In this chapter, I aim to stimulate discussion of the practice of music analysis. Although analysis is basic to the training of most academic musicians, it remains a contested discipline. Some are put off by its technical language, its failure to address certain parameters (like affect), its supposed blindness to salience, its uneasy alliance with composing and performing, and its use of ostensibly anachronistic methods. These charges are obviously too complex and multifaceted to be dealt with adequately in a short paper. Since the emphasis here is on practice, I offer for discussion and debate the beginnings of two readings of the opening movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in D major, Op. 18 No. 3, the first of the Opus 18 quartets to be composed (1801), and one that has not (yet) received an excessive amount of scholarly commentary. Beethoven's music is, of course, central to the definition of a Euro-American analytic tradition, so this choice should be neither surprising nor controversial. The first reading conveys aspects of structure through a paradigmatic analysis inspired by the semiological method associated with Nicolas Ruwet, Jean-Jacques Nattiez and their followers. A second reading seeks access to the movement's expressive dimension by exploring its topical content in the manner of Leonard Ratner. Each reading is self-sustaining and yet ultimately partial; both are at once autonomous and complementary. No strenuous effort is made to seek a synthesis. The emphasis, rather, is on what each analytical proceeding makes possible.