# Decoding Beethoven



## ajrdileva

Here's a nice YouTube series with the analysis of Beethoven's Sonata Op.2 No.1 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt-Oh3MSFwB-FcmGmBB1xxzOmIdIIwNC9


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## EdwardBast

It's actually not primarily an analysis. It's an elaborate blurb for some harmony decoder device. The guy doing the pitch keeps calling Beethoven's Piano Sonata op. 2 #1 a "song."  And his theoretical vocabulary seems geared toward teenage guitarists — at least they're the only people I know who'd describe a dominant chord with a 4-3 suspension as a "sus(s) chord." If one is interested in the theory of classical music, I would recommend finding other sources.


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## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> It's actually not primarily an analysis. It's an elaborate blurb for some harmony decoder device. The guy doing the pitch keeps calling Beethoven's Piano Sonata op. 2 #1 a "song."  And his theoretical vocabulary seems geared toward teenage guitarists - at least they're the only people I know who'd describe a dominant chord with a 4-3 suspension as a "sus(s) chord." If one is interested in the theory of classical music, I would recommend finding other sources.


This is a ridiculous criticism. It's not a "harmony decoding device." It's a tonal mapping tool, to aid in analysis and composition. Take your "classical" academic negativity elsewhere and stop polluting the waters. Your style of academic theory is being replaced by more forward-looking thinkers and methods.

And thank you, ajrdeliva, for providing us with this link to valuable information on music theory.


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## Manxfeeder

EdwardBast said:


> It's actually not primarily an analysis. It's an elaborate blurb for some harmony decoder device. The guy doing the pitch keeps calling Beethoven's Piano Sonata op. 2 #1 a "song."  And his theoretical vocabulary seems geared toward teenage guitarists - at least they're the only people I know who'd describe a dominant chord with a 4-3 suspension as a "sus(s) chord." If one is interested in the theory of classical music, I would recommend finding other sources.


From what I can tell, the top of the screen does give the classical harmonic figurations (like V 6/5). The middle screen describes the chords in a way most people can relate to. I guess if you go to Curtis Institute, the professor won't use his words (he does call it a song but a couple times calls it a sonata), but both will give you the same harmonic progression analysis. I don't have a problem with analyzing a classical piece with terminology which will relate to music in the real world.


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## drmdjones

Calling the sonata mvt. a song betrays this guy's inexperience with classical music. Turned me off, so I turned him off.


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## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> This is a ridiculous criticism. It's not a "harmony decoding device." It's a tonal mapping tool, to aid in analysis and composition. Take your "classical" academic negativity elsewhere and stop polluting the waters. Your style of academic theory is being replaced by more forward-looking thinkers and methods.


Alas, your "forward looking thinkers" don't know or make the distinction between linear and harmonic events. Every composer of classical music did, which makes the "forward looking thinkers" hopelessly out of touch with what they seek to analyze. Chords with suspensions are not a new kind of harmony, they are a linear phenomenon, an element of counterpoint. You have had the same problem in your analyses.



Manxfeeder said:


> From what I can tell, the top of the screen does give the classical harmonic figurations (like V 6/5). The middle screen describes the chords in a way most people can relate to. I guess if you go to Curtis Institute, the professor won't use his words (he does call it a song but a couple times calls it a sonata), but both will give you the same harmonic progression analysis. *I don't have a problem with analyzing a classical piece with terminology which will relate to music in the real world.*


It will relate to people used to reading the kind of chord notation used in lead sheets, fake books, and popular song collections. To understand why classical music is the way it is, it helps to understand the music as its composers did, which crucially requires being able to distinguish counterpoint from harmony.


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## millionrainbows

You come across as a classical snob, Edwar. We know what counterpoint is. It's what was happening in the Gregorian chant days before they learned to think harmonically.


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## Woodduck

I looked at this thread a few days ago, sampled the first video, and immediately lost interest. I didn't understand the title of the series: "How To Write Music Using Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro." Upon returning to it and watching more videos I can be more specific about my discomfort - or, to be more specific, my skepticism.

What is supposed to be the contribution of this "tonal mapping tool" to our musical understanding? What, in fact, _is_ the tool? Is it just those little diagrams? Are those what's being called "Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro"? Why do we need them? Are they supposed to tell us something that listening to music and studying scores can't tell us about the way music is constructed? Do they tell us more about how music unfolds in time - how one thing follows another - than a verbal statement or demonstration at the keyboard? Does their spatial configuration tell us anything about the audible structure of music? Is looking at them actually supposed to help us _write _music"? Or are they, as they feel to me, just a sort of visual technobabble, a cute but pointless doodling in the margins of the mind?

When I was learning about music I'm sure I would have found them an irrelevancy and a distraction.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> You come across as a classical snob, Edwar. We know what counterpoint is. It's what was happening in the Gregorian chant days before they learned to think harmonically.


Ummm... There is no counterpoint in Gregorian chant. And we can think contrapuntally and harmonically at the same time.

But you knew that.


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## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> You come across as a classical snob, Edwar. We know what counterpoint is. It's what was happening in the Gregorian chant days before they learned to think harmonically.


Those who have devoted time and effort to mastering a subject are sometimes resented by those who haven't.


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## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> Those who have devoted time and effort to mastering a subject are sometimes resented by those who haven't.


No, there's no resentment; it's just that I have a bad reaction to all that dust. :lol:


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet

millionrainbows said:


> No, there's no resentment; it's just that I have a bad reaction to all that dust. :lol:


Well, to this reader at least, the comments by EdwardBast in this thread come across as those of a master and your comments come across as those of a resentful amateur, who, for no good apparent reason, chose to enter this discussion with a ridiculous criticism of EdwardBast's first comment.


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## millionrainbows

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Well, to this reader at least, the comments by EdwardBast in this thread come across as those of *a master* and your comments come across as those of *a resentful amateur,* who, for no good apparent reason, chose to enter this discussion with a ridiculous criticism of EdwardBast's first comment.



Speaking of "for no good apparent reason, choosing to enter this discussion with a ridiculous criticism."
They should put your picture next to that. And talk about hyperbole!

Oh, they're just old buddy-duddys, and nobody needs TwoFlutes' input on the personal dimension. If you have some substance to add, please do. All that Edwardbast and Woodduck do is take pot-shots at other people's ideas; notice that they never start any threads. This is a martial-arts principle which they've adapted for internet use: let you enemy make the first move, then strike. I'm used to this sort of behavior.

Now, back to business, and away from grumpy old men:

Here's a page out of Schoenberg's _Structural Functions of Harmony. _Notice the similarities. Many times linear scores cannot show as much as visual charts can, and the direction of modern music theory is headed in that direction, as more of a geometric approach.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, they're just old buddy-duddys, and nobody needs your input on the personal dimension. If you have some substance to add, please do. All that Edwardbast and Woodduck do is take pot-shots at other people's ideas; notice that they never start any threads. This is a martial-arts principle which they've adapted for internet use: let you enemy make the first move, then strike. I'm used to this sort of behavior.
> 
> Now, back to business, and away from grumpy old men:
> 
> Here's a page out of Schoenberg's _Structural Functions of Harmony. _Notice the similarities. Many times linear scores cannot show as much as visual charts can, and the direction of modern music theory is headed in that direction, as more of a geometric approach.
> 
> View attachment 113971


Only a modern rationalist could imagine that all this silly diagramming adds anything to the understanding of a Beethoven sonata. Such doodles are a waste of time to a real musician.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Only a modern rationalist could imagine that all this silly diagramming adds anything to the understanding of a Beethoven sonata. Such doodles are a waste of time to a real musician.


No, that's incorrect. Look over my shoulder here; perhaps you'd like to join me, to read further?









There are things you can see using these methods that are normally not apparent. Trust me, Woodduck (sir), you should check this out. It might turn out to be job security for you, unless you've already retired.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> No, that's incorrect. Look over my shoulder here; perhaps you'd like to join me, to read further?
> 
> View attachment 113974
> 
> 
> There are things you can see using these methods that are normally not apparent. Trust me, Woodduck (sir), you should check this out. It might turn out to be job security for you, unless you've already retired.


So where are the diagrams you consider so essential? I already understand the _Tristan_ prelude without them, by the way, because I can hear what it's doing. Can't you?

In addition to which, this thread proposes to "explain" Beethoven's compositional procedures by means of a visual system, and to teach us how to compose music with it as well. It's horsepuckey.


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## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> No, there's no resentment; it's just that I have a bad reaction to all that dust.


You resent being corrected, which, unfortunately is bound to happen when you have trouble distinguishing contrapuntal from harmonic events. And if you didn't enjoy dust you'd be reading modern sources on "geometric" methods, parsimonious voice-leading, and various conceptions of the Tonnetz, like the work of the neo-Riemannians, rather than dredging around in the early stages of the field.


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## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> You resent being corrected, which, unfortunately is bound to happen when you have trouble distinguishing contrapuntal from harmonic events. And if you didn't enjoy dust you'd be reading modern sources on "geometric" methods, parsimonious voice-leading, and various conceptions of the Tonnetz, like the work of the neo-Riemannians, rather than dredging around in the early stages of the field.


Oh, I know why Woodduck dislikes geometric ideas and charts; it is so obvious, I should have realized it earlier, since I already knew it.


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## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> *All that Edwardbast and Woodduck do is take pot-shots at other people's ideas*; notice that they never start any threads. This is a martial-arts principle which they've adapted for internet use: let you enemy make the first move, then strike. I'm used to this sort of behavior.




This is false and you know it - or should. The vast majority of my posting on the theory forum has been answering questions and giving assistance to members with practical theory problems to solve. The rest of my time here tends to be spent debunking misinformation and foggy unsupported assertions. One of these categories is largely coextensive with our collected colloquies.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> *Oh, I know why Woodduck dislikes geometric ideas and charts*; it is so obvious, I should have realized it earlier, since I already knew it.
> 
> View attachment 113990


 What is it you think you know (but don't)? Your favorite third-person "Woodduck" only dislikes "geometric ideas and charts" when they're stuck like barnacles onto things that don't require them. It's lucky for that guy in the video that Beethoven wasn't standing there with a plate of sauerkraut and bratwurst ready to launch at the appropriate target. That would've been much more entertaining than these video games, at least to those of us "spiritual" enough not to have to "rationalize" what we've understood about music - by listening to it - since grade school.

Your first post on this thread is feeble foolishness and you know it. All you've done since is dig your intellectual grave deeper. Why bother? You're already underground.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> What is it you think you know? Your favorite third-person "Woodduck" only dislikes "geometric ideas and charts" when they're stuck like barnacles onto things that don't require them.


You need this, Woodduck.









Where's the chart? This is to demonstrate that geometric charts facilitate chromatic thinking, and bring geometric ideas which would not rise to consciousness when impeded by outdated, inflexible conceptions of diatonicism. My advice to you is that you need to start thinking more chromatically, especially if you're going to expound on Wagner.

All pedagogues: Note the references to the rise of pedagogy in the nineteenth century.

_Staying healthy, staying on-topic_


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> You need this, Woodduck.
> 
> View attachment 114000
> 
> 
> Where's the chart? This is to demonstrate that geometric charts facilitate chromatic thinking, and bring geometric ideas which would not rise to consciousness when impeded by outdated, inflexible conceptions of diatonicism. My advice to you is that you need to start thinking more chromatically, especially if you're going to expound on Wagner.
> 
> All pedagogues: Note the references to the rise of pedagogy in the nineteenth century.


The above has nothing to do with the question of whether Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro is of any value either in understanding Beethoven or in composing music. It's one thing to digress slightly, and another to pretend that we're having a completely different conversation in order to distract from one's off-the-wall remarks.

But, OK, let's digress more than slightly. Let me point out that Wagner and other composers influenced by him who pushed harmony to its chromatic outer limits did not need "geometric charts" in order to "start thinking more chromatically" or have their ideas "rise to consciousness," and they were not in the least "impeded by outdated, inflexible conceptions of diatonicism." Wagner, imbued with the dynamic principles of the Western tonal system, took its foundational and transcendent presence for granted and played with it and with his listeners' tonal expectations. It remains detectable and potent in his most far-flung and protracted ambiguities, dissonances, temporal distensions, and swift-moving shifts of tonal center both explicit and implied.

There is a recent, in-depth study of Wagner's harmonic thinking which I would be reading right now if it didn't cost a gazillion dollars:

https://www.amazon.com/Musical-Stru...773476423/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

From the book's conclusion: "The manipulation of unstated tonics in motivic sequence then becomes a direct manipulation of an unconscious psychological process of projecting order. It is not an invention or deviation from the theoretical structure of tonal practice, but a realization of possibilities inherent within the system. As such it represents a profound stylistic advance, and the possibilities which it opened may remain largely unexplored by later composers."

That states succinctly what I hear when I listen to _Tristan_ or _Parsifal,_ which I regard not as violations and rejections, but as fulfillments and celebrations, of the Western tonal tradition. Wagner didn't need "geometric charts" - playthings of academics - to create his music, and no one needs them to listen to it with comprehension.


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## millionrainbows

"The manipulation of *unstated tonics* in motivic sequence then becomes a direct manipulation of *an unconscious psychological process of projecting order.* *It is not an invention or deviation from the theoretical structure of tonal practice,* but a realization of possibilities inherent within the system."

*Unstated tonics?*

*An unconscious psychological process of projecting order?*

This sounds as _"codswallopy"_ as some of the "irrational" ideas you accuse me of.

If I demand that _you_ "prove" this thesis of _"unstated tonics"_ (like you demand of me), which by the author's own admission are _"not an invention or deviation from the theoretical structure of tonal practice,"_ then it follows that _you can't do it by rational means of musical analysis.
_
Your answer appears to be: _"I dunno if there's a tonic or not. Ya just gotta feel it. You just gotta believe."_

Honestly, I think I could answer my own question better than that, but it's your assertion that's making claims for Wagner using "_"unstated tonics"_ which are _"not an invention or deviation from the theoretical structure of tonal practice."_

Is it "too rational" of me to expect you to try to support your thesis with something concretely and specifically musical?

Apparently you just "believe" this. I'm interested in how Wagner's music works harmonically.

You're just the sap who brought this notion of "unstated tonics which are the result of an unconscious psychological process of projecting order" up.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> "The manipulation of *unstated tonics* in motivic sequence then becomes a direct manipulation of *an unconscious psychological process of projecting order.* *It is not an invention or deviation from the theoretical structure of tonal practice,* but a realization of possibilities inherent within the system."
> 
> *Unstated tonics?*
> 
> *An unconscious psychological process of projecting order?*
> 
> This sounds as _"codswallopy"_ as some of the "irrational" ideas you accuse me of.
> 
> If I demand that _you_ "prove" this thesis of _"unstated tonics"_ (like you demand of me), which by the author's own admission are _"not an invention or deviation from the theoretical structure of tonal practice,"_ then it follows that _you can't do it by rational means of musical analysis.
> _
> Your answer appears to be: _"I dunno if there's a tonic or not. Ya just gotta feel it. You just gotta believe."_
> 
> Honestly, I think I could answer my own question better than that, but it's your assertion that's making claims for Wagner using "_"unstated tonics"_ which are _"not an invention or deviation from the theoretical structure of tonal practice."_
> 
> Is it "too rational" of me to expect you to try to support your thesis with something concretely and specifically musical?
> 
> Apparently you just "believe" this. I'm interested in how Wagner's music works harmonically.
> 
> You're just the sap who brought this notion of "unstated tonics which are the result of an unconscious psychological process of projecting order" up.


Real cute, million. Can't even use your own words now.

If you can't grasp the simple concept of an unstated tonic, there's no hope for you at all and you may as well give up trying to talk about the structure of music. I will only say that music is full of passages in which a tonal center is implied but not stated, and I recommend that you go looking for such passages forthwith and report back with your findings. But don't start with Wagner; he may be too complicated for you at this stage. Try the opening of Schumann's C-Major Fantasy.

I haven't the means here to lead you by the hand through a musical score to show you how Wagner does what he does. I wish I did; I'd love to be able to make these ideas concrete, and it would be fascinating and enlightening to us both.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Ummm... There is no counterpoint in Gregorian chant. And we can think contrapuntally and harmonically at the same time [...]


Indeed. That said, I tend always to think harmonically when in contrapuntal mode. I just can't help it.


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## Guest

millionrainbows said:


> This is a ridiculous criticism. It's not a "harmony decoding device." It's a tonal mapping tool [...]


Dunno. Sounds like it could be Schenkerian analysis to me.


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## Guest

Not sure what an "unstated tonic" is but I do know one can "imply" a chord in 2-part counterpoint. Is that what you mean?


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## millionrainbows

TalkingHead said:


> Not sure what an "unstated tonic" is but I do know one can "imply" a chord in 2-part counterpoint. Is that what you mean?


No, he's talking about harmonic progression, and trying desperately to keep truly chromatic (modern) thinking in the straight-jacket confines of simple diatonicism, especially in light of the fact that Wagner's chromatic excursions defy Schenker, and other forms of harmonic analysis which require a tonic (a real tonic, that makes sounds) as part of the deal.

Harmonic analysis, BTW, arose concurrently when musical education became institutionalized in conservatories, and classical tonality, with all its Roman numerals became canonized and began to congeal. As an academic, Woodduck is compelled to reject all else as heresy, for his own survival as a pedagogue.

The very idea of Wagner simply "thinking chromatically" outside the bounds of academic diatonicism gives Woodduck the heebie-jeebies.

The only justification of this $1600 textbook is to justify Wagner diatonically, to counter the growing perception that Wagner (God forbid) foreshadowed modernism and (eek!) Schoenberg's abandonment of Woodduck's precious diatonic system, and - oh, yes - that one can think chromatically.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> No, he's talking about harmonic progression, and trying desperately to keep truly chromatic (modern) thinking in the straight-jacket confines of simple diatonicism, especially in light of the fact that Wagner's chromatic excursions defy Schenker, and other forms of harmonic analysis which require a tonic (a real tonic, that makes sounds) as part of the deal.
> 
> Harmonic analysis, BTW, arose concurrently when musical education became institutionalized in conservatories, and classical tonality, with all its Roman numerals became canonized and began to congeal. As an academic, Woodduck is compelled to reject all else as heresy, for his own survival as a pedagogue.
> 
> The very idea of Wagner simply "thinking chromatically" outside the bounds of academic diatonicism gives Woodduck the heebie-jeebies.
> 
> The only justification of this $1600 textbook is to justify Wagner diatonically, to counter the growing perception that Wagner (God forbid) foreshadowed modernism and (eek!) Schoenberg's abandonment of Woodduck's precious diatonic system, and - oh, yes - that one can think chromatically.


Don't tell TalkingHead what I'm saying and doing. I can do that myself. You get into enough trouble speaking for yourself.


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## Woodduck

TalkingHead said:


> Not sure what an "unstated tonic" is but I do know one can "imply" a chord in 2-part counterpoint. Is that what you mean?


It's really simple in principle. I could write an entire piece of music in, say, Bb major, and never sound a Bb major triad, yet the harmonic functions present would indicate the unstated tonic that gives meaning to the rest.


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## Guest

millionrainbows said:


> No, he's talking about harmonic progression, and trying desperately to keep truly chromatic (modern) thinking in the straight-jacket confines of simple diatonicism, especially in light of the fact that Wagner's chromatic excursions defy Schenker, and other forms of harmonic analysis which require a tonic (a real tonic, that makes sounds) as part of the deal.
> 
> Harmonic analysis, BTW, arose concurrently when musical education became institutionalized in conservatories, and classical tonality, with all its Roman numerals became canonized and began to congeal. As an academic, Woodduck is compelled to reject all else as heresy, for his own survival as a pedagogue.
> 
> The very idea of Wagner simply "thinking chromatically" outside the bounds of academic diatonicism gives Woodduck the heebie-jeebies.
> 
> The only justification of this $1600 textbook is to justify Wagner diatonically, to counter the growing perception that Wagner (God forbid) foreshadowed modernism and (eek!) Schoenberg's abandonment of Woodduck's precious diatonic system, and - oh, yes - that one can think chromatically.


Ah, I see. I didn't understand that this is part of a long-standing polemic between you and Woodduck.
I have to say at this juncture that I agree with Woodduck that one can more or less "analyse" his music diatonically, or relate it diatonically, even though it is not always possible to "anchor" it in Schenkerian terms..
As to the rise in Roman numerals, it always existed anyway (kind of) in figured bass: what a Baroque composer (or continuo player) would have figured as +4 simply translates later as V4/2 or V7D (if you will). The point I'm trying to make is that one notational convention (+4) was supplanted by another (V7D).
Otherwise, I don't see the problem in perceiving Wagner (or Bruckner, or Mahler) as foreshadowing modernism.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Don't tell TalkingHead what I'm saying and doing. I can do that myself. You get into enough trouble speaking for yourself.


He deserves a clear explanation. Anyway, the info I provided about your attitude has already been confirmed by you as being correct, since you have rejected all geometric/chromatic space methods of modeling, and I know you don't want Wagner to be portrayed as a chromatic thinker. *Isn't that right, Woodduck? You've already confirmed this!
*


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> It's really simple in principle. I could write an entire piece of music in, say, Bb major, and never sound a Bb major triad, yet the harmonic functions present would indicate the unstated tonic that gives meaning to the rest.


That's a much simpler example than Wagner's use of diminished and half-diminished chord voice leadings, which can have at least four possible choices.


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## millionrainbows

TalkingHead said:


> Ah, I see. I didn't understand that this is part of a long-standing polemic between you and Woodduck.


It's bigger than that; it's a polemic between simple diatonic thinking and chromatic thinking.



> I have to say at this juncture that I agree with Woodduck that one can more or less "analyse" his music diatonically, or relate it diatonically, even though it is not always possible to "anchor" it in Schenkerian terms.


No, you cannot analyze all of Wagner in terms of Schernkerian analysis, because Schenkerian analysis requires a REAL tonic, *which cannot be considered if it does not exist.

*One can more or less (I'd say "less") "analyse" (yes, in quotes) his music diatonically, or relate it diatonically, if one is a "believer" in diatonicism. But the fact is, Wagner is thinking chromatically.


> As to the rise in Roman numerals, it always existed anyway (kind of) in figured bass: what a Baroque composer (or continuo player) would have figured as +4 simply translates later as V4/2 or V7D (if you will). The point I'm trying to make is that one notational convention (+4) was supplanted by another (V7D).


_When_ this happened is not crucial. In your example, it's all diatonic anyway.



> Otherwise, I don't see the problem in perceiving Wagner (or Bruckner, or Mahler) as foreshadowing modernism.


I don't either; but Woodduck's rejection of all geometric modeling methods relating to chromatic pitch-space is conservative and outmoded. He still wants to see intervals not as quantities in pitch-space (that's too modern, like serialism; he likes the old Church-method), but as identities within key areas. How quaint.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> He deserves a clear explanation. Anyway, the info I provided about your attitude has already been confirmed by you as being correct, since you have rejected all geometric/chromatic space methods of modeling, and I know you don't want Wagner to be portrayed as a chromatic thinker. *Isn't that right, Woodduck? You've already confirmed this!
> *


People who *yell* lose credibility. And no, I haven't confirmed that, except inside your apparently overheated cranium.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> That's a much simpler example than Wagner's use of diminished and half-diminished chord voice leadings, which can have at least four possible choices.


There are multiple choices in the abstract - _in isolation_. But we don't analyze music a chord at a time. Wagner makes but one choice each time, according to the tonal direction in which he wants to go.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> It's bigger than that; it's a polemic between simple diatonic thinking and chromatic thinking.


No it isn't. Diatonic and chromatic thinking are not mutually exclusive. The first can, and in Wagner does, give meaning to the second.

That Wagner "thinks chromatically" doesn't mean that he either eschews or loses track of the tonal implications of what he's writing. His chromaticism, like chromaticism in earlier music, serves expressive purposes, and often his purposes require that tonal orientation remain suspended or ambiguous for a certain length of time. The effect of that ambiguity depends crucially on tonal expectations set up and maintained by reference to known tonal relations, whether or not these are made explicit. He isn't sailing without a rudder or a sextant.

Pure "chromatic thinking" would land us in atonality. Wagner's way of moving rapidly, by means of chromatic voice leading, from tonal area to tonal area through other tonal areas more or less glancingly hinted at, is not atonality, and the listener's diatonically-trained expectations are as important in understanding it - grasping its expressive value and its sense of logical progression - as they are in understanding Beethoven. Wagner reminds us of this frequently by changing key signatures and by erecting clear signposts in the form of plain diatonic cadences. By this means he creates the long arcs of oscillating tension/resolution of which his works are built.

I'm frankly indifferent to what system of visual symbols anyone might use to describe Wagner's harmonic structures. I recognize that Roman numerals were not created to describe chromatic passing chords traversing alien key areas. But any system of analysis that doesn't identify the music's tonal guideposts and implications will not describe Wagner's procedures accurately. Music is meant to be heard; analysis comes later, if it must, and to be of any value it has to confirm what is understood by listening.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Woodduck's rejection of all geometric modeling methods relating to chromatic pitch-space...


Gosh... Venture a few critical remarks about a superfluous little game called "Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro" and this is the kind of thing they start to say about you...

Please don't tell my mother that I've rejected all geometric modeling methods relating to chromatic pitch-space. She's ninety-two and has high blood pressure.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Gosh... Venture a few critical remarks about a superfluous little game called "Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro" and this is the kind of thing they start to say about you...
> 
> Please don't tell my mother that I've rejected all geometric modeling methods relating to chromatic pitch-space. She's ninety-two and has high blood pressure.


Having second thoughts, eh?


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## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> It's bigger than that; it's a polemic between simple diatonic thinking and chromatic thinking.
> 
> No, you cannot analyze all of Wagner in terms of Schernkerian analysis, because Schenkerian analysis requires a REAL tonic, *which cannot be considered if it does not exist.
> 
> *One can more or less (I'd say "less") "analyse" (yes, in quotes) his music diatonically, or relate it diatonically, if one is a "believer" in diatonicism. But the fact is, Wagner is thinking chromatically.
> 
> _When_ this happened is not crucial. In your example, it's all diatonic anyway.
> 
> I don't either; but Woodduck's rejection of all geometric modeling methods relating to chromatic pitch-space is conservative and outmoded. He still wants to see intervals not as quantities in pitch-space (that's too modern, like serialism; he likes the old Church-method), but as identities within key areas. How quaint.


What you have written above is, in music theoretic terms, nonsense. Believer in diatonicism? That is a category no one with training would use. "Quantities in pitch space?" What is that supposed to mean? "the old Church method?" This connects to nothing in reality, or at least nothing remotely related to any of the music under discussion. It doesn't sound like you know any Schenkerians or that you have studied Schenkerian analysis either. They graph nonexistent or implied tonics. "A polemic between simple diatonic thinking and chromatic thinking?" This is a complete mischaracterization of the discussion. Who do you think you're fooling with this pseudo-theoretical word salad?


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## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> Believer in diatonicism? That is a category no one with training would use.


Yes, diatonic thinking vs. chromatic thinking. Of course, no one with training in a conservatory even knows what chromatic thinking is. They've already been brainwashed into diatonic thinking. This is invisible to you, though, since you've never thought outside the box. You're like a goldfish who is unaware that he is in a bowl of water.



> "Quantities in pitch space?" What is that supposed to mean?


Apparently you do not understand the concepts of "pitch identity" and "pitch quantity." See my blog. A key theoretical concept is that of "tonal space."



> "the old Church method?"


i.e., diatonic



> This connects to nothing in reality, or at least nothing remotely related to any of the music under discussion.


Yes it does, but apparently your trained mind can't grasp it.



> It doesn't sound like you know any Schenkerians or that you have studied Schenkerian analysis either. They graph nonexistent or implied tonics.


*"Implied tonics?" What is that supposed to mean? There is not even a WIK entry on "implied tonics" because this is such a nebulous concept.
*


> "A polemic between simple diatonic thinking and chromatic thinking?" This is a complete mischaracterization of the discussion. Who do you think you're fooling with this pseudo-theoretical word salad?


That's Woodduck's ultimate goal: to have Wagner seen as a tonal thinker, thus avoiding the association with the chromatic dissipation of tonality and diatonicism.

How long do you think you can go with these obsolete ideas of diatonic tonality?


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## Roger Knox

I was heavily involved in the academic music theory scene in the late-1970's and 80's as a grad student (MM theory, Indiana; PhD composition, Eastman), then theory lecturer. My advanced studies included motivic, Schenkerian, pitch-class set, serial, and modal analysis along with single-period and -genre studies. Now semi-retired, I listen, sing and write about music, no longer in an academic context. I was fortunate to have a course with expert Wagner musicologist Robert Bailey in which he lectured on _Tristan and Isolde_ and _Die Meistersinger_. Here are some non-technically-worded points I'd like to make about the music theory aspects of numerous, sometimes-complicated issues raised above:

1. References to "Wagner" should specify "Tristan ..." if the topic is "chromatic dissipation of tonality and diatonicism." For dramatic reasons Wagner extended tonality in this work much more than in his earlier or later operas. From Robert Bailey's class I am convinced that Tristan is a tonal work but in analysis some concepts from diatonic harmony should be dropped.
2. The commonly-accepted idea that Tristan led to a crisis in tonality is based on analyses (1) stressing the ambiguous effect created by persistent use of certain chords that can move this way or that; and (2) sometimes stressing the significance of voice-leading - the "horizontal" motion in each line - over "vertical" chord structures and resulting progressions. No. 1 is self-evident; no. 2 is subtle and open to interpretation in my view.
3. Schenkerian analysis is about tonal music (for the orthodox, up to Brahms; I think expanding the boundaries can be useful, but carrying it into atonal music is not).
4. Tonal music that is chromatic, and atonal music that is chromatic, are two different things. Hard-fought battles were waged between them in the early-mid twentieth century. Implying there is a sort of logical movement from one to the other is in my opinion wrong.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> "Implied tonics?" What is that supposed to mean? There is not even a WIK entry on "implied tonics" because this is such a nebulous concept.
> 
> That's Woodduck's ultimate goal: to have Wagner seen as a tonal thinker, thus avoiding the association with the chromatic dissipation of tonality and diatonicism.


There's nothing nebulous about the concept of an implied tonic. I cited the well-known example of Schumann's wonderful C-Major Piano Fantasy, which begins on the dominant of its key and refuses to give us a tonic chord or cadence during its first five minutes, and then just when we might think we're about to get one, switches over to c-minor. We don't hear a decisive cadence in the work's primary key until about eleven minutes in.

Look and listen: 




As for Woodduck's "ultimate goal," I doubt that I have one. My objective here (now that we appear to have left the OP behind) is to state that Wagner was indeed a tonal thinker and a manipulator of tonality of the most astonishing prowess - that his imaginative exploitation of chromatic harmony is fundamentally an expansion, rather than a rejection, of tonality. The rejection of tonality was Schoenberg's job, not Wagner's; Schoenberg was explicit about wanting to prevent the sense of tonal gravitation from arising in the listener (though he didn't always do so even in nominally 12-tone works), while Wagner relied constantly on that sense to give meaning to what he was writing, including passages in which the pull of tonal gravitation is attenuated, ambiguous, or even (rarely) completely suspended.

Wagner said, while composing the third act of _Parsifal_ (his most extreme work harmonically), that he felt as if he were reinventing music. He knew he was stretching the possibilities of tonality. But he was still relying on it to create the subtle, anguished tensions this music exhibits:


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## Roger Knox

Woodduck said:


> ... Wagner was indeed a tonal thinker and a manipulator of tonality of the most astonishing prowess - that his imaginative exploitation of chromatic harmony is fundamentally an expansion, rather than a rejection, of tonality. The rejection of tonality was Schoenberg's job, not Wagner's; Schoenberg was explicit about wanting to prevent the sense of tonal gravitation from arising in the listener (though he didn't always do so even in nominally 12-tone works), while Wagner relied constantly on that sense to give meaning to what he was writing, including passages in which the pull of tonal gravitation is attenuated, ambiguous, or even (rarely) completely suspended.


Yes I agree with your comments about Wagner and tonality; also, thanks for bringing up the example of _Parsifal_, Act 3 especially the Prelude. I saw the live streaming of the Gatti-conducted 2013 Met production on the wide screen and it was extraordinarily moving.

Personally, I find some atonal and serial compositions excellent and they have influenced my composing. Certainly I did my share of row tables and pitch-class set analyses. After over 50 years in the music field just don't find the concepts (and they are old now) as productive as I used to.


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## Woodduck

Roger Knox said:


> Yes I agree with your comments about Wagner and tonality; also, thanks for bringing up the example of _Parsifal_, Act 3 especially the Prelude. I saw the live streaming of the Gatti-conducted 2013 Met production on the wide screen and it was extraordinarily moving.
> 
> Personally, I find some atonal and serial compositions excellent and they have influenced my composing. Certainly I did my share of row tables and pitch-class set analyses. After over 50 years in the music field just don't find the concepts (and they are old now) as productive as I used to.


Thanks. It's good to hear from another person with nuts-and-bolts musical experience concerning the issues raised in this conversation. :tiphat:


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> There's nothing nebulous about the concept of an implied tonic. I cited the well-known example of Schumann's wonderful C-Major Piano Fantasy, which begins on the dominant of its key and refuses to give us a tonic chord or cadence during its first five minutes, and then just when we might think we're about to get one, switches over to c-minor. We don't hear a decisive cadence in the work's primary key until about eleven minutes in.


If it eventually goes to C minor, that's still a C tonic, and it could be explained as a 'borrowing" from C minor. It's not implied.



> The rejection of tonality was Schoenberg's job, not Wagner's; Schoenberg was explicit about wanting to prevent the sense of tonal gravitation from arising in the listener (though he didn't always do so even in nominally 12-tone works), while Wagner relied constantly on that sense to give meaning to what he was writing, including passages in which the pull of tonal gravitation is attenuated, ambiguous, or even (rarely) completely suspended.


I never said that Wagner rejected tonality; I said his music in Tristan is better thought of as chromatic, not diatonic, and not referenced to diatonicism, but free chromatic thinking.



> Wagner said, while composing the third act of _Parsifal_ (his most extreme work harmonically), that he felt as if he were reinventing music. He knew he was stretching the possibilities of tonality. But he was still relying on it to create the subtle, anguished tensions this music exhibits:


When music loses its tonality to the degree it becomes ambiguous, it's better to consider voice leading in terms of pitch/interval quantity rather than identity/tonic.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> If it eventually goes to C minor, that's still a C tonic, and it could be explained as a 'borrowing" from C minor. It's not implied.
> 
> I never said that Wagner rejected tonality; I said his music in Tristan is better thought of as chromatic, not diatonic, and not referenced to diatonicism, but free chromatic thinking.
> 
> When music loses its tonality to the degree it becomes ambiguous, it's better to consider voice leading in terms of pitch/interval quantity rather than identity/tonic.


Ugh. Let me attempt a definition:

_An __*implied tonic*__ is a tonal center which is not stated/heard, but which is deducible from what __is_ _stated/heard._

Schumann, in his Piano fantasy in C Major, is _implying_ the tonality of C Major during much of the ten minutes of music preceding an actual statement of the tonic chord. Even if he had never cadenced in the tonic, the tonality of C Major would still be _implied_ in the opening section of the piece. The excursion into c minor is irrelevant to the establishment of C Major as the key of the piece; that key was already present, though its tonic was unstated, in the preceding section. A tonic did not need to be "borrowed" from c minor, a bizarre notion (especially bizarre in requiring a "borrowing" from something not yet heard).

Yes, much of the music of _Tristan_ should be thought of as chromatic. That's rather obvious. But you've been referring to "chromatic thinking" and "diatonic thinking" in a mutually exclusive way. Just what are you calling "diatonic thinking"? Is it just something we get if we stick to the white keys in C Major? If it is, then not even Haydn was a "diatonic thinker." I've tried to describe what Wagner's harmony actually does, not put labels on it. If you can show where that description is incorrect, or offer a better description, please do so. Don't just throw around theoretical jargon as if it were a mark of superior perception.

You say that you've not stated that Wagner rejected - or lost - tonality. But you certainly seem anxious to talk about him as if he had. To say "when music loses its tonality to the degree it becomes ambiguous..." is odd, in that harmonic ambiguities in tonal music don't normally suggest what I would call a "loss of tonality." In fact, if there is no tonality, there can be no ambiguity - i.e., no uncertainty about tonal direction. If we're listening to tonal music, we expect it to continue to make tonal sense, and if a cadence lands us on a diminished seventh, we are unlikely to feel that the music has "lost its tonality"; we may feel suspense in consideration of what will come next, but we don't fear that tonality has somehow disappeared (unless the composer does something to create that expectation - but even then we will probably be expecting some sort of tonal resolution). To apply this to the present case: does Wagner's music lose its sense of harmonic direction in such a way as to make us fear think that it's "losing its tonality"? In my experience as a listener, it doesn't, and I believe that the reason is simply that the composer is ever in command of tonal relationships and of how he is manipulating them - that he is in control of the tonal schemes underlying his chromatic progressions - and that he is using our tonal expectations to convince us that the music is going where it ought to go. To debate whether he is "thinking diatonically" or "thinking chromatically" is to erect a dichotomy, a false choice; the music itself is more chromatic at one moment, more diatonic at another, but Wagner's sense of tonal construction marries the two in a dynamic modulatory flow which never hesitates with uncertainty but moves with a sense of inevitability throughout the range of tonal possibilities, realizing those possibilities both explicitly and implicitly (see "implied tonic" above). "Chromatic thinking" unmoored from the fundamental diatonic relationships of the tonal system which Wagner inherited and thought in terms of, could never have allowed him to create such vast musical/dramatic structures of such sustained dramatic tension and power. It's quite remarkable to find, behind Wagner's intricate chromatic curtain and woven into its fabric, the old dominant-to-tonic yearning, exerting over and over again its primal power.

You've said to me, "My advice to you is that you need to start thinking more chromatically, especially if you're going to expound on Wagner." You've accused me of "trying desperately to keep truly chromatic (modern) thinking in the straight-jacket confines of simple diatonicism" and remarked, about a book you haven't read, that "the only justification of this $1600 textbook is to justify Wagner diatonically, to counter the growing perception that Wagner (God forbid) foreshadowed modernism and (eek!) Schoenberg's abandonment of Woodduck's precious diatonic system, and - oh, yes - that one can think chromatically."

If you were busy making a more coherent case for your own positions you wouldn't have to make such absurd and presumptuous statements about others to justify yourself.


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## millionrainbows

From _A Geometry of Music_ by Dmitri Tymoczko: 
_Tristan demonstrates that Wagner makes use of the eight most efficient resolutions, exploiting all of the shortest pathways between half-diminished and dominant seventh chords. *This suggests that the fundamental logic of the opera is a contrapuntal logic. *Wagner demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of four-dimensional chord space, utilizing all the most efficient voice-leading possibilities from half-diminished to dominant seventh, substituting one half-diminished chord for another, moving between chords by way of their chromatic intermediaries, reusing the same basic contrapuntal schema with different sonorities, and even reproducing the open-ended quasi-sequences of Chopin's E minor prelude. *Chromaticism here starts to achieve an impressive degree of autonomy; loosening itself from functional tonality, it becomes an independent force with its own distinctive logic.*_


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## Woodduck

At last something relatively specific. Two cheers - though only two, since stuff like "the fundamental logic of the opera is a contrapuntal logic" and "a sophisticated understanding of four-dimensional chord space" has me reaching for the smelling salts.

That aside, Wagner does indeed resolve half-diminished and diminished chords into one another with great resourcefulness, and his chromatic voice leading does indeed result in active contrapuntal textures. This of course does not answer the question - is it still a question? - of whether these features generally rely upon, are guided by, and/or incorporate basic tonal relationships. Wagner's harmony, even at its most chromatically unstable, is still based on triads, the roots of which are still felt constantly to be present, moving about and creating kaleidoscopic tonal shifts, the tonalities often barely hinted at but still fleetingly present. Not infrequently we feel the presence of more than one tonal center simultaneously, a characteristic effect of half-diminished chords (and undoubtedly a primary reason for using them).

I have no problem with calling the prominent use of this sort of harmony "chromatic thinking," but I must insist on the importance of the fact that its full effect and meaning rely upon the listener's diatonically trained tonal sense; we're expected to feel the reference to and/or passage through tonal areas which are not spelled out but are implicit (in the exact way that C Major is implicit in the opening section of the Schumann Piano Fantasy). I have often sat at the piano with the score of _Tristan_ or _Parsifal_, playing certain passages over and over simply to savor the magic of getting from one place to a seemingly remote place by passing through these unstated tonal areas, each chromatic change of a note in an inner voice evoking a tonality which dissolves immediately into another, onward until a cadence on a major or minor triad announces a stable key. These harmonic journeys are not meanders; they're tightly controlled all the way through a careful weighting of tonal tensions. We never doubt that the driver knows where he's going and can get us there.

Because such passages of tonal ambivalence and flux are "signatures" of Wagner's mature style, it's easy to forget just how often those unambiguous cadences occur - how often he writes straightforward diatonic harmony - even in his more chromatic scores. We are rarely left tonally uncertain for long; even the famous Tristan chord is an ambiguous shape-shifter only when it first strikes our ear, before it assumes, with one chromatic alteration, its role as an augmented sixth which moves conventionally into the dominant of the music's key area of A Minor/C Major. It's true that we don't hear lengthy passages of explicit A Minor or C Major in the prelude, but at key structural points we do hear them, or harmonies closely related to them. No one who knows this score can fail to see the strength of its chromaticism's diatonic underpinnings, and this is not an exceptional case in Wagner's music: the tonal cohesion of it is one of the things that make Wagner a greater composer than, say, Delius, whose incessant chromatic dissolution has all the tensile strength of melting candle wax, or Reger, whose tangled "chromatic thinking" is apt to chart a bumpy road from nowhere to nowhere.


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## Haydn70

I don't want to knock this thread off course but the discussion in the previous two posts re: Wagner, _Tristan_, chord resolutions, tonal ambivalence, etc., brought this passage from the book _Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds; A Conversation with Elliott Carter_ to mind. (This doesn't address the issue of contrapuntal logic, but I hope you guys don't mind.):

"Clearly _Tristan _must have involved a terrific operation of the intellect in terms of deciding what are the norms of the piece. In a certain sense _Tristan _is involved entirely with the various resolutions of the augmented sixth chord, all of which had been used occasionally before-but never with such frequency that they formed one of the essential elements of a work. Indeed, from one pint of view, you could almost consider _Tristan _a "technical treatise" on this subject. In the course of working on it, I can imagine Wagner writing out all the possible surprising results you can get from resolving the dominant seventh and augmented sixth chords in their many enharmonic readings and then proceeding to find uses for them in the actual opera."

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.


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## Woodduck

ArsMusica said:


> I don't want to knock this thread off course but the discussion in the previous two posts re: Wagner, _Tristan_, chord resolutions, tonal ambivalence, etc., brought this passage from the book _Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds; A Conversation with Elliott Carter_ to mind. (This doesn't address the issue of contrapuntal logic, but I hope you guys don't mind.):
> 
> "Clearly _Tristan _must have involved a terrific operation of the intellect in terms of deciding what are the norms of the piece. In a certain sense _Tristan _is involved entirely with the various resolutions of the augmented sixth chord, all of which had been used occasionally before-but never with such frequency that they formed one of the essential elements of a work. Indeed, from one pint of view, you could almost consider _Tristan _a "technical treatise" on this subject. In the course of working on it, I can imagine Wagner writing out all the possible surprising results you can get from resolving the dominant seventh and augmented sixth chords in their many enharmonic readings and then proceeding to find uses for them in the actual opera."
> 
> We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.


Interesting. I assume that's Carter himself talking? I assume it because only a 20th-century serialist would imagine a 19th-century Romantic "writing out all the possible surprising results you can get from resolving the dominant seventh and augmented sixth chords in their many enharmonic readings and then proceeding to find uses for them."

I'm surprised he didn't accuse Wagner of using Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro.


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## Haydn70

Woodduck said:


> Interesting. I assume that's Carter himself talking? I assume it because only a 20th-century serialist would imagine a 19th-century Romantic "writing out all the possible surprising results you can get from resolving the dominant seventh and augmented sixth chords in their many enharmonic readings and then proceeding to find uses for them."
> 
> I'm surprised he didn't accuse Wagner of using Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro.


Yes, sorry I didn't make that clear; that was Carter talking.

And yes, I too got a kick (albeit a negative one) out of Carter discussing _Tristan _in such a clinical, sterile, serialist, eggheaded fashion. I should have included the next sentence:

"Thus this piece could be considered a kind of a game dealing with this particular musical problem, and hence it is based on a particular set of norms and expectations that are not clear until you know the piece rather well."

"Dr. Carter, please report to surgery, your next patient is ready..."


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## Roger Knox

Yes that was one aspect of Robert Bailey's analysis of Tristan using classical harmony. It's pretty
straightforward and I'll make an attempt here to explain it, although it's hardly rocket science music theory. You may begin with the tonic note C, assume all chords of the keys of C major and C minor are available, and that in a progression a chord from one can substitute for the other providing that voice-leading rules are preserved. So, the _dominant seventh chord_ (V7 or G7; GBDF) can resolve as follows:

Regular resolution: V7-I (C major); V7-i (c minor)
Deceptive resolution: V7-vi (a minor); V7-VI (Ab major)
Suspended resolution: V7-IV6 (F major, 1st inversion); V7-iv6 (f minor, 1st inversion)

The are other possibilities such as resolution to a different dominant seventh chord resolving in the different key.

Enharmonic alteration of the seventh produces the _German augmented sixth chord_ GBDE# which resolves as follows:

Key of B major/minor on bVI: Gn6-V (F# major) OR
Key of F# major/minor on bII: Gn6-V (F# major)

Key of B major/minor on bVI: Gn6-I 6/4-V (B major-F# major) OR
Key of F# major/minor on bII: Gn6-i 6/4-V (B minor-F# major)

Many different chords, and from there many different keys are available progressing from that one G7 chord. So Carter says, and really everyone since _Tristan_ at least has had these options. No big deal here. Except that, starting from chromatic inflections or enharmonic equivalents of chords in _diatonic_ harmony, we've reached a systematic, structural use of _chromatic_ harmony. But all of this is old hat.

What Dmitri Tymoczko is talking about in _A Geography of Music_ is different. All his remarks about voice leading refer to something different, the motion of the half-diminished chord TO the dominant seventh. With a cue from Schoenberg he attends to the exhaustive use of voice-leading possibilities, which is diagrammed effectively. And from there the whole movement historically from chromatic tonality to atonality and 12-tone music has a theoretical boost. A professor at Princeton University, Tymoczko's work has attracted a lot of attention and I wouldn't begin to comment on it without reading the book or a reliable summary of it.

2 conclusions: (1) I think Woodduck is taking an affective- and cognitive-based position on the linkage presented of Wagner to Schoenberg, one that takes into account the responses of performers and listeners. Even with the theoretical link of Wagner's chromatic tonality to Schoenberg, how do we explain their vastly different effects on us? We MUST consider the implications and realizations, or otherwise, of chords and chord progressions on our sense of tonality, and on mood for that matter, using concepts from traditional harmony. Voice-leading makes chord connection possible, but is it really such a big deal in affective terms? 
(2) Maybe I'm wrong but to me Tymozcko's theory is too advanced and complex to satisfactorily carry on a debate here with people who haven't studied it. Probably young musicians and scholars have a better grasp of it than I do with my music theory education having ended over 30 years.


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## Woodduck

Roger Knox said:


> What Dmitri Tymoczko is talking about in _A Geography of Music_ is different. All his remarks about voice leading refer to something different, the motion of the half-diminished chord TO the dominant seventh. With a cue from Schoenberg he attends to the exhaustive use of voice-leading possibilities, which is diagrammed effectively. *And from there the whole movement historically from chromatic tonality to atonality and 12-tone music has a theoretical boost. *
> 
> I think *Woodduck is taking an affective- and cognitive-based position on the linkage presented of Wagner to Schoenberg, one that takes into account the responses of performers and listeners. Even with the theoretical link of Wagner's chromatic tonality to Schoenberg, how do we explain their vastly different effects on us? We MUST consider the implications and realizations, or otherwise, of chords and chord progressions on our sense of tonality, and on mood for that matter, using concepts from traditional harmony. *Voice-leading makes chord connection possible, but is it really such a big deal in affective terms?


You know me so well! :lol:

Not being a scientist or an academic by temperament or occupation, I take a very empirical, sensual approach to analyzing music. I always rely on what I hear and feel. I know some theory but haven't sat down to analyze music using any system or its associated terminolgy in many years. When I talk about tonality in Wagner I do so out of direct aural perception exercised over many years of acquaintance with the music. The experienced ear is the ultimate guide.

I've always held that there is a distinct and audible break between the extended tonality of Wagner and the atonality of Schoenberg, despite isolated moments in both that might suggest a continuity. I do not buy the notion that all that was required for the transition to atonality was an increasing density of chromaticism, or that "music" was inevitably moving toward the final obliteration of tonality as a result of increasing chromaticism. The move to genuine atonality required not only that more notes be in play, but that certain ways of using them be forbidden. Schoenberg confirms this when he explicitly recommends banning certain harmonic entities and procedures on grounds of preventing the emergence of tonal centers in the perception of the listener. Allowing that to happen would undermine the whole project.

The most obvious difference between Wagner's harmony and Schoenberg's, requiring no special training to perceive, is the fact that the former is persistently triadic. This has the effect of constantly doing what Schoenberg was at pains to avoid doing: suggesting tonal centers. This occurs even in the densest, most unstable chromatic passages: the rapid movement of fleetingly perceived tonalities is often sufficient to prevent any sense of actual modulation to a key; in fact, the frequent use of diminished and half-diminished chords can suggest the simultaneous presence of more than one key, since these chords consist of overlapping or interlocking triads which can be felt as having different roots depending on their context - multiple identities which allow them to belong to and move to different tonal areas. But in Wagner ambiguity does not engender chaos or confusion; there is always the feeling that we have come from somewhere and are going somewhere; we feel ourselves being transported on a magic carpet through tonal regions where we are not permitted to dwell, but which are nonetheless real and which exert the dynamic pull on us which we recognize from our experience of music in which tonal centers are established unambiguously.

Tonality in Wagner is further established through carefully plotted schemas that give unity and direction to long passages and scenes. To a certain extent we can hear this happening, but much of the effect is subconscious, and ferreting out its technical aspects would take us into deeper studies of the scores. Such studies have presumably been done.


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## Larkenfield

In perhaps more simple terms with regard to its effects, I believe the power and fascination of the _Tristan_ chord is that no one exactly knows what key the Prelude is in when it begins and that through its chromaticism the music continues to rise, inch up, and progress harmonically-sustained seemingly indefinitely with drama, tension, anticipation, and suspense-without having to return to the tonic. It's the journey away from home without knowing when the return will take place. There's the sense that its chromatic rising progressions could go on forever and never land. It would be relatively easy to relate the long journey of its return to the tonic to the next evolution in music with Schoenberg and his never having a tonic at all. The _Tristan_ chord is the start of an epic journey in sound... something that is about to build and eventually end in a grand climax of heat, passion and emotion of epic proportions. The entire Prelude is full of that kind of prolonged harmonic tension and suspense... something related to desire that longs to be satisfied.






Sometimes it helps to see the long chromatic harmonic risings in the score:


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## millionrainbows

I take a much simpler, elegant approach. If it's not analyzable harmonically, it's not subject to harmonic analysis. Harmonic analysis is based on chords built on scale steps, which is very diatonic.

The "diminished seventh" chord itself, supposedly built on the vii degree, is not really that at all: it's to be considered an incomplete G7 dominant (B-D-F), and should be resolved as that by assuming a G root, according to two respected sources: Walter Piston's _Harmony_ and Schoenberg's _Harmonielehre. _

The "diminished seventh" is not really a chord at all, with its unstable tritone; it just reveals a glitch in the harmonic system, and is really the result of contrapuntal voice-leading.

The diminished seventh, with its tritone B-F, reveals the inherent instability of the C major scale, which was designed for "travel" out of the key, not to ultimately reinforce the key suggested by the scale. The diatonic C major scale, the chosen scale for most of our music,_ is also inherently unstable as far as being "totally tonal." It's built for movement, for unrest._

The interval C-F is a fourth; if we hear this as "root on top," then F Major (complete with leading tone E-F) is established, subordinating C, supposedly the "home" key. All this is due to the fact of the tritone F-B in the C major scale. 
In this light, we can see the truth of George Russell's assertion that _*the Lydian scale is "more tonal" if one wants to establish the scale root as the key. 
*
The F lydian scale cycles through all 7 in perfect fifths before it circles back around to F, its key note: F-C-G-D-A-E-B (F). _This is also why _piano tuners start on F and tune by fifths.

If we try to "stack fifths" starting on C, we get C-G-D-A-E-B-*(F#?)*. It doesn't work for a C major scale, as it has an *"F." *_

When all the notes of a C major scale are sustained by ascending fifths, C-G-D-A-E-B, _*the consonance of perfect fifths falls apart when the clunker "F" is added on top.*
_
*The C major scale is structured so that there is a "leading tone" E-F (establishing F),* *as well as B-C (establishing C).*

Significantly, the C lydian scale has a leading tone F#-G *(establishing the more closely related V step of G) and B-C (establishing the scale key).*

I'm not criticizing the C major scale; it's perfectly suited for what it is used for: _to travel to other key areas due to its inherent __instability, the tritone B-F, which ultimately manifests as the diminished chord.

In other words, the C major diatonic scale was designed to travel to other key areas, thus being inherently unstable, thus fulfilling its "harmonic destiny:" the diminished chord and the unravelling of the tonal fabric.

Schoenberg can't be blamed for the dissolution of tonality; it is *inherent in the structure* of the major scale._


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## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> I take a much simpler, elegant approach. *If it's not analyzable harmonically, it's not subject to harmonic analysis.* Harmonic analysis is based on chords built on scale steps, which is very diatonic.


If you consider circular redundancy elegant. I consider it funny, just as Alice did.

"based on chords built on scale steps, which is very diatonic" - unless some of those scale steps support or are implicated in secondary dominants, secondary °7ths, and other chords which are chromatic.



millionrainbows said:


> The "diminished seventh" chord itself, supposedly built on the vii degree, is not really that at all: it's to be considered an incomplete G7 dominant (B-D-F), and should be resolved as that by assuming a G root, according to two respected sources: Walter Piston's _Harmony_ and Schoenberg's _Harmonielehre. _


Yes, one of your favorite fun facts which is often true and often not. If only you could tell the difference.



millionrainbows said:


> The "diminished seventh" is not really a chord at all, with its unstable tritone; *it just reveals a glitch in the harmonic system*, and is really the result of contrapuntal voice-leading.
> 
> The diminished seventh, with its tritone B-F, reveals the inherent instability of the C major scale, which was designed for "travel" out of the key, not to ultimately reinforce the key suggested by the scale. *The diatonic C major scale, the chosen scale for most of our music, is also inherently unstable as far as being "totally tonal." It's built for movement, for unrest.*


It's not a glitch, it's a feature, in fact a most important one.

It accommodates both rest and unrest, which is an amazingly simple and fundamental thing anyone pretending to understand theory should get. 



millionrainbows said:


> The interval C-F is a fourth; if we hear this as "root on top," then F Major (complete with leading tone E-F) is established, subordinating C, supposedly the "home" key. All this is due to the fact of the tritone F-B in the C major scale.


Nonsense. This does not in any way establish F major as the key.



millionrainbows said:


> In this light, we can see the truth of George Russell's assertion that _*the Lydian scale is "more tonal" if one wants to establish the scale root as the key.
> *_


_ 
A mistaken factoid invalidated by the whole history of Western music.

Okay, this is getting tiresome. I'll just jump to:



millionrainbows said:



In other words, the C major diatonic scale was designed to travel to other key areas, thus being inherently unstable, thus fulfilling its "harmonic destiny:" the diminished chord and the unravelling of the tonal fabric.

Schoenberg can't be blamed for the dissolution of tonality; it is *inherent in the structure* of the major scale.

Click to expand...

Designed? By whom? This is intelligent design nonsense applied to music historiography. The scale in its theoretical and musical significance evolved over more than a millennium. The tritone is what closes the system (or closed it depending on what historical period is under discussion)._


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## Woodduck

Larkenfield said:


> In perhaps more simple terms with regard to its effects, I believe the power and fascination of the _Tristan_ chord is that no one exactly knows what key the Prelude is in when it begins and that through its chromaticism the music continues to rise, inch up, and progress harmonically-sustained seemingly indefinitely with drama, tension, anticipation, and suspense-without having to return to the tonic. It's the journey away from home without knowing when the return will take place. There's the sense that its chromatic rising progressions could go on forever and never land. It would be relatively easy to relate the long journey of its return to the tonic to the next evolution in music with Schoenberg and his never having a tonic at all. The _Tristan_ chord is the start of an epic journey in sound... something that is about to build and eventually end in a grand climax of heat, passion and emotion of epic proportions. The entire Prelude is full of that kind of prolonged harmonic tension and suspense... something related to desire that longs to be satisfied.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sometimes it helps to see the long chromatic harmonic risings in the score:


Your description of the emotional effect of the _Tristan_ prelude surely accords with Wagner's intentions. In specific harmonic terms, though, it isn't the case that the primary key - A minor/C Major - is forgotten throughout most of the work's course. The first notes of the prelude on the cellos outline A minor, and although the first chord we hear seems remote, we immediately cadence on the dominant seventh of A minor, and the following restatements of the same material keep us in A minor's tonal orbit until the first real melody of the piece emerges in clear C Major. That melody is again in C Major the next time we hear it, and again in its final, powerful statement heading into the work's climactic bars, whereupon the music collapses into the "Tristan chord" on exactly the same pitches heard at the beginning of the prelude, resolves identically to the V7 of A minor, and recaps with slight variation the subsequent material. The final quiet bars of the prelude shade into C minor in preparation for Act 1 and the C minor song of the sailor.

Key relationships in Wagner tend to work on us subconsciously - we aren't supposed to notice them the way we do in Classical sonatas and such - but they are carefully plotted.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> The "diminished seventh" chord itself, supposedly built on the vii degree, is not really that at all: it's to be considered an incomplete G7 dominant (B-D-F), and should be resolved as that by assuming a G root, according to two respected sources: Walter Piston's Harmony and Schoenberg's Harmonielehre.
> 
> The "diminished seventh" is not really a chord at all, with its unstable tritone; it just reveals a glitch in the harmonic system, and is really the result of contrapuntal voice-leading.


A chord is just notes sounded simultaneously. How is a diminished seventh not a chord? And why must it be a "result of contrapuntal voice-leading"? In innumerable pieces of music it occurs without any counterpoint at all. It _can_ function as an "incomplete dominant," but it doesn't _have_ to.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Schoenberg can't be blamed for the dissolution of tonality; it is inherent in the structure of the major scale.


I can just hear Arnold protesting, when caught red-handed, "The Diabolus in Musica made me do it!"


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## millionrainbows

I take a much simpler, elegant approach. If it's not analyzable harmonically, it's not subject to harmonic analysis. Harmonic analysis is based on chords built on scale steps, which is very diatonic.

The "diminished seventh" chord itself, supposedly built on the vii degree, is not really that at all: it's to be considered an incomplete G7 dominant (B-D-F), and should be resolved as that by assuming a G root, according to two respected sources: Walter Piston's _Harmony and Schoenberg's Harmonielehre.

The "diminished seventh" is not really a chord at all, with its unstable tritone; it just reveals a glitch in the harmonic system, and is really the result of contrapuntal voice-leading.

The diminished seventh, with its tritone B-F, reveals the inherent instability of the C major scale, which was designed for "travel" out of the key, not to ultimately reinforce the key suggested by the scale. The diatonic C major scale, the chosen scale for most of our music, is also inherently unstable as far as being "totally tonal." It's built for movement, for unrest.

The interval C-F is a fourth; if we hear this as "root on top," then F Major (complete with leading tone E-F) is established, subordinating C, supposedly the "home" key. All this is due to the fact of the tritone F-B in the C major scale. 
In this light, we can see the truth of George Russell's assertion that *the Lydian scale is "more tonal" if one wants to establish the scale root as the key. 
*
The F lydian scale cycles through all 7 in perfect fifths before it circles back around to F, its key note: F-C-G-D-A-E-B (F). This is also why piano tuners start on F and tune by fifths.

If we try to "stack fifths" starting on C, we get C-G-D-A-E-B-*(F#?)*. It doesn't work for a C major scale, as it has an *"F." *

When all the notes of a C major scale are sustained by ascending fifths, C-G-D-A-E-B, *the consonance of perfect fifths falls apart when the clunker "F" is added on top.*

*The C major scale is structured so that there is a "leading tone" E-F (establishing F), as well as B-C (establishing C).

Significantly, the C lydian scale has a leading tone F#-G (establishing the more closely related V step of G) and B-C (establishing the scale key).

I'm not criticizing the C major scale; it's perfectly suited for what it is used for: to travel to other key areas due to its inherent instability, the tritone B-F, which ultimately manifests as the diminished chord.

In other words, the C major diatonic scale was designed to travel to other key areas, thus being inherently unstable, thus fulfilling its "harmonic destiny:" the diminished chord and the unravelling of the tonal fabric.

Schoenberg can't be blamed for the dissolution of tonality; it is inherent in the structure of the major scale.*_


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> If you disagree, state why. Otherwise, this is just another one of *your & Woodduck's empty invalidations, containing no discussion value. *From now on I'm reporting posts of this nature.


EB can speak for himself, but if you're going to "third-person" me again, I'm going to point out that my contributions to this thread are anything but "empty invalidations." What's empty is your evasive yet indignant non-defense of "Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro" as a tool of analysis or composition, and your ridiculing of other people's "outdated" and "academic" understanding of music.

Not wanting to be "invalidated" is problematic for one who makes statements as questionable as _"We know what counterpoint is. It's what was happening in the Gregorian chant days before they learned to think harmonically,"_ or _ "This is to demonstrate that geometric charts facilitate chromatic thinking, and bring geometric ideas which would not rise to consciousness when impeded by outdated, inflexible conceptions of diatonicism,"_ or _"Unstated tonics? This sounds as 'codswallopy' as some of the 'irrational' ideas you accuse me of,"_ or _"The diminished seventh chord itself, supposedly built on the vii degree, is not really that at all: it's to be considered an incomplete G7 dominant (B-D-F), and should be resolved as that by assuming a G root,"_ or _"the C major diatonic scale was designed to travel to other key areas, thus being inherently unstable, thus fulfilling its 'harmonic destiny:' the diminished chord and the unravelling of the tonal fabric."_

Not many people are going to come onto a music theory thread and attempt to deal with statements like these. I suspect you'd be happiest if no one would, and you could just lecture to your hearts content to an audience stunned into silence by your erudition.


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## Larkenfield

I've never seen any agreement on the technical analysis of the Tristan chord, only what it's designed to achieve. There is no final word:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_chordconsensus.


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## Woodduck

Larkenfield said:


> I've never seen any agreement on the technical analysis of the Tristan chord, only what it's designed to achieve. There is no final word: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_chordconsensus.


The situation is less desperate than it looks! Not all the theories are mutually exclusive, and if the chord is viewed in context - in terms of what precedes it, its resolution, and the subsequent repetitions of it - its tonal function and identity is not mysterious. The only reason it sounds mysterious when we first hear it is that its top note, G#, is a dissonant tone not prepared with sufficient context to be immediately identifiable, and it thus throws off our sense of key until the chord resolves. If that note were an A rather than the G# which constitutes an appoggiatura to it, our ears would immediately hear its identity with the opening note of the prelude (an A on the cellos, the keynote of the piece) and recognize the chord as an augmented sixth, functioning as the dominant of the dominant of A minor, to which it resolves in a perfectly ordinary way. While we note the ambiguous effect of the chord as it first sounds, we have no reason to complicate our understanding of its function by positing roots in alien keys or making "linear interpretations," as if the chord were just some sort of marvelous coincidence. Wagner's tonal plan in this prelude is precise and neither occult not accidental. I agree with Jacques Chailley:

"_Tristan_'s chromaticism, grounded in appoggiaturas and passing notes, technically and spiritually represents an apogee of tension. I have never been able to understand how the preposterous idea that _Tristan_ could be made the prototype of an atonality grounded in destruction of all tension could possibly have gained credence. This was an idea that was disseminated under the (hardly disinterested) authority of Schoenberg, to the point where Alban Berg could cite the Tristan Chord in the Lyric Suite, as a kind of homage to a precursor of atonality. *This curious conception could not have been made except as the consequence of a destruction of normal analytical reflexes leading to an* *artificial isolation of an aggregate in part made up of foreign notes, and to consider it-an abstraction out of context-as an organic whole. After this, it becomes easy to convince naive readers that such an aggregation escapes classification in terms of harmony textbooks.* [empasis mine]


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## Larkenfield

"I have never been able to understand how the preposterous idea that Tristan could be made the prototype of an atonality grounded in destruction of all tension could possibly have gained credence. This was an idea that was disseminated under the (hardly disinterested) authority of Schoenberg, to the point where Alban Berg could cite the Tristan Chord in the Lyric Suite, as a kind of homage to a precursor of atonality. " -Jacques Chailley

Interesting quote but I'm not inclined to agree... I believe that Chailley was mistaken: Tristan starts from a tonal uncertainty, an ambiguity, with the Prelude not being clear about the key that it's in, then progresses away from home base almost indefinitely and gives the impression that it might never return or is reluctant to return. I view that as a precursor to not having the necessity of a home base of tonality at all which would be the final step before Schoenberg's convulsive revolution in sound... that what Wagner did was only one step away from what Schoenberg did. It's like the difference between staying away from home for a year (Wagner) and staying away from home for an eternity (Schoenberg). Big difference!

The Tristan chord doesn't sound mysterious to me because it leaves a trail of harmonic bread crumbs that can be followed. I believe the chord's purpose is clear on how it creates emotional tension, expectation, and builds and builds and builds like what has never been heard in music before and that was remarkable. Its use in the Prelude gives the impression of stretching time almost indefinitely... Wagner changed music's relationship to time. But I find that the various technical explanations and analyses of the chord offer little satisfaction and the hearing of it is far more satisfying as something that can be felt.


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## Barbebleu

I'm thinking of starting a new thread called ' Decoding the thread called Decoding Beethoven.'

Man alive, you guys take your shibboleths seriously.

Some of the discussions make me think of the contract scene from A Night at the Opera. The party of the first part etc.

A diminished 7th chord is not a chord until such times as it is! Yay, that's cleared that up for me.

Keep it up though. Reading the posts has cheered me up immensely.


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## Woodduck

Larkenfield said:


> "I have never been able to understand how the preposterous idea that Tristan could be made the prototype of an atonality grounded in destruction of all tension could possibly have gained credence. This was an idea that was disseminated under the (hardly disinterested) authority of Schoenberg, to the point where Alban Berg could cite the Tristan Chord in the Lyric Suite, as a kind of homage to a precursor of atonality. " -Jacques Chailley
> 
> Interesting quote but I'm not inclined to agree... I believe that Chailley was mistaken: Tristan starts from a tonal uncertainty, an ambiguity, with the Prelude not being clear about the key that it's in, then progresses away from home base almost indefinitely and gives the impression that it might never return or is reluctant to return. I view that as a precursor to not having the necessity of a home base of tonality at all which would be the final step before Schoenberg's convulsive revolution in sound... that what Wagner did was only one step away from what Schoenberg did. It's like the difference between staying away from home for a year (Wagner) and staying away from home for an eternity (Schoenberg). Big difference!
> 
> The Tristan chord doesn't sound mysterious to me because it leaves a trail of harmonic bread crumbs that can be followed. I believe the chord's purpose is clear on how it creates emotional tension, expectation, and builds and builds and builds like what has never been heard in music before and that was remarkable. Its use in the Prelude gives the impression of stretching time almost indefinitely... Wagner changed music's relationship to time. But I find that the various technical explanations and analyses of the chord offer little satisfaction and the hearing of it is far more satisfying as something that can be felt.


Harmonic ambiguity was not new in 1859. Chromaticism was part of the language of musical expression for centuries, and no one ever imagined that it was a "precursor" to the abandonment of tonality. Your "staying away from home" analogy is flawed: the difference is not between staying away from home for a year and staying away from home for an eternity, but between staying away from home and _having no home to return to._

Technically, your description of the prelude is inaccurate; it doesn't move continuously away from its tonal home base, but remains within its home territory and comes back to its actual key center with each statement of the principal melody. But your description of its emotional effect -_ "the chord's purpose is clear on how it creates emotional tension, expectation, and builds and builds and builds like what has never been heard in music before and that was remarkable. Its use in the Prelude gives the impression of stretching time almost indefinitely... Wagner changed music's relationship to time."_ - is spot on. And what you describe is precisely what power of expression tonality makes possible, what its absence makes impossible, and what makes atonality a break from, not an evolution of, tonality. Schoenberg understood this perfectly - understood that tonal music's potential for long-range effects of tension and cohesion could not be realized once the gravitational pull of tonal centers was removed. To compensate for this loss was the whole rationale for the form-making technique of serialism. But of course, being Schoenberg, he had to rationalize his revolution by casting it as an evolution - by creating a theoretical justification for it, complete with a quasi-mystical (and at that time rather fashionable) conception of "historical necessity."

The enrichment of tonal harmony to accommodate more chromaticism may, either by choice or through incompetence, lead to a weakening of the perception of tonal gravitation. But that isn't what Wagner was up to. _Tristan_ in particular, and his work in general, is an expansion and an intensification of tonality that utilizes time "away from home" to make being away and coming home all the more poignant. The scores of _Tristan_ and _Parsifal_ confirm and affirm over and over again the inimitable powers of Western tonal harmony.


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## EdwardBast

Larkenfield said:


> "I have never been able to understand how the preposterous idea that Tristan could be made the prototype of an atonality grounded in destruction of all tension could possibly have gained credence. This was an idea that was disseminated under the (hardly disinterested) authority of Schoenberg, to the point where Alban Berg could cite the Tristan Chord in the Lyric Suite, as a kind of homage to a precursor of atonality. " -Jacques Chailley
> 
> *Interesting quote but I'm not inclined to agree... I believe that Chailley was mistaken: Tristan starts from a tonal uncertainty, an ambiguity, with the Prelude not being clear about the key that it's in,* then progresses away from home base almost indefinitely and gives the impression that it might never return or is reluctant to return. I view that as a precursor to not having the necessity of a home base of tonality at all which would be the final step before Schoenberg's convulsive revolution in sound... that what Wagner did was only one step away from what Schoenberg did. It's like the difference between staying away from home for a year (Wagner) and staying away from home for an eternity (Schoenberg). Big difference!
> 
> The Tristan chord doesn't sound mysterious to me because it leaves a trail of harmonic bread crumbs that can be followed. I believe the chord's purpose is clear on how it creates emotional tension, expectation, and builds and builds and builds like what has never been heard in music before and that was remarkable. Its use in the Prelude gives the impression of stretching time almost indefinitely... Wagner changed music's relationship to time. But I find that the various technical explanations and analyses of the chord offer little satisfaction and the hearing of it is far more satisfying as something that can be felt.


I think the key's perfectly clear. As Chailley notes: +6 chord followed by dominant in A minor. The G# appoggiatura mystifies it for a couple seconds. I too have always thought the Second Viennese and their acolytes latched onto this passage for "religious" reasons, because it made a satisfying origin myth for them. It's long past time to let the story die.

It is the very strength and clarity of the passage's tonal implications, underlined by the withholding of resolution, that makes the passage a perfect metaphor for longing.


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## JosefinaHW

EdwardBast said:


> I think the key's perfectly clear. As Chailley notes: +6 chord followed by dominant in A minor. The G# appoggiatura mystifies it for a a couple seconds. *I too have always thought the Second Viennese and their acolytes latched onto this passage for "religious" reasons, because it made a satisfying origin myth for them. It's long past time to let the story die*.


Greg would you mind explaining what you mean here. I don't mean the "religious" term. I mean what is the origin myth for them? I thought Schoenberg "just" wanted to explore/create another "language" for composing music.


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## Larkenfield

The opening melody of Tristan starting on the second bar is clearly chromatic. Notes in this chord progression are played with equal value and not as appoggiaturas, and that changes their harmonic function in a way that Chailley does not acknowledge or recognize ... All the notes are played as having equal value though of course not having equal length and the tonal ambiguity can be clearly heard:


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## Larkenfield

Jacques Chailley First Symphony, which of course has no sympathy or relationship with anything that Schoenberg did with regard to a revolutionary attitude toward tonality, so why should he understand him?





g


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## EdwardBast

JosefinaHW said:


> Greg would you mind explaining what you mean here. I don't mean the "religious" term. I mean what is the origin myth for them? I thought Schoenberg "just" wanted to explore/create another "language" for composing music.


I mean the desire to show that the path they were exploring was somehow foreordained by masters of the past, that they were the inevitable next step in an historical progression. Essentially: the implications of the Tristan Prelude foretold the inevitable move to atonality. Wagner was doing the same kind of thing when he interpreted Beethoven's 9th as foreshadowing his music drama. Schoenberg did something similar with Brahms when he wrote about Brahms the progressive. Any number of rock guitarists claiming the blessing of Hendrix.

I'm not sure the term origin myth is exactly right, but I hope you get what I mean: That narrative about the history of music that has the effect of anointing the myth-spinner.


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## Woodduck

Larkenfield said:


> The opening melody of Tristan starting on the second bar is clearly chromatic. The notes in this chord progression are played with equal value and not as appoggiaturas, and that changes their harmonic function in a way that Chailley does not acknowledge or recognize ... All the notes are played as having equal value though not of course having equal length:


Appoggiaturas have no necessary time value. They can be long or short. They can last longer than the note they resolve to. If this one were not there - if we heard the A right off - the underlying progression would be unambiguous from the get-go: a French sixth resolving to the dominant.

Note that Wagner's spelling of the chord includes a D# - the leading tone to E, dominant of the dominant - and G#, the mediant tone of that same chord. If Wagner had envisioned any other harmonic function for the chord, he could have spelled it F-Cb-Eb-Ab instead of F-B-D#-G#. His spelling is exactly what we would expect for a French sixth which resolves the way it does. He knew what he was doing.

That G# provides a moment of mystery, of suspense, of ambiguity. A moment! Analysts who try to spin that into a theory that reduces Wagner's entire tonal plan to insignificance need to get some fresh air.


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## EdwardBast

Larkenfield said:


> The opening melody of Tristan starting on the second bar is clearly chromatic. Notes in this chord progression are played with equal value and not as appoggiaturas, and that changes their harmonic function in a way that Chailley does not acknowledge or recognize ... All the notes are played as having equal value though of course not having equal length and the tonal ambiguity remains:


The G# is an appoggiatura to the A. The D# is a chord tone in the augmented 6th harmony. The only thing irregular is that the D# moves down to the 7th of the V7 chord. Irregular but not that unusual. But the easiest explanation is just to play this:









A minor. No tonal ambiguity whatever.


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## JosefinaHW

EdwardBast said:


> I mean the desire to show that the path they were exploring was somehow foreordained by masters of the past, that they were the inevitable next step in an historical progression. Essentially: the implications of the Tristan Prelude foretold the inevitable move to atonality. Wagner was doing the same kind of thing when he interpreted Beethoven's 9th as foreshadowing his music drama. Schoenberg did something similar with Brahms when he wrote about Brahms the progressive. Any number of rock guitarists claiming the blessing of Hendrix.
> 
> I'm not sure the term origin myth is exactly right, but I hope you get what I mean: That narrative about the history of music that has the effect of anointing the myth-spinner.


Thank you, your response was very clear and helpful. :tiphat:


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## Larkenfield

Woodduck said:


> Appoggiaturas have no necessary time value. They can be long or short. They can last longer than the note they resolve to. If this one were not there - if we heard the A right off - the underlying progression would be unambiguous from the get-go: a French sixth resolving to the dominant.
> 
> Note that Wagner's spelling of the chord includes a D# - the leading tone to E, dominant of the dominant - and G#, the mediant tone of that same chord. If Wagner had envisioned any other harmonic function for the chord, he could have spelled it F-Cb-Eb-Ab instead of F-B-D#-G#. His spelling is exactly what we would expect for a French sixth which resolves the way it does. He knew what he was doing.
> 
> That G# provides a moment of mystery, of suspense, of ambiguity. A moment! Analysts who try to spin that into a theory that reduces Wagner's entire tonal plan to insignificance need to get some fresh air.


Perhaps. But many feel that the tonal ambiguity of the Tristan chord and the Prelude as a whole clearly points in the direction of Schoenberg and no tonality at all related to a home base. Wagner wanders far afield from home, more than anyone ever before him. But those who do not like Schoenberg will never acknowledge this because they don't like Schoenberg. And the reason why they don't like Schoenberg is because they don't like Schoenberg and how he changed music in a revolutionary way by creating a new vocabulary that can express the unconscious but that the music conservatives are still fighting and will never accept though it's already been incorporated into the basic language of music as a whole. Now that's the problem with analyzing the Tristan chord as appoggiaturas when every note in those chords are treated with equal value rather than as extended grace notes.


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## JosefinaHW

Larkenfield said:


> Perhaps. But many feel that the tonal ambiguity of the Tristan chord and the Prelude as a whole clearly points in the direction of Schoenberg and no tonality at all related to a home base. Wagner wanders far afield from home, more than anyone ever before him. But those who do not like Schoenberg will never acknowledge this because they don't like Schoenberg. And the reason why they don't like Schoenberg is because they don't like Schoenberg and how he changed music in a revolutionary way _*by creating a new vocabulary that can express the unconscious*_ but that the music conservatives are still fighting and will never accept though it's already been incorporated into the basic language of music as a whole. Now that's the problem with analyzing the Tristan chord as appoggiaturas when every note in those chords are treated with equal value rather than as extended grace notes.


Lark, I know I'm the junior member posting here, but I think it is enough that Schoenberg created a new language to compose music. Experiments are wonderful. *BUT, I did not know that he thought his vocabulary could express the unconscious?!?! *To me it was exploration with language. I do understand that other composers partially adopted his language but didn't find it expressive enough so they used traditional harmony, but this last sentence is not my primary question.

If this is too junior a question, just say so kindly. :tiphat:


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## Larkenfield

JosefinaHW said:


> Lark, I know I'm the junior member posting here, but I think it is enough that Schoenberg created a new language to compose music. Experiments are wonderful. *BUT, I did not know that he thought his vocabulary could express the unconscious?!?! *To me it was exploration with language. I do understand that other composers partially adopted his language but didn't find it expressive enough so they used traditional harmony, but this last sentence is not my primary question.
> 
> If this is too junior a question, just say so kindly. :tiphat:


Yes, Schoenberg talked about his music with regard to its relationship to the unconscious, which suddenly reminds me of the psychological aspects of Wagner's own work through music and myth! Schoenberg took it further into the 20th century and this is another tie between them. The psychological has been discussed in another thread which I don't exactly recall right now related to the portrayal of darkness, the psychological, and the unconscious in music. Schoenberg wrote about the influence of the unconscious with regard to some of his works. Of course, none of this will be willingly acknowledged by those who consider him the ruination of 20th century music. But when one looks at the terrible history of the political turmoil and catastrophic wars during that century, no century ever needed an understanding of the psychological more than that one and needed in music a stronger more revolutionary and liberated language to account for the expression of the psychological and the neurotic, though of course Schoenberg's music, along with the subtleties of Berg and Webern, was far more than that.

"Art," declared Schoenberg to Kandinsky, "belongs to the unconscious!"

The psychological and the unconscious related to the description of Schoenberg's _Erwartung_: The depth of the forest scenario becomes a projection room for distressing traumatic states - obscurity, anger, threat, fear, loneliness, horror, darkness - and naturalistically reinterprets the subjective ordeal of suffering the woman lives through in four scenes. The music portrays these deeply psychological states.


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## EdwardBast

Larkenfield said:


> Perhaps. But many feel that the tonal ambiguity of the Tristan chord and the Prelude as a whole clearly points in the direction of Schoenberg and no tonality at all related to a home base. Wagner wanders far afield from home, more than anyone ever before him. But those who do not like Schoenberg will never acknowledge this because they don't like Schoenberg. And the reason why they don't like Schoenberg is because they don't like Schoenberg and how he changed music in a revolutionary way by creating a new vocabulary that can express the unconscious but that the music conservatives are still fighting and will never accept though it's already been incorporated into the basic language of music as a whole. Now that's the problem with analyzing the Tristan chord as appoggiaturas when every note in those chords are treated with equal value rather than as extended grace notes.


Acknowledging Wagner's harmonic and tonal excursions, which I do, is in no way related to ones feelings about Schoenberg. Of course composers were going to explore atonality. It was and is inevitable. Other composers found different threads to pick up on in Wagner's work, like cycles of mediant and submediant related harmonies, hexatonic systems and so on. Wagner's work suggested paths in multiple directions, including his own idea that we'd all be writing music dramas because instrumental symphonies were played out. What I object to is the crass co-opting of someones else's work to justify the existence of ones own-especially given that it is a completely unnecessary and arbitrary move. The only place Wagner's music made Schoenberg inevitable was Schoenberg's head, which is funny because the exploration of atonality was going to happen whether or not Wagner or Schoenberg ever lived.


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## Woodduck

Larkenfield said:


> ...*the tonal ambiguity of the Tristan chord and the Prelude as a whole clearly points in the direction of Schoenberg and no tonality at all related to a home base. *... But *those who do not like Schoenberg will never acknowledge this because they don't like Schoenberg. And the reason why they don't like Schoenberg is because they don't like ... how he changed music in a revolutionary way by creating a new vocabulary that can express the unconscious *but that the music conservatives are still fighting and will never accept though *it's already been incorporated into the basic language of music as a whole.* Now that's the problem with analyzing the Tristan chord as appoggiaturas when *every note in those chords are treated with equal value rather than as extended grace notes.*


Wow. A ton of assumptions here. Starting at the end:

1. What does it mean to say that "every note in those chords are treated with equal value"? The various note in the phrase have different note values and different places in the progression.

2. It is not a fact, but an opinion, that "the tonal ambiguity of the Tristan chord and the Prelude as a whole clearly points in the direction of Schoenberg and no tonality at all related to a home base."

3. It is therefore not a question of "acknowledging" a fact which doesn't exist. What I acknowledge is that _you_ believe that the tonal ambiguity of the Tristan chord points to what you believe it points to.

4. What does it mean to say that tonal ambiguity "points" to atonality? The very concept of tonal ambiguity implies the existence of a tonality to possess the quality of ambiguity. I would say that tonal ambiguity, if it points to anything, points to tonality and its possibilities, just as an ambiguous verbal reference points to possible objects, not to an absence of objects.

There is intentional tonal ambiguity in Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. There is no tonal ambiguity in Schoenberg's Piano Suite or Wind Quintet; intervallic relationships suggesting known tonal relationships can be picked out on the fly by the ears of listeners accustomed to hearing those relationships in tonal contexts, but this doesn't make the music tonal and "ambiguous."

Wagner sounds his dissonance in the context of a recognizable tonal progression, and it is explicable in terms of that progression. In doing that, he isn't pointing to music that acknowledges no such thing as tonal progression. Musical styles can point to one another if there are actual anticipations of procedures; we would have a legitimate instance of "pointing" if Wagner had written a few bars of music with no tonal references and no suggestion of movement toward a tonal resolution. To my knowledge, he never did that.

5. Attributing a theoretical analysis of _Tristan_ to the analyst's attitude toward Schoenberg seems awfully presumptuous. Have you surveyed analysts to determine what their attitude toward Schoenberg is?

6. Atonality has not been incorporated into music "as a whole." Most music is tonal. In fact, any number of academy-trained composer's have chosen to "unincorporate" atonality in their work. At most, atonality is an option, and for most purposes not a very popular one.

7. What does it mean to "express the unconscious," and why does atonal music do this while tonal music doesn't? (I know this has been talked about here in another thread.)

If you want to hear some 19th-century music that really does point to the future (if only briefly) try this:






It isn't atonal, as a whole (it's mostly in G minor), but it does get pretty spacey (technical term there).


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## Larkenfield

“Of course composers were going to explore atonality.” 

Well, by all means mention a bigger name than Schoenberg. He was the first one there and he taught others. The obvious relationship between Wagner and eventually Schoenberg are too numerous to mention, including the profoundly psychological, and resistance is futile!  Those who never speak that well of Schoenberg, or understand or like his music, rarely if ever give him credit for anything, and the above quote is one more example. 20th-century music was a little more involved than that and there’s a clearly evident relationship between atonality, serialism, and the unconscious because it can be heard in the music and in the darkness of some of the stories, such as Erwartung. It was Schoenberg who had the courage to follow his own path against tremendous odds and condemnation. It was he who opened up the language of the unconscious and started to explore it within the context of that century. Practically any music heard on TV and in the cinema has been influenced by him and his own music because of the new vocabulary that he developed to express emotions and states of mind that had never been expressed in music ever. That’s how important he was.


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## EdwardBast

Larkenfield said:


> "Of course composers were going to explore atonality."
> 
> Well, by all means mention a bigger name than Schoenberg. He was the first one there and he taught others. The obvious relationship between Wagner and eventually Schoenberg are too numerous to mention, including the profoundly psychological, and resistance is futile!  Those who never speak that well of Schoenberg, or understand or like his music, rarely if ever give him credit for anything, and the above quote is one more example. 20th-century music was a little more involved than that and there's a clearly evident relationship between atonality, serialism, and the unconscious because it can be heard in the music and in the darkness of some of the stories, such as Erwartung. It was Schoenberg who had the courage to follow his own path against tremendous odds and condemnation. It was he who opened up the language of the unconscious and started to explore it within the context of that century. Practically any music heard on TV and in the cinema has been influenced by him and his own music because of the new vocabulary that he developed to express emotions and states of mind that had never been expressed in music ever. That's how important he was.


Yes, the stylistic connections between Wagner and Schoenberg are obvious. None of what you are addressing is material to my point, which was narrow: My belief that the alleged oversized role of the Tristan Prelude in the gestation of atonality is a bogus trope. I was making no comment on Schoenberg's music. I think my favorite exploration of the subconscious from that period is Strauss's _Elektra_.


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## JosefinaHW

Larkenfield said:


> and the above quote is one more example. 20th-century music was a little more involved than that and *there's a clearly evident relationship between atonality, serialism, and the unconscious *because it can be heard in the music and in the darkness of some of the stories, such as Erwartung.
> 
> It was Schoenberg who had the courage to follow his own path against tremendous odds and condemnation. *It was he who opened up the language of the unconscious and started to explore it within the context of that century.* Practically any music heard on TV and in the cinema has been influenced by him and his own music because of the new vocabulary that he developed to express emotions and states of mind that had never been expressed in music ever. That's how important he was.


Lark, Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to me above.

I just cannot believe that you truly mean that no Western CM composer had ever before conveyed the unconscious of the composer, of the time, of reality itself! In all of the many posts of yours that I have read (and admired greatly), you have almost always revealed that you have a very balanced view of reality; what do I mean by that? "a both/and" approach. Not an extremist either/or approach."

I don't think that you believe that no composer before Schoenberg ever conveyed the subconscious/unconscious before! And, even in the horrors of the 20th century (and as you well know there have been horrors in every century) there is that solid ground/the firm bedrock that is the reality of God. Yes, yes, yes, I know we don't discuss that here. Everyone (but Lark) can say that is ridiculous, but I know that you believe that Lark. You recommended Unity on here!

And if you want to avoid spirituality and theism in this conversations that is totally ok, we don't need to be explicit about it. Come on, how many times have so many of us said that pleinchant, a Renaissance piece, Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner's music "moves" us, it "resonates in us in a way that we can't (always) explain.

Respectfully, have you not boxed yourself into something that you don't really believe here?


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## JosefinaHW

Again, I would just like to attempt to make myself as clear as possible. We do not have to believe in any god or invisible entity or energy or whatever anyone want to call it to talk about the human unconscious or subconscious. Looking at it over the centuries through literature and other forms of art there are tremendous commonalities amongst most human beings. And that has been conveyed through various art forms throughout the centuries. Unless I am totally confused about what you mean by the un-/subconscious I can't imagine anyone saying it wasn't conveyed in art until Schoenberg.


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## Larkenfield

*P*



JosefinaHW said:


> Again, I would just like to attempt to make myself as clear as possible. We do not have to believe in any god or invisible entity or energy or whatever anyone want to call it to talk about the human unconscious or subconscious. Looking at it over the centuries through literature and other forms of art there are tremendous commonalities amongst most human beings. And that has been conveyed through various art forms throughout the centuries. Unless I am totally confused about what you mean by the un-/subconscious I can't imagine anyone saying it wasn't conveyed in art until Schoenberg.


The operas of Wagner have been mined since their premieres for their psychological content and possible interpretations. Some have even applied Jungian psychology, an approach that uses symbols, archetypes, and dreams to explore the human psyche. Each of Wagner's operas contains numerous hidden symbols both on the stage and in the musical phrases of the orchestra. By deciphering these symbols, one can discover the unconscious motives and thoughts of the characters within his works. With this understanding, deeper psychological content surfaces in his operas. But Schoenberg mentions the word 'unconscious' consciously and Wagner never did that I know of, though there was great psychological content in his music dramas related to the unconscious. The further difference is that Schoenberg dealt with the unconscious within a 20th-century context at the time that Sigmund Freud was on the ascendancy and there was a correspondence of psychology and the music of Schoenberg, if only indirectly. Whatever the psychological content of Wagner, the Freudian unconscious, including its exploration of the abnormal, psychotic, anxious, deeply buried neurotic tendencies and unconscious desires, was not fully revealed and conceptualized until the late 19th and early 20th-century and Wagner had no knowledge of it in that sense. If he did, please point out where he directly talks about the unconscious and subconscious mind. Perhaps he did, but I haven't seen it yet and it's not necessary to understand the psychological content of his operas. That's the difference between the psychological understanding of the 19th and the 20th century. The psychological interests of both composers is another tie that exists between them.


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## Woodduck

Larkenfield said:


> The operas of Wagner have been mined since their premieres for their psychological content and possible interpretations. Some have even applied Jungian psychology, an approach that uses symbols, archetypes, and dreams to explore the human psyche. Each of Wagner's operas contains numerous hidden symbols both on the stage and in the musical phrases of the orchestra. By deciphering these symbols, one can discover the unconscious motives and thoughts of the characters within his works. With this understanding, deeper psychological content surfaces in his operas. But Schoenberg mentions the word 'unconscious' consciously and Wagner never did that I know of, though there was great psychological content in his music dramas related to the unconscious. The further difference is that Schoenberg dealt with the unconscious within a 20th-century context at the time that Sigmund Freud was on the ascendancy and there was a correspondence of psychology and the music of Schoenberg, if only indirectly. Whatever the psychological content of Wagner, the Freudian unconscious, including its exploration of the abnormal, psychotic, anxious, deeply buried neurotic tendencies and unconscious desires, was not fully revealed and conceptualized until the late 19th and early 20th-century and Wagner had no knowledge of it in that sense. If he did, please point out where he directly talks about the unconscious and subconscious mind. Perhaps he did, but I haven't seen it yet and it's not necessary to understand the psychological content of his operas. That's the difference between the psychological understanding of the 19th and the 20th century.


A close acquaintance with _Parsifal_ might cause a bit of a shift in your thinking here. I'll grant you, such a close acquaintance is not the simplest thing to attain. I've been at it for about 50 years! But if you want "abnormal, psychotic, anxious, deeply buried neurotic tendencies and unconscious desires," you'll find them there.

What really opened my awareness of Wagner's psychological sophistication was reading Robert Donington's "Wagner's Ring and its Symbols." It looks at the _Ring_ from the standpoint of Jungian psychology, and although it's taken a goodly share of criticism (as has Jung) it's still a book that will leave you with an expanded perspective on Wagner.

It's certainly true that the exploration of abnormal psychology went farther in the 20th century and that the music of Schoenberg and Berg (see Pierrot, Wozzeck and Lulu) expressed things that Wagner's didn't. But of course there's more to man's unconscious life than states of moral, emotional and cognitive derangement and decadence.


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## JosefinaHW

So, Lark, your emphasis is on the explicit statement and discussion of the subconscious and the Jungian collective consciousness. Ok, I see what you are saying.


This is a rather embarrassing question because I should know this by now but what is "moral, emotional and cognitive decadence"?


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## Woodduck

JosefinaHW said:


> This is a rather embarrassing question because I should know this by now but what is "moral, emotional and cognitive decadence"?


It's what you hear when you listen to Berg's Lulu.


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## JosefinaHW

Woodduck said:


> It's what you hear when you listen to Berg's Lulu.


I've never listened to Lulu. (So in response to my own question in the other Wagner thread, I should just go and put on Lulu.)


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## JosefinaHW

Very interesting and exiting discussion. Thank you, Everyone!

Good Night.


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## EdwardBast

Larkenfield said:


> The operas of Wagner have been mined since their premieres for their psychological content and possible interpretations. Some have even applied Jungian psychology, an approach that uses symbols, archetypes, and dreams to explore the human psyche. Each of Wagner's operas contains numerous hidden symbols both on the stage and in the musical phrases of the orchestra. By deciphering these symbols, one can discover the unconscious motives and thoughts of the characters within his works. With this understanding, deeper psychological content surfaces in his operas. But Schoenberg mentions the word 'unconscious' consciously and Wagner never did that I know of, though there was great psychological content in his music dramas related to the unconscious. *The further difference is that Schoenberg dealt with the unconscious within a 20th-century context at the time that Sigmund Freud was on the ascendancy and there was a correspondence of psychology and the music of Schoenberg, if only indirectly. Whatever the psychological content of Wagner, the Freudian unconscious, including its exploration of the abnormal, psychotic, anxious, deeply buried neurotic tendencies and unconscious desires, was not fully revealed and conceptualized until the late 19th and early 20th-century * and Wagner had no knowledge of it in that sense. If he did, please point out where he directly talks about the unconscious and subconscious mind. Perhaps he did, but I haven't seen it yet and it's not necessary to understand the psychological content of his operas. That's the difference between the psychological understanding of the 19th and the 20th century. The psychological interests of both composers is another tie that exists between them.


Yes! I grew up steeped in Freudian theory, having read a good portion of the collected papers at a tender age. The connection you are drawing between Schoenberg and theories on the unconscious and subconscious makes perfect sense to me. Rightly or wrongly, it even colors my aesthetic experience listening to instrumental works like the pieces of Opus 11.


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## Roger Knox

Here are corrections and clarifications of a section in my Post #53, above:

"Enharmonic alteration of the seventh produces the _German augmented sixth chord_ GBDE#, which resolves as follows:
Key of B major/minor, on bVI: Gn6-V* OR
Key of B major/minor, on bVI: Gn6-I(or i)6/4-V*
*(Here V is the chord of F# major)[/B]

Key of F# major/minor, on bII: Gn6-I or i*
Key of F# major/minor, on bII: Gn6-IV(or iv)6/4-I or i* 
*(Here I is the chord of F# major; i is the chord of F# minor)"


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## mmsbls

Responding to a post within a quote is very confusing since sometimes people use bold or change sizes in their own posts. It's also true that copying a post, changing it to red, and replying can be confusing because it's hard to find the original post. I have seen several people do the latter, but I don't think I've seen the former until now.

Please return to the thread topic and related issues.


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## millionrainbows

mmsbls said:


> Responding to a post within a quote is very confusing since sometimes people use bold or change sizes in their own posts. It's also true that copying a post, changing it to red, and replying can be confusing because it's hard to find the original post. I have seen several people do the latter, but I don't think I've seen the former until now.
> 
> Please return to the thread topic and related issues.


From now on, I'll post a disclaimer explanation before I do that, to make it blatantly clear that my comments are insertions. It does save a lot of work, though. I don't do it to make things hard to trace.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> From now on, I'll post a disclaimer explanation before I do that, to make it blatantly clear that my comments are insertions. It does save a lot of work, though. I don't do it to make things hard to trace.


That's not good enough. Do as other people here do, behave like an adult, and keep your comments out of quotes of other people's words.


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## Larkenfield

JosefinaHW said:


> This is a rather embarrassing question because I should know this by now but what is "moral, emotional and cognitive decadence"?


That everything bad is good for you.


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## Larkenfield

JosefinaHW said:


> Lark, Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to me above.
> 
> I just cannot believe that you truly mean that no Western CM composer had ever before conveyed the unconscious of the composer, of the time, of reality itself! In all of the many posts of yours that I have read (and admired greatly), you have almost always revealed that you have a very balanced view of reality; what do I mean by that? "a both/and" approach. Not an extremist either/or approach."
> 
> I don't think that you believe that no composer before Schoenberg ever conveyed the subconscious/unconscious before! And, even in the horrors of the 20th century (and as you well know there have been horrors in every century) there is that solid ground/the firm bedrock that is the reality of God. Yes, yes, yes, I know we don't discuss that here. Everyone (but Lark) can say that is ridiculous, but I know that you believe that Lark. You recommended Unity on here!
> 
> And if you want to avoid spirituality and theism in this conversations that is totally ok, we don't need to be explicit about it. Come on, how many times have so many of us said that pleinchant, a Renaissance piece, Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner's music "moves" us, it "resonates in us in a way that we can't (always) explain.
> 
> Respectfully, have you not boxed yourself into something that you don't really believe here?


 I believe Schoenberg deserves more credit than he's been given. The expression of the true dirt and darkness of the unconscious through atonality, surrealism and the 12-tone system had never been done before until Schoenberg in the 20th century and that's when you're really getting the creepy expression of the unconscious being brought to light, the abnormal, the psychotic and the neurotic in a modern context. It affected almost everybody including Bartok and Shostakovich. It's not that other composers do not have psychological content in the music, but it wasn't done in the Freudian sense where all the cats had been let out of the bag.

Of course, what's left out of this is the lack of interest in anything that might be related to a metaphysical understanding of life that is connected with some philosophy of light or spiritual understanding. That just didn't happen when virtually everything is reduced to a psychological dynamics, and I believe that's part of the shortcomings of what composers like Schoenberg, Shostakovich and others did. It's a whole other subject beyond psychology and I think that's what their work lacked: The true in-depth exploration of the sacred, spiritual insight, and a metaphysical understanding about the larger dimensions of life where everything is connected and there is a beneficial force operating that can be a source of healing or inner peace. Such an area was usually avoided because it was probably considered too closely related to religion after Friedrich Nietzsche had declared that "God is dead".


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## KenOC

Larkenfield said:


> I believe Schoenberg deserves more credit than he's been given. The expression of the true dirt and darkness of the unconscious through atonality, surrealism and the 12-tone system had never been done before until Schoenberg...


Speaking only for myself, there are an infinite number of places I'd rather be than down there slogging through the sewers of Schoenberg's unconscious. Not to mention that it tends to ruin my shoes.


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## Larkenfield

KenOC said:


> Speaking only for myself, there are an infinite number of places I'd rather be than down there slogging through the sewers of Schoenberg's unconscious. Not to mention that it tends to ruin my shoes.


That stuff came out because people were unhappy and society was exploring it as part of the new dimension of the mind. It really was considered an advance at the time but it doesn't mean that one has to wallow in it or continually expose oneself to it. I don't particularly care for it myself because sometimes I find it too twisted and psychologically negative. But the full awareness of unconscious and subconscious psychological urges came to light because sometimes what you bury or repress in the unconscious can kill you, such as with certain psychosomatic illnesses related to buried hatred and and negative emotion of that nature. I still find it of value to be aware of this development in music though I don't often expose myself to it. The understanding of the psychological was not only important in music but society. It was huge and considered healthy at the time. I believe it was. But there was the fascination with the abnormal because just about everyone was considered to have some of those kinky repressed urges.


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## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> Speaking only for myself, there are an infinite number of places I'd rather be than down there slogging through the sewers of Schoenberg's unconscious. Not to mention that it tends to ruin my shoes.


We hear the tonal relationships don't we? I'm not saying they were implied, but we follow one after the other. Looking at the scores and seeing the inventiveness is captivating. An imitation of the patterns (note groupings) from older music. The short piano pieces seem to continue with a logical end for the beginning half or the beginning third. These discoveries make the music more interesting (we might not expect them). They also seem to teach that we can't get away from these formulae of expression. Is it THE human outlook?


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## Haydn70

Larkenfield said:


> *I believe Schoenberg deserves more credit than he's been given*. The expression of the true dirt and darkness of the unconscious through atonality, surrealism and the 12-tone system had never been done before until Schoenberg in the 20th century and that's when you're really getting the creepy expression of the unconscious being brought to light, the abnormal, the psychotic and the neurotic in a modern context. It affected almost everybody including Bartok and Shostakovich. It's not that other composers do not have psychological content in the music, but it wasn't done in the Freudian sense where all the cats had been let out of the bag.
> 
> Of course, what's left out of this is the lack of interest in anything that might be related to a metaphysical understanding of life that is connected with some philosophy of light or spiritual understanding. That just didn't happen when virtually everything is reduced to a psychological dynamics, and I believe that's part of the shortcomings of what composers like Schoenberg, Shostakovich and others did. It's a whole other subject beyond psychology and I think that's what their work lacked: The true in-depth exploration of the sacred, spiritual insight, and a metaphysical understanding about the larger dimensions of life where everything is connected and there is a beneficial force operating that can be a source of healing or inner peace. Such an area was usually avoided because it was probably considered too closely related to religion after Friedrich Nietzsche had declared that "God is dead".


Schoenberg deserves the blame.


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## JosefinaHW

I completely understand what you are saying in post 97 and 99, Lark (I still haven't learned how to use the multi-quote function).

You said it beautifully and so concisely. 

I think post 99 foretells what one of the next major steps will be in CM (and culture--not everyone has been given the opportunity to voice their scream of rage and anguish yet). I suppose that is why I've loved Expressionist painting so much: you see the ugly side of reality but there is always something if not many things that are still beautiful in the best Expressionist work. Expressionism in music, for me, would need to be much shorter in duration, probably because music vibrates every organelle and cell in our bodies.

I am going to frame the text of those two posts! with a suitable piece of artwork once I decide what I think would be most appropriate!. :kiss:


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## Larkenfield

JosefinaHW said:


> I completely understand what you are saying in post 97 and 99, Lark (I still haven't learned how to use the multi-quote function).
> 
> You said it beautifully and so concisely.
> 
> I think post 99 foretells what one of the next major steps will be in CM (and culture--not everyone has been given the opportunity to voice their scream of rage and anguish yet). I suppose that is why I've loved Expressionist painting so much: you see the ugly side of reality but there is always something if not many things that are still beautiful in the best Expressionist work. Expressionism in music, for me, would need to be much shorter in duration, probably because music vibrates every organelle and cell in our bodies.
> 
> I am going to frame the text of those two posts! with a suitable piece of artwork once I decide what I think would be most appropriate!. :kiss:


Thank you. I love the Expressionists, too. Thelonious Monk once wrote a song called "Ugly Beauty," and I've also seen beauty in ugliness and human shortcomings and defects and it reminds me of how imperfect we all are, but we're trying, at least most of it, it seems... I hope you show your picture when you've finished it. I see art as a form of redemption, that no matter how far humanity can sink that it's capably of rising from its own ashes and soaring again.


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## millionrainbows

Two words: Pierot Lunaire


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## millionrainbows

posted for easier reference; lest we forget


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## Phil loves classical

Larkenfield said:


> The opening melody of Tristan starting on the second bar is clearly chromatic. Notes in this chord progression are played with equal value and not as appoggiaturas, and that changes their harmonic function in a way that Chailley does not acknowledge or recognize ... All the notes are played as having equal value though of course not having equal length and the tonal ambiguity can be clearly heard:


I have my own interpretation of the use of the tristan chord. It contains notes from the whole tone scale, in addition to the G#, which is a leading note to the A. Here is a demo I made with the whole tones transposed and also throwing in additional whole tones. It doesn't change the character, even though it sounds more cluttered in the last chord. The whole tones add temporary ambiguity, but it is still well within the home key.


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## Woodduck

Phil loves classical said:


> I have my own interpretation of the use of the tristan chord. It contains notes from the whole tone scale, in addition to the G#, which is a leading note to the A. Here is a demo I made with the whole tones transposed and also throwing in additional whole tones. It doesn't change the character, even though it sounds more cluttered in the last chord. The whole tones add temporary ambiguity, but it is still well within the home key.


What are you trying to show here?


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## Phil loves classical

The function of the bottom 3 notes of the Tristan chord doesn't change if I treat them as notes from the whole tone scale.


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## millionrainbows

That makes some sense, bearing in mind that there are only two whole-tone scales in the chromatic collection, so any chromatic notes not in that scale can be seen to be tension notes which resolve.


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## Woodduck

Phil loves classical said:


> The function of the bottom 3 notes of the Tristan chord doesn't change if I treat them as notes from the whole tone scale.


How can you speak of their function when you don't show their resolution? The three examples would not all resolve in the same way, so how can they have the same function?

It doesn't make sense to say that you're "treating" the chord differently. You're not "treating" it, you're replacing it with other chords.


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## millionrainbows

> It doesn't make sense to say that you're "treating" the chord differently. You're not "treating" it, you're replacing it with other chords.



Yes, it makes sense; he is simply considering the notes in question as components of an "assumed" whole-tone collection. Remember your "assumed" tonics? This shouldn't be too much of a stretch for you.
Any chromatic movement, up or down, "resolves" one whole-tone scale to another, since there are only two WT scales in the chromatic collection, and can be considered as adjacent areas of harmonic activity.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Yes, it makes sense; he is simply considering the notes in question as components of an "assumed" whole-tone collection. Remember your "assumed" tonics? This shouldn't be too much of a stretch for you.
> Any chromatic movement, up or down, "resolves" one whole-tone scale to another, since there are only two WT scales in the chromatic collection, and can be considered as adjacent areas of harmonic activity.


The word "function" in a discussion of tonality has a specific meaning. A "whole-tone collection," as such, doesn't have a "function." Phil's statement, "the function of the bottom 3 notes of the Tristan chord doesn't change if I treat them as notes from the whole tone scale," is therefore misleading. If he means what you say he does (and I would have preferred to hear from HIM, having asked him "how can you speak of..."), he should have said "I will think of the bottom 3 notes of the Tristan chord as notes from the whole tone scale, disregarding their function, and replace them with other possible collections from the whole tone scale." Why one would want to do that, I don't know, since replacing the chord with different chords doesn't tell us anything about the original chord or any functions it contains. If the assertion is that the original chord, like a whole-tone collection, has no function, the assertion is simply incorrect.

The concept of "implied" (not "assumed") tonics is a part of tonal theory and has nothing to do with this exercise.


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## millionrainbows

> The concept of "implied" (not "assumed") tonics is a part of tonal theory and has nothing to do with this exercise.


Oh, ok, I'll accommodate your specialist lingo.



Woodduck said:


> The word "function" in a discussion of tonality has a specific meaning. A "whole-tone collection," as such, doesn't have a "function."


The WT scale is ambiguous. It could have an "implied" function."  Remember your "implied" tonics? This shouldn't be too much of a stretch for you. As such, there are only 2 WT scales, so any chromatic tone, up or down, "resolves" one whole-tone scale to another. These are not necessarily "resolutions, but can be considered as traveling from one adjacent area of harmonic activity to another, each governed by one of the two WT scales.



> His statement, "the function of the bottom 3 notes of the Tristan chord doesn't change if I treat them as notes from the whole tone scale," is therefore misleading.


You're right, that is awkward phrasing, and that's not what I think he meant.



> If he means what you say he does (and I would have preferred to hear from him, having asked him "how can YOU speak of..."), he should have said "I will think of the bottom 3 notes of the Tristan chord as notes from the whole tone scale, disregarding their function, and replace them with other possible collections from the whole tone scale."


Yes, that's got it.



> Why one would want to do that, I don't know, since replacing the chord with different chords doesn't tell us anything about the original chord or any functions it contains. If the assertion is that the original chord, like a whole-tone collection, has no function, the assertion is simply incorrect.


I thought he was simply adding those notes to show that the existing notes had a "dual nature," functioning as chords in their "partial" WT state, then revealed to be actual WT components, thus "resolving by implication" to the adjacent WT area. Thus, your original implication about function has not been "replaced" but has been "filled in."


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, ok, I'll accommodate your specialist lingo.
> 
> The WT scale is ambiguous. It could have an "implied" function."  Remember your "implied" tonics? This shouldn't be too much of a stretch for you. As such, there are only 2 WT scales, so any chromatic tone, up or down, "resolves" one whole-tone scale to another. These are not necessarily "resolutions, but can be considered as traveling from one adjacent area of harmonic activity to another, each governed by one of the two WT scales.
> 
> You're right, that is awkward phrasing, and that's not what I think he meant.
> 
> Yes, that's got it.
> 
> I thought he was simply adding those notes to show that the existing notes had a "dual nature," functioning as chords in their "partial" WT state, then revealed to be actual WT components, thus "resolving by implication" to the adjacent WT area. Thus, your original implication about function has not been "replaced" but has been "filled in."


I'm drawing a blank on your last paragraph, and I see no relation to "implied tonality." I'm going to have to hear from Phil on this one.


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## Phil loves classical

I was saying the bottom 3 notes are from the whole tone scale, and I suspect this is the cause of the chord adding both a burst of tension and colour. By treating it as whole tones, through transposing it a semitone or adding more whole tones as in the other 2 examples respectively it confirmed, to me at least, the way I hear the actual Tristan chord as functioning in a similar way (my whole tone plus leading note theory). The other 2 chord examples were just for illustration. It was basically a proof by substitution as in math, applying to music, although not sure if judging by ear proves anything definitively. Hope I'm making it more clear.


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## millionrainbows

Phil loves classical said:


> I was saying the bottom 3 notes are from the whole tone scale, and I suspect this is the cause of the chord adding both a burst of tension and colour. By treating it as whole tones, through transposing it a semitone or adding more whole tones as in the other 2 examples respectively it confirmed, to me at least, the way I hear the actual Tristan chord as functioning in a similar way (my whole tone plus leading note theory). The other 2 chord examples were just for illustration. It was basically a proof by substitution as in math, applying to music, although not sure if judging by ear proves anything definitively. Hope I'm making it more clear.


Well, if that's the way you hear it, I fully support your WT idea.




> I'm drawing a blank on your last paragraph, and I see no relation to "implied tonality." I'm going to have to hear from Phil on this one.


You could use the term "ambiguous" tonality or function. This comes from looking at the WT scale, noting its symmetry, and realizing that starting on any of the six "modes" of it, the results are the same. If you want it to have a "function," then any of six augmented triads will do.


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## Woodduck

Phil loves classical said:


> I was saying the bottom 3 notes are from the whole tone scale, and I suspect this is the cause of the chord adding both a burst of tension and colour. By treating it as whole tones, through transposing it a semitone or adding more whole tones as in the other 2 examples respectively it confirmed, to me at least, the way I hear the actual Tristan chord as functioning in a similar way (my whole tone plus leading note theory). The other 2 chord examples were just for illustration. I didn't see the Tristan chord needing to resolve in the traditional way, as in each note needing to resolve to an adjacent one. They don't all resolve following that part anyway. Hope I'm making it more clear.


So you're talking about the feeling of being "suspended" that the Tristan chord induces before it moves on, and suggesting that this suspended quality has to do with three of its notes belonging to the whole tone scale? That makes sense to me. Your invented examples, heard on their own, do induce a similar feeling.

In the context of the prelude, the suspended quality also has to do with the fact that the melody note g# - which on a tonal reading functions as a long appoggiatura to a French sixth - seems to deprive the chord of any relationship to the three note figure at the very beginning, a-f-e, which wants to designate the key of A minor but is apparently contradicted until the chord resolves to the dominant seventh of that key. If the appoggiatura is omitted and the French sixth is sounded directly, the chord's function is amazingly obvious and its urge to resolve to the dominant (e) chord quite strong. It's an interesting, typically Wagnerian, case of an underlying tonality becoming clear only in retrospect.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> You could use the term "ambiguous" tonality or function. This comes from looking at the WT scale, noting its symmetry, and realizing that starting on any of the six "modes" of it, the results are the same. If you want it to have a "function," then any of six augmented triads will do.


I get that. ...................


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## Larkenfield

I hear nothing suggestive of the whole tone scale in the Tristan chord, not when the melody is clearly chromatic and the ambiguity comes from that. The notes of the melody are treated as equal value (not as an appoggiatura) though not the same length. If Wagner wanted to suggest the whole tone scale the melody would certainly support that in some way, but it doesn’t.


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## Woodduck

Larkenfield said:


> I hear nothing suggestive of the whole tone scale in the Tristan chord, not when the melody is clearly chromatic and the ambiguity comes from that. The notes of the melody are treated as equal value (not as an appoggiatura) though not the same length. If Wagner wanted to suggest the whole tone scale the melody would certainly support that in some way, but it doesn't.


I'm sure Wagner didn't intend any hint of the whole tone scale (to my knowledge nobody was thinking of that in 1859, although Liszt may have been wondering what use could be made of it). But the chord known as the French sixth does consist of notes which belong to that scale, and the Tristan chord moves into a French sixth when top g# moves up the half step to a. It's possible, and logical in context, to hear a French sixth as the underlying harmony and the g# as a superimposed dissonance for the purpose of creating an initial ambiguity. I don't think it's unreasonable to call the g# an appoggiatura; appoggiaturas can be as long as the note to which they resolve, or even longer, as we sometimes hear at the cadences in Baroque music. As I pointed out above, if the g# is eliminated and the French sixth is sounded directly, the tonality is obvious and its urge to resolve to the dominant (e) chord quite strong.


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## Barbebleu

1959?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Aah, the joys of the time machine!


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## Woodduck

Barbebleu said:


> 1959?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> Aah, the joys of the time machine!


Thanks. I was wondering why there were no horses in the streets.


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## Phil loves classical

Larkenfield said:


> I hear nothing suggestive of the whole tone scale in the Tristan chord, not when the melody is clearly chromatic and the ambiguity comes from that. The notes of the melody are treated as equal value (not as an appoggiatura) though not the same length. If Wagner wanted to suggest the whole tone scale the melody would certainly support that in some way, but it doesn't.


I also doubt Wagner intended the whole tone scale specifically, but I think it explains the function or effect of the chromaticism and movement well, as also in the bottom E, G# and D that comes after, rather than trying to relate to chord types and functions in traditional tonality. It is my own post-period analysis of how he achieves the sound that he does. I don't interpret the melody as having appoggiaturias or passing notes over those "chords", but more integrated as in equal emphasis in each of the melody notes.


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## Woodduck

Phil loves classical said:


> I also doubt Wagner intended the whole tone scale specifically, but I think it explains the function or effect of the chromaticism and movement well, as also in the bottom E, G# and D that comes after, rather than trying to relate to chord types and functions in traditional tonality. It is my own post-period analysis of how he achieves the sound that he does. *I don't interpret the melody as having appoggiaturias or passing notes over those "chords", but more integrated as in equal emphasis in each of the melody notes.*


Where have you heard of anyone describing the top line as "passing notes over chords"?


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## Phil loves classical

Woodduck said:


> Where have you heard of anyone describing the top line as "passing notes over chords"?


You mean melody as having passing notes over chords. I saw some interpretations suggesting the G# as an appoggiatura, some suggest the A is instead, and some as a passing note.


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## millionrainbows

Just as I suggested in the Prokofiev/Russian thread, I think these are just "mechanisms" of voice-movement which fall outside the older tonal practices; as such, they are just chromatic movements of voices in which it becomes increasingly difficult and irrelevant to explain in 'proper' tonal terms. Wagner was doing it by "ear." If you can explain them tonally, fine, but I think it's rather like trying to stuff a horse into a...


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