion of Schubert's instrumental lyricism and explores its aesthetic and technical links with the discursive strategies of idealist lyric poetry. While Schubert's lyricism is most often associated with cantabile style, it is also implicit in the composer's paratactic approach to form and in his tendency to emphasize the materiality of musical gestures through unprepared chromaticism or sudden changes of texture. Such unorthodox instrumental designs are further considered with reference to two idealist views of musical form, A. B. Marx's Formenlehre and Schenker's brief discussion of form in Free Composition. Schubert's departures from sonata norms are, at the same time, manifestations of structural patterns typical of the Liedsatz and forms derived from combinations of Liedsatze, such as the theme and variation. His incorporation of these patterns within the context of the sonata evokes the lyric as both an Arcadian ideal and as a means of critical engagement with convention. This study reaffirms the centrality of the poetic imagination for Schubert through an interdisciplinary approach that combines the literary and the musical."