An Aspect of Functional Harmony in Schoenberg's Early Post‐Tonal Music

Newton, Neil

doi:10.1111/musa.12018

Cited by 3 publications

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“…This discussion finds interesting parallels with Newton (), which pursues a kind of vestigial functionality in Schoenberg's early atonal music based on the resolution tendencies of isolated harmonic tritones. However, Newton's tritones expand or contract in contrary motion, like those in traditional V 7 s.…”

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confidence: 77%

Voice‐leading Energetics in Wagner's ‘Tristan Idiom’

Monahan¹

2015

Music Analysis

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Recent theories of musical energetics have typically given tonality – often a powerfully synthetic, prolongational monotonality – a decisive role in accounting for sensations of musical tension, force and attraction. Though well‐suited to music of the common practice, these models fare less well in certain repertoires of the later nineteenth century, where tonal centres are often fleeting and traditional syntax is weakened or even annulled—as is often the case in Wagner's late music, where dissonant tertian tetrachords are combined in new and sometimes confounding ways. This study offers a new perspective on tonal tension and relaxation in such passages – which I call Wagner's ‘Tristan idiom’ – by focusing on voice‐leading contour. Taking a broad cue from Ernst Kurth, it asks what might be gained by bracketing questions of chord identity and structure to focus instead on the voice leading that produces and interconnects them. Using a tool called kinetic displacement metrics (KDMs), it assigns emergent psychokinetic tension values to chord pairs based on the directions that their voices move, both in pitch‐ and pitch‐class space. Of special interest throughout is a phenomenon I call ‘directional variance’, where opposing contours in a single passage (between abstract and real voice leading, for example, or between the harmonic layer and the melodic one) seem to have psychodramatic relevance for the stage action. After a brief exposition of the theory and its uses (and limitations), with brief examples from all of Wagner's post‐Lohengrin operas, it then moves to a series of longer vignettes on excerpts from Tristan und Isolde: the opening of the Act I Prelude, the closing of the same, and the entirety of the Act III Prelude.

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confidence: 77%

Voice‐leading Energetics in Wagner's ‘Tristan Idiom’

Monahan¹

2015

Music Analysis

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“…See for example: Robert Gauldin's (2014) thorough treatment of the wedge in Romantic music, which focuses primarily on wedges with structure intervals of the minor seventh, octave, and major ninth; and David Neumeyer's (2022) historical study, which traces the wedge from the Renaissance to the early 20th century. The wedge figure has also been discussed in relation to music of the Second Viennese School by Lewin (1968), whose "inversional balance" connects symmetrical relationships to Schoenberg's musical idea; Robert Hanson (1983) whose study of semitone voice leading in Webern's atonal music is an important antecedent to my own work; and more recently, Neil Newton (2014), who argues that the wedged resolution of tritones in Schoenberg's atonal music recalls tonal-functional harmony. Wilhelm Pfannkuch's (1963) analysis of Verklaerte Nacht argues that the convergent counterpoint at prominent cadences signals formal endings, and Ethan Haimo's (2006) well-known study documents the evolution of Schoenberg's early style and also describes wedge figures in his music without placing them at the center of his discussion.…”

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Chromatic Function in Schoenberg’s Little Piano Piece, op. 19, no. 1

Hier

2023

MTO

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The revival of Formenlehre studies has initiated a renewed interest in formal functions in atonal music. Schoenberg, who pioneered the study of formal functions, did not extensively analyze his atonal music from a formal point of view. Recent scholars, however, have drawn parallels between the formal construction of his atonal music and common-practice tonal music. One impediment to such analysis is the lack of a theory of counterpoint and harmony upon which formal-functional analysis rests. I propose a normative contrapuntal-harmonic structure for Schoenberg’s atonal music I call the “chromatic cadence.” I trace its origins to voice-leading techniques used by Schoenberg in his earlier tonal music and develop fundamental principles that guide the analysis and identification of the cadence in his atonal music. I conclude with a detailed analysis of Schoenberg’s piano piece, op. 19, no. 1, in which I examine the interrelationship of its motivic construction, contrapuntal-harmonic structure, and its formal functions.

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The Enigma of Entropy in Extended Tonality

Smith¹

2021

Music Theory Spectrum

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This article considers music that stages the decline of the tonal system through “entropy”—the process conceived in the domain of thermodynamics by which energy is wasted through randomized dispersal or decrease in organization. Tonal organization faced challenges at the turn of the twentieth century, much of the music possessing a sense of tonal drive but with an increased array of outlets for this drive’s tension to be released. This article regards the dominant-seventh complex and its variant configurations as paradigms of this tonal drive and attempts to understand their new ambiguities and the increased richness of possibility they enjoy. In order to achieve this, the study engages in probability theory to create a unique profile for each tonal drive in a given piece, effectively measuring its strength. The fluctuating strengths can be mapped and the process of entropy tracked through a single piece, potentially even across repertoires. Using a new method of visually laying out the patterns of these dominant drives, combined with concepts from information theory that allow us to measure and compare levels of entropy mathematically, I attempt to combine qualitative and quantitative data to model the entropic processes that inhere in early twentieth-century music.

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An Aspect of Functional Harmony in Schoenberg's Early Post‐Tonal Music

Cited by 3 publications

References 24 publications

Voice‐leading Energetics in Wagner's ‘Tristan Idiom’

Voice‐leading Energetics in Wagner's ‘Tristan Idiom’

Chromatic Function in Schoenberg’s Little Piano Piece, op. 19, no. 1

The Enigma of Entropy in Extended Tonality

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