The role of musical analysis in the education of performers

critical insights from a literature review

Abstract

This article discusses the pedagogy of music theory and analysis for instrumentalists and singers in undergraduate music programs. In order to propose pedagogical approaches, a literature review was conducted, mapping works published by performers and other researchers in the proceedings of the ANPPOM, ABRAPEM, and TeMA conferences between 2017 and 2020, using the following inclusion criterion: works had to make explicit the analytical processes implemented, regardless of reference to a specific analytical-theoretical framework, and describe the relationship between analytical action and the processes of musical-technical-interpretive construction in the performance of the target music. Thirty-nine works were included in this review, which were subsequently subdivided into seven categories, with a critical discussion conducted of the analytical and interpretive proposals in each text. On this basis, the article discusses musical, pedagogical, institutional, and political issues involved in teaching theory and analysis to instrumentalists and singers. Among other arguments, it contends: (a) that the field of music theory and analysis should play a greater role in generating analytical models capable of accounting for musical parameters neglected by the major analytical theories (timbre, articulation, dynamic control, agogic manipulation, etc.); (b) that Eurocentric and musically restricted teaching practices should be deconstructed; (c) that the performer's interpretive-analytical process does not depend on the use of established analytical theories to generate musical analytical data; and (d) that the construction of musical meaning does not lie in the separation of structural elements restricted to the material level of music, but rather in the subsequent correlation of the parts (synthesis-meaning) previously separated by the analytical act, thereby conferring musicality and meaning upon the analysis.