Search parameters

"Instead of seeing a descending series of transformations generated from a postulated organizing original whole (the Ursatz), we might view a given system as generated from the bottom up. In that case, the characteristic implications of the individual parameters would be taken as the postulates, instead of the combining action of the realized whole, and we would look for rules of dynamic structuring rather than for rules of dynamic wholes. The whole would therefore be conceived as a by-product of the organizing activity of the whole. Schenker's 'terminal symbols' (the foreground notes on the printed page of the composition) would be conceived not as just another transformation mapped onto a lower level from middleground structures and background kernel in the synchronic system, but rather as the initiating formation of something that becomes transformed on the next higher level. And since the rules governing such dynamic structuring would be concerned with implications of parameters, implications would have to be formulated separately from their effects. Whatever structures actually occurred would always be related to what was implied. But what was implied would not necessarily be realized. In other words, implications (formations) would be evaluated separately from realizations (transformation), even though rules of transformation would always seem to depend to some extent on rules of formation." Eugene Narmour, Beyond Schenkerism