5 Conclusion

This course completes your introduction to the systematic analysis of voice leading in pieces of tonal music. You have encountered a large number of new technical words and ideas in this course. The following terms are the principal ones that have been discussed.

• foreground, middleground and background

• fundamental structure

• fundamental line

• primary tone

• initial ascent, prolongation of the primary tone, structural descent, structural coda

• structural cadence

• interrupted form

This course does not expect you to be able to analyse a whole movement's background structure yourself from scratch. However, you should now understand the sorts of musical observation that go into making such an analysis, and be able to read an analytical graph in relation to the score of the music, and discuss the musical thoughts that it embodies.