Desire in Chromatic Harmony

Of the many composers in the Western classical tradition who celebrated the marriage between psyche and sound, those explored in this book followed the lines diverging from Wagner in philosophizing the nature of desire in music. This book offers two new theories of tonal functionality in the music of the first half of the twentieth century that seek to explain its psychological complexities. First, the book further develops Riemann’s three diatonic chord functions, extending them to account for chromatic chord progression and substitution. The three functions (tonic, subdominant, and dominant) are compared to Jacques Lacan’s twin concepts of metaphor and metonymy, which drive the apparatus of human desire. Second, the book develops a technique for analyzing the drives that pull chromatic music in multiple directions simultaneously, creating a libidinal surface that mirrors the tensions of the psyche found in Schopenhauer, Freud, and the post-Freudians Lacan, Lyotard, and Deleuze. The harmonic models are tested in psychologically challenging pieces of music by post-Wagnerian composers. From the obsession with death and mourning in Suk’s Asrael Symphony to an exploration of “perversion” in Strauss’s Elektra, from the post-Kantian transcendentalism of Ives’s Concord Sonata to the “Accelerationism” of Skryabin’s late piano works, and from the Sufi mysticism of Szymanowski’s Song of the Night to the failed fantasy of the American dream in Copland’s The Tender Land, the book cuts a path through the dense forests of chromatic complexity and digs deep into the psychological makeup of post-Wagnerian psychodynamic music.

Pedagogy of Chromatic Harmony and Form

As the study of music theory becomes more advanced with the introduction of chromaticism and formal studies, there is an opportunity for instructors and students to create a dialogue based on interpretations and performance. Starting with sound is essential in teaching the more advanced topics, and students should be experiencing the music through singing, playing, and listening before analytical conclusions are made. Through visual interpretations, analogies, and incorporation of a multitude of genres, students are able to make meaningful connections between harmony and formal structures, harmony and textual references, and how formal structures are created within a musical context. These more advanced levels encourage students to become independent thinkers and to create their own understanding of “how” and “why” the music was composed by creating their own analytical discoveries.

The Webern in Mozart: Systems of Chromatic Harmony and Their Twelve-Tone Content

Toward the end of his 2012 book, Audacious Euphony, Richard Cohn asks, “how does music that is heard to be organized by diatonic tonality [as in the age of Mozart] become music that is heard to be organized in some other way [as in the age of Webern]”? In the present article, a theory different from Cohn’s is offered as answer. The theory’s three sub-theories, harmonic hierarchy, within-key chromaticism, and “solar” key distance, lead to a distinction between four types of harmonic systems: the strictly diatonic, the first- and second-order chromatic, and the restricted twelve-tone system. As its name implies, the latter harmonic system allows for twelve-tone levels, though under a restriction (termed Principle of Diatonic Fusion) that holds “the Webern in Mozart” in check.

Church Is Where “I Acquired My Singing Tactics”

This chapter explores the influence of singing in Mount Zion Baptist Church on Armstrong’s development as a musician.Although we do not know exactly what Armstrong sang at his church there are transcriptions of the singing in New Hope Baptist Church just across the Mississippi River in Gretna. The transcriptions reveal a similar blues influenced tonality to the street songs and barbershop cadences sung elsewhere in New Orleans. This chapter explores the pentatonic tendency of melody in African American song; whereas the supporting lines tend to contain chromatic intervals and give rise to chromatic harmony.

Octatonicism and Chromatic Harmony

In this paper, the author looks at the relationship between octatonic structures and chromatic harmony. The discussion concentrates on two major aspects of late-tonal octatonicism: the use of alternative bass tones for the diminished seventh chord and the development of these sonorities into hexachordal and pentachordal combination chords. A number of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century chromatic passages are analyzed. Complex harmonies in chromatic passages are explained by formulating reductive models comprised of simpler, octatonic constructs.