When All You Have is a Hammer: Surface/Depth as Good Comparison

Abstract

This article interrogates and reimagines the approach to reductive music analysis characterized by spatial metaphors (like “underlying” harmony). Such language portrays analysis as the process of discovering a structure “beneath” a piece’s “surface.” I argue that this picture downplays the multi-faceted, varied processes that go into creating musical reductions. Examining details of several different kinds of relationships between “surface” and “depth,” I show that while the traditional characterization is analytically apt in many cases, it encourages false equivalences in others. Borrowing Schoenberg’s description of music theory as being based in “good comparison,” I suggest that such an alternative conception might better suit some of our engagements with reductive analysis. Moreover, adopting this alternative might encourage different kinds of engagements, altering our perspective in a way that makes constructing reductions a much more flexible—and potentially more powerful—approach than has hitherto been the case.