Music Theory, Analysis, and Society

Selected Essays

RobertP. Morgan, Robert P. Morgan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367581787
• eBook ISBN: 9781351557139
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Robert P. Morgan is one of a small number of music theorists writing in English who treat music theory, and in particular Schenkerian theory, as part of general intellectual life. Morgan's writings are renowned within the field of music scholarship: he is the author of the well-known Norton volume Twentieth-Century Music, and of additional books relating to Schenkerian and other theory, analysis and society. This volume of Morgan's previously published essays encompasses a broad range of issues, including historical and social issues and is of importance to anyone concerned with modern Western music. His specially written introduction treats his writings as a whole but also provides additional material relating to the articles included in this volume.

Part One

Schenkerian and Other Theory

CHAPTER 1

DISSONANT PROLONGATION: THEORETICAL AND COMPOSITIONAL PRECEDENTS

It is one of the notable ironies of recent music history that Heinrich Schenker’s concept of prolongation has supplied an important tool for the analysis of twentieth-century music; and furthermore, that those prolongational procedures first pointed out by Schenker in his analyses of masterpieces of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been among the most adaptable of the techniques associated with tonal music to the broader context of more recent non-functional tonality.¹ Schenker conceived of prolongation solely in terms of a consonant, triadic background; and the technique was, in his own formulation, strictly limited to the framework of the functional tonal system.² Indeed, the basis of Schenker’s theory was rooted in his belief that the triad represented the “chord of nature”—a God-given absolute that in its “natural” state existed solely as a simultaneous projection derived from the overtone series.³ The triad could then be projected in time—made horizontal, as it were—to form extended compositional spans; but these prolongations, whatever their length and complexity, also acquired meaning ultimately as temporal unfoldings of a single, consonant sonority.

For Schenker, the history of Western music before the advent of functional tonality revealed a clear development toward the only perfect system provided by nature. Post-tonal music, on the other hand, as well as a great deal of ostensibly tonal music by such composers as Berlioz and Wagner, testified to an abrupt decline into chaos and decadence. Schenker, in fact, was convinced that the art of music had reached an ignominious end during the course of his own lifetime, witnessed by his poignant dedication of the study of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony “to Johannes Brahms, the last of the German masters.”

Some of Schenker’s contemporaries took a more flexible position, pointing out that much new music was not really “atonal” in nature, but rather reflected a different kind of tonality (with such matters as melodic and rhythmic emphasis, rather than the functional I-V-I progression, assuming the principal key-defining role). Theorists have more recently begun to point out tonality-defining prolongations in twentieth-century compositions that form surprisingly close parallels to earlier triadic procedures. In 1948, in a pioneering article on Bartók, Milton Babbitt disclosed the presence of non-triadic “harmonic regions” in this composer’s music, regions that were “revealed by polyphonic unfolding.” Babbitt went on to observe that these referential areas acquired primacy not by virtue of any inherent hierarchy within a generally accepted musical system, but solely by “contextual” means unique to the individual compositions.⁴ Since the publication of Babbitt’s article, several important books and articles have appeared providing further documentation of such “dissonant prolongations” in the music of a wide range of twentieth-century composers.⁵

If it is ironic that Schenker should himself provide the key to a deeper understanding of a body of music of which he disapproved, it is doubly so that he also indicates the lines along which his concept of prolongation can be extended into the area of non-functional tonality. In an analysis of some fifteen measures from the first movement of Stravinsky’s Piano Concerto (Example 1, beginning with the upbeat to rehearsal no. 33 in the revised edition of 1950), Schenker provides a suggestive illustration of how one might approach a non-functional, yet “tonal,” composition.⁶ Schenker, to be sure, employs the example as a Gegenbeispiel, and he makes no attempt to hide his contempt of Stravinsky’s music. Yet the effect of his observations is to suggest striking analogies between Stravinsky’s methods and those of his forerunners.

EXAMPLE 1

Copyright 1956 by Universal Edition A.G. Reproduced with permission.

Schenker remarks that the graphs are at best indications of “what may have been dimly present in Stravinsky’s mind.”⁷ Yet, as he proceeds to point out, there do exist horizontal prolongations of intervals (Züge or “spans”), although the spans are “of the simplest type.” Schenker continues: “Is it not true that Stravinsky contradicts this structure whenever he can: in the counterpoint of the outer voices, [and] especially the bass, which circumvents each articulation of the spans; further, in that he makes no distinction in the motives that would enable the spans to be perceived in their individuality; finally, in that, by neglecting the spans, he allows the tones to appear constantly in dissonant relationship to one another?” These points are then illustrated by reference to several details in the passage: e.g., the third span in the top voice from A to F-sharp, whose completion on the first beat of the third measure—and again, after its repetition, on the second beat of the fifth measure—is contradicted by the dissonant B in the middle voice.

But these are “contradictions” only if one assumes that the underlying structure is—or should be—triadic and consonant. In fact, the dissonant vertical combination A-sharp—B—F-sharp, which occurs at these two spots, has already appeared (transposed diatonically) several times within the first span. It was associated with both of the preceding “structural” notes in the descending third of the top voice: with A on the second eighth of the upbeat (where, significantly, the rhythmic layout tends to make the opening octave in the two lower voices sound “dissonant”), and with G-sharp on the second eighth of the second measure, as well as on the last quarter of this measure (where the voice exchange in the two lower voices, and the suspended A and anticipated F-sharp in the top voice, obscure the vertical sonority, thereby saving the more direct statement for the “cadential” arrival on the next beat). The same sonority also reappears at focal points later in the passage. It is associated with the repetition of the third span in mm. 4–5 (here at a somewhat more background level until it appears again explicitly at the end of the span), as well as with the final five notes of the octave span: E in m.12 (at just the point where the opening figuration is taken up again in all three voices), D in m.13, C in m.14 (here again at a more background level), and B and A in m.15.⁸

The main problem, then, is that Schenker analyzes the music in terms of a consonant background; and there are certainly other aspects of his analysis with which one might argue (such as the importance he assigns to the IV chord). But the point here is not to offer an alternative reading, but to indicate the extent to which, regardless of intent, Schenker has provided a working model for an analysis of this music—an analysis that invokes many of the procedures employed by Schenker in dealing with earlier music. As he indicates, prolongation spans are present (and not just the third spans A—F-sharp and C-sharp—A, but also the octave span A³—A², suggesting that the entire passage is held together by a more background prolongation). Indeed, it is only a short step from this analysis to the more complex and sophisticated ones that have appeared in recent years.⁹

But if Schenker’s example has unwittingly provided the foundation for a theory of twentieth-century tonal structure based on “dissonant tonics,” it has failed to stimulate a study of comparable phenomena in nineteenth-century music. A large body of music from this period, dismissed or ignored by Schenker, does not conform to the assumptions of his theory. And although some Schenker-derived analyses have since been undertaken on music of this type, the basic vertical sonority underlying the prolongation is always assumed to be consonant, i.e., either a major or minor triad.¹⁰

There are, however, instances in nineteenth-century music of passages, analogous to those in twentieth-century music, that appear to be based on dissonant referential sonorities. The dissonances involved, as we shall see, are harmonies commonly found in tonal music; yet they are nonetheless dissonant and thus unstable. According to the traditional view, they are incapable of generating prolongations.

Once again it is indicative of the range and suggestiveness of Schenker’s theoretical formulations that he himself provides the basis for an analytic approach to such passages. In Der freie Satz, in the section on the “seventh,” there are several examples of prolonged dominant seventh chords.¹¹ Schenker, however, is ambivalent concerning the status of these prolongations. Since, in his view, the dominant seventh is “only a means of prolongation,” it is unable “to produce a prolongation; only its transformation into a consonance renders a prolongation possible.”¹² Elsewhere, he states that “an interval that is itself passing in character cannot at the same time provide the first tone [Kopfton] of a prolongation, which must always be consonant.”¹³ Yet the examples given to illustrate such “transformations of the seventh” suggest certain inconsistencies in this regard.¹⁴ The graph of the prolongation of the passing seventh in Bach’s C major Prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Vol. I¹⁵ (the F in the top voice, which in turn prolongs the larger motion from D to F), for example, shows that the prolongation takes place entirely in conjunction with dissonant harmonic support (Example 2).

The only major or minor triad in the passage—the C major chord in six-four position—occurs with G in the top voice, the upper neighbor of the more fundamental F. Thus the dissonance has not been “transformed into a consonance”; even if one wishes to consider the six-four chord as a “relative consonance,” it is shown as performing a prolonging function relative to a conceptually prior dissonance—in which case the consonance must be said to “resolve” to the dissonance. And in several of the other examples, despite intervening consonant transformations, it is the seventh chord that represents the polar harmony defining the limits of the prolongation.

In the analysis of the first part of the development section (beginning with the closing measures of the exposition) of Beethoven’s E-flat major Piano Sonata, Op. 81a,¹⁶ the dominant seventh chord controls the entire passage. The temporary stabilization of the A-flat in m.69 does not alter this, for again the major six-three chord appearing at this point must logically be considered on a lower structural level (and thus subordinate, or, as it were, “dissonant”) to the conceptually prior dominant seventh (Example 3).

Presumably, Schenker would respond that these passages, regardless of the nature of their individual prolongations, represent only “passing moments” in the total piece: they are in motion between stable harmonic regions. Thus, formally considered, such passages normally occur in transition or development sections—i.e., they do not present musical “statements” in the expository, “thematic” sense, but form transitions between (or in preparation for) such statements. Such transitions are common enough in tonal music, and two illustrations will suffice here: the prolonged dominant seventh at the end of the development of the first movement of Mozart’s G-minor Symphony, K. 550 (mm. 147–65), where the prolongation results simply from motion through this one chord; and the dominant seventh (here V⁷ of VI) in the transition section of the first movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 132 (mm.30–47). The prolongation here is considerably more complex, incorporating several secondary chords such as the tonic F major, to which the seventh will ultimately resolve, but which appears several times within the prolongation as a “passing chord” subordinate to the seventh.

EXAMPLE 2

EXAMPLE 3

Copyright 1956 by Universal Edition A.G. Reproduced with permission.

More significant for our present considerations, however, is the application, already noticeable in early nineteenth-century music, of such dissonant prolongations to thematic statements, i.e., passages traditionally associated with formal, tonal stability. There are many tonal pieces that begin with brief dominant “upbeats,” but what is characteristic here is that the opening dominant is prolonged to control a quasi-independent formal segment comprising part or sometimes all of the principal thematic material. In the first movement of Schumann’s C-major Piano Fantasy, Op. 17, the prolongation of the dominant seventh associated with the opening theme encompasses some 27 measures and includes (but is not limited to) both an antecedent and consequent phrase, the latter defined by a full cadence on V. Similarly, Brahms uses a prolonged dominant seventh as a basis for the antecedent phrase of the main theme of the B-flat major Intermezzo, Op. 76, no. 4. Although here the consequent phrase is articulated by a cadence on VI (providing a temporary resolution of the V, albeit “deceptively”), the middle section carries the VI down chromatically in the bass (through G-flat to V again, at which point the opening theme reappears). As a result, the cadence on VI becomes in the larger context only a neighbor-note prolongation of the more fundamental, though dissonant, dominant seventh, whose real resolution occurs only ne...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Principal Writings
• PART ONE SCHENKERIAN AND OTHER THEORY
• PART TWO MUSIC ANALYSIS
• PART THREE MUSIC AND SOCIETY
• Index