Since the advent of music theory as a dedicated profession in the mid-nineteenth century, theorists have intuited that analysis would be at least beneficial, and perhaps even essential, to performers. Recently, “Performance and Analysis” has emerged as a distinct area of study within the field. Despite an abundance of serious Performance and Analysis studies by eminent music theorists, no universal principles have emerged, and little if any interest has been generated among performers.

The failure of efforts to date to tie performance to analysis is not due to bad writing on Performance and Analysis; rather, it points up the limitations of analysis as it has been practiced. To allow the possibility of offering assistance to performers, analysis must result in a more comprehensive understanding of a composition than has been sought, but such an analysis requires a fundamentally different process by the analyst. In an attempt to overcome the limitations of analysis for performers, this chapter presents a path toward gaining new insight into the essential nature of a composition.

A Brief Overview of Performance and Analysis

The latter part of the twentieth century saw a flurry of attempts to demonstrate the value of analysis for performance, e.g., Cone (1968), Meyer (1973), Burkhart (1983), Schmalfeldt (1985), Narmour (1988), Berry (1989), Dunsby (1989), and Schachter (1991). These writings hew to a common formula: a description of some element of the structure of a composition, followed by instructions for dynamic and temporal inflections with which to effect its proper or preferred realization in performance.