Gjerdingen, Robert O. (1988). A Classic Turn of Phrase: Music and the Psychology of Convention. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

PART I: Theoretical Foundation

Robert Gjerdingen presents the researches of several scholars of cognitive psychology such as David Rumhart, Roger C. Schank and Robert P. Abelson, and George Mandler to establish his conventional pattern as a schema. According to Gjerdingen, a schema is a mental structure based on past experience and served as an interpretive text. He is also strongly influenced by Leonald B. Meyer's concepts of melodic structure and musical archetypes.

Gjerdingen adopted Eugene Narmour's network theory. Narmour developed theoretical concepts: style form, style structure, and idiostructure (p.40). In this book, Gjerdingen focuses on style structure because it is related to the notion of cognitive schemata. And he also combines Style form and style structures to form a specific structural complex. In Beyond Schenkerism, Narmour shows a concept bottom-up method as a network analysis objecting to Schenkerian analysis as the treelike structures. Gjerdingen mentions that both types (network theory, Schenkerian analysis) could be happened together in a schema theory.

Gjerdingen forms his phrase pattern based on Meyer's term changing-note archetype with a bipartite, AA’form and mirrored structure. He refers to Meyer's concept, archetype, consistently through his book.

Gjerdingen presents the 1-7/4-3 schema here. The most common bass line used with the 1-7/4-3 schema is 1-2…7-1, tonic to supertonic and then leading tone to tonic. ♫ there are other bass line like 1-2…5-1 bass, 1-5…7-1 bass, 1-5…5-1 bass, and the mix of the 1-2…7-1 and 1-5…5-1 bass. Haydn used 1-2…2-3 bass with 1-7/2-1 style structure. Gjerdingen provides well-defined rhythmic-harmonic-melodic closure to establish the two schema events with other features in the structural complex. Many deforming features are found in the 1-7/4-3 schema. The concept of deformed style structure provides a useful alternative way. The 1-7/4-3 schema is defined by many other features such as pitch, meter, and rhythmic pattern, melodic conformance, preceding and succeeding contexts. Two factors, metric placement and the disposition of subphrases, influence the perception of schema events. ♫ while almost all examples have their metric boundaries immediately prior to downbeats, a few other examples moves their boundaries over to just before weak beats. Variations of features and schema events affect the typicality of a phrase as a whole. When typicality becomes very low, an alternative schema will appear itself. According to Gjerdingen, we need to study the 1-7/4-3 schema as a historical phenomenon to make out the knowledge of it.

PART II: Historical Survey

According to Gjerdingen's hypothesis, a musical schema will show a curve of typicality similar to its population curve. The "population" of a musical schema forms of bell-shaped curve during the advance of the schema's history. He found the fact that the regulated relationship of typicality and population is lacking in music history. Typicality and population may be related to a "feedback loop". An important element in schema theory is memory. Memory provides a schema derived from past experience to interpret present conditions (p. 104). A new schema structures should include a reevaluation of earlier examples.

• 1720-1754: Scattered Examples. The 1-7/4-3 style structure is not found in the early history of period, 1720-1754. Gjerdingen started to research the origin of the 1-7/4-3 schema from Italian vocal music but he could not find any appropriate examples. However; he found the 1-7/4-3 schema's the well- defined early example in Italian or Italian influenced instrumental music. Comparing with mid-century examples, the phrase in the earlier phase is rhythmically continuous, more contrapuntal, and has an unarticulated context. It is presumed that the early examples of a structure are more complex than the prototype. The 1-7/4-3 style structure is rare in the works of J.S. Bach. 1-7/4-3 style structures during this period began to move away from the complex interconnection of overlapping processes, and toward the simpler relationships like a linkage or juxtaposition. This schema is made from a particular arrangement of preexistent elements in the 1680s or 1690s. It becomes significant schema only in the 1720s, first in Italian instrumental music. The complex melodic networks from 1-7/4-3 style structure have two melodic complexes. The first one is combined a 1-7/4-3 pattern with a stepwise descending melody. The second one has a 1-7/4-3 pattern with a descending leap from ② to ④, and the weak impression of a 1-2-3 melodic structure.
  
  
• 1755-1769: Sharp Increases in Population and Typicality. This period's particular shape presents a simple antecedent-consequent form. Gjerdingen takes many musical examples from Haydn. His symphony No. 12 is a good example to show an expanded 1-7/4-3 style structures. Haydn uses the change in texture to distinguish the extension from the schema. That is, the characteristic of the changes occurring in this period was shown in Haydn's music (simplification and structural clarification of the high- melodic complex). Gjerdingen mentioned that Haydn promoted perception of the schema and showed the predictive or implicative aspects of schematic cognition.
  
  
• 1770-1779: The Peak. Low-level rhythmic and melodic movement applies only to the period of the 1770s. Fiala produced phrases that are more prototypical than those of a famous composer like Haydn. This is because Fiala may represent someone who attained mastery over the aspect of his craft. Haydn presents someone for whom eighteenth century musical schemata were conventions against which his idiosyncratic techniques could project emotion and personality (p.172). We can find the obvious descending triads in the melodic complex. It consists of the tonic and the dominant. ♫ for example, the second theme in the first movement of Mozart’s “Posthorn” Serenade and the basic complex of a 1-7/4-3 style structures appears four times in four different figures. Gjerdingen presumes that Mozart had little experience with the style structure in this period but Haydn had extensive experience with this style structure. ♫ Haydn used the high-② melodic complex and the descending-triads melodic complex. An interesting thing we can think is the placement of the metric boundary of the 4-3 dyad and modulation. In 1770s, the most representative examples of the 1-7/4-3 style structure conformed not only with the mid-level structural requirements but also with the low-level norms of rhythmic and melodic activity of the 1770s (P. 194). Linear –descent complex, the high-② complex, the descending triads melodic complex, simplicity and conformance are found in this period. The 1-7/4-3 style structures became more complicated. Subsidiary pattern and overlapping processes are reemerged.
  
  
• 1780-1794: New Complications. The standard 1-7/4-3 melodic complexes were retained into the 1780s and early 1790s. Gjerdingen mentions Haydn again. Haydn weakens the closure of the 1-7 and 4-3 dyads by adding to each a string of sixteenth-notes (p. 205) .Overlapping processes were reintroduced. In order to avoid simple 4-3 dyad, he made an ornamented or protracted version. The concept of default values are strongly related to the 4-3 dyad. The 4-3 dyad was frequently altered than the 1-7 dyad. For the first time an example's 4-3 dyad is placed ahead of its second metric boundary. The foreground/back ground effect and the stepwise transposition of the second half of the phrase are additional characteristics of the style of the 1780s. Like melodic ornamentation, a delaying technique was used to change and extend a repetition of a 1-7/4-3 structure. The established formal types, 1-7/4-3 and 1…7-4…3 structures, are differentiated from their melodic patterns and harmonic forms. ♫ comparing to a 1-7/4-3 style structure, we can find that the closure at the end of a 1…7-4…3 style structure is relatively weak. The x 1-7/4-3 style structure existed long before this period. Gjerdingen suggests that the x 1-7/4-3 style structure is reemerged in more open-ended, processive phrases.
  
  
• 1795-1900: A Legacy. A 1-7/4-3 schemata in the nineteenth century has the very low population and typicality. He presents the examples as idiostructural creations. Gjerdingen asked how all the complexities of the phrase are concentrated on the melody in this chapter. The various deformation of the 1-7/4-3 style structure at all structural levels are found – the “Wanderer” motivic pattern, x 1-7/4-3 patterns. The 1-7/4-3 style structures disappears by the end of the 1820s. Gjerdingen compares two composers, Schumann and Wagner. Schumann used the 1-7/4-3 style structure significantly. Within his symphonies, he used for the most part the altered forms of the 1-7/4-3 structures. Wagner used the 1-7/4-3 schema only when he was young and his few examples show relatively large and complicated melodies. He also touch upon Trivial Music and Schema Music. The scattered examples of 1-7/4-3 style structures in the nineteenth century present an important aspects of Romantic musical style. ♫ for example, German and Austrian composers frequently used x 1-7/4-3 pattern, "Wanderer" pattern, and harmonic deflections of the cadence.

Conclusion

Gjerdingen stresses the psychology of perception based on a schema theory. He talks about an adequate sample and how to interpret a limited sample. Gjerdingen asserts that we need in both Schenkerian analysis and network representations to formulate a schema theory. He also considers a schema as the product of experience and requires new study of music history including the history of specific phrase types and the history of musical schema structures. And he wants us to rethink the study of what types of schemata composers used in a specific musical period, and where their schemata came from and which schemata survived and transferred to the next period.

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