From Gretchen to Tristan: The changing role of harmonic sequences in the nineteenth century

Nineteenth Century Music

Volumn 19, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 263-284

  Bass, Richard ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61449254941     PISSN: 01482076     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/746222     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. William C. Mickelson, Hugo Riemann's Theory of Harmony and History of Music Theory, Book III (Lincoln, Neb., 1977), p. 82
2. Mickelson's quotation is from Riemann, Harmony Simplified, trans Rev. H. Bewerunge (Vereinfachte Harmonielehre, oder die Lehre von den Tonalen Funktionen der Akkorde) (London, 1893)
3. Riemann's reference is to François-Joseph Fétis, Traité complet de la théorie et de la pratique de l'harmonie [1844] (2nd edn. Paris, 1853), p. 253
4. see also Riemann, Geschichte der Musiktheorie (Leipzig, 1898), p. 479n
5. Ernst Kurth: Selected Writings, ed. and trans. Lee A. Rothfarb (Cambridge, 1991), p. 136
6. the quoted passage is from Kurth's Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners "Tristan" (Berne, 1920), pp. 334-35
7. By "absolute progression," Kurth refers to the particular effect created in moving from one harmony to another - an effect that is independent of any contextual relationships either between the two harmonies, or in association with the underlying tonality (Selected Writings, pp. 119-24)
8. In a sequence that is purely melodic, the harmony may change in successive statements, but it does not follow the same transpositional scheme as the melody; for an example, see Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C, K. 467 (movt. II), mm. 45-50
9. Percy Goetschius, The Material Used in Musical Composition [1889] (14th edn. New York, 1913), p. 113
10. o) with the leading tone doubled, an occurrence he describes as a justifiable departure from the "rules."
11. Ludwig Bussler, Musikalische Formenlehre, trans. J. H. Cornell (New York, 1883), p. 88
12. George F. McKay, The Technique of Modern Harmony (Ann Arbor, 1948), p. 65
13. Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony (Harmonielehre) [1911], trans. Roy E. Carter (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1978), p. 283
14. Schoenberg, "Criteria for the Evaluation of Music" [1946], in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984), p. 129
15. Carl Dahlhaus, "Issues in Composition," in Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980), pp. 45-52
16. and Walter Frisch, Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984), pp. 27-28
17. William Rothstein (Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music [New York, 1989], pp. 75-77)
18. includes an example of a sequence from Haydn's Symphony No. 42 (movt. II), mm. 77-96, that accomplishes a voice-leading step and also serves as an internal phrase expansion. His analysis is given in response to Koch's treatment of sequence as a device used for phrase expansion that is functionally equivalent to literal repetition - a view which, as Rothstein shows, is too simplistic
19. Allen Forte and Steven E. Gilbert, Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis (New York, 1982), p. 100
20. Among harmony texts currently in widespread use, the most thorough discussion of sequences, their usage and associated harmonic functions, is Walter Piston, Harmony, rev. Mark DeVoto (5th edn. New York, 1987), pp. 315-27
21. Daniel Harrison, Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music: A Renewed Dualist Theory and an Account of Its Precedents (Chicago, 1994), p. 5
22. This application of the term pattern is rather common; it appears at least as early as 1903, in Prout, Harmony, p. 50
23. I am adapting "projection," for lack of a more generally accepted term, from Howard Hanson, Harmonic Materials of Modern Music: Resources of the Tempered Scale (New York, 1960); although Hanson uses intervallic projections to construct sets of pitch classes, the procedure he describes closely parallels that used to produce a series of transposed statements in a sequence
24. Schoenberg (Theory of Harmony, p. 283) also includes in his definition of sequence the stipulation that the initial pattern ("progression") must contain at least two chords
25. In Elie Siegmeister, Harmony and Melody, vol. II (Belmont, Ca, 1977), p. 103
26. and William Christ, et al., Materials and Structure of Music (3rd edn. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1980), p. 321
27. the authors admit sequences consisting of only two statements of a pattern, whereas Piston, Harmony, p. 317, claims "it is generally agreed that a single transposition of a pattern does not constitute a full sequence" and refers to such passages as "half sequences."
28. Stipulations similar to Piston's appear in various other sources, including Roger Sessions, Harmonic Practice (New York, 1951), p. 216, and much earlier (in the late eighteenth century)
29. Heinrich Christoph Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Komposition, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1782-93)
30. trans. Nancy Kovaleff Baker, Introductory Essay on Composition: The Mechanical Rules of Melody, Sections 3 and 4 (New Haven, 1983), p. 43
31. A rare acknowledgment of this kind of functional linkage is in Stanley Chapple, Language of Harmony (New York, 1941), p. 65: "A sequence can be interrupted when desired, by resolving the last chord in a normal, and not a sequential, manner."
32. 6-V in Emusic flat sign) is restated in a projection of descending thirds (DMusic flat sign, bMusic flat sign;, GMusic flat sign, eMusic flat sign), leading to a passage in EMusic flat sign minor that immediately follows the sequence. The shifting major and minor modes, as well as the alternation of minor and major thirds in the projection, preserve the diatonic relatedness between the focal harmonies: EMusic flat sign minor becomes the eventual anchor, but each tonicized harmony is diatonically related to all the others
33. For more specific theoretical discussions dealing with cycles of this type, see Gregory Proctor, Technical Bases of Nineteenth-Century Chromatic Tonality: A Study in Chromaticism (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1978)
34. and Harald Manfred Krebs, Third Relation and Dominant in Late 18th- and Early 19th-century Music (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1980)
35. The last harmony in the sequence - BMusic flat sign major - sets up a return to the principal key of the song (D minor) and the restatement of the refrain beginning in m. 74
36. Schubert used this theme again in the late Sonata in A, D. 959 (1828), but recomposed the first half in a way that did not place as much emphasis on the motion from 2-3. In particular, the cadence at m. 8 is rewritten as a retarded perfect cadence, so that the 2̂-4̂ motive does not assert itself until the second half of the theme, beginning with the sequence
37. The only other difference between the patterns of the two statements is the enharmonic substitution of A for BMusic flat signMusic flat sign in the tenor, m. 80; the spelling is motivated by the non-functional resolution of that chord, as a so-called common-tone diminished seventh, to an enharmonic Neapolitan sixth (i.e., A major in six-three inversion)
38. The melody is reharmonized in the middle section, where similar but not exactly transposed progressions support statements in B major and E major
39. Similar tonal schemes are common in works from this period. Among Schumann's rondo forms, see, for example, Grillen from the Fantasiestücke, op. 12
40. Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C, op. 53, has an analogous arrangement in the first movement, with the second theme presented in E major in the exposition, then returning in A major in the recapitulation. In these pieces, however, there is a return to the tonic for the conclusion of the second theme
41. Schubert's Symphony No. 9 in C has a second theme that appears first in the mediant (E minor); it is recapitulated in the submediant (A minor), but only after a brief statement of the same material in the tonic minor
42. In Schumann's op. 22 finale the episode material never returns in the tonic
43. Another variant of this scheme occurs in Schumann's Concert sans orchestre, op. 14 (movt. I)
44. see Linda Correll Roesner, "Schumann's 'Parallel' Forms," this journal 14 (1991), 268-70
45. Charles Rosen (Sonata Forms [rev. edn. New York, 1988], pp. 369-83) presents a detailed analysis of the finale from Schumann's Sonata in F# Minor, op. 11, which also relies extensively on sequential passages for its formal organization
46. One curious inconsistency exists between another corresponding point in the two episodes - mm. 108 and 288. The first episode has an F#-minor harmony, whereas the second episode (here a fifth higher than the first) has DMusic flat sign major. A shift to F# major occurs in the first episode two measures later; it would seem that for some reason Schumann chose to avoid the use of FMusic flat sign in m. 238
47. For a synopsis of various functional analyses of this chord, see Charles J. Smith, "The Functional Extravagance of Chromatic Chords," Music Theory Spectrum 8 (1986), 136n
48. William Mitchell, "The Tristan Prelude: Techniques and Structure," in The Music Forum, vol. I, ed. William J. Mitchell and Felix Salzer (New York, 1967), pp. 167-81, is the benchmark Schenkerian-based analysis against which subsequent linear studies of this passage are measured
49. Robert Bailey (Richard Wagner, Prelude and Transfiguration from Tristan and Isolde, Norton Critical Score [New York, 1985], pp. 126-30) reiterates some of Mitchell's findings and identifies additional motivic connections within these measures
50. Forte ("New Approaches to the Linear Analysis of Music," Journal of the American Musicological Society 41 [1988], 324-38) also adopts Mitchell's study as a point of departure
51. Still other conclusions are reached in the voice-leading analysis by John Rothgeb, "The Tristan Chord: Identity and Origin," Music Theory Online 1.1 (1995)
52. and in the responses by Forte, "Tristan Redux: Comments on John Rothgeb's Article on the Tristan Chord in MTO 1.1," Music Theory Online 1.2 (1995)
53. Some exceptions are Schoenberg, Harmonielehre (Vienna, 1911; 3rd edn. 1922), pp. 308-10, who associates the Tristan chord with Et minor (as a supertonic half-diminished seventh)
54. 7 as a "self-sufficient progression" in G#, inserted into a different tonal context
55. The controversy concerning functions in the initial pattern extends also to the opening cello line: whereas most analysts regard the gesture A-F-E in m. 1 as tonic harmony with F as an appoggiatura, both Deryck Cooke (The Language of Music [Oxford, 1959], pp. 187-94)
56. and Rothstein ("The Tristan Chord in Historical Context," [3] describe the opening skip as the fifth and third of a D-minor triad, a view that can be traced back as far as Mayrberger [1881]
57. see Robert W. Wason, Viennese Harmonic Theory from Albrechtsberger to Schenker and Schoenberg (Ann Arbor, 1985), p. 91. Rothstein hears the figure as subdominant harmony, but Cooke refers to D minor as an actual key that yields to A minor in mm. 2-3
58. See also Harrison, Harmonic Function, pp. 155-57, regarding the subdominant function of this opening gesture
59. Bailey, Prelude and Transfiguration, p. 126
60. See also his reference to Edward T. Cone, "Sound and Syntax: An Introduction to Schoenberg's Harmony," Perspectives of New Music 13 (1974), 23-24
61. Rothgeb ("The Tristan Chord," [16]) reiterates these points
62. See especially Mitchell's voice-leading graphs b and c in his ex. 4 ("The Tristan Prelude," pp. 170-71)
63. and Bailey's ex. 10 (Prelude and Transfiguration, p. 129)
64. The term "slide" is from Rothgeb, "The Tristan Chord," [13-15]
65. 7 of IV in AMusic flat sign which would call for a GMusic flat sign
66. A notable exception is the analysis by Mayrberger, which attempts to explain the sonority in m. 10 as a confluence of melodic suspensions; see Wason, Viennese Harmonic Theory, pp. 91-93
67. Forte ("Tristan Redux," [4])
68. refers to Rudolph Louis and Ludwig Thuille, Harmonielehre (Stuttgart, 1907), p. 232, which specifically indicates in an example (no. 234) that it is not a leading-tone chord of dominant function in F#. Forte adds that such an interpretation "would require a considerable tonal reorientation were it so!"
69. For another interesting perspective on the origin of this passage, see Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), pp. 474-75, which explores the influence of Liszt's song Die Lorelei: Liszt opens his pattern with the skip of a diminished seventh, thus implying a harmony that would also have obtained from the skip of the tritone that Wagner originally considered