Commentarial analysis is one of the things I do. I write analyses and assess the analyses of others, particularly my own students. I am scrupulous to avoid hardcore academic analysis, just as I am scrupulous to avoid hardcore academic anything. I am a blue-collar musician, a working stiff kind of guy, not an effete leather-patched pontiff holding forth in the musty confines of a seminar room. I try to reach ordinary human beings with my commentary. Even if I am obliged to wade through academic treacle on my way to the cold clear water of understanding, I take pains to remove the stickiness from my own presentations. I'm careful to impart that same caution to my students, who may be tempted by academic gobbledegook's potential for masking creative sterility.
I recognize that analytic writing is just about as difficult as it gets, especially when the subject matter is fraught with technicalities. Very few writers pull it off successfully. Donald Francis Tovey was a grand master of the art, his style honed by both a superb education in English prose and his educated readership at the Leeds Festival. His multi-volume "Essays in Musical Analysis" is a collection of his program notes for the Leeds Festival, written back in the days when program notes were technical, high-toned, and bristling with musical examples. We don't do that nowadays.
Tovey's secret was to use clear and friendly prose that avoided pomposities while embracing the occasional high-toned adjective, such as his glorious description of the Haydn "Surprise" symphony's variation theme as displaying anserine solemnity. (Nota bene: "anserine" means "goose-like.") He never hesitated to toss in an opinion, always maintaining a personal tone. I'll be the first to admit that some of his observations aren't necessarily defensible. But they add much-needed color and vitality. Consider this gem from his article on the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto:
"The finale breaks in, pianissimo, with an intensely lively theme in that prosaic daylight by which Beethoven loves to test the reality of his sublimest visions."
Everything after the word "theme" is at least fluff if not downright nonsense. I seriously doubt that LvanB sat there at his composition desk muttering: Let's surround this here thing with prosaic daylight so I can test the reality of this sublime vision of mine. Nonetheless, it's a nifty way to point out that the theme is given a humdrum, almost colorless setting.
In contrast I offer this blob of glutinous academic prose, taken from a textbook that shall remain nameless, written by authors who shall remain anonymous:
"Different from movements that emphasize compression for the early portions of a recapitulation are those that indulge in a so-called secondary development, digressing from the original order of events by interpolating a stretch of motivic elaboration, heightened ensemble activity, or tonal enrichment."
Sheesh, what a stuffed shirt. The meaning is clear enough but the prose reeks of pomposity and intellectual entitlement. You want to slap the author. Well, at least I do.
Analytic writers resort to a variety of approaches to avoid the tiresome slough of blow-by-blow musical commentary. Over the years I have come to identify four tropes that pop up regularly. None are all that objectionable unless they are used consistently, in which case they become irritating mannerisms. I try to avoid them in my own writing, with varying degrees of success.
Start with this passage from from Tovey's analysis of the Brahms B-flat Piano Concerto:
"There are no trumpets and drums in this finale. Neither are there any storms. There is abundance of young energy and grace, and there is all that greatness of design which, as Mozart and the Greeks have proved, is unfailingly sublime, whatever the ostensible range of the subject."
I'll try re-writing it to demonstrate each of the four approaches in turn.
The Royal 'We'
"We will hear no trumpets or drums in this finale. Neither will we hear any storms. We will hear an abundance of young energy and grace…"
The royal 'we' is encountered in student writing with distressing regularity. "Our primary theme is in G Major, and we can see that it outlines the tonic triad." At its best, the royal 'we' is unnoticeable and even friendly, such as Tovey's "When the strings join in, the calm is as deep as the ocean that we have witnessed in the storms of this huge piece of music." But it can get out of hand all too easily, resulting in analysis that sounds like an imperious arts-dragon lady pontificating for the Tuesday Club For the Propagation and Dissemination of the Fine Arts.
The Lonely 'One"
"One will encounter no trumpets and drums in this finale. Neither will one hear any storms. One hears an abundance of young energy…"
One doesn't encounter this one too often in professional writing. One finds that, as a rule, one's editor takes a red pencil to one's prose and banishes the lonely 'one' to limbo. Which is a very good thing indeed. However, a bit of fun is there for the having, just by replacing all incidences of "one" with a chap: "A chap will encounter no trumpets and drums in this finale. Neither will a chap hear any storms." How plummy, how charming in its turgid Colonel Blimp-y way.
I Proclaim
"I note that there are no trumpets or drums in this finale. Nor have I found any storms. I consider this finale to contain an abundance of young energy, much as I have heard a greatness of design which I discern in Mozart and the Greeks, and which I refer to as unfailingly sublime, whatever I might consider to be the ostensible range of the subject."
In light doses, the injection of the author's persona is unobjectionable and even refreshing. But a soupçon slops over into an overdose all too easily, as a confidential tone morphs into egomaniacal posturing. I Proclaim puts even the friendliest writer at risk of unleashing a smug little twit. Tovey falls prey to an attack of twittiness on occasion: "I will leave this great and childlike finale to call forth the right emotions without further analysis in words." So Donny-o, I suppose you'll smite me if I call forth the wrong emotion?
He Did It
"Beethoven required no trumpets or drums in this finale. Neither did he seek any storms. Instead, Beethoven embraced an abundance of young energy and grace…"
Also known as the Vulcan Mind-Meld, He Did It trephines the composer's skull and inserts thoughts, ideas, motivations, and intentions. My first Tovey quote provides an example, as "Beethoven loves to test the reality of his sublimest visions." The advantage of He Did It is a sense of ownership over the material, an almost chummy relationship with the creator that, being wholly imaginary, is subject to neither proof nor disproof. Beethoven, having been dust for a good long time, cannot object to any thoughts I might give him. He Did It is common, with the result that most folks blip right over it without a moment's notice. Nor is He Did It without validity; there is nothing whatsoever objectionable about bringing commentarial observations about a composer's habits into the discussion, as long as those observations don't expand into fantasy. Tovey: "Mozart had a gentle vein of irony which often goes with a long range of prophetic vision, and we may take it that when he inscribes the first movement of this Concerto in G major allegro maestoso he writes the inscription with his tongue in his cheek." As entertaining as that sentence may be, it edges into Star Trek territory. It's one thing to describe Mozart's "gentle vein of irony" but another thing entirely to state that he was being satirical in a tempo marking; neither Mr. Tovey nor anyone else could have possibly known that.
Is good analytic writing even possible? Sure it is—but it requires skill, attention, and a dab of artistry. I offer Brahms: The Four Symphonies by Walter Frisch as my candidate for overall excellence in analytic prose. Consider this paragraph, taken more or less at random, from Frisch's coverage of the finale of the Fourth Symphony:
"It is striking—and surely not coincidental—that Brahms's adaptation of sonata form in this movement has the same features as the third movement of the symphony, in which the main theme reappears in the tonic at the start of the development and the recapitulation beings at that point in the first group where the theme has broken off at the start of the development. Here the ostinato returns literally for the first four measures of variation 16, and the recapitulation begins at variation 24 with a reworking of variation 1. The variation form, made up of smaller, independent units, adapts itself ideally to this kind of structure."
Frisch's book is aimed at professionals rather than general readers, but nonetheless he maintains a readable and clear style throughout, even considering the technical nature of his prose. The non-technical portions of his work are even more readable yet no less rich in content. Frisch makes use of He Did It as necessary, but never slops into Vulcan Mind Melds. The Royal 'We' and The Lonely 'One' are (thankfully) absent, nor is Frisch inclined towards I Proclaim. It's a breathtaking accomplishment, but its virtue is not necessarily immediately apparent to the reader. That's how it should be: good analysis writing is, in the final analysis (so to speak), good writing.