Given my present belief in the much greater range of variability as to both order and kind of complexity in the world's musics versus the world's lan… - Harold Powers

A tonal type is minimally identifiable by its three markers and thus objectively observable completely apart from its musical or cultural context; it is 'scientific,' it is 'etic.' 'Mode' conversely is all bound up in sixteenth-century musical culture, not as a living doctrine of the music of the church and a heritage fomr the Middle Ages but also as a musical construct being expirimented with by members of the culture, from both humanistic and traditional points of view; it is thoroughly 'emic' and requires study on its own terms....

[A. Merriam] neglects to take sufficiently into account the possibilities of critical musical analysis as though from within the culture, be it by a native or a native-trained foreigner.

'Objective' analysis is a tool, primarily useful for suggesting or confirming putative relationships between different musical styles....'Critical' analysis results not in a statistical measurement of style or proof of relationship but rather, ideally, in a formal model for a relatively independent and artistically controllable style within a culture, and should then be viable for accounting for individual manifestations of that style...