My title was "Themes, Hierarchies, and Lines: Schenkerian Analysis as a Subspecies of Linear Analysis." As that suggests, the talk summarized the argument of my MTO article and provided illustrations, focusing on Chopin's Prelude in A Major, which I identified as a polka-mazurka, a mixed genre dance that was mildly popular in the 1830s. It's unlikely that Schubert knew anything like it, as it was probably invented by a Parisian dance instructor in the late 1820s or early 1830s, but it is highly likely that Chopin not only knew it but also danced it himself.
An article version of the keynote address will be submitted to Res musica, which is the peer-reviewed science magazine of the Estonian Musicology Association and the Musicology Department of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. The journal is devoting an issue to papers from the conference.
The surprise for me was that my usual argument about methodological pluralism in linear analysis -- aimed of course at long-standing reactionary attitudes on the part of some analysts, mainly in my generation and the one before us-- is now out of date. Theorists gathered from Nordic Europe, the United States, and Canada took this pluralism for granted, indeed, actively nurtured it and protected it whenever it seemed threatened. It was quite refreshing to see a sense of community gathered about the utility and practice of music analysis; that's certainly a (generational) step ahead of the master-disciple model that prevailed before and that, for too long, inhibited the practice of Schenkerian analysis and development in Schenkerian theory.
