EMS Proceedings and Other Publications

Analytic procedures in composition

Philippe Leroux

Until up to Renaissance and Baroque, musical analysis was based on rhetorical prescriptive principles that could be used as models for musical composition. The following eras used an analysis type able to be more descriptive where the aim of composition "exercises" was only to verify developed theories.

I would like to discuss what analysis would mean today for a composer for the composition itself. And how beyond an esthetical purpose, even beyond generation of material, from verification and conception of composition processes, it can inject new blood into the difficulty of the shape in musical composition.