Performative Analysis: Reimagining Music Theory for Performance. By Jeffrey Swinkin. (Eastman Studies in Music.) Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2016. [vii, 263 p. ISBN 9781580465267 (hardback), $95; ISBN 9781782047346 (e-book), $29.99.] Music examples, bibliography, index.

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 pre-existing 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: Frederic 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 und -leben. 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 a discussion of the complex dynamics and relationships between four different parts. Similarly, Schumann's song not only encompasses the interaction between singer and pianist but also the complicated intersection with poetry.

Swinkin wisely approaches each composition in creatively varied ways. Although all three chapters develop from core Schenkerian and "Swinkinesque" principles, the author adjusts his approach sensitively to reflect the compositions' generic differences. The chapter on Chopin's Nocturne is, in some ways, the most conventional. In a manner that emulates the dialogic elements of Janet Schmalfeldt's groundbreaking essay from 1985 ("On the Relation of Analysis to Performance: Beethoven's Bagatelles Op. 126, Nos. 2 and 5," Journal of Music Theory [29, no. 1 (Spring 1985)]: 1-31), Swinkin oscillates between the analyst and the potential performer (always in this order). In the first part, the author applies the theory from the first two chapters by teasing out ambiguities and creating from his Schenkerian analysis an anthropomorphic or metaphorically driven narrative within the score. The second part includes gently phrased suggestions for how a pianist might play, embody, express, or merely be aware of the Nocturne's unfolding in light of the previous analytic assertions. His description of the first phrase, in the section on performance, best captures the author's sentiment and strategy: "In the interpretive scenario just posed, the pianist would presumably aim to conjure this enervated persona. Most generally, the pianist can express this state through slightly unsteady timing, thus creating a musical limp. Also, the absence of a linear dynamic trajectory--a steady crescendo leading to a distinct point of arrival, for example--will exemplify the absence of voice-leading linearity and tonal resolution" (p. 82). Depending on their fluency or commitment to Schenkerian methods, performers might find the author's suggestions inspiring or, at the very least, thought-provoking.

In spite of the structure in this chapter, however, Swinkin repeatedly insists that his analyses are not prescriptive and that analysis and performance should be seen as coequal: "The problem in my view is not granting analysis chronological priority but rather granting it epistemological priority. I believe my approach avoids that pitfall, since it conceives analysis as less an abstract realm than a sensuous and emotive one. As such, my analysis doesn't ask performance to ingest something foreign to it--namely, abstract concepts-- but to draw from a realm of experiences common to performance and analysis alike. Analysis in this model offers the performer not prescriptions but rather something to respond to freely. When an analysis is conceived in this way, proceeding from analysis to performance is not really a problem" (p. 76).

Just because Swinkin's analysis becomes more "sensuous and emotive," however, does not mean that the imbalance between analyst and performer is diminished, removed, or less problematically conceived. The sections on performance repeatedly model the rhetorical structure of a "master-teacher," where Swinkin the analyst suggests what a performer "might," "can," "can perhaps," "would," or "will" do. This top-down dynamic is reinforced in chapter four. Framed as a hypothetical Socratic dialogue, a "theory teacher/ chamber-music coach" (p. 96) guides four performers as they do a close reading and rehearsal of Beethoven's string quartet. Imagining the rehearsal as a conversation is inspired and lends itself beautifully to the structure of the ensemble. Yet in spite of the occasional give and take among musicians or even suggestions made by members of the quartet, the analyst/teacher remains the authoritative voice that either determines the parameters of the conversation or approves/challenges claims made by the performers/students.

The final chapter is, perhaps, the most ambitious and problematic. Swinkin's goal is to use both his performative analyses and performances with singer Jennifer Goltz in order to resist both the potential misogynistic meanings read into Frauenliebe und -leben and misogynistic tendencies within music theory itself. (Videos of these performances can be found at http://jswinkin.com /publications/performative-analysis -reimagining-music-theory-for -performance/ [accessed 27 December 2017]). In this way, Swinkin aspires to integrate and contribute to scholarly polemics regarding battles over Schumann's song cycle, "New Musicology" criticisms of music analysis as a gendered enterprise, and explorations of the performing self/persona. Unfortunately, however, Swinkin repeatedly puts himself in a position of needing to defend his own argument on multiple fronts. For instance, if Schenkerian analysis is already perceived as a problematic enterprise, how can it be employed to confront even bigger problems? Can it really be used effectively? And how perceptible or meaningful are these analyses (and their implications of resistance) to either listeners or performers?

Swinkin's argument in this chapter, and the analytic methods he advances in the book as a whole, would have been better served had his tone been less defensive. His efforts to position himself as an advocate for feminist criticism leaves him, paradoxically, battling against such critiques by Suzanne G. Cusick, Susan McClary, Marcia J. Citron, and Richard D. Leppert, whose work could have been used productively to strengthen his own analyses. Instead, as was the case in the introduction, Swinkin oversimplifies the arguments of these scholars, fails to recognize the historical context behind their claims (the debates around music and gender in the 1990s were very different from the ones today), and ignores more recent scholarly developments on related topics over the last quarter century.

Yet I applaud Swinkin's attempt to revitalize the possibilities of Schenkerian analysis and to extrapolate their performative elements. More significant and worthy of emulation is the way in which the author, in this book, uses the questions confronted by performers as a creative tool for challenging the relevance of certain music theories and for reimagining the very analytic tools themselves.

Daniel Barolsky

Beloit College