Performative Analysis: Reimagining Music Theory for Performance by Jeffrey Swinkin (review)

As he concludes the third chapter of Performative Analysis: Reimagining Music Theory for Performance, Jeffrey Swinkin reveals the exchange of ideas that supports his central argument: "Schenkerian theory and music partake of a mutually beneficial relationship, by which Schenkerian theory realizes potentials of the music, the music potentials of Schenkerian theory" (p. 94). Though the title is quite evocative, it does not make clear that the author's "performative analysis" is almost exclusively Schenkerian. Swinkin's monograph is both an homage to and defense of Heinrich Schenker, whose theories the author suggests have been misapplied. Instead, Swinkin advocates that we re-imagine Schenkerian analysis as a tool for performers who can use it to open up interpretive possibilities, ambiguities, or even resist meaning.

In his introduction, Swinkin establishes his view of the relationship between performers and analysts, one that appears to emancipate the former from the claims of the latter. Yet after a cursory (and at times overly simplistic) assessment of music-analytic studies involving recordings, Swinkin dismisses their usefulness for his purposes. In addition, while the author acknowledges the existence of ethnomusicological literature that explores social dynamics within performance, he neither cites specific literature nor draws upon any form of ethnography. Consequently, although he challenges the "hegemonic scheme" (p. 12) prescribed by the likes of Eugene Narmour and Wallace Berry—a "scheme" that validates only those performances conforming to preexisting analytical claims—Swinkin nevertheless gives the performer little or no actual voice and ignores many of the strategies or methods that would do so. The author claims that "analysis and performance are distinct yet coequal" (p. 15) and advocates the use of analysis "to inform performance in a nondictatorial way" or, as the book's subtitle indicates, function as "Music Theory for Performance" (italics mine). Yet given how firmly Swinkin defines the terms in which a performer works and the values that define a "good performance" (p. 15), the analyst's position still dominates.

The first two chapters provide a theoretical foundation for Swinkin's primary thesis. Drawing upon the work of Fred Everett Maus and others, the author emphatically rejects the claim that the purpose of analysis is to locate objective truths within a score—truths that a performer is responsible for realizing. In other words, it is not the job of the performer merely to realize the analytic claims of a theorist. Instead, Swinkin, expanding upon the ideas of Nicholas Cook, argues that analysis is a performative process in which both the performer and analyst aspire to project interpretative and embodied possibilities in the score. The major contribution of this claim, which leads to the second chapter, is a reexamination of analytic tools (especially Schenkerian models) to see how they lend themselves to the domain of interpretation and performance. In this way, these tools serve not to define fixed meanings rigidly but rather to seek new ways of seeing, feeling, or hearing. In particular, Swinkin employs analysis to reveal ambiguities that a performer can consider and also celebrates the metaphorical implications of Schenker's methods. He hopes that performers explore the emotive resonances of these metaphors and either embody or translate their potential into their performances.

The remaining three chapters explore the application of Swinkin's theories to three different compositions: Frédéric Chopin's Nocturne in C Minor, op. 48, no. 1; the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet in C Minor, op. 18, no. 4; and "Du Ring an meinem Finger" from Robert Schumann's Frauenliebe undleben. These choices are ambitious by adventurously taking on three very different genres (even as Swinkin has restricted himself to tonal repertoire written by three canonic white male composers from a limited historical, stylistic, and geographic milieu). As opposed to the piano music traditionally studied by most scholars working on the relationship between performance and analysis, a string quartet requires...