About Voice-leading analysis of music 3: the background

The music of Mozart has been used to examine the foreground and middleground of harmony in units AA314_1 and AA314_2. Now you will use Beethoven's Eighth Symphony to consider the largest-scale stage of voice-leading analysis. By the end of this unit you should: be able to describe the nature of the background structure of a piece of tonal music; understand the difference between analysis which is definitely right or wrong (largely true of the foreground level) and that which is dependent on individual judgement (largely true of the background level); be able to relate the notes of a background graph and the indications of bar numbers to specific events in the musical score; understand the sorts of decisions and observations that go towards analysing the background structure of a piece of music (especially the example of Beethoven's Symphony No.8, third movement); recognise the analytical statements about the various parts of a piece of music that are contained in a background graph (especially the example of Beethoven's Symphony No.8, first movement); understand the relationships between typical layouts of background graphs and typical layouts of the constituent parts of sonata form.