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Peter Westergaard's tonal theory is the theory of tonal music developed by Peter Westergaard and outlined in Westergaard's 1975 book ''An Introduction to Tonal Theory'' (hereafter referred to as ''ITT''). Based on ideas of Heinrich Schenker (see Schenkerian analysis), Westergaard's theory is notable for: *explicit treatment of the relationship between rhythmic structures and pitch structures in tonal music; and *elimination of "harmony" as a conceptually independent element of musical structure (in Westergaard's theory, traditional "harmonic" principles follow as by-products, or epiphenomena, of more fundamental contrapuntal principles, so that discussion of chord progressions as such becomes superfluous). ==Methodological foundations== In keeping with Westergaard's characteristic "concern with fundamental methodological questions" (Peles 1997, p. 75), ''ITT'' begins with a discussion of what it is that a theory of tonal music consists of. The conclusion reached is that it is a "logical framework in terms of which we understand tonal music" (''ITT'', p. 9)--the operative words being "we understand". Westergaard is thus seeking a theory about a certain kind of cognition, as opposed to one dealing with acoustics or neurophysiology. The argument he gives for defining the domain of inquiry in this way is essentially the following: on the one hand, the acoustics of music are already well understood, and in any case acoustical theories are of limited use in addressing the psychological aspects of the musical experience; on the other hand, while neuroscience may eventually be capable of addressing these latter aspects, it is not currently equipped to do so—a situation which is unlikely to change in the near future. Consequently, our best strategy is to address the psychological questions directly, more or less at the level of introspection (''ITT'', pp. 3–7). Such an approach, however, immediately raises the problem of developing a metalanguage for discussing tonal music: how do we accurately describe "what we hear"? Reasoning that the process of solving this problem will itself lead inevitably to substantive insights into how music is actually heard, Westergaard takes the construction of a metalanguage for tonal music as his task for the main part of the book (''ITT'', pp. 7–9). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Peter Westergaard's tonal theory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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