Schachter notes that ‘the right hand plays two melodic lines written in free imitation. The lower of these lines carries the main melodic motion and is, in general, more active than the upper one. The upper line, therefore, functions as a secondary part’ (Schachter 1999, 70). The logic is uncertain: the strong linear drive created by the string of suspensions succeeds in focusing attention on the lower voice but does not therefore relegate the upper voice to secondary status: the unargued assertion that the lower voice ‘carries the main melodic motion’ in itself accomplishes that task. (22)
Furthermore, as we know well by now, the claim that the alto voice, with its suspensions, is somehow "more active" than the upper voice, with its constant play of ^5 and ^6, is simply not defensible. The characterization rests on an opposition line/boundary-play (Urlinie/Ränderspiel) that assigns structural priority (and I mean that literally as "arising in an earlier level") to a line that is internal to the texture rather than the line at the top.
Schachter's insistence on a feature that runs counter to the evident musical qualities of D779n13 is only the most obvious marker of his basic strategy, that of the symptomatic reading. As David Bordwell describes the process, the critic must first have
master[ed] a semantic field informed by particular theoretical concepts. [Then, in the work of interpretation,] certain semantic features enjoy a particular saliency. . . . The critic will pick out textual cues that can bear the weight of those semantic features [and] mount an argument, perhaps using the rhetoric of demystification, to show the significance of the semantic projections, from field to text, that the critic generated. Every recognized method . . . follows something like this routine. (12)
If large-scale descending lines have priority (that is, "enjoy a particular saliency"), then the appropriate "textual cues" are more likely to be in the alto than the soprano (which cannot "bear the weight"). The "rhetoric of demystification," then, would separate soprano/alto from main-voice/subordinate-voice by indicating how and why the alto is the carrier of the primary melodic voice. (Actually, I think Bordwell is referring to something a bit different, but in our limited context the dismantling of a cluster of binaries makes sense.)
Within the theory itself, the effacing of ^7 by ^2 is behind this particular result. More to that tomorrow.
References:
Schachter, Carl. "Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Durational Reduction." Music Forum 5 (1980): 197-232. Reprinted as "Durational Reduction" in Schachter 1999a, 54-78. (Schachter, Carl. Joseph Straus, ed. Unfoldings: Essays in Schenkerian Theory and Analysis. New York/London: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Bordwell, David. Poetics of Cinema. London/New York: Routledge, 2008.
Neumeyer, David. "Description and Interpretation: Fred Lerdahl's Tonal Pitch Space and Linear Analysis." Music Analysis 25/1-2 (2006): 201-30.
