The author seeks to create a new analytical methodology that links the long-range linear thinking characteristic of sophisticated tonal analysis with the insights of recent critical and feminist perspectives on music. Leaving behind the ideological insistence on music's organic unity and physical transcendence that is inherent in traditional linear theories, this methodology attempts to define musical energy in terms that are overtly mechanical and physical.
Musical energy is linked to our direct physical response to music.
Potential energy in music can be defined as desire for physical response to music. The theoretical crux of this study is an attempt to define one type of linear mechanism that many composers have used to channel the potential energy of our musical desires. The Rossini crescendo presents a simple linear energy mechanism. The crescendo creates a pitch plateau by simple repetition, storing energy which is released by an immediate linear ascent. The plateau-ascent model provides the basis for more extended linear structures in the contemporaneous late choral works of Beethoven.