Research in Music Series: A Talk by Benjamin Wadsworth

Thursday, May 7, 2026 @ 11:00 AM; Bromery Center Room 419, Free

Research in Music Series: A Talk by Benjamin K. Wadsworth

Professor of Music Theory at Kennesaw State University, Atlanta, Georgia

“Transgressing Schenker: Questioning Assumptions in the Classroom”

Abstract:
Schenkerian theory and analysis have played a central role in the discipline of the post-WWII, North American field of music theory. Recently, however, the Schenkerian project has lost its previously influential status and stagnated as a discipline, as seen in criticism of its scientific value (DeBellis 2010), pointed attacks on Schenker’s ideology and racism (Ewell 2023), and increasing acceptance of alternative approaches such as schema theory (Gjerdingen and Bourne 2015). In my course on Schenkerian analysis to upper-level undergraduates and a following independent study, my students and I have consciously critiqued the theory and brainstormed refinements. In the class’s second unit (Wadsworth 2016), which practices graphing period forms in Mozart piano sonatas in preparation for the midterm exam, we have debated adjustments that reflect 18^th-century compositional practice, avoid speculation in the absence of foreground evidence, and assume an ecological view in which disunity is conceptually equal to unity. They include: (1) allowing conflicting prolongations; (2) allowing multiple analyses of the same passage; (3) minimizing substitutions in the soprano line; (4) under special conditions, allowing linear progressions to contain essential skips by third; and (5) allowing outer voices to align using contrapuntal species other than note-to-note. 

After an examination of Schenker’s fundamental structures and their often vague and contradictory assumptions, I will explore seven graphing situations that have come up the past two semesters in which a Schenkerian approach, as applied to 18^th-century works, yields graphs that are “stretched,” i.e., following tenets of Schenker’s theory yet weakly supported by foreground evidence. After showing each initial, conventional graph, I will present a revised, unorthodox one that normalizes a greater number of structural events in unified and disunified contexts. Often, these alternative analyses abandon any claim to an overarching Ursatz; instead, they align more closely with surface formal contrasts and predict expressive states with greater accuracy. This talk will hopefully spur other scholars to tinker with the core assumptions of Schenker’s theory—and possibly to reestablish the relevance of a modified approach to the music theory community.