Schenker Approach in Music Analysis

20th century is a period when composers abandoned traditional norms. Various trends defying norms imposed by tonal harmony and composers who experimented with new forms left their imprint in last century. It is striking that Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935), Viennese music theorist, remained faithful to tonality, structured his analysis on tonic triad and derivations despite new trends. Schenker in this theory explained basic structure of musical pieces and hierarchical relations through technique of prolongation. This article aims to evaluate the Schenkerian analysis, under general headings. Hereby, ideas that Schenker developed over lifetime are provided in general; Schenkerian analysis is observed with examples in general section terms, harmonic structure, melodic notions, graphic notation. Analysis of work is avoided and to describe the technique, selection of samples, chosen from literature is used. Related resources are obtained through literature survey of relevant academic researches and analyses. Some new analysis techniques, that emerged in 20th century are briefly mentioned in essay but not examined in detail since each of them is topic of separate research. Due to limited number of Turkish sources on Schenker’s analysis, this article aims to remedy this deficiency in literature and provide general information on Schenker analysis