Hugh Aitken - The Piece As A Whole

The Piece as a Whole
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The Piece as a Whole
Studies in Holistic Musical Analysis
HUGH AITKEN
Westport, Connecticut
1RRAEGER London
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Aitken, Hugh.
The piece as a whole : studies in holistic musical analysis / Hugh
Aitken.
p. cm.(Contributions to the study of music and dance,
ISSN 0193-9041 ; no. 45)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-313-30061-5 (alk. paper)
1. Musical analysis. 2. MusicPhilosophy and aesthetics.
I. Series.
MT6.A29P54 1997
781dc21 97-2714
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright 1997 by Hugh Aitken
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
A hardcover edition of The Piece as a Whole is available from Greenwood
Press, an imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (Contributions to
the Study of Music and Dance, Number 45; ISBN 0-313-30061-5).
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-2714
ISBN: 0-275-96038-2
First published in 1997
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the

Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 Chopin: Prelude No. 7 in A Major 5
2 The Split Fifth: A Cautionary Tale 15
3 Chopin: Prelude No. 4 in E Minor 17
4 Meaning in Music 29
5 Some Mozart Excerpts 35
6 Beethoven: Fifth Symphony 45
7 Three Beethoven Excerpts 63
8 Aesthics: Aesthetics Meets Ethics 73
9 Two Schumann Songs and a Bit of Brahms 77
10 J. S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I 87
11 Wagner: Prelude to Tristan and Isolde 99
12 Debussy: Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun 105
13 The Analysis of Twentieth-Century Music 113
Suggestions for Further Reading 123
Index 125
Preface
This book is intended primarily, but not exclusively, for college music stu-
dents who have completed at least one year of basic theory and ear training.
With the exception of some terminology used in fugal analysis, no new tech-
nical material will be introduced or explained, as the book assumes familiari-
ty with harmonic theory through secondary dominants and the augmented
sixth chords as well as aquaintance with common formal vocabulary such as
sonata-allegro, rondo, and so forth. Most of the technical analysis will con-
centrate on tonality, texture and harmony, avoiding the Schenkerian ap-
proaches that are so prevalent in other texts and which, in my view, are high-
ly overrated. Upper-level students should find much of interest in the book
because of the novelty of the strategy.
The music studied is taken largely from the familiar repertoire of
Baroque, Classical, Romantic and early twentieth-century compositions, with
a few references to earlier and later music as well as to music from other tra-
ditions. The approach is one not often found in textbooks; it does not present
a theory or propose a method but rather illustrates, through its analyses, a
stance, a point of view, that requires that those aspects of our wonderful art
which drew us to it in the first place, music's expressive qualities, be consid-
ered along with and in relation to the technical, theoretical aspects. The pro-
cedure is eclectic, as I believe that tools should be developed to fit the subject
matter or problem at hand. All too often analysts do precisely the opposite;
they have their familiar tools, their preconceptions, their jargons, their dia-
gramming methods ready-made and devote their efforts to forcing pieces of
music to fit their collections of molds. More of this in the introduction.
The techniques of analysis presented in this book necessarily involve
some areas of inquiry usually not addressed in "theory" courses, questions in-
volving aesthetics, value judgments and meaning in music. As a holistic ap-
proach demands their inclusion, they are treated as an integral part of the
technical analyses as the book proceeds. There are, as well, two separate chap-
ters on these topics. Each chapter containing musical analysis concludes with
suggestions for further study along the same lines. A few of the analyses in
VIII Preface
this book are of complete pieces, but none of them claim to be complete
analyses. (Given the holistic premise of the book, a "complete" analysis would
of necessity be infinite in scope.) Some concern themselves with short ex-
cerpts, some with longer sections, some go into great detail, some are a little
skimmy, but none, it is hoped, will leave you with that question so often
asked by bored theory students, "What does all this have to do with music?"
Most of the musical examples are in the text, but you will need to have
available full scores of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, two Mozart piano con-
certos: K. 488 in A Major, and K. 467 in C Major, and Debussy's Prelude to
The Afternoon of a Faun.
I would like to extend my thanks to my friend and former colleague Jef-
frey Kresky for having brought my work to the attention of Greenwood Pub-
lishing Group, and to Dr. Maxine Okazaki for preparing the index. Above all,
my thanks to my incomparable wife, Laura, for all her help.
Introduction
The true is the whole.

HEGEL
A question rarely asked in textbooks on musical analysis is this: What precise-

ly are we analyzing when we analyze a piece of music? I do not mean the
grand abstraction "a piece of music," but some specific piece. Let's begin with
the fifth symphony of Beethoven since it is so widely known. We will be tak-
ing a closer look at it later on too.
The question may seem odd at first: What, precisely, is the fifth sympho-
ny? If I hold the score in my hand, am I holding the symphony? (Let's be very
literal-minded here.) The score consists of ink and paper. Can ink and paper
be tragically defiant, as many people find the first movement to be? Hardly.
Well, of course, the ink is the medium for the notation which, when properly
interpreted and executed by performers, leads to the production of sounds.
Are the sounds the symphony? The sounds, in themselves, are complex pres-
sure waves in the air, which can be thoroughly described and analyzed by the
mathematical vocabulary of acoustics. Is analyzing the wave forms the same
as analyzing the symphony? Can jostling molecules be nobly serene, like the
opening of the second movement? No. The notation and the sounds, in
themselves, might be called necessary moments in the emergence of the sym-
phony or parts of the protosymphony, the symphony to be. Until the sounds
are heard, we don't even have a piece to talk about. But then we have to ask,
"Heard by whom?"
It's at this point that many theorists reason more or less as follows:
"Whose hearing are we to talk about, mine or yours, Elliott Carter's or my
four-year-old son's? No, no; we cannot get into subjective reactions, there
would be no end to it. We must be objective, or we do not learn about the
piece, but about merely personal reactions to the piece. That's psychology, not
musical analysis." So they back away from the heard piece in the name of
what they believe to be scientific objectivity. At first this seems reasonable
enough, even necessary, but now the theorists are back where they started
from, with the score or the disturbances in the air, neither of which is The
Piece in the full sense of the word. The symphony has escaped them or,
rather, they have unwittingly refused to deal with it. Ink marks on paper or
2 THE PIECE AS A WHOLE
changes in air pressure cannot be triumphant, but parts of that symphony

certainly are. There's just no getting away from that! And isn't it precisely be-
cause the symphony has such effects on listeners that we bother with it at all?
Yet what claims to be an objective analysis leaves out the heart of the matter.
If one does not speak about beauty, expression, energy, the felt qualities of
human experience in our art, but speaks only of the technical and the mea-
surable, one is not speaking about music. And so, students' eyes glaze over as
they read about, learn and practice a kind of clinical analysis that does not
seem to have much at all to do with the aspects of music that drew them to
become involved with the art in the first place but only concerns itself with
notation and numbers.
Our thinking about the nature of the score and the sounds in the air leads
us to realize that The Piece, in the full sense of the word, includes the listener.
That should be taken quite literally. Any genuinely objective study of a work of
art must include the subjective because the subjective is part of the objective
nature of works of art. That's worth repeating and thinking about: The subjec-
tive is part of the objective nature of works of art. Those who would eliminate
the subjective aspects when they analyze music are followers of Procrustes,
who, in the old Greek story, placed people on his bed of iron: those who were
too long for the bed had the excess chopped off; those too short were stretched
until they fit. There are more than a few analysts who chop or stretch their sub-
ject matter in order to make it conform to their limited set of intellectual tools;
they usually chop off by simply ignoring the expressive qualities of a piece. It is
not that analyses that do not address these felt qualities are a complete waste of
time. We can learn about our symphony by reading an insightful article about
its modulations, but we will learn a lot more when we relate those modulations
to texture and instrumentation, to rhythmic activity, to other technical as-
pects, and then see how all of these combine to produce, for example, the ex-
hilarating effect of the sudden leap into C Major near the opening of the slow
movement. To understand that, we cannot deal only with the score.
We are obliged to return to the question "Whose hearing are we to talk
about?" The only hearing I can talk about with assurance is my own, so in the
analyses to follow that is where I will usually begin. Not because I consider
my hearing to be superior to anyone else's (whatever that would mean), but
because it is the only hearing I can be sure of. The opening of the last move-
ment of the Beethoven symphony seems to me to be full of optimism and
self-assurance. (Of course, those feelings occur in me, you might say; the
symphony has no feelings. But remember, we now understand that the sym-
phony includes me, so it makes sense to say that the music is optimistic.) I
will not, however, be talking only about my own responses to the music at
hand; in over forty-five years of teaching music students I have very rarely
come across student reactions to music from the common-practice period
that differ from mine in truly significant ways, so I expect I will be talking
Introduction 3
about your reactions as well. Certainly there can be different shadings, differ-
ent verbalizations, but I cannot imagine anyone finding the opening of the
Beethoven finale mournful. This is in large part because we grew up undergo-
ing more or less the same musical conditioning, which is one reason there
will only be a few references to music from cultures very different from our
own. While there are some musical procedures that have similar effects when
heard by people from any culture (for example, other things being equal, a
quickening pulse is usually associated with increasing excitement; a descend-
ing melody that has lengthening note values and a diminuendo is associated
with relaxation), most of our responses to musical events have to be learned;
we weren't born expecting dominant seventh chords to resolve. And when we
approach certain twentieth-century pieces we will have to make allowances
for what may be somewhat limited familiarity with some styles.
Affective responses to the music we will study are not to be the only con-
cern of this book. I have spoken about them here so much only because they
are usually omitted from books and articles about analysis. Our aim, as we
work together, will be to try to see the piece at hand as a whole. That is what I
mean by "holistic analysis." That whole, starting with the heard sounds, in-
cludes your reactions to the music as well as the technical goings-on which,
working in connection with your culturally conditioned expectations, pro-
duce those reactions. We will, of course, never be able to fully "explain" such
complexity; we will be talking about processes, not things. Remember, there
is no Beethoven symphony out there to be explained! The next time you lis-
ten to "it," you will be a somewhat different person, you will be becoming
more familiar with the sounds. Therefore The Piece will be different. Do you
see what we're getting into here? But I've written enough about these matters
in the abstract. Let's get started. Play, or listen to, Example 1.1.
CHAPTER ONE
Chopin:
Prelude No. 7 in A Major
We'll begin with the shortest complete piece to be analyzed, Frederic Chopin's
Prelude No. 7 in A Major (Example 1.1). With which aspect shall we start?
Why, with The Whole, of course. That is to say, the Heard Piece. Play through
it, have someone play it for you or listen to a recording. The more familiar you
are with it, the more fruitful your analysis will be. Be sure to remember this be-
fore you begin each chapter. This book is about heard pieces, not notation.
Example 1.1
With each piece or excerpt, after you have become familiar with the mu-
sic, and before you read what I have to say, try some analysis on your own. It
need not be thorough, but give at least some thought to questions of tonality,
harmony, rhythm and meter, melody, texture and structure. Then try to ver-
balize your emotional responses and your opinion of the piece and see if you
can relate these to the technical aspects. What do you think of the perfor-
mance? Would you have done some things differently? Why? Having done all
this, you will find the further analysis and discussion much more fruitful and
interesting.
I referred to the prelude as a complete piece, but is it? No, not really; it is
one of a group of twenty-four preludes. It was not intended to be played by
itself, so we should consider its placement in the group, which is arranged in
a series of major keys ascending by fifths, starting with C, each followed by a
prelude in its relative minor. Our prelude is immediately preceded by a slow
piece in B minor, whose wide-ranging legato melody is always in the bass-
baritone range, accompanied by steadily repeated eighth notes in the treble.
Before that, No. 1 was very agitated; No. 2, spooky and quite dissonant; No. 3,
fast and lighthearted, with a marvelously active left hand accompaniment;
No. 4, the famous one in E minor on which we will spend considerable time
later, haunting and pessimistic; No. 5, almost frantically assertive. Our simple
and emotionally undemanding A Major prelude has its character highlighted
by its placement in the series, but that specific character is there because of
the piece's harmonies, phrase-structure, and so on. We had best devote our
attention now just to those sixteen measures.
Traditional analysis usually concerns itself more or less separately with
different aspects of the piece at hand: harmony and tonality, melody, instru-
mentation and texture, rhythm and meter, form. In a given piece they inter-
penetrate and affect one another, and good analysis will show the relation-
ships between them, but one cannot start with relationships; one is obliged to
elucidate given aspects before relating them one to the other. In most cases
form should be left for last because form does not exist as a separate category.
You cannot talk about the form of a piece without talking about the form of
its melodies, its tonal areas, its blocks of rhythmic activity and so on, so they
should usually be treated first. The form of this little gem is so obvious,
though (see Figure 1.1), that we will discuss it first.
The figure is a diagram of what we will call the architectural form. The
dramatic form, how the piece works experientially in ongoing time, is a relat-
ed but separate matter, which we will talk about later. Level 1 shows the piece
as a 16-bar unit. (I will capitalize the word "piece" when I am speaking of The
Piece in the full sense of the word, including expression and affect, including
you and me.)
Level 4 shows the smallest segments that might be considered units. A
rough analogy with a paragraph of prose would be to call level 4 the words,
level 3 the phrases, level 2 the sentences.
Figure 1.1
Chopin: Prelude No. 7 in A Major 7
It is very important to note that none of these levels contradicts any oth-
er. Each is a true aspect of the form. The piece has a 2-barredness to it as well
as a 4-, an 8-, and a 16. The diagram shows all of this at a glance. As we will
see when we tackle longer pieces, diagramming a piece is not always this easy.
Furthermore, for many pieces there is not only one possible "correct" dia-
gram. Personal interpretation will quite often play a legitimate role.
I have been avoiding the word "phrase," you will have noticed, using
"unit" and "segment." Try to use "phrase" as a verb, as in "How do you plan to
phrase this piece?" But when students are asked how long the first phrase is,
they usually come up with one of three answers: two, four or eight bars. A
useful exercise for you right now would be to try to justify each of those an-
swers. In my classes it has proved interesting to have one student give every
argument she could for emphasizing one of the levels, while another student
would argue for a different level. This required them to look more closely at
the music, which we will now do.
We hear eight rhythmically identical statements of a simple figure, and
only four note values are used. Dullsville? Not in context; there has been a
great deal of rhythmic variety in the earlier preludes, so I think we are ready
for this letup in activity. Do we not welcome this piece with a smile, particu-
larly just after the serious, mildly melancholic preceding one? And even if we
do not think about it consciously, we can tell that it is not particularly diffi-
cult to play, and this case adds to its accessibility and therefore to its charm.
The piece also serves as a breather before the molto agitato F# minor prelude
to follow. What little rhythmic activity there is takes place at the start of each
two-bar group, followed by the longer quarter notes and then resting on the
half notes. Every group settles down. The rhythm is not at all "interesting"; it
is merely perfectly appropriate. Doesn't hearing it calm you down?
Now, how do the harmonies, their progression and the nonharmonic
tones help create the affective personality of this piece? Whenever doing har-
monic analysis, avoid the error of identifying the first chord, then the second,
and so on. First label the obvious chords, the ones immediately apparent to
the ear. Leave until later anything problematic or ambiguous. In this piece,
though, unlike the next Chopin prelude we will tackle, the harmonies are all
fairly obvious, familiar, and straightforward in their progression, and this is
bound to contribute to its expressive personality; it is uncomplicated and un-
surprising.
Figure 1.2 shows what you should have come up with in your analysis.
Very direct, isn't it? No long-range sense of direction at all; every dissonance
is resolved immediately and in the traditional, expected way. No delayed grat-
ification until 12, where there begins a familiar, friendly four-chord cycle of
fifths to conclude the piece. Every chord is in root position. There is only one
altered chord, but it shares two tones with the preceding tonic triad, so it
hardly alarms. The main harmonies and their progression are completely
Figure 1.2
consistent with the experiential quality created by the rhythm, the structures,
the ease of playability and, something that hasn't been mentioned, the famil-
iar and moderate register chosen. Now let's look at the dotted eighth notes.
Students often misinterpret the harmonies on these alternate down-
beats. Typically, the first is labeled I46 by several students, while a few call it
hi6. The quickest way to disabuse students of such mishearings is to play it
with an A below the C# in measure 1 (see Example 1.2).
Example 1.2
It simply sounds wrong, while adding D and G# instead makes it clear

that the entire measure is a V7 and that the C# is a nonharmonic tone. The
supporters of C# minor will often point to 8, where the opening is repeated. It
sure looks like a iii6, but try playing the phrase in context, in tempo, and ask
yourself whether you actually hear a minor chord there. (To students who do,
I recommend a change of major.)
Clever students, particularly if they don't trust their ears, are too often
likely to take a one-sonority slice from a piece and then juggle the notes
around until they get a series of thirds that they can label. Jazz pianists tend
to commit the same error. For example, the dotted eighths in 3 might, I guess,
be misconstrued as a viio7/iii in third inversion, but only by a deaf lawyer. No,
these dotted eighths are all nonharmonic. In this piece, anyway. The down-
beat of 7 might well be a chord for Arnold Schoenberg in his Op. 11 piano
pieces, as we shall see, but not for Chopin. Style period is very relevant. Let's
take some time out to expand on that.
Consider (which means play and listen to) the harmonies in Example 1.3.
Example 1.3
The first sonority sounds consonant to us, but either incomplete or an-
tique. Around 1000 A.D. perfect fifths and octaves were the only true conso-
nances, although perfect fourths were considered consonant as long as they
were not up from the bass. The second example would have sounded disso-
nant in the sense that no piece would end on such a chord, the third sound-
ing nonharmonic. (Keep in mind that these statements are only generally ac-
curate; harmonic styles were changing at differing rates in different parts of
Europe.) Major and minor triads were accepted more and more during the
fifteenth century, though even as late as J. S. Bach's time many works in minor
concluded with a major chord, including the mysteriously named "Picardy
Third." This was probably because of problems with temperament; the har-
monic series is not much help in tuning a minor third above the tonic.
Example c), the dominant seventh, is heard as a dissonance even today,
which means it is usually followed by a major or minor triad. In jazz, of
course, you can add a lowered seventh to the final tonic triad. Within that
style it is consonant in the sense that listeners do not expect it to resolve to
anything that is more at rest. In jazz, if the tonic is clear to the ear, the player
may add just about anything to her final chord, but if you add a B(, to the final
chord of a Mozart piece in C Major, you have made a mistake. Bach occasion-
ally opens a piece with a dominant seventh, but only if it is the V7 of the key.
The next example, the dominant ninth, wasn't heard as a chord at all until
well into the nineteenth century. Until then, the ninth would almost always
drop to the octave before the root changed. But listen to the sweet opening of
Cesar Franck's violin sonata, the first example I know of a composition open-
ing with an extended ninth chord (see Example 1.4).
Example 1.4
By now, 1886, most listeners will accept this, though it did sound like "mod-
ern music." Not long after, Claude Debussy will write streams of unresolved
ninth chords, to many people's outrage. Example e), played out of context,
will usually be heard as a C Major triad with a suspended fourth, not as a
chord at all. Heard in a passage by any composer from the nineteenth century
or earlier, that's what it "is." But listen to Examples 1.5 a and b, page 10.
Chords built in fourths, or quartal harmonies, became perhaps even too
common in midcentury American music. Are the chords marked x in the ex-
amples above the "same"? Only in their intervallic structure! This should
alert you to the dangers of the sort of analysis that works only by the num-
bers, not the sounds. It usually misses the point, but certain minds seem ad-
dicted to it.
Example 1.5
The point of view coming out of our listening to and thinking about Ex-
ample 1.3 cannot be overstressed: context, context, context. And not only
within the piece, but within The Piece! The Piece includes you and me and
our conditioned expectations within different style periods.
The earliest piece I know that opens with a secondary dominant is the
first symphony of Beethoven (see Example 1.6). How novel it must have
Example 1.6
sounded back then, not to say misleading. The C Major which we unambigu-
ously arrive at in 6 is not the same C Major it would have been had the har-
monies been more traditionally diatonic. It has a lightness, which is part of
the expressive quality of the entire piece, because the eventual tonic has been
presented to us first as a dominant of the subdominant. It therefore is not
rock solid, not the uttermost base of the piece. Bach quite often sets up a sim-
ilar situation near the end of his pieces; V 7 /IV-IV will appear several times
before the final perfect cadence, again leaving the final tonic sounding not
quite so final (see Example 1.7).
Example 1.7
Some of his pieces, to my ears at least, sound almost as if they end with a
semicadence. To an untrained listener the effect of this is usually to give the
final tonic chord a degree of lightness. You will not, however, find Bach be-
ginning a piece with a possibly misleading harmony such as a secondary
dominant. It wouldn't go with a very basic aspect of his musical personality,
which is solid assurance and a lack of ambiguity.
What about the dramatic form of the prelude? The diagram in Figure
1.1 shows us nothing about that. You might almost say that, overall, there is
no dramatic form. Every expectation is gratified almost immediately, the only
"surprise" being the F# seventh in 12. This is hardly a shocker, but it does
stand out in this mild little piece. It is the only altered chord, it has the most
notes and the highest note, and it is the first time that the half-note chord
doesn't repeat the preceding harmony. Should it be thought of as the climax
of the prelude? Well, a climax is usually the arrival point of a process that has
been going on, which is not the case here. Let me put the previous question
another way: Should this chord be played as the climax of the piece? Should a
pianist make it sound led up to? Chopin does call for a crescendo in the previ-
ous bar, after all. But does that mean that the preceding measures should all
be played at the same dynamic level? This is a good place to briefly consider
the relationship between analysis and performance.
Theory professors often try to justify their profession in the eyes of
doubting music students by claiming that technical analysis is necessary in
preparing a good performance. There are, however, dissenting opinions. A
former student of mine, a violinist, told me of arriving at a coaching session
with the other members of his string quartet when he was in graduate school.
The coach, a prominent violinist, noticed that my student had brought with
him a study score of the quartet they were going to be working on that day. It
was much marked up with diagrams, Roman numerals and the like. "What is
all this?" asked the coach. "I can hardly see the notes." My student answered,
"I analyzed the piece, maestro." "Oh," was the response, "It must be nice to
have a hobby." Not untypical, I assure you. The great majority of my col-
leagues who taught an instrument or voice thought that the time students
spent doing theory assignments would have been far better spent practicing.
In the case of many students I agree with them. It's partly a matter of tern-
perament. There are students who find analysis inherently interesting and
others who find it boring or even harmful. A Russian student, an extremely
promising violin student in the Preparatory Division at Juilliard, came to me
after a class session one day complaining that she now understood the techni-
cal aspects of the piece we had been working on, and this bothered her. "I
want music to be a mystery which I approach with love and feeling, not with
numbers and diagrams. You have spoiled the piece for me!" This hit home,
and I felt awful. There is no doubt that there are those whose spontanaiety is
hobbled by thought. But other students have found analysis useful, and not
only because it helped them memorize their music. Analysis of the bass line
in our prelude might bring to a pianist's attention the fact that the A in 7 and
8 is an octave lower than that in 3 and 4, helping to establish the unity of the
first half of the piece. This might lead her to play the low A a bit louder. But
matters are not always that straightforward. Let's return to the question of the
"climax" in 11 and 12.
If we agree that this is the high point of the prelude, literally, in terms of
pitchregister, harmonically, because of the chromatic alteration, and textural-
ly, because of its density, do we then know how it should be played? I think
not. One student will say, "As it is the climax, it should be built up to, played
more loudly than any other spot in the piece, as well as being lingered on a
bit." "Gross!" another will respond. "The registral, harmonic and textural
characteristics of this spot work just fine because of the way Chopin wrote
them. Your melodramatically emphasizing them is not only not needed, it's
vulgar. You don't need to highlight the obvious! Better, in fact, to underplay
the F#7." Who's right? We can decide only by hearing them play the piece; log-
ical argument has no part to play here. I can see either approach resulting in a
beautiful performance or in a poor one. One might argue that analysis at least
made them think about how to play that spot, but my Russian student would
say that a musical pianist not only doesn't need to analyze a piece in order to
play it well, but should avoid analysis lest it interfere with her musical intu-
ition. She would also claim that a real musician, without giving it a moment's
thought, would play that spot just the way it should be played, by that specif-
ic pianist and at that specific time. In a year's time, of course, she might well
choose to do it differently. It should go without saying that there is no correct
way to interpret any piece. This is not to say that there are no limits, however.
Would anything justify playing this prelude at mm. = 160?
So where do we end up after all that? After many years of observation
and of discussing these matters with performers, teachers and students, I
have come to two simple, straightforward conclusions:
1. It is not necessary to analyze a piece in order to perform it well. Quite
a few musicians intuitively grasp what is needed and then perform at the
peak of their ability without conscious analysis. (The great pianist Artur
Rubenstein not only had no use for analysis; he almost never practiced! I am
not, however, recommending that for everyone.)
2. Analysis very rarely does any harm. My Russian student was an ex-
ception. It can be somewhat helpful to the majority of performers, extremely
helpful to some. You won't know whether it's the right thing for you until
you've tried it. You will find your own approach to its proper use.
I had one student, a very serious piano major, who turned out a monster
paper on the interpretation of this little prelude. He listed every aspect of per-
formance that was to at least some extent up to the player: tempo, dynamics,
phrasing and articulation, pedalings, and so on. Then he gave every argument
he could dream up for each of the structural interpretations we talked about
earlier: eight two-bar phrases, four four-bar phrases, and so forth. Then came
how you would handle each of the performance variables (tempo, dynamics,
etc.) to emphasize (or underplay!) each structural interpretation. All this was
spelled out with numbing thoroughness. If that's your cup of tea, by all
means try it. I'll only mention that in this case his performance was numbing
too.
One could go on and on with questions about interpretation, but this
book is not the place for much more of that. Here are a few questions to pon-
der on your own. Even if you're not a pianist, pretend that you are.
The piece is written in 3/4. Does that mean that every downbeat should
be emphasized? Doesn't it sound better with the dotted eighths getting a little
more emphasis than the half notes? But if Chopin had wanted that couldn't
he have written it as an eight-bar piece in 6/4? Just how much does it matter
what Chopin wanted, anyway? I've never heard anyone change any of the
pitches (intentionally, that is), but Maurizio Pollini has a wonderful CD of all
the preludes, and in this one all the active downbeats are played as double-
dotted eighths followed by thirty-second notes. Is that legitimate? Justify your
opinion.
Chopin indicates pedal on alternate downbeats but look at bar 1; if the
pedal catches the C# it will ring into the E7, which will sound dreadful. What
would you do?
What should the sounding bass note be at the end? How would you
achieve that?
The piece requires some rise and fall in the dynamics even though it's so
short. How about starting piano and rising to fortissimo in 12? Why not?
Think about it, keeping in mind that there is no "correct" answer.
There are features of this piece that we have not talked about, but life is
short. Before we tackle a detailed analysis of the harmony in another very dif-
ferent prelude by Chopin, read the following true story.
CHAPTER TWO
The Split Fifth:

A Cautionary Tale
At this point I would like to offer a bit of harmonic analysis for you to think
about. Quite a few years ago I heard the following explanation offered by a
well-known composer and theorist to a class at a prestigious college I was vis-
iting. Under consideration was Bach's D minor Prelude from Book I of The
Well-Tempered Clavier, which had been assigned for harmonic analysis. The
lecture and discussion proceded as expected until the following passage was
reached. Listen to the whole piece and then play through this passage slowly.
Example 2.1
We have been in F Major for a while, and the section which follows the ex-
cerpt has G minor as its temporary home. The professor wondered aloud
whether any of the students had come up with the correct label for the indi-
cated chord. Someone suggested that the E^ was merely a passing tone. "But a
passing tone," he was told with some impatience, "is a kind of nonharmonic
tone while this sounds like an active chord, including the bass." Another stu-
dent asked, "Might it be a V7 of B^, the relative major of the up-coming G mi-
nor?" "There's no B1* major music in this piece! Let's not analyze in keys that
are not present." Silence and head scratching followed. Then they were let in
on the secret. " Didn't anyone realize that we're dealing with a cycle of fifths
progression here? The chord is spelled like a major-minor seventh on F, but
it's really an altered supertonic in G minor! A is the root, C the third, and
there are two versions of the fifth, EL and E#. The chord has a split fifth." Now,
I have heard of musicians splitting a fifth, but this was new to me. Give some
thought to this analysis before reading on. Do you consider it a satisfactory
explanation?
Let's hope not!! At first I believed that this clever teacher was deliberate-
ly giving his students a ludicrous analysis in order that at least someone would
object. Nobody did. One student ventured, "But can you hear it that way?"
The response was, "Yes, if you try." The class proceded with no further refer-
ence to the split fifth. I gradually came to realize that the man had actually
meant what he said. I offer this to you as a stupefying example of the spirit of
Procrustes, who lurks in all our souls, ready to force music onto a bed of iron,
in this case the cycle of fifths. The D 7 functioned as a V, correct? Then the pre-
ceding chord must be a ii; that's all there was to it.
It is not, I should point out, the notion of the split fifth in itself that I
find ridiculous. I can imagine a progression such as the following in which
the lingering over chromatic passing tones might be said to result in a chord
with two fifths, the D 7 having both a raised and a lowered fifth (see Example
2.2).
Example 2.2
In fact we will find a progression almost exactly like this in a Robert

Schumann song we will look at later, but to analyze the Bach that way is
grotesque. How should it be explained then? I'll go along with the two stu-
dents: the EL is a passing-tone which can be heard as resulting in the V7 of BL,
the relative of the upcoming G minor music. It is always tempting to try to fit
our experiences into the framework of our preconceived ideas or our preju-
dices because we find it comforting and because it saves us work. But it's usu-
ally a substitute for genuine understanding. Be ever alert!
Now, before reading a word of the next chapter, sit down and play or
listen to the haunting E minor prelude by Chopin at the beginning of
Chapter 3.
CHAPTER THREE
Chopin: Prelude No. 4

in E Minor
We'll start with harmonic analysis in Chopin's Prelude No. 4 in E minor (Ex-
ample 3.1) because harmony plays the predominant role in establishing its
affective personality and drama. Our analysis will be very detailed, the most
detailed in the book, even though an apparently reasonable argument can be
made that to attempt to label every chord in this piece is a mistake, that many
of them are the result of voice leading, that they are merely passing chords
without any structural significance. (Though I have no idea who said it first, I
have long admired the wisdom of the warning, "Nothing is 'merely'anything."
Think about that. We'll be exploring the implications of this idea as we go
along.) But let's at least try to label every sonority. Only after having done so
can we judge whether it was worth doing. Be sure to take your time going
through this analysis, playing every example and trying to answer every ques-
tion asked rather than just reading through it. If it becomes tedious, turn to
something else and then pick up again where you left off.
Whenever you set out to do a harmonic analysis, begin with the keys.
This will give you an overview which should be the first as well as the final
goal. The final overview will, of course, be much richer in content. I can't
imagine hearing any tonic but E in this piece. Although there are some al-
tered chords that may look as if they're not in E, by now you are wise enough
to distrust counting on your eyes too much when it comes to music. A few
passages, played out of context, may even sound outside the key of E, and
that's an important observation, but their truth is to be found only in con-
text. Nowhere in this piece does any pitch class sound like the tonic but E. If
the music sounds in E, it is in E. This does not mean that there may not be
sections that are best understood (and heard) as referring to other keys, but
we'll deal with that when we get to it.
Your next step is to listen to each sonority and label only those which are
obvious, familiar chords. Never proceed by labeling the first chord, then the
second, and so on. It will always prove more fruitful to range over the entire
piece, or at least a sizable section of it, listening for those chords whose quali-
Example 3.1
ty and function is obvious to your ears. In common-practice music these will

usually be simple dominants, tonics and subdominants. Skip over any com-
plex or ambiguous sounds and come back to them later after you have the lay
of the land; many of them will then fall into place. Taking the first half of this
prelude, I imagine you might come up with but five chords on your initial
survey: l 6 in 1, the E7 in 4 , which would ordinarily act as a V7/iv, the D7 in 7,
Chopin: Prelude No. 4 in E Minor 19
(V7/iii, or of the relative major, G?) the iv6 in 9,10 and 11, and the V7 in 10,11
and 12. Now make yourself a little map, something like Figure 3.1.
Note that the first half, although it contains many ambiguous har-
monies, has very familiar ones as its most obvious features. Note also that, ex-
cept for the D 7 , they make for a traditional progression of roots: i-V/iv-iv-V,
which progression might be thought of as the backbone of these measures,
giving them a longish-range harmonic logic. The fact that the E7 is not im-
mediately resolved to the expected A minor triad certainly does not mean it's
not a V7/iv, but what does immediately follow it is odd and is one of the
defining features of the expressive content of the piece. Play the E7, let it ring
for a while. In the usual way of writing about harmony, one says, "This chord
wants to resolve to ..." or "The next section is very calm," or "The excitement
builds during the following passage." Now, we all know that the chord doesn't
want anything. It is we, the listeners, who undergo certain patterns of experi-
ence during the course of a performance. That, as will be expanded on later, is
where to look for the "meaning" of a composition. This piece has no expecta-
tions to be gratified or denied, but this Piece surely does. Because of our con-
ditioning, and I believe this is true no matter how familiar the piece has be-
come to us, there is some expectation of an A minor chord here. But what
does occur? Its "leading tone," the G#, droops to G. This is of great signifi-
cance. Understanding this event will prove to be the key to seeing how
Chopin has used our learned expectations to produce in us a mood of gentle,
haunting melancholy of a very specific quality which can never be conveyed
by words, but only by the heard sounds of this piece. The active, searching di-
minished 5th from G# to D has become perfect; the chord has lost its tension.
The resulting minor 7th chord is not only less tense; its destination has be-
come vague. Is it not a bland chord, with its two perfect fifths? How shall we
label iti 7 perhaps? One cannot deny that it is an E minor seventh, but that
doesn't seem to explain much. Let's leave it for the moment. When we return
to it, we will see how the loss of the tritone in the preceding chord, properly
understood, is the key event in the prelude, beautifully relating the technical
and the expressive. (Which, of course, is the point of this book.)
This brief minor seventh passes through a diminished seventh, to which
we will return, to the next downbeat, which appears to be an inverted A mi-
nor seventh. But listen to it: doesn't the G in the "tenor" sound like a suspen-
sion, waiting to resolve to the F# in the next chord, an apparent ii24? Maybe,
Figure 3.1
but now the E in the bass sounds suspended, waiting to drop to the D # in the
succeeding vii7! What has happened to our supposed V7/iv? We already know
that iv is coming up in 9, but I have read one analyst who writes, "Thus, for
example, the E7 of m. 4 suggests V7 of iv, but surely fails to act that way." Well,
it may not act "that way" immediately, but the strikingly emphasized iv in 9
is, to my ears, a delayed resolution of the E7. Notice all that happens in this
measure: we hear the strongest dissonance we've had so far, the right hand is
rhythmically more active than it has been so far, we hear the first triad since
the opening of the piece, and this chord lasts longer than any since the open-
ing. Both structurally and dramatically this is a very important measure.
The dissonance on the downbeat is clearly nonharmonic. But, it should
be stressed, only in this stylistic context. We will see, in Schoenberg, sonorities
like this that are harmonies. Sounds which for several hundred years served
as expressions of tension and strong desire for resolution will entirely sup-
plant chords built of thirds, at least for some composers. We'll go into this
more in later chapters, but for now let me only mention that the distaste most
audiences still have for such atonal music cannot be explained away simply
by claiming that their taste is undeveloped, or that they are not familiar
enough with the style. As most of us have grown up listening to tonal music,
we bring to our hearing of, say, Schoenberg's Opus 11 piano pieces, condi-
tioned expectations which are bound to produce in us some reactions akin to
frustration and discomfort. Might this not be part of the meaning of those
pieces? You may be sure the composer was not trying to cheer us up with
these pieces. If you're not sure, read a biography. (My father once said to me,
"I know the world is full of difficulties and tensions. I don't need to go to a
concert to find that out. Forget Schoenberg, give me Brahms!" I told him I
didn't see why we had to choose between them.)
You should now go through the first half again, listening for chords on
the next level of obviousness, chords we passed over on the first scan, but
which are not too obscure. If you didn't catch it the first time (good for you if
you did), you will now hear the inverted B7 on the third quarter of 2. Listen
carefully to the entire measure. Notice how the first half sounds; there is a
mild dissonance which resolves when the E drops to Ek Did you perhaps not
call this a B7 because you didn't see a D#? If a chord sounds like a major-mi-
nor seventh, it is a major-minor seventh. (Some of you are thinking of Ger-
man sixths, I imagine. Don't they sound like major-minor sevenths? Not
when they resolve like augmented sixths! Those two families of chords sound
the same only when there is no context, but in a piece there is always a con-
text; in this case, the preceding E minor measure.)
Bar 10 doesn't look too difficult, so let's try that next. First, as we heard
in 2, there's a 4-3 suspension resolving to dominant harmony, this time a
root-position V7. On the third quarter we seem to return to the iv6 of the pre-
vious measure, but with an F# in the upper voice. Well, we know that ii and iv
are closely related; the ii7 includes the iv. This is a ii34 which extends the func-
tion of of the earlier iv6, which is to prepare for the upcoming V7. Bar 11 is a
repetition of 10. Let's put the new findings in the diagram. Don't worry if you
found some chords on a different scan than I did. Some of you may have
identified chords on your second go-through that I have not yet labeled. This
is not important. To help us understand how this section works as a whole,
play the series of chords in Example 3.2 as a continuous progression. Except
for the puzzling D 7 , it makes perfect harmonic sense, doesn't it? The D 7 seems
out of place. Keep that in mind, for it is out of place, in a way. In a most im-
portant way.
Example 3.2
Most of you probably considered the entire first bar to be i6, hearing the
C as an upper neighbor. I agree. But I have encountered students who insist
that the tones G-B-E-C can only be construed as a C Major seventh chord. A
few have insisted that they hear it that way. "You keep telling us to trust our
ears," they say, "and when I hear a major seventh here, you tell me I'm wrong."
Especially if you're familiar with jazz, it's possible to hear it that way, but in
this context, and at this tempo, you'd be wrong. Play it. Do you really hear a
change of root on the fourth quarter? I hope not.
What about the last quarter of 2? This is a little more involved. Either it's
still an inverted V7, with the C as upper neighbor, or it's a vii56, right? Watch
out for either-orsl Neither interpretation excludes the other.
Let me explain. You have often heard the sort of thing one hears in Ex-
ample 3.3. In the first two examples the C sounds like an appoggiatura resolv-
ing to the B. What about the third? Can you not hear it as a lazy appoggiatura
and as the ninth of the chord? After all, the V9 includes the V, V7, vii and vii7,
doesn't it? Do you hear a change of root in Example 3.4?
Example 3.3
Example 3.4
In the harmony texts my father studied from, what we label vii7 was
marked V09, meaning a ninth chord with the root omitted, so I don't think it
matters a bit whether you call it a major-minor seventh, a diminished seventh
or an incomplete ninth chord.
Now for bar three. The first half sounds like a dominant seventh with a
lowered fifth. With this altered fifth in the bass it is usually called a French
augmented sixth chord, but in what key would one find this one? The bass in
any augmented sixth is usually a half-step above the dominant, so this chord
"should" appear in A Major or minor and be followed by a V of A. Well, listen
to the next downbeat. There we have the dominant of the important iv which
is coming up in 9. Do you see how helpful it has been to listen for obvious
chords first, as opposed to proceding a chord at a time? This third downbeat
of the piece might well have been a puzzler, especially with its tenor note be-
ing spelled Ek had we not known that the next triad in the piece was to be iv.
We might have been tempted to take the easy way out, as one published ana-
lyst has, and consider many of the chords to be "the chance confluence of the
three strands in their simultaneous slides downward." Were the left hand
scored for, say, English horn, trombone and cello, one might be able to hear
"strands," but when it is played on a piano, we hear chords. And were this
confluence "chance," we'd get some pretty wacky chords. This one is a sec-
ondary augmented sixth, a French 6th of iv. Now listen to and think about
the two remaining chords in this measure. In the context of A minorish mu-
sic they present no problems. The b half-diminished seventh is a ii4 and the
last chord is viif.
Listen to the progression in Example 3.5. Removed from context, this
passage in in A minor. But, of course, there is a context. In this prelude those
chords are not in A minor, they are on, or from, A minor. Chopin is spending a
little time in the subdominant region of E minor. Listen to Example 3.6.
Example 3.5
Example 3.6
Doesn't the iv have a somber quality to it? The minor subdominant region of a
key is not a particularly cheerful place. Nor is the Chopin we meet in this piece
a particularly cheerful man. Now we come to something really important. The
E7 in 4 will resolve to A minor in 9, so we are calling it V7/iv. But we noted ear-
lier the odd effect of the G# dropping to G. We have been led to desire the E7 by
the harmony of the previous measure, and now we are ready for the promised
A minor. But the secondary leading tone droops, so to speak, lessening our de-
sire. Far more common in this style period is the reverse, as in Example 3.7.
Example 3.7
Doesn't that sound familiar? The raising of the G to G# brightens the

chord and increases the tension, increases our desire. But in this prelude, the
desire weakens; we are left with a bland E minor seventh that seems rather
aimless. Lasting for but a quarter note, it is followed by an equally brief, am-
biguous diminished seventh, to which we will return. Skipping 5 for the mo-
ment, note that 6 presents a ii4, and then a vii7 of our basic key. Looking
ahead, we note that the D # leading tone at the end of of 6 is also going to drop
a half-step, as is the F# in the puzzling D 7 in 7. We're onto something here, but
we are not quite ready to grasp its full meaning.
Leaving the E minor seventh in 7 for the moment, let's consider the
chord that follows. It is spelled as a C# diminished seventh, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that's what it is. What do you make of the diminished sev-
enth in Example 3.8? Surely the third chord is a vii07/V no matter how it is
spelled. Is my point klear? As you know, starting from any note in a dimin-
ished seventh chord and building a diminished seventh with it as the root will
result in the same four tones, ignoring enharmonic spellings. To determine
the actual root we must listen for the function or resolution of the chord. The
Example 3.8
great majority of such chords turn out to have a leading tone function, to be
vii7s of something (or, as previously noted, incomplete ninth chords). Is this
true of the last chord in 4? Trying each note as root, we get vii7 of F, AL, D or
Ck Naming the last one vii7/V (B) is possible, as we will be hearing dominant
harmony in 6, but the analyst I quoted earlier would most likely say, "Come
on! These drooping half-steps just happen to produce a diminished seventh
here. Aren't you forcing it into the cycle of fifths, you disciple of Procrustes?"
He may have half a point here, because the chord is ambiguous, but do we
really have to decide whether the chord is a vii34/V or merely the result of
dripping semitones? Can't it be both, without the "merely"? Watch out for ei-
ther/or's.
The first chord in 5 is usually called an A minor seventh in second inver-
sion, ivf. Some hear it as a C chord with an added sixth (see previous com-
ments on jazz). Both of those are possible, but I hear the G as a suspension (I
prefer "prepared appoggiatura," as it is not suspended) that resolves to F#, so I
call the whole measure ii|, with the B on the last quarter as an upper neigh-
bor. The first half of 6 continues this harmony, while the second half is like
the second half of 2, presenting a vii7, with the B on the last quarter sounding
like an upper neighbor while also being the theoretical root of the V9.
Now for the D 7 in 7. Remember, your starting point should always be
the sound, not any theoretical notions you may have. Beware of Procrustes!
In music from this period, this collection of tones can only be heard as a ma-
jor-minor seventh or as an augmented sixth. In this case, both listening and
thinking rule out the latter. As this is the first chord since the opening bar to
last for a complete measure, we are certainly expecting a G chord to follow.
But there is no G chord in the entire piece, nor is there even any hint of G, ex-
cept for here. We must return to the basic idea behind this book, that The
Piece includes the listener, if we are to fully understand the role of this chord.
Among the expectations to be found in the audiences of Chopin's time
was the strong one (consciously held or not!) that any piece in the minor
mode would make its first modulation to the relative major, or possibly the
minor dominant key. When a piece did modulate to the relative major, what
was the effect? Unless contradicted by other aspects of the music, the move to
the relative major inevitably brightens, lightens, relaxes, makes more positive
or cheerful or optimistic the flavor of the music. That was its purpose. The
minor mode had come to be associated with the solemn, sad or serious. A
piece that remained in that affect-world for too long, without the relief of at
least some major music, was very rare. Listeners, after a stretch of minor,
would want the relief of major, or at least expect it, consciously or not. Our
prelude, then, includes G Major as an expected temporary key. Because of
prior conditioning this would be felt as a lightening of the melancholy. But,
in this piece, that relief is to be denied us. To have granted such relief would
have violated the expressive integrity of the piece. To hear what I mean, play
from the beginning. When you come to 8, play a G Major chord. Doesn't it
sound . . . stupid? Why is this? There is no technical answer, no answer what-
soever to be found in the realm of traditional theory. And G Major does not
sound stupid there simply because you know the piece and therefore G major
sounds like a mistake. It goes much deeper than that; G Major would be ex-
pressively wrong. The relief afforded by the relative major is too trite for this
special, intimate little piece; it would sound banal. Such personal, tender, gen-
tle yet deep melancholy cannot be assuaged by the humdrum relative major!
Well, what else might Chopin have done at this spot? A lesser composer
could have given us a deceptive resolution. Try an E minor chord on the
downbeat of 8. Nowhere, isn't it? Why? A piece that begins in G major can ef-
fectively resolve a D 7 to E minor, but here we have been in E minor, so the ef-
fect is lost. Let's try what Beethoven did in the passage from his Les Adieux
sonata which we will analyze later: try E^3 major on the downbeat of 8. Strik-
ing, isn't it? Quite Mahleresque. (Beethoven, according to a friend of mine,
often stole from Mahler, as well as from Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Schumann and
others. Think about that. How could he have stolen from future composers?)
E^ is effective, yes, but wrong for this piece. Such a resolution would be too
much of a surprise for this gentle piece. What Chopin does is perfect; to drop
the active F# to F is just right. For an entire measure (which is quite a while in
the time scale of such a brief work) we have been led to expect the smile of G
Major. But the sun will not come out in this music. Not only are we to be de-
nied the solace of the relative major, but the desire we have for it is not even
going to be gratified deceptively. The desire itself will weaken. That is the key
to this little masterpiece. The music might be said to be about, or involved
with, the loss of desire. This is a loss toward which Buddhists may strive, but a
dismal reality for Chopin . . . young, immensely talented, successful, living
with his belovedand dying of tuberculosis. Now, that having been said, it
must be pointed out that he was writing cheerful music as well at this time.
Biographical correlations are notoriously risky. Chopin might not agree with
my interpretation, but that isn't important. The attenuation of desire is part
of the expressive content of this piece, and it is achieved by the technical
means we have been explicating.
The downbeat of 8, the paltry residue of desire, is a D minor seventh.
Does this relate to what lies ahead? Do you recall all the chords preparing us
for the iv in 9? We're back on that track now. The D minor seventh is the
iv7/iv, the dark underside of the dark underside of E minor. Perfect. Why per-
fect? Because the technical procedures correspond to and express the flavor of
a kind of deep experience we all undergo at one time or another. That is why
we are moved by the piece. Its human, experiential content is what makes it
worth playing, hearing and perhaps even analyzing. In my view the same is
true for all good music, in any style. We will see later how some twentieth-
century composers have no interest in relating their music to any kind of hu-
man experience other than the intellectual. They avow that their only con-
cern is with compositional procedures. If you like their music they are
pleased, but they say that your emotional response is your affair entirely,
They really ought not be surprised by their lack of an audience, except among
theory professors.
We are now ready to understand the E minor seventh in the middle of 4.
It is the residue of the preceding V7/iv, whose leading tone drooped. Unlike
the iv7/iv on the downbeat of 8,1 cannot come up with any functional har-
monic label for it. But that doesn't matter, does it? We understand how it got
there and what its effect is, which is important. I suppose you can label it i7 if
you like. Back to 8. Continuing the preparation for the iv, the third quarter is
a ii56/iv or the vii34/iv, with the A as a suspension that will resolve on the last
quarter. Take your pick. I prefer the latter.
The second triad in the piece, the A minor of 9, does not appear until
the second, weak quarter; this helps prevent it from sounding like a major ar-
rival point, as do the novel melodic activity in the right hand and its being in-
verted. These keep the music moving right up to the extended semicadence in
10-12. That dominant seventh in 12, by the way, does not resolve into the
tonic harmony of the next bar. In 13, Chopin backs up to the beginning again
to have another go at it. The dominant will be reached sooner this time, in 17,
where I hear Chopin struggling to break out of his mood of resignation. He
will not succeed. This dominant will be a pedal around which the bass fluctu-
ates for eight bars while, above, the energy leaks away until we reach the ut-
terly hopeless finality of the last measure.
As at the beginning, the second half of the piece starts with a full mea-
sure of i6 followed by a V34 with a prepared appoggiatura. But this time, when
the E resolves to E^/D# the bass also drops, giving a sense of impatience or ur-
gency as we get to the secondary French sixth sooner than expected. He's
rushing, even marking the next bar stretto. Then comes the V7/iv, but when it
loses its leading-tone this time, the loss of tension is but for an instant, as we
get in quick succession two inverted vii7s and a ii34 and/or iv6, the first time
we've heard three different harmonies in one measure. I hear this as hurrying
to get to 17, where he will try to break loose from the decline he's been under-
going and to shake off the pessimism. I hear the music as angrily anguished
here: the strong dissonance of the complete V9, the highest and the lowest
pitches he's used, the upward leap of a diminished seventh in the melody, the
dynamic indication, the fatness of the chords, the rhythmic activity in the
melody. Up to now he's been brooding or wearily musing. Now he's strug-
gling. But to no avail, at least not in this prelude. How reassuring the next
prelude will sound after the desolate ending of this one!
The V9 moves through a brief i6 and iv to ii34, which will last (though
with some nonharmonic activity) for longer than any harmony in the piece
so far. (Looked at a bit more closely, one can hear the sonority on the third
quarter of 18, which will appear twice more, as already V, with E as suspen-
sion. Or, one can hear the Bs as the non-chord tones, resolving to C and A.)
At any rate, we get an unambiguous V-V 7 in 20. Bar 21 is very striking, isn't
it? A deceptive VI; the first major triad in the piece and the only C chord, if
that's what it is. What I mean by that is that once you're familiar with the
piece, you can prehear the upcoming Bk
Though spelled as a C seventh, in the context of E minor it is at least
mostly a German sixth. (As a two-faced chord, it may also hint at distant keys
we will never get to. A distinguished disciple of the German theorist Heinrich
Schenker once actually said to me that it could not be an augmented sixth be-
cause it included Bk not A#. Can you believe it? It sounds like something I
might have made up as a straw man to show how bad analysis can be. His
name was Ernst Oster.) On the downbeat of 21 the hollow fifth in the left
hand is marvelous; if you can put up with my psychodramatic interpretation,
I hear this as the moment when Chopin realizes that he's not going to make it
out of his decline. Chopin's indication of smorzando (dying) is just right. (To
be fair to Schenkerites, they are not all like Oster. Another one, Carl
Schachter, has written of this piece as being tinged with mourning, grief and
the thought of death.) A return to ii^ at the end of 21 is followed by major
and minor tonic 6 s (or could the G# actually be an A^ passing tone?), the
strange-sounding inverted German sixth and then the ominous pause before
the hopeless finality of the closing two measures.
Play and hold just the left-hand E's and listen closely. On my piano, after
about five seconds, the E major triad from the harmonic series becomes
clearly audible. Now add the minor third that Chopin has written. I find it al-
most painful. No wonder that the minor mode has become associated with
the darker, more negative flavors of experience. Unlike the conditioned ex-
pectation we experience when hearing a major-minor seventh chord, this as-
sociation is grounded in nature.
Well, was it worthwhile, our trying to label every harmony? In itself, no.
After all, whether a given sound is called X or Y is of no importance "in itself."
But I hope you agree that by relating the technical, harmonic-theoretical to
the expressive we have come to understand what most of those chords, and
this piece as a whole, are "for us," as opposed to "in itself." These terms come
from the German philosopher Hegel, whose striking assertion, "The True is
the Whole," I have used as the epigraph for this book. He is saying, at least in
part, that the more we know about something, the closer we are approaching
what he calls its "truth." Hegel is a notoriously difficult philosopher, and I do
not claim to come anywhere near fully understanding him, but this concept,
holism, seems more fruitful to me every year. In contemporary English we
would not say that we are trying to explicate the "truth" of the prelude, but
rather its meaning or significance. (Hegel was a contemporary of Beethoven,
and the academic German used in philosophical works in those days was very
strange.) Does this prelude "mean" anything? If so, what? Would you say that
it was meaningless? Is it without significance? How do these questions relate
to the piece's expressive flavor?
It's time that we turn briefly from specific pieces in order to look into
these matters. There's much more that could be said about this marvelous
prelude, but I'll leave you to think about its melody, rhythm and performance
on your own. In the next chapter I will try to clarify the ways I am using ideas
about meaning and significance in music. After all, that's what it's all about,
isn't it? Music matters to us because of its meaning and significance, not its
technical procedures in themselves.
Here are a few suggestions for further work you might try on your own
along the lines we have been exploring in these preludes. Listen to the very
odd second prelude in this group, in A minor. Just what does it mean to say
this piece is "in" A minor? What is the expressive effect of this type of tonali-
ty? Try a Roman numeral analysis, then ask yourself what you have learned
from so doing. How do you explain the diminished octaves in 5 and 10? How
many "voices" are there in the left hand? Do they cross? What is the effect of
the appearance of full, rich chords at the end?
CHAPTER FOUR
Meaning in Music
Either music has meaning or it is meaningless. You and I know it's not mean-
ingless, but to specify its meaning or to clarify what meaning in music means
is difficult. I've read that when Beethoven was asked by a puzzled listener
what one of his late piano sonatas "meant," his answer was to sit down and
play the music again. This is very understandable; if he could have made its
meaning clear with words, he wouldn't have had to write the piece. Was he
saying that the piece means itself? But what doesn't mean itself? And if some-
thing means nothing but itself, does it mean anything? This book is not the
place for an extended exploration of such murky matters, but these questions
need not be put off until you take a graduate course in the philosophy of the
arts. If our aim is holistic analysis, we certainly cannot omit the notion of
meaning. If Beethoven's Fifth Symphony didn't mean a lot to me, I wouldn't
have bothered writing this book. Great pieces of music are significant in some
way. This means that they signify something; they point outside themselves.
But we had better begin with the relatively simple case of the denotative
meaning of a word.
"Book," depending on context, refers to one of those things on the shelf,
or to the whole class of such things or, if capitalized and preceded by "The," it
might refer to the Bible. But in every case it refers to something other than it-
self, beyond itself, outside itself. The thing in the library is not the word
"book." This meaning is not present in the accumulations of dried ink on the
page nor in the sonic disturbances that are produced when the word is spo-
ken. The meaning resides in the read or heard and understood word. The
meaning of "book" can be said to come into existence only when the follow-
ing conditions hold: a human being who has had at least some direct or indi-
rect experience of at least one book and who has come to know that the sight
or sound of that word is used to refer to that detail of his experience hears or
sees the word. The word means something to her. Meaning is part of the ex-
perience of human beings, not an,objective property of words or theories or
symphonies in the way that radioactivity is an objective property of plutoni-
um.
Meaning involves a relationship, and it always requires at least three

components: one or more persons (or perhaps some higher mammals), that
which means, and that which is meant. This sort of meaning is called denota-
tive meaning; a word denotes something. Words have connotative meanings
as well. These often include references to unconscious memories and the af-
fects that go with them. A boy who is required to study when he'd rather be
playing ball will have very different feelings about "book" than a collector of
rare editions. These reactions, attitudes, feelings, thoughts, likes and dislikes
must all be taken into account in our understanding of a word's potential
meanings. Now, what about music?
There are those who claim that music is self-referential, that it does not
refer, at least not intentionally, to anything outside itself. This is perhaps true
of some formalist contemporary music. The prominent American composer
Milton Babbitt claims that, at least in his music, the meaning lies entirely in
the internal relationships between pitches, intervals, rhythmic patterns and
the like. If Babbitt is right about his music, his pieces may be meaningless, at
least in my sense of the word, but let's leave that question until later; for now
we are talking about music from the common practice era.
The pieces we are examining certainly do make reference to, or at least
are analogous to, something other than themselves. Otherwise we wouldn't
bother listening to them! A piece of music or a part thereof does not denote
anything I can point to. I cannot, in words, tell you what the opening of the
finale of the Beethoven symphony "means," but it is certainly involved with,
or expresses, or embodies, or produces self-confidence, assurance, triumph,
optimism, or something along those lines. How it does this is far from com-
pletely understood, but it's not all mystery.
Think about the great complexity and richness of your responses to a
composition. Only a few bars of unaccompanied melody can produce ten-
sions, expectations and gratification on many levels, of different degrees of
intensity, which would take pages simply to list. Leaving rhythm aside for the
moment, a tune which begins with an ascending perfect fifth may lead you,
probably unconsciously, to expect a certain pitch for the third tone. Given
your previous experience with the piece or others in its style, you may expect
a sequence to follow. A fourteen note phrase, from the point of view of pitch
alone, produces a very involved situation when heard. The first few notes may
create desires that are not gratified until the last note, while in the meantime
other expectations will have been set up and perhaps gratified, or gratified
deceptively, surprisingly, with or without delays, teasings, contradictions. All
these coexisting sets of expectations interact with one another to produce
other responses inside us at a slower tempo, on a higher architectural level.
These fourteen tones may make up the first phrase of a four-phrase
group that is, in itself, one of eight sections within a larger chunk of music
Meaning in Music 31
that is the first theme group in the opening movement of a symphony. Expec-
tations and remembrances overlap in many ways, along levels and across lev-
els. I have been talking, mind you, only of the relationships among pitches in
unaccompanied melody! This melodic material will have a rhythmic and
metric structure as well, and I might go through the entire description again
with regard to those aspects. These rhythmic events on different levels may
work with or against the pitch events and relationships. Staggering complexi-
ty!
What about the accompaniment? The bass line and inner voices will
have melodic and rhythmic characteristics of their own, on many levels.
These all interact in the listener. And we have not yet mentioned harmony.
There will be chords, their progression, relationships to the key center, disso-
nances and their resolutions or lack thereof. All these interact. Suppose now
that the opening phrase is played on a French horn in the low register. This is
bound to connote a certain area of expressive flavor. I think you can imagine
how this verbalization might continue.
We have, therefore, an immensely complex set of relationships among
relationships, both in time (those occurring on a given level) and in space
(those occurring simultaneously on different levels). You can see that our art
is unequaled in its ability to provide a composer with the means to create
structures in time with a maximum of controlled complexity and rich inter-
dependence of parts and levels. Because these structures exist in time, they
are experienced as process, as change, as dramatic form on many simultane-
ously existing levels.
Now consider the complexity of a given period of time in your life.
There coexist many interrelating levels of conscious and unconscious activity,
from the processes of rational thought, through the dynamic rise and fall of
instinctual and learned desires, to series of minor muscular readjustments.
Think of the time you are spending reading this chapter. Most of your
attention, I would like to think, is given to what you are reading. And these
words, like a composition, are giving rise to a web of thoughts, expectations,
likes and dislikes, agreements and disagreements, questions and so on. But a
good deal more is going on at the same time. You may be hungry or thirsty;
you may be restless or bored or distracted. The degree of your awareness of
these and other desires is continually fluctuating. In different parts of your
mind there are thoughts, fears, memories, expectations, desires concerning
what you will be doing tonight, tomorrow, next week, next semester. There is
a certain amount of fatigue in your eyes, muscles, brain that calls itself to
your attention now and then. Or perhaps it does not but remains in the back-
ground where it colors your thoughts and feelings. And so on. Were we to de-
scribe and analyze the patterns made by these inner events, we would find
many levels of organization, architectonically and dramatically speaking. To
make an analogy with a piece of music, at the slowest tempo, on the highest
organizational level, you are making the simple move from birth to death.
Halfway down, perhaps, at a somewhat faster tempo, at the level of a move-
ment in a symphony, you are at a certain point in your college career. At the
fastest tempo, on the level of a fragment of a melody, your eyes are moving
from word . . . to . . . word. So you see that a piece of music is morphological-
ly analogous to a segment of human experience. A composer, by his manipu-
lation of the materials of music in terms of existing traditions, is able to bring
about in a listener an elaborate set of tension/release and other sorts of
processes that remind the areas of our psyches concerned, conscious and un-
conscious, of similarly shaped and flavored processes experienced in the past.
These may also suggest to the listener possible future experiences, how it
would feel to undergo certain types of as yet unknown experiences.
Another very important aspect of all this, which I first came across in
John Dewey's marvelous book, Art as Experience, is the idea of completed ex-
periences. In real life certain sets of inner and/or exterior goings-on may
reach fruition in a given segment of time, but there are always others still in
the process of development or decay or supression. Is there ever a moment in
our experience when we are free of all expectation or ungratified desire? But a
musical composition may beautifully resolve and complete all the tensions
and desires it has aroused in us. This will leave a responsive listener with a
great sense of satisfaction. If these tensions and desires engaged those areas of
the psyche that are normally involved in our most profound, significant and
moving experiences, we will feel at their resolution that the music has offered
answers to our deepest questions. We will think that this is great music. We
may weep, we may dance with joy, but we will feel that we have learned some-
thing. We will have been encouraged to feel what certain perhaps heroic or
tragic experiences would have been like for us . . . or might still be like for us.
Of course, all fine music need not be heroic or deal with "deep" emo-
tions and experiences. Our first Chopin prelude is a little beauty, and com-
pletely unpretentious. Also, popular music usually presents an uncomplicat-
ed view of things, and it is certainly none the less admirable for that! We all
need entertainment and relaxation, and I honor those who have written mu-
sic that serves such a function. I can think of many a heavy symphony I
would give up before I'd do without Cole Porter, Johann Strauss, Sir Arthur
Sullivan or Charlie Parker. But the very scope, depth and variety of our con-
sciousness can be increased by some music. Music, and the other arts, can of-
fer us a kind of knowledge; intimate, empathetic knowledge of how being
alive felt to, or was imagined by, sombody else, and how it might feel to us.
All of the above, it must be stresed, is only possible when the listeners in-
volved have heard a great deal of music in the given style. Music can work in
very different ways than those I have just been discussing. For example, there
are musics, such as that of Indonesia, that are not at all concerned with ex-
Meaning in Music 33
pectation or with tension/release drama. This is true as well of several pre-

Baroque and twentieth-century European and American styles. We will only
touch on these, as they are outside the scope of this book. But it's time to get
back to work on specific pieces, with these notions of meaning and signifi-
cance added to our tool chest. Put this book down and allow yourself the
great pleasure of listening to Mozart's Piano Concerto in A Major, K. 488.
CHAPTER FIVE
Some Mozart Excerpts
PIANO CONCERTO IN A MAJOR, K. 488

First Movement
This concerto is a treasure trove of delights, but you don't have to dig or dive
for the treasure. All you have to do is listen. Well... is that really all there is to
it? Doesn't it depend on who you are and what your experience has been? By
now you know that it does; you know that when you hear those sounds, you
become part of The Piece. You are, to a significant extent, creating it. Never
forget that neither the score nor the sounds are The Piece.
So there are many K. 488s, and new ones are created every day. What
they all have in common are the initiating score and the sounds. (Let's not get
involved here with interpretive differences among performances by various
musicians.) What they do not have in common results from differences
among the listeners. Some differences are extreme, for example, those be-
tween someone who has heard only Western tonal music, and someone who
has grown up hearing nothing but Javanese music. Such a person will have
had no experience at all of triads or seventh chords, major or minor scales,
equal temperament or modulation. He or she simply will not be able to re-
spond to the harmonic language of this concerto in anything like the ways
necessary to get near to what Mozart was up to. Not only that, Javanese music
is not listened to for its own sake. It is, rather, always heard as an integral part
of a religious or social event of some sort, so the listener would not even
know how to listen to music as just music. Some differences between hearings
are more subtle. An American high school student who has heard almost
nothing but rock is not likely to find the piece a "treasure trove of delights," at
least not immediately.
Let's try now to analyze some excerpts, exploring, as we have been all
along, the relationships between technical procedures and expression. Listen
a few times to the first eighteen measures of the first movement.
What is it about this music that so many people find magically beautiful
and appealing? Here are some adjectives I've collected from students describ-
ing the opening: attractive, optimistic, relaxing, agreeable, uncomplicated,
sunny, good-natured, tender, balanced, unthreatening, aimiable, easygoing,
graceful, pretty, smooth. I would add, deeper than it sounds. Let's look at
what goes on with each of the elements and then explore how these proce-
dures relate to the music's expressive personality.
First, melody. That's what one remembers after all, that's what catches
one's attention. If someone asks you how the concerto begins, you don't an-
swer with "I, V7/IV, IV46 . . . " you sing the tune. The first phrase is basically a
step-wise descent from sol to sol. We'll see this same range in the melody that
opens the second movement of the B symphony, the outer notes being the
dominant, the second most stable degree in the scale, and the tonic resting in
the middle. This contributes a certain light stability, different from the heav-
ier stability of a tune with the tonic for the outer notes. The second phrase
does begin on do, the lowest pitch of the melody, but its being harmonized
with a first inversion tonic chord keeps it somewhat in the air. The phrase
moves back up to the opening do followed by a smooth little adornment and,
as with the first phrase, no tone within the range is omitted. It's basically step-
wise, all leaps being filled in immediately. This contributes to there being al-
most no expectations created other than that the piece will continue. The
melody of the first eight bars is eminently singable, even if the range of an oc-
tave plus a sixth would stretch some voices a bit.
Change the third melody note in 4 to a half note and notice how much
less singable the tune becomes; no place for a breath! The violinists don't
need the rest, as a singer would. This makes the melody more approachable,
friendlier, as did the ease of performability of the Chopin A Major prelude,
even when not consciously thought about. And, to point out the obvious, it's
all legato except for the charming ascending thirds in 7. Other things being
equal, playing or singing legato always takes less energy than rearticulating
each tone.
Phrase three being the same as the first is such a familiar procedure that
it reassures, but the change in sonority keeps it fresh. The next section is quite
different; flowing, vocal-style melody is abandoned for two three-note frag-
ments (at which we will look more closely) followed by a concluding four-bar
phrase in a more instrumental style. This will continue until 30, where the re-
turn to cantabile writing, with one of Mozart's most beautiful melodies, will
be so effective and affecting.
Let's see now how harmony and other aspects of the opening relate to
the melody. The tonic can be established at the beginning of a piece in many
different ways, from the forthright, as in the opening of Beethoven's Eroica
symphony (Example 5.1a), through the indirect, as with his first symphony
(b), to the vagueness of Wagner's Tristan prelude (c).
Some Mozart Excerpts 37
Example 5.1
Returning to the Mozart, the opening progression, I-V 7 /IV-IV 6 4 , gives

to A Major a certain lightness by making it active after only two beats; it
doesn't just sit there. It serves as dominant of the subdominant that is, as it
were, underneath the tonic, supporting it from below. "Subdominant" does
not mean under the dominant in the sense that IV is a step below V, it means
that IV is the underneath-dominant, so to speak. It counterbalances the dom-
inant from the other, underside of the tonic. When one moves from the sub-
dominant back to the tonic, one must ascend to it. Note this effect in 4, with
that wonderful D in the bass. I have seen this downbeat labeled IV9, which
has nothing at all to do with the sound but is a good example of the clever-
student-syndrome mentioned in chapter 3, the shaking of notes in a box un-
til they stack up in thirds. Here, we have the complete tonic triad in the upper
strings and the subdominant in the bass. That's all. One hears a plagal ca-
dence even though the I is already there upstairs. There is to be no strong
dominant to tonic resolution until 18, which adds to the gentleness of the
personality. Aren't plagal cadences less assertive than authentic ones? In the
Beethoven symphony we will hear several occurences of one of his most
characteristic procedures, the juxtaposition of greatly differing expressive
areas; moving suddenly, for example, from a barely established pastoral mood
to a gruff heartiness. Mozart has a lighter touch. Listen to the effect in 13 and
14: the sudden, loud ii6 on the downbeat of 13 is the first minor triad we've
heard, and the triple-stops in the violins make it a bit rough sounding. The
winds and strings have been separate choirs up till now, but here three winds
respond instantly to the sudden string chord, repeating the ii6 embellished by
its vii6. The next measure is an altered sequence, embellishing V not with its
diminished seventh, but with an F Major chord, usually described in the texts
as a chord "borrowed" from the parallel minor. (Why "borrowed"? Will
Mozart have to return it? When we look later at the introduction to
Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, we will develop a better way of looking at
such "borrowings.")
Now, these two bars, 13 and 14, are hardly alarming, nor do they really
establish a different mood; but they are not part of the dramatic world which
preceded them. Their world (the stern? the serious? the troubled?) is visited
but briefly, 15 quickly establishing a busy, upbeat conclusion to the section, to
be followed by the first tutti of the piece, energetic and self-assured. But a
darker emotional climate has been touched on, lightly and briefly. That's of-
ten Mozart's way. One doesn't notice it particularly, but it plays its part in en-
riching the emotional life of the piece.
In 46-48 a comparable effect is achieved by the passing reference to D
minor, the "borrowed" subdominant. The downbeat of 49, however, tries to
banish these shadows with a forte major IV. Yet only three bars later, suddenly
piano, the new figure in the winds is heard as if we were in F# minor. The
crescendo to the forte D Major in 56 puts us back on track. And the simple lit-
tle closing tune beginning in 62 says something like, "All's well, don't take
yourself so seriously!" Read again the list of adjectives my students came up
with. They're all valid, but it's not quite as simple as that, is it? Yes, it's sunny
music, but now and then a shadow crosses the face of the sun. As in life. With
Beethoven, and even more so after him, the weather is often less settled, you
have to watch out for sudden storms. In some twentieth-century music the
weather is always lousy.
The moving beauty of the marvelous melody presented in 31 through
38 and then repeated with an altered ending in the next eight bars, I find ulti-
mately inexplicable. That doesn't mean we can't say anything at all about it,
or that there are no observations to be made that help explain why is sounds
the way it does, but I mean to say that when I have finished making what ob-
servations and analyses I can, there is a residue left unexplained, and in that
residue is the secret of Mozart's magic. After analysis I don't think, "Ah! Now I
understand." All I can do is thank Mozart. But let's at least attempt to list
some factors that contribute to establishing the personality of these mea-
sures.
We have not heard the strings alone since 8, so we are reminded of the
flavor of the opening. Additional lightness is provided by the absence of the

basses; in fact the lowest note for four bars is only D above middle C. The
structurally important notes of the melody itself, circled in the following ex-
ample, are all factors from the dominant seventh, which helps keep the tune
alight (see Example 5.2). This is the first continuous eight-bar phrase of vo-
cal-style melody. The entire sixteen-bar period is sunny, and there are no
darkenings from the parallel minor. There are two minor chords, but they are
diatonic and appear as part of a cycle-of-fifths progression, so they work as
functional harmonies; they do not call attention to themselves as expressive
deviations. Perhaps you can add to this list.
Example 5.2
Figure 5.1 is a diagram of the "architectural" form of the first sixty-six

measures. The music before the entrance of the soloist in a classical concerto,
referred to as the first exposition, usually presents all the important melodic
material of the piece in the tonic key. Then commences something like a tra-
ditional sonata-allegro exposition, though the presence of a soloist compli-
cates matters dramatically. In this piece, the melody just discussed will be
heard, in the dominant key, as the main theme in the second theme group.
Mozart, always one for gentle and welcome surprises, makes us the gift of a
Figure 5.1
previously unheard and very appealing melody in 143, a variant of which will
lead us into the development section in 156.
Drawing such a diagram of every work you analyze can be helpful, most
especially if it is a piece you are preparing for performance, because it forces
you to become more aware of aspects of the music that you might have over-
looked otherwise.
Second Movement
The haunting music of the second movement of Mozart's concerto has the
unusual power of reaching, on first hearing, even students who have grown
up on no other music but the most primitive rock. When I play it for a music
appreciation class it is inevitably followed by a hush; almost without excep-
tion the students know they have been in the presence of something special.
As was the case with the second theme in the first movement, our analysis
will not be followed by "Aha, now I understand completely why and how this
music has the effect that it does." But let's see if we can move at least a little in
that direction.
The first twelve bars present familiar chords in uncomplicated cycle-of-
fifths progressions in F# minor, which should be thought of as including its
relative, A Major. The first phrase has two statements of i-ii-V, with familiar
inversions to allow a smooth bass line. The next phrase begins with VI6, this
D Major chord acting as IV/relative major (A). (Play 6 with an unchanging
A-E fifth in the left hand and hear how firmly the two bars sound in A Ma-
jor.) The unexpected return to an F# minor triad in the middle of 6 says,
"Sorry; not yet." This is not like what we heard in Chopin's E minor prelude,
where the strong desire for the relative major was weakened. Here, Mozart
simply backs up to i before A is able to become tonicized. In 25, A Major will
be established, though by 29 it will have been minorized, with the attendant
darkening of the just established lighter mood. As is usual with this compos-
er, all is accomplished gently.
The pitches D-F # -A appear vertically three times during the solo, each
time serving a different function. On the downbeat of 2 they do not add up to
a triad at all, the treble A sounding as a prepared appoggiatura to the G#. In 5,
as mentioned, they constitute a IV6 of the relative major. In root position for
the first time in 8, D Major functions as the dominant of the weighty
Neapolitan 6, which will be the first harmony to last for two measures. With
the exception of 1 the harmony has changed on every dotted-quarter beat, so
this prolongation of the "out-of-key" G Major chord is doubly striking.
The monotonous rhythm of the accompaniment is that of the well-
known barcarole, traditionaly sung by Venetian gondoliers. Usually easygoing
and in major, it is presented here with typically Mozartean unobtrusive so-
Example 5.3
phistication. Did you notice how varied the rhythm of the melody is? No two
measures have the same rhythm until 11 repeats that of 9. Observe how odd
the rhythm is after the rest in 2, while the simplest rhythm occurs with the
"oddest" chord, the N6.
In Figure 5.2 let's look at the internal structure of the melody. As with
many memorable melodies, we see there is an embedded descending scale.
Other things being equal, a descending line will be associated with relaxation
more than will a melody which ascends. Kinesthesia is the word for this sort
of thing; though this is a piano tune, were we to sing it, our vocal chords
would be relaxing during its course. There are many similar connections be-
tween experienced music and human physiology, some obvious, some not.
An accelerating pulse betokens an accelerating pulse, but in life an accelerat-
ing pulse may develop in a variety of situations: fear of attack, excitement at a
coming victory, simple exertion, growing sexual arousal. There are not neces-
sarily direct connections between these musical procedures and specific life
experiences, but, rather, with types of life experiences. After this twelve-bar
solo, played by one person, and thereby more likely to be associated with the
personal, a number of musicians enter. Is not their music beautifully sus-
tained and sustaining, comforting? The movement as a whole offers us a type
of gentle drama, involving the interplay between a thoughtful, rather sub-
dued protagonist and a group of people. There's no "correct" interpretation
of all this, and very likely it's best to entirely avoid trying any such thing and
to just listen to the music. But we only want to listen to it, again and again,
because it is "about" something that means a lot to us. But we don't want to
end in the minor mode, do we? Listen to the next movement! We will now
look at some of the slow movement from another Mozart concerto.
CONCERTO IN C MAJOR, K. 467
Mozart's music almost always sounds transparent, uncomplicated and un-

problematic. He is too polite to say, "Hey, pay attention, this is serious stuff!"
the way Beethoven quite often does. The section of this movement which
precedes the entry of the soloist is utterly serene and unpretentious, but very
subtle. There is far more here than seems to meet the ear. The first event that
stands out at all is the F# appoggiatura in 4, so before reading on, find every
appoggiatura in the first twenty-two measures and compare them.
You should have found thirteen, the last two being the same as numbers
10 and 11 because the last three bars are a repeat of the previous phrase, with
the addition of winds and horns. When comparing the first eleven, did you
notice that no two were the same in every respect? Here's a chart which makes
that observation clear.
Interval
Appoggiatura above Scale
# Bar Instrument Bass Steps Harmony Duration
7
1 4 vn 1 #4-5 #1-2 V quarter
2 7 vn 1 #2-3 #2-3 I eighth
3 9 vn 1 9-8 5-4 IV eighth
4 12 vn 2 4-3 8-7 yb9 quarter
5 13 vn 2 5-4 9-8 i% quarter
6 14 vn 2 b 6 -5 b 3 -2 V7 quarter
7 14 via b 9 -8 b 6 -5 V7 half
8 15 vn 2 7-b 6 4-b 3 vii07/V quarter
9 16 via 4-3 8-7 V7 half
10 18 vnl b 6 -5 3-2 V grace-note
11 18 vn 2 4-3 8-7 V dotted half
It is true that there are three 4-3 "suspensions" and that all three are from F to
E, but the harmony is slightly different in each case and no two have the same
duration. (Though not actually suspended in the sense of being tied over
from the previous harmony, the effect is just about the same. The term "pre-
pared appoggiatura" is usually preferrable when there's no tie, but the steady
triplets make this a special case.) It almost leads one to think that Mozart
consciously planned all this, and we cannot be absolutely sure, but it is most
unlikely. He wrote in a letter to his sister that when someone had asked him
how he composed, he replied, "As a sow pisses."
Now, nobody other than an analyst would notice this appoggiatura
business, which causes me to admire Mozart all the more. Music in which all
the factors making it up lie on the surface where they are readily heard can be
pleasant enough, but in a childlike way at best. There's a good deal of variety
in this excerpt that is apparent, but there's even more underneath the surface,
which adds to our coming away from it saying, "What a wonderful piece,
though I can't quite put my finger on why." The composer Ernst Toch said of
him, "If Mozart is possible, the word impossible' should be removed from the
vocabulary."
Let's look at some other aspects. The first two melodic phrases are three
bars each, quite unusual, though not unheard of. (See the minuet of his forti-
eth symphony for another example of three-bar phrases.) There follow two
two-bar phraselets, linked to a continuous eight-bar phrase, the last three bars
of which are repeated and rounded off by the winds and horns with an al-
tered echo of the opening measure. None of this sounds strikingly irregular,
but irregular it is, in a covert way, just as one might say that the variety of ap-
poggiatura types was covert.
The relationship between the melody and its accompaniment is dis-
creetly unusual. The sixteenth notes in 2 and 3, and the eighth notes later on,
do not match the continuous triplets underneath. Again, nothing striking
here, nothing to ruffle the tranquillity, but enriching. Play, or have someone
play for you, the piano statement of this music beginning in 23 with eighths
or sixteenths in the left hand instead of triplets. Enough said.
More subtlety is to be found in the F minor music, 11-16. The sud-
denly loud secondary dominant of IV in 8 resolves obligingly to the stable
subdominant, but its high C has been left up there, one might say. That C
moves up a step to D above the vii07/V in 10. The bass of this diminished
seventh chord moves up a half-step to the anticipated C, but the unexpect-
edly minor i% while hardly a shock, throws a cloud over the next six bars, all
suspended over a dark dominant pedal in the horns and bassoon. The high
D passes down through the minor scale until it calmly reaches the tonic in
17, where the shadow disappears; the pedal C passes through B^ to A natur-
al for a major I6 and the winds and horns drop out, except for a solo oboe
who doubles the violin melody. The winds and horns first spoke in 8,
whereby they became associated with the slight unease produced by the ac-
cented secondary dominant, and then they continue to play throughout the
section in F minor, so their disappearance in 17 is appropriate for the return
of the major mode. But for the repeat of 17-19 they reenter, effecting a sort
of reconciliation.
The overall dramatic-emotional form of this section then is A-A'-A,
with the middle section representing something more serious or thoughtful
than the outer parts. It is not program music in the sense that it tells a specif-
ic story, but it does offer a represention of a story type, as does almost all mu-
sic from the Classical and Romantic periods. Ultimately, to explain it is be-
yond us, but that does not mean it is "pure" music or "absolute" music,
without reference to anything but its own inner workings. If it referred to
nothing other than itself, it would be meaningless. You don't need me to tell
you that is not at all the case with this music. Just listen to it.
It's intriguing, though fruitless, to speculate on what sort of music this

man would have written had he lived beyond age thirty-five. When the earli-
er-mentioned Ernst Toch heard someone lament what a shame it was that
Mozart had died at such an early age, he would say, "My God, what more do
you want from the man?!" When Mozart died in 1791, Beethoven, who was
only twenty-one, had not yet written his first piano sonata. Fifteen years later
he would write what was to become the most famous symphony ever com-
posed, our next object of study. If by any chance you are not already familiar
with it, listen to it now.
CHAPTER SIX
Beethoven:
Fifth Symphony
FIRST MOVEMENT
What a forceful and strikingly original way to begin a symphony! Of

Beethoven's preceding symphonies, the opening of the first is original in that
its first chord is a misleading secondary dominant, but only in that respect.
The Eroica, his third, starts with two smashing E^ major chords for full or-
chestra which really make you sit up and take notice, but they are followed by
a melody that is repeated, extended and varied in largely familiar ways. The
fifth is different indeed. I'm often struck by how odd this fellow, this music is.
The opening motto generates a tremendous amount of energy and ex-
pectation, but the fourth note is held, abruptly damming up that energy. The
motto is immediately repeated a step lower, again getting hung up on a fer-
mata, for even longer this time, letting more pressure build. Then he starts
moving, but quietly, which somehow increases the urgency. In 18 he asks for
a crescendo from p to/that must take place in less than half a second! (Notice
that he wants to make sure that a conductor other than himself doesn't ruin
the expressive point by making a gradual crescendo; 18 is marked p, and then
comes the hairpin.) This abruptness surely raised a few Classical eyebrows;
how vulgar it must have seemed to an elegant aristocrat. Then another ferma-
ta, on the active dominant. Now a third statement of the motto, a step higher
than the first, and still again the fermata. Nothing has really been established
other than impatience, determination, perhaps even anger, and a furious but
unfocused energy that keeps getting blocked. Where will all this lead? It will
lead us, as we will see, all the way through the next two movements, to the
finale.
In 25 he gets moving again, and there will be no stop that is more than a
brief pause until the end of the exposition, just before the repeat sign, and
those two measures of silence last barely over one second. He hasn't really ar-
rived anywhere even by then. Stop your recording just before the double bar.
Does the exposition sound at all complete? The second theme group has been
in E1* Major, true, but that key is only one side of a coin that has C minor on
the reverse. To my ears it's almost not a real modulation. The little eight-note
tunelet (63) may hint at a world less stern, but it has no real presence or per-
sonality, and before even its first phrase is over, the basses, lurking in the cel-
lar, mutter the motto, reminding us that all is not yet well. The tunelet is with
us for only thirty-three bars all told, always with the motto keeping us from
relaxing. In fact, there's to be not a moment of relaxation until the next
movement, with the possible exception of the striking oboe solo just after the
beginning of the recapitulation, but that's a parenthesis that lasts only a few
seconds. We'll come back to that. The stern determination does change before
the end of the exposition, however. The section beginning at 94 is actually
joyous; the thrpe eighth notes of the motto are not blocked here; they success-
fully continue to rush along unhindered, even if only for about fifteen sec-
onds. It's a a hope for, or perhaps a premonition of, the conquering spirit of
the last movement.
The harmonies have been unremarkable, but harmony that called atten-
tion to itself would hinder the onrushing action which is at the heart of this
movement. Neither are the rhythms at all interesting, and for the same rea-
son; except for the remarkable closing measures of the development, eighth
and quarter-note motion is all we hear and all we need. It's the momentum
generated by the repeating rhythmic figures that is important.
What about his use of the orchestra? Was there any place where the or-
chestration itself struck you? When you listen to the Debussy that we will
work on later in the book, the experience will be very different in this regard.
Beethoven's orchestration is perfect, in part because it's so unobtrusive, so
natural. Not that Debussy's is unnatural, but it is clear that he gave a lot more
thought to texture, color, spacing and the sensuous qualities of music than
did Beethoven, who, I suspect, would have disapproved somewhat of De-
bussy's concern with beautiful sounds for their own sake. Beethoven was not
unconcerned with orchestral sound, of course. An early draft of this move-
ment has the flutes also playing the motto at the opening, an octave higher
than the violins. He crossed them out. But much of Debussy's fussiness with
scoring would have struck Beethoven as self-indulgent if not effeminate. He
wrote that those who understood his music would have the woes of the world
lifted from their shoulders, while Debussy said that the purpose of music was
to please.
The first fifty measures of the development move through F minor and
C minor to a section on G Major as V, beginning in 179. For this reason
among others, sensitive listeners of the time, consciously or not, will be
expecting the recapitulation. The question of how long-range harmonic
and key relationships actually function in the heard piece is complicated.
Beethoven: Fifth Symphony 47
(For some very surprising observations of how people actually hear, see
Nicholas Cook's enlightening Music, Imagination and Culture.) But when
we get to C, in 195, it functions as the dominant of F minor again. The 32
measures of half notes that follow are remarkable. Before reading the next
section you should make a piano reduction of 195 through 254 and do a
thorough harmonic analysis. Doing a reduction forces you to look at every
note.
If C minor is the foundation for this movement, then F minor, the sub-
dominant, might be thought of as the subbasement. When the tonic becomes
a temporary dominant and we drop to iv, it can seem like dropping through
the floor, though not violently or painfully. When the F minor i6 in 204
moves up a half-step to a Neapolitan six, a chord that has not appeared in the
piece so far, the effect is strong even for us, so we can imagine how much
stronger it was for listeners in the early nineteenth century. Not that it was a
novel chord, having been in use for some time, but every harmony preceding
it in this movement has been very conventional: Beethoven has used major
and minor triads, dominant and diminished sevenths and one augmented
sixth, that's it. If this N 6 had been followed by the traditional and expected
dominant chord, the moment of surprise would soon have been forgotten,
but here it leads to the dominant not of F minor, but of the subdominant of
the subdominant, B1* minor. We are really underground now. Then in 212
comes the N 6 of that distant key, followed by V-i in the key, which is as far as
you can possibly get from C minor, G^0 minor. (To avoid double flats, it is
spelled as as F# minor, at least in the strings.) It cannot be overstressed that
concertgoers in those days had not experienced the harmonic meanderings
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so this passage must have
felt very strange indeed to sensitive listeners. The motto has been absent for
thirty bars, a long time in this movement; before this it has never been absent
for more than four measures at a time. The tonic triad of this alien key, F# mi-
nor, is sounded six times, as the diminuendo begun only ten measures earlier
moves us from ff to pp. Then, in 221, the first flute, most soft-spoken of in-
struments, moves demurely up a half-step, from D^ to D natural ($) and we're
back on track with a V/G, though we don't realize it at the moment. In 228
the motto, on G, suddenly bursts out ff, followed immediately by the leading
tone diminished seventh, pp. The diminished seventh does turn out to be the
incomplete dominant ninth of our home key but, given all the preceding
vagueness, this ambiguous chord, of which any member might be the "root,"
does not announce a clear destination. After seven (!) pp statements of this
chord, its fifth and seventh are insistently hammered away at for eight bars as
the composer struggles to make it to the furious tutti restatement of the mot-
to in 248.
The first twenty-one bars of the recapitulation are structurally equiva-
lent to the first twenty-one bars of the exposition, but the understated differ-
ences are important. Compare the two sections, and make note of every dif-
ference before reading on.
What turns out to be the most significant is the quiet entry of the oboe
in 254. We'll see why in a moment. In 7, the corresponding measure at the be-
ginning, the sustained bass is middle C while in 254 the second bassoon holds
the lower octave, emphasized by the pizzicato cellos. One shouldn't make too
much of this, I suppose, but it does darken the passage slightly. The strong,
abrupt, crescendo of 18 is not asked for in 265 but in the next measure in-
stead, which is odd, as only two bassoons and an oboe can oblige. The tutti V
in the next measure is loud enough. However, the recapitulation, which has
barely begun, is not allowed to continue quite yet. The oboe has something to
say that will significantly enrich the psychological depth and reach of the
movement. Turn to the corresponding spot near the beginning of the piece
(21) so that we can compare the two places. Remember how Beethoven
seemed to be having difficulty getting started? Two very brief but forceful ex-
clamations,)/. Then, suddenly p, the forceful motto is extended, and we seem
to be under way again, but after only twelve bars there's an abrupt crescendo
to another hold, on the anxious dominant. Another strong statement of the
motto in 22, a step higher than its first occurence, and we're really on our
way; there won't be another pause until the two bars of silence before the re-
peat of the exposition.
Now at the place in the recapitulation corresponding to 21, which
means that we feel again the pent-up eagerness to continue, Beethoven writes
adagio, and the solo oboe, who has been playing unnoticeably since 254, takes
center stage for a brief but striking soliloquy. (It's important that he emerges,
that he does not suddenly interject himself. He was there all the time, so to
speak.) But what is the meaning of this? (After the preceding chapter the
word "meaning" should mean a little more to you than it perhaps did before.)
Try, for the moment, to hear the solo by itself, out of context. What is its fla-
vor, its character, its expressive personality? Isn't it rather pensive, tinged per-
haps with regret, private, wistful, above all, backward-looking. It's like a com-
mentary on all the preceding uproar and sometimes almost tiresome
assertiveness. This oboe solo is not part of what has been going on. It stands
outside the turmoil, which has but briefly subsided or has been pushed out of
the mind for a moment The ongoing energy will reassert itself almost imme-
diately. Beethoven will brush away the introspective interruption, but this
solo has added a psychological complexity to the movement, a kind of self-
awareness that is not at all common in most earlier music. Not that Mozart,
say, didn't write pensive, inward-looking music, but it would last for an entire
movement or at least a substantial and clearly defined section, as opposed to
this sort of parenthetical interruption. The remainder of the recapitulation
offers no surprises except, perhaps, for the ineffective use of bassoons for the
horn-call in 303. Was Beethoven making some ironic comment, as he will in

the third movement where the loud, noble horn theme starting in 19 is quiet-
ly parodied by a clarinet and pizzicato strings later in the movement? Or is
there a simpler explanation for not using the horns again? Some conductors
have chosen to add horns. Is this legitimate, do you think? Why did
Beethoven not use the horns here? (There is a simple answer.)
The measure that corresponds to the final chord of the exposition is
375, but the music has developed far too much momentum to be able to stop
there. The remainder of the movement, though technically called a coda (tail)
is longer than any of the three preceding sections, not counting the repeat of
the exposition. There's much of interest in it. For example, the section begin-
ning at 475 is almost the same as the altered restatement of the opening of the
piece at the recapitulation, but note the addition of the deep cello fifth. Even
if one didn't know what was to come, this grounding on the low keynotes of
the movement helps things settle down. But such a movement cannot end
quietly, so Beethoven makes sure you get the point with his twelve concluding
measures.
Listen to the coda once more, taking note of places that strike you. Try to
describe the expressive character of those places and then see if you can de-
termine how Beethoven caused you to hear them that way.
Before we move on, consider whether this movement could stand as a
piece by itself, as just about any Haydn or Mozart movement could. Even if
you didn't know there were other movements to come, even if it were listed in
the program as an overture, like Corialanus or Egmont, would you be dramat-
ically satisfied after those last chords? I doubt it very much. I asked where the
piece was headed when the music seemed to really get under way back in 25.
It was headed for this cadence, of course, but not as a final destination. Let's
continue the journey. Unless you are very familiar with it already, listen now
to the second movement.
SECOND MOVEMENT
The movement begins with a short song without words. Why a song? Sing it
and you'll hear what I mean. Isn't the register perfect for a male voice?
(Would it be the same tune if sung by a woman or played on a clarinet an oc-
tave higher? Not expressively! Therefore the music would be different.) Even
though it has twice as many leaps as it does steps, the largest is but a fifth, and
all the leaps are within familiar chords. Its range is only one octave. There are
natural places one could catch a breath. (Not that the cellists and violists
should insert any rests; I'm just pointing out another aspect of its singability.)
It is very gratifying to sing, its restful tonic being in the middle of its range,
the outer notes being the dominant, calm and easy to reach. (How right of
Beethoven, when he harmonizes the high E^ in 9, not to add a seventh to the

V chord; the increase in tension that would give is to be held off until later.)
This singability makes the melody friendlier than anything in the first move-
ment. Nothing to alarm one here. The rhythms are simple, even if they look
complicated on the page. (I've often wondered why Beethoven sometimes
chose an eighth note for the beat in slow tempos. Look at all the thirty-
second notes the poor man had to draw, and with a quill pen!)
As for its expressive flavor, I find it to be nobly serene and assured. The
assurance comes to a great extent from the implicit harmony. We never hear
more than two tones at a time, but they present a complete cycle of fifths
within the key: IIV vii III VI ii V I. The IV has a touch of ii on the third beat
because of the way the A highlights the Bk and the III and VI are altered to be
simple secondary dominants. This cycle, other things being equal, always
projects a feeling of familiarity and inevitability in its progress. And the no-
bility? Sing it in 9/16, all triplety. It becomes flabby and undistinguished,
doesn't it? There's something about dotted rhythms that inclines one to
square one's shoulders. (My thanks to my colleague Jeffrey Kresky for this im-
age.)
There are two more important things to be said about this opening.
First, its placement. One has just heard some 500 measures of mostly furious
music, ending with repeated hammer blows. This noble melody wouldn't
have the same effect at all if it opened the symphony. But now, with the pas-
sions of the first movement still reverberating in our souls, this music's in-
trinsic personality stands out in contrast, particularly its calm continuity.
Wasn't the continuity in the first movement always rather pushy? And there
was no vocal-style melody in the entire movement, with the possible excep-
tion of the tunelet in E^ in the second theme group, and even that touch of re-
laxation is only eight notes long and is contradicted by the cautioning motto
in the bass. One longs for something like this after all the uproar.
On the other hand, it must be said that there is something decidedly odd
about it. Now, you and I may not hear it as odd for two reasons: first, of
course, we are very familiar with it. But more importantly, we have all heard a
lot of music that is much stranger, particularly in some pieces written this
century. We can never, of course, experience this music the way it was heard
in 1808, but we can try to imagine what it must have been like.
Consider the instrumentation and texture. I cannot think of a sym-
phonic movement before this one that opens with a melody in the strings,
but with the violins remaining silent. Add to that the fact that there are no
chords, no inner voices, just the basses, pizzicato, more than two octaves be-
low the tune. It must have verged on the spooky for at least a good part of the
audience. I can hear someone saying, "Poor man! His hearing is deteriorat-
ing, you know." But there's much more to it than that. There appears to be a
contradiction here between the above-mentioned felt qualities of the melody
itself and the way in which it is presented. This is not unusual in Beethoven
after his earliest pieces. I find these presentations of contrasts and conflicts to
be a manifestation of a basic aspect of his musical personality. A contradic-
tion may present itself in two ways: simultaneously, as in this case, or in the
course of the dramatic action of the piece, as we will see in this same move-
ment shortly. Let's back up a little, in terms of music history.
Most Baroque instrumental music (I am not speaking of opera or other
dramatic works) presents basically one affect, one emotion-area, per move-
ment. If a movement begins with vigor, assurance and chugalong rhythmic
activity, these will pretty much continue until the final cadence. Not that
there will be a complete absence of variety, of course, but no mood or flavor
will be introduced which conflicts seriously with the opening stance, such as
the oboe solo in the first movement of our symphony. Let's jump way ahead
now. By the late nineteenth century such conflicts will have become com-
monplace. A Tchaikovsky second theme group will often seem to belong to
an entirely different expressive universe than the music in the first group, and
it is this contrast that is at the heart of the drama. This change occurred grad-
ually during the period of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Why it happened is
beyond the scope of this book, but surely it had to do with the many ways in
which human experience was changing in Europe during those years.
Beethoven, after all, was nineteen when the French Revolution took place.
Then there were the Napoleonic wars, which came pretty close to him in Vi-
enna. He was, at first, a great admirer of Napoleon, who seemed such a pro-
gressive early on, but later turned against the man who crowned himself em-
peror. Beethoven was much concerned with such matters, and this shows in
many of his pieces. Not that these pieces are "about" politics, revolution or
war, but the composer's personality was certainly influenced by what was go-
ing on.
Back to the piece: We have heard a singable, relaxedly assured, continu-
ous melody, played in a relatively unusual register for the time and accompa-
nied in a decidedly unusual and rather contradictory manner, expressively
speaking. What happens next? The cadential figure is repeated, harmonized
comfortingly with V to I. The winds enter, repeating and extending the previ-
ous idea. The ascending do-mi-sol is filled in by a satisfying, legato descent in
flute and clarinet, harmonized very simply. Then, mostly strings, in 15-19, re-
peat this yet again in a slightly altered version, with the same harmonies.
Then the winds repeat the tail of that phrase. Then the strings repeat that
repetition, followed by three root-position tonic chords. Fourteen bars of un-
eventful, reassuring settling down, after only an eight-bar tune that was itself
quite calm! Everything we've heard since bar 9 has all the characteristics of a
coda. It sounds like music that comes toward the end of a long section, yet the
movement has barely begun. One almost doesn't know quite what to make of
it. But let's look at it in context: are we not still settling down after the first
movement? I think so, at least partly. At any rate, I find these 14 bars very
soothing. Except, that is, for a couple of puzzling dynamic indications.
The first eight bars are all piano and dolce. Suddenly, in 9, the V chord is
marked forte, and the following I, piano. I must admit that I don't get it. For
the remainder of this section I find the dynamic changes somewhat arbitrary
and a bit heavy-handed, a little too Beethoveny for my taste. I find a conflict
here between the expressive function of this section in relation to the rest of
the movement and these dynamic indications. There are enough contrasts in
this movement without them. Were I conducting the piece, I'd be strongly
tempted to play these dynamic contrasts down, which would surely get me
into hot water with some knowledgeable but literal-minded critics.
Now, in 22, there appears what I would call a somewhat new melody. We
have not heard it before, but at the same time it sounds like a variant of the
opening melody, and the viola triplets which accompany it relate it to the pre-
vious three phrases. Something very odd and typical of many of Beethoven's
music of this period is about to happen: the new tune loses its way. It gets
stuck on a diminished seventh chord. It has only been with us for four bars
and now it seems puzzled, though not for long. The "root" of the diminished
seventh drops a half-step, and we're punched with a j/augmented sixth chord
that propels us upward into a I 6 V 7 I i n C major, upward because the previ-
ously flatted notes are now all natural. I still find this startling even though I
know it's coming. How much more startling it must have seemed to the audi-
ence at the premiere. No aristocratic, classical elegance here! The relaxed as-
surance of the first twenty-five bars is rudely but joyously interrupted.
Though sudden expressive contrasts of this sort were certainly not entirely
absent from Classical style, they usually occured in opera or oratorio where
demanded by the text, much less often in concert music.
Another original aspect of this spot is that when the new tonic has
been asserted and the trumpets and drums come in, they don't give us a
new tune; they play the innocuous, gentle melody that began at the pickup
to 23, but with its personality transformed by the scoring, texture and dy-
namics. It is now bold, solemnly festive and rather martial. No words can
capture its flavor, and its flavor will of course be somewhat different for
each of us, but it is something along those lines. Once again Beethoven does
something that must have startled many in the audience, presenting the
"same" melody with an entirely different personality. Not that this sort of
thing had never been done before; the second theme in the first movement
of Mozart's Fortieth Symphony occurs in major in the exposition and reca-
pitulates in the tonic minor, for example. And in development sections and
cadenzas one heard transformations of this sort. Otherwise it was not com-
mon, while later on, particularly with Liszt and Franck, it was perhaps over-
done. The earlier-mentioned triplets have become very prominent, helping
to relate the sections one to the other; yet this is very different music than
any we've heard so far in this movement, and it starts only in 29. But now
we're in for yet another interruption in the flow. After only eight bars, the E
and G from the C chord are left hanging and fading; then the strings make
them part of another diminished seventh chord! Can't this guy make up his
mind as to where he wants his music to go? It must have been heard as a
fault by many in the audience, as they had grown up playing and listening
to music that always knew where it was and where it was going. (Again, an
exception must be made for opera or other music with a text.) Knowing
where you're going was and is a good way to feel. Who wants to go to a con-
cert to be troubled by the composer's doubts and misgivings? Well, in this
piece, at least, the doubts will be left far behind by the time the symphony
is over. But do you see how Beethoven is extending the psychological, ex-
pressive reach of music? I do not mean that his pieces are better than earli-
er music because of this, but they are different and seemed novel, if not
strange or sometimes inept. Although he's writing about a somewhat later
piece, listen to what a London critic wrote:
The merits of Beethoven's 7th we have before discussed 8c we repeat that it

is a composition in which the author has indulged a great deal of disagree-
able eccentricity. Often as we have now heard it performed, we cannot yet
discover any design in it, neither can we trace any connection in its parts.
Altogether, it seems to have been intended as a kind of enigmawe had
almost said a hoax.
Such reactions, many by trained, sensitive musicians, were not rare. The
quote above does not show that its author was a fool or unmusical. He prob-
ably would have felt something like this about the music we have just been
discussing:
The juxtaposition of such differing, even contrasting, moods is most un-

settling. It is the expression of an unstable personality, or at least a man of
questionable taste. The opening melody, which is pleasant enough, is pre-
sented without a completed accompaniment; where are the inner voices?
Perhaps the great man was interrupted at his desk? Similarly, the vulgarly
abrupt modulation to C major comes much too soon. The previous mood
has hardly had time to settle in. If this music is at all a picture of Herr
Beethoven's inner life, he should seek help. I surely would not want to go
through such changes in my emotional weather!
He is saying, you see, that one should not feel that way. There are many people
who say the same thing about much twentieth-century music. This is a moral
judgment, isn't it? In the chapter titled "Aesthics" we will explore further the
relationships between one's moral and ethical views on the one hand and
one's aesthetic taste on the other.
To return to the music: the optimistic brassy music wasn't allowed to

continue, at least not for now. Does this not leave us with a desire for it to re-
sume its course, whether or not we are conscious of that desire? It will try
again in 80 through 86, where once more it will be thwarted. It will reappear
in 147-155, ff and tutti, but this last statement, even though there is no di-
minished seventh to muddy the waters this time, will get no further, will not
fulfill its potential. We are left, at the movement's conclusion, with unfulfilled
expectations, as we were in the first movement. Is this a fault? Hardly. They
are not strong enough to make us uncomfortable, but they will, I think, play
their part later in the piece. Here we are talking about dramatic form, as con-
trasted with architectural form. No diagram can show this very significant as-
pect of the symphony. Note that I write "of the symphony," not "of the move-
ment." Some of you will have foreseen what I am about to say: those
unfulfilled expectations will be gratified in the last movement. You know that
nothing can be understood apart from its context. Just as part of the charac-
ter of the opening song in this movement was due to its coming right after
the uproar of the first movement, so the triumphant optimism of the finale is
made even more satisfying by these incomplete attempts at similar assertions
in the andante. Whether this is the result of conscious planning on the com-
poser's part we'll never know, but that's a separate question, isn't it? The piece
works that way. And, of course, just before the recapitulation of the finale,
Beethoven will quote the third movement, proving, as if proof were needed,
that he did think in these long-range ways. It should also be pointed out that
key was very important to him. He associated quite specific expressive areas
with different tonics: for Beethoven, E^ was imperial; C minor dramatic; D
pastoral, and so on. So the fact that the brassy music in the andante is in C,
the forceful, upbeat key ofthe finale, is no accident. The Piece is The Whole.
Let's now look in detail at the strange transition in bars 38 through 49.
The diminished seventh chord which occurs in 39 is spelled as, and most eas-
Example 6.1
ily heard as, an incomplete V9 (which we will label vii07) of F minor, the vi or
relative minor of the main key. Of course, it might be heard as vii07/iv in C,
but like all such chords, any note can be construed as the root, so it's always
best to hear and see where it goes. It's followed in 42 by what is most readily
heard as a major-minor seventh, but which resolves as an augmented sixth
chord to an A1* minor triad in second inversion, which inversion usually pro-
claims a chord to be the tonic. We know, having listened to the entire move-
ment several times, that A^ Major is coming up, so why is this chord minor?
Firstly, because three bars later we will hear that marvelous A^> Major triad,
with the root as the highest note in the phrase, and the cellos on their rich
open C; it wouldn't be nearly as effective had we just heard it in 43. Also, the
mood of this transition would be violated by any major chord that soon.
Beethoven here is lost for a moment. There is no pulse, no rhythmic direc-
tion, no familiar resolution of any chord until the dominant in 45 grants us
the original tonic again for an easygoing variation of the opening song. Fig-
ure 6.1 is a Roman numeral analysis of the passage.
Note that I have named, but not analyzed, the diminished seventh which
begins the phrase. What are the options, if we insist on nailing it down? I
mentioned the vii07 of F. It might be called a misspelled G07, the vii07 of the
upcoming Ak Saying that the root is B^/A# or D^/C* doesn't get us anywhere,
so I'll let you take your pick between the first two possibilities, if you're so in-
clined. Or maybe it's just a diminished seventh! Would leaving it at that both-
er you? I hope not. Its function is dramatic, not structural.
Let me recapitulate the affective journey so far. We've been knocked
about by the first movement. We are soothed and reassured by the first 26
bars of the second. Then comes an abrupt, energizing burst of trumpets and
drums in C Major, but in almost no time it loses momentum and direction in
the passage we just analyzed. Three greatly contrasting expressive areas in
only 48 measures! Very original for the time. I repeat, this does not mean that
it's "better" than earlier music, not at all. We'll go into value judgments more
toward the end of the book, but for now just this: Beethoven often tries to in-
tegrate expressive qualities that, before his time, were almost always kept
apart, and he usually succeeds. By "integrate" I mean place in close juxtaposi-
tion and relate one to the other so that they become parts of a larger whole.
You may not agree with my precise words, but in this movement so far we
have been pleasantly relaxed, then suddenly energized and heartily encour-
aged, but only briefly. Then, for a short stretch, we were troubled by doubt
Figure 6.1
and the loss of a sense of direction. But all is well again when we return to Ak
and the relaxed song and mood of the opening are reestablished. Are these
not the sorts of emotional qualities and patterns of change of life experiences
we all have undergone, or might undergo, even if not in the same order or for
the same relative periods of time? We can relate to this music because its af-
fective flavors and dramatic form are analogous to actual human experience.
I do not mean to suggest that Beethoven based the music on some particular
experience of his, though it's not out of the question. But his taste and imagi-
nation are not autonomous faculties, unrelated to his mind and personality
as a whole. What present themselves to composers as purely musical prob-
lems (Which harmony is better here? Should this section be extended a little?
Ought I add oboes to the accompanimental figures?) are, at bottom, ques-
tions involving expression and feeling. This is certainly true for all music
written during the common-practice period, as well as for most twentieth-
century music. Some composers of this century, whom I call formalists, are
concerned only with the technical procedures of composition; they let the ex-
pressive chips fall where they may. But even when every pitch, rhythm and
performance direction is generated by impersonal mathematical procedures,
our conditioning will quite often lead to our finding the music "expressive" in
some vague way. This is what I called unearned significance. More of that in
the final chapter.
The overall architecture of the movement is unique and interesting. If
you'd like something really challenging, try drawing a formal diagram, like
the one we did for the exposition of the Mozart concerto movement. That
was relatively easy, Mozart's large-scale structures being almost always clear
and unambiguous. Beethoven's often are as well, but there can be structural
subtleties which, while not calling attention to themselves at the moment,
complicate and enrich the hearing experience. For example, take the "some-
what new" melody that begins on the pickup to 23: how important is this
structurally? On which level of organization would you show this demarca-
tion? We haven't heard this tune before, but it's not really that new. If we drew
a diagram showing the structure as defined by melody alone, this would be
the start of a new section. A diagram showing structure as defined by key and
major changes in texture, however, would not show a really new section until
ten bars later, when the brass present that tune in C Major. In Mozart and
Haydn when a tune appears for the first time, there is almost always a clear
change in instrumentation, rhythmic profile, accompanimental texture and
perhaps in key as well. We do have the introduction of triplets here in the vi-
olas, but the melodic structure does not match the apparent form of the oth-
er aspects. This is in no way a conflict, but it is a complication. How will you
show this in your diagram?
There's much more that could be said about this andante, but why don't
you try it on your own? I suggest starting with the E^7 in 124; verbalize as best
you can the expressive character of a section and then attempt to explain how
Beethoven's use of melody, rhythm, orchestration and so on contribute to es-
tablishing that character.
THIRD MOVEMENT
If they had heard his first four symphonies, the members of the audience at
the premiere of this one would have known better than to expect a polite
minuet for the third movement, but who could have foreseen a beginning
this spooky? And (here he goes again!) a ritard as soon as 7, and then the fer-
mata. The eight-bar period starts over but is given an odd two-bar stretching
in the middle. Phrase length is something that listeners would most likely
never be consciously aware of, and yet deviations from the expected duple,
quadruple and so on groupings were rare. When they did occur, there was
bound to be a subliminal effect. Even today, with our jaded ears, when we lis-
ten to a piece from an earlier style period we seem to adopt the expectations
of an audience from that time. So this internal stretching is somewhat dis-
torting; this is not "regular" music. It most certainly is not dance music, as
was the norm for symphonic third movements.
We now hear an unexpected sforzando-piano on the D, then the ritar-
dando again, as well as the fermata on the dominant. Ominous and tentative,
isn't it? Gone is the calm continuity of the previous movement. A polite min-
uet would, of course, be completely out of place in this symphony, while a
boisterous scherzo or jolly folk dance a la Haydn would give the finale noth-
ing to play off against, which is one of the reasons I have a little trouble with
the C Major section coming up. More on that later.
These questioning eighteen bars are just right. The previous movement
offered us a good deal of relaxing music, and it closed with a longish, confi-
dent-sounding coda. Now, a sense of foreboding, verging on the melodra-
matic. (At the opera, can you not see the villain slinking onto the darkened
stage?) The effect must have been much stronger in 1808; remember that the
listeners had never heard Berlioz or Wagner or Tchaikovsky, not to mention
Schoenberg or Varese. Also keep in mind that they must have been much
more sensitive to music played by an orchestra than we are because such con-
certs were so rare. And, needless to say, they were without recordings and ra-
dios. ("Needless to say," yes, but imagine: you heard no music unless you
made it yourself or traveled to some place where it was being performed. A
very different world from ours. How much more precious and appreciated
music must have been!)
Then, out of the dark blue, those horns! Once again Beethoven has suc-
cessfully established a striking atmosphere, only to abandon it for something
quite different, this time after a mere eighteen bars. The rhythmic resem-
blance to the motto of the first movement is obvious but not of much signifi-
cance because the feel of the music is so different. The motto was pushy, an-
gry, always trying to get moving, while this music is confident, noble, serious
and assertive. The winds enter in 27 and the new idea is sequenced a minor
third higher. Before this time, sequences rarely sounded as if they were in an-
other key. A sequence a fifth higher would sound on the dominant, not in the
key of the dominant. A sequence a step higher would use the tones of the
home scale, so as not to sound like a modulation. But in this case the music
abruptly leaps into E^ minor, there's no other way to hear it. The firmly estab-
lished C minor of the first twenty-six bars is gone; we have been dislocated.
Here again, as was noted in the previous movement, the moment of modula-
tion does not align with the statement of the new melody and texture, as was
usually the case with Mozart, Haydn and others of that period. Beethoven has
given us but one phrase of a striking new melody in the established tonality
when the sudden modulation to a distant key jolts the listeners. Does it still
jolt? Certainly not as strongly as it must have in 1807, when the symphony
was first played. Six years later, in 1813, Richard Wagner was born. Modulat-
ing sequences of this sort abound in his music, as we shall see when we exam-
ine his Tristan, premiered in 1865. Wagner's music was widely imitated, and
listeners became used to its extreme chromaticism and expanded notion of
key. Of course by now we have all heard music far more adventurous than
even Wagner could have imagined, but still, as was pointed out above, we en-
ter into the style world of the piece we are listening to, adopting its set of ex-
pectations to the extent possible.
In 44 a sudden, quick diminuendo to pp on the dominant Bk which im-
mediately changes mode and function to serve as tonic for the opening idea
in Bl minor. Another novel effect for the time. The restatement beginning on
the pickup to 53 is extended into a modulatory link to a restatement of the
noble theme in C minor, which is soon sequenced up a fourth in F minor, not
up a minor third as it was in 27. This in turn is extended, as in 27-44, until it
reaches, in 96, a C Major triad as V/F minor. Paralleling 53, C is minorized
into the new/old tonic for the remainder of the section, a most unusual way
to return home.
Let's review the unconventional aspects of the first 96 measures, keeping
in mind that they were experienced as being all the more unusual because of
the expectation of the audience for a dancelike third movement. The spooky
opening, low strings alone, ritards and fermatas before motion really takes
hold, the internal stretching of an 8- into a 10-bar phrase, the odd, complete-
ly unexpected sfp, the sudden, very contrasting entry of the horns, the abrupt
shift to the distant E^ minor after only one phrase of the new melody, the
darkening effect of major V turning into minor I twice . . . all these serve to
replace the calm of the closing pages of the previous movement with . . . with
what? Can you find words to approximate the feel of this music for you? Ulti-
mately, of course, it's impossible to reduce music to words, but that doesn't
mean we can't say anything at all about it. See if you can complete this section
of the chapter on your own, analyzing 97-141. What's that in the violins in
101? And where did that tune in the cellos come from? What's the effect of
the running eighth notes beginning in 116? What about the extreme differ-
ence in dynamics between 133 and 137?
Now, in what is called the trio, starting in 141, we hear for the first time
some music which actually is rather dancelike, though rather heavy-footed.
The instruments, the same as those which began the movement, are certainly
in a better mood here than they were there, but their heartiness is a bit un-
gainly because of the size of the instruments and because of the two six-bar
phrases, a phrase length not common at all in dance music for bipeds. I have
always found the repetition of these twenty bars a little troubling. Why is
Beethoven being this conventional formally with such unconventional mu-
sic? ("Conventional" refers to the fact that the trio of a minuet or scherzo was
just about always AABB in form.) I surmise that he didn't want things to get
too out of hand; if within the sections he is writing some odd music, he will
at least present the sections in a familiar package. The second B section here is
changed greatly, but that literal repeat of A bothers me. As a matter of fact, it
might be argued that this entire C major section is somewhat out of place in
this movement and in this symphony. It's terrific music, mind you, but
wouldn't it would fit better into the next symphony, the Pastoral? The func-
tion of the major mode here may be to intensify by contrast the darkness of C
minor in 256, but the jolly C Major music takes away a little from the effect of
the opening of the last movement. Only a little, though;- that opening is so
powerful that this thought has never entered my mind at a performance.
What do you thinkare we permitted to criticize a masterpiece?
At any rate, the effect of clumsiness in 181 and 184 fits in perfectly.
Things smooth out and relax nicely, becoming positively aimiable after 228,
but what's coming up after the return of the opening is strange indeed. We
noted in the second movement Beethoven's presenting a melody with a cer-
tain personality and then bringing it back in a different guise. (You will recall
the "somewhat new" melody that first appears gently and quietly in 23 and
which is then restated a few bars later ff with trumpets and drums.) This time
the effect is even more pronounced because of the specific expressive flavors
involved. Starting at 256, the alteration of the opening is only a slight change
of bowing and the breaking up of the phrase with two rests. Winds instead of
strings complete the period, but the mood is still what it was in the begin-
ning. Now we get that stretched ten-bar phrase. The pitches are the same as
they were in 9-18, but their being stated by solo bassoon and pizzicato strings
gives the music a turn toward the grotesque. What happens next, beginning
in 275, demands some sort of programatic interpretation.
Recall the entry of the horns in 19. After the first ominous, spooky, ten-
tative eighteen measures, which have undermined the composure established

by the preceding movement, a pair of the noblest instruments of them all tells
us to buck up. Now some people might object to my putting words to this
music, but from reading his letters and diaries I feel sure that Beethoven
would have approved. In fact, in the stupendous fourth movement of his last
symphony, he does it himself; the baritone soloist, after much very agitated
music, enters with O Freunde, nicht diese Tone! The words are Beethoven's
own, and mean literally, "O friends, not these sounds!" He then urges them to
be joyful and sets a poem by Friedrich von Schiller that asserts that all men
shall be brothers. Beethoven was full of such thoughts and explicitly claimed
that those who understood his music would have the woes of the world lifted
from their shoulders. The emotions that go with such views will be forcefully
asserted in the last movement of this symphony, though without any words.
The passage we are dealing with in this movement, however, is more complex
expressively and psychologically.
The horns in 19 have spoken out sternly against the ghostly timidity of
the first eighteen bars. They have been very serious about this, but they fade
away after only about twenty measures, and the ominous mood returns. We
need not try to interpret the ensuing back and forth between the two themes
and their combination after 101, but the music is never relaxed or at all joy-
ful, and it remains frowningly in the minor mode. Now, what about the mu-
sic from 275 on?
Is this not the same music we heard beginning in 71? These are the same
pitches and essentially the same rhythms, aren't they? Well, yes, but it's cer-
tainly not the same music! There's much more involved here than a simple
change in instrumentation. It's as if Beethoven were reevaluating everything
that has come before in this movement, as if he's looking back and saying, "I
was fooled by those noble horns. They meant well, but really didn't amount
to very much; I can see that now." One could almost say that he's questioning
his previous pretentions, or perhaps even sneering at them a little. I don't
know, something along those lines.
I do not, I should stress, want to reduce the music to these ideas. One
can listen to the piece without thoughts like this entering the mind at all, and
that's just fine. Beethoven didn't write the symphony in order for people to
translate it into words or ideas. But if one wishes to understand why this mu-
sic is still played and why it is spoken of as a great work, it simply won't do to
claim that it's great music because it's great music or it appeals to some au-
tonomous "aesthetic sense." We value it so highly because of what we undergo
when we hear it, which involves us somehow with profound matters that are
relevant to important aspects of human experience.
So the movement almost ends with this piddling statement of what had
been so very serious. Where its final chord should be, on the downbeat of
344, the music is kept alive by the surprise ppp appearance of an A^3 Major tri-
ad, a harmony that we have not heard since the final cadence of the second
movement. The deep basses sound again after an absence of almost a hun-
dred bars. The timpani have been silent for even longer, and now they throb
with the motto that the bassoon has just tooted to mock the earlier horns,
and which makes at least some reference to the first movement. Now for fifty
bars of rising expectation. When the violins' sustained C finally moves in 359
on an A1* Major arpeggio that becomes an implied augmented sixth, it is with
a variant of the opening theme of the movement. The tail of this is repeated
in rising sequences until we reach the extremely tense sonority of the last four
bars before the allegro with timpani and bassoons on the tonic and everyone
else on a full dominant seventh chord. An extraordinary sound indeed, lead-
ing to some of the grandest sounds and most triumphant gestures in Western
concert music.
The fourth movement is for you to work on. Start by asking yourself
what the major characteristics of the opening section of this allegro are and
how they produce the feelings you experience when you hear it. There's no
secret for you to discover, but you may overlook some obvious points unless
you organize your quest. List the main attributes under each of the following
headings: melody, texture and orchestration, rhythm/meter, harmony/tonali-
ty and structure, both on the phrase level and the long-range. What do you
think of the return of the parodied horn theme from the previous move-
ment? What might he have had in mind in doing that? In the next chapter we
will examine a few shorter excerpts from other works by the same composer.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Three Beethoven Excerpts
SEVENTH SYMPHONY, INTRODUCTION
We will look at only part of this wonderfully energetic symphony, but do, un-
less you know it well already, sit down and listen to an uninterrupted perfor-
mance of the entire work. It should buck you up for a week. Then play the
following harmonic reduction of the first section of the introduction (Exam-
ple 7.1) to the first movement and try a harmonic analysis.
Example 7.1
Two bars of I, two bars of V6. (You don't need to be told, I am sure, that
the F# in 2 is a nonharmonic tone!) In 5, the tonic becomes a secondary dom-
inant, V2/IV, a very bottom-heavy chord. A bar of IV6 expectedly follows;
then it becomes bottom-heavy, with that F natural. From here on we have a G
Major-minor seventh in third inversion, a first inversion C major triad two
beats later, a full measure of F Major after which that heavy F in the bass
drops to the expected E for dominant harmony.
Now, how did you mark the chords in 8 and 9? Do they "belong" in A
Major? There's a lot going on here. Very noticeable is the descending chro-
matic line in the bass. One might thoughtlessly say that the G# in 3 and 4
"wants" to return to A. (Yes, we all know that a note doesn't "want" anything,
but we've gone into that; it is a handy way to talk, and your desires are part of
The Piece.) However, that's only true on a first hearing, which is an important
point, too often neglected. There's a bit of that tendency to return to A left in
the G# even when you know the piece, but its predominant direction has be-
come downward. This would have been reinforced in the expectations of au-
diences by their having heard the use of a descending chromatic line from do
to sol in hundreds of pieces, from popular dances through sets of variations
to the Crucifixus from Bach's Mass in B Minor. Certainly once we hear the G
natural we expect the bass to continue to descend to the dominant. We have,
thereby, an expectation of an expectation, one of the many subtle possibilities
offered by triadic tonality.
To return to the question at the beginning of this paragraph, here, as in
the Chopin E minor prelude, we must expand our notion of what a key "is."
The E minor of that piece included its relative, G Major, because the expecta-
tion of G was part of the equipment, if you will, of the listeners. And, as you
now know, the listeners are part of The Piece. All it took was that D 7 to evoke
G Major in order that it might never be achieved and so help establish the af-
fective drama of the prelude. In addition, there were a number of harmonies
from the subdominant area, A minor, even though A was never present as a
tonic, even temporarily. Soon after Beethoven, certainly by the middle of the
nineteenth century, a key must be considered as being hospitable to any chord.
In the case at hand, when we reach the dominant harmony in 10 we have sure-
ly not heard any key other than A, but can we not think of it as A mijor? (My
thanks to my teacher Vincent Persichetti for this term.) Then we have no prob-
lem explaing the G, C and F chords: G is the V of (Big III) and F, is simply VI.
You might say that the key of C has been hinted at briefly, but I don't hear it
that way at all; the C moves to the F, which moves to the E. It's that "A major" is
a larger house than its key signature might lead you to believe. Signatures are
instructions to performers, not information about the tonality of a piece ex-
cept in quite simple, diatonic music. I have made temporary enemies of many
students by giving them analysis assignments with altered, misleading key sig-
natures. This way they learn to listen before they think. Now let me lead you to
the edge of a discovery about Beethoven's long-range key planning. Whether
we can actually hear the relationship you are about to observe is questionable,
but there's no doubt the composer could. After the scaly transition beginning
in 10 we are given a new tune in 23. More scales and then the tune appears
again in 42. In what keys are these presentations? Isn't that neat?
SONATA "LES ADIEUX." OP. 81 A. INTRODUCTION
Simply to supply Roman numerals for chords is, in itself, only a start. If, how-
ever, you have done it properly, which means using your ears before your
brain, you are off to a good start. This is because implicit in those numerals is
a good deal of information about why the music sounds the way it does, how
it moves, what tensions, moods and expectations it sets up. In this excerpt
Three Beethoven Excerpts 65
harmony and suggested tonics play the major role in creating its expressive
atmosphere. A thorough analysis will of course consider texture, rhythm,
phrase structure and other aspects as well, but in this excerpt we will concen-
trate on harmony and tonality. Listen to the first twenty-one bars several
times and then try to label every chord. Remember: key(s) first, then the ob-
vious chords, then those remaining. Don't look at the analysis which follows
the next paragraph until you have completed your own (see Example 7.2).
Example 7.2
The question "What key is this excerpt in?" is a bad one. It's usually a
bad one, because it implies beforehand that there is a single correct answer.
Might there not be modulations, well established or passing or merely hinted
at? Of course, but a very prominent theorist and analyst, Allen Forte, has ac-
tually written, "We can now regard the late nineteenth-century concept of
modulation' merely as a verbal inaccuracy." I don't know that I'm sure what
that means, but it's certainly not an aural inaccuracy! There's simply no get-
ting around the fact that most large-scale pieces of music change keys. Short
as it is, could anyone hear all of this excerpt as being in E1* Major? I suppose
one might say that as it begins and ends with EL as its major tonic and is fol-
lowed by an allegro section clearly in that key for a while, the overriding or
basic key is Ek And looking at it from that standpoint might help you discov-
er things in the music that you would not otherwise have noticed. But does
that have anything to do with the sound of, for instance, 2-5? Watch out for
this sort of thing as you continue studying theory, it's widespread in acade-
mia. Keep your analysis rooted in the sound of the music, and you can't go far
wrong. Start with abstract ideas and you may end up with consistent and in-
teresting theories and "explanations" which have little or no relation to the
experienced piece. Figure 7.1 is what I've come up with.
This is program music. Beethoven entitled the first movement, "The
farewell, Vienna, May 4,1809, on the occaision of His Imperial Highness', the
revered Archduke Rudolf's departure." He wrote the "Le-be-wohl!" above the
first three notes, which is an familiar way of saying "Fare thee well!"
(Beethoven's dealings with his aristocratic patrons are fascinating. I recom-
mend at least reading the article on him in an encyclopedia of music. The bi-
ography by Maynard Solomon is excellent.)
Play through the downbeat of 2, omitting the Cs in the left hand. The
archduke liked to hunt, and this figure, called "horn fifths," was commonly
used in pieces referring to hunting. The so-called "deceptive" resolution to vi
instead of the expected tonic triad is the composer's way of telling the duke
how sorry he is to see him leave. (Whether he really meant it we'll never
know, but Beethoven knew how to handle rich patrons. You didn't get far in
Figure 7.1
Vienna in those days without their support.) The next four bars sound as if
they are in C minor; therefore they are in C minor, with the possible excep-
tion of the last chord in 5. This G minor triad could be a minor v in C minor
or iii in the coming Ek or you might call its third an anticipation, which is the
way I hear it. Don't lose any sleep agonizing over your decision.
The dominant seventh on the downbeat of 6 puts us firmly back in Ek
The downbeat of 7 is a diminished seventh used in a manner we have not
come across yet, so let's take the time to consider it.
The historical and theoretical origin of the 7 is as the upper four tones
of a V9, and this explains the overwhelming majority of its uses in common-
practice music well into the nineteenth century. These are usually labelled
vii07, though, as mentioned in chapter 3, they used to be marked V^90, indicat-
ing a dominant ninth with the root omitted. (The ^ is not needed if the music
is in the minor mode, in which case the lowered ninth is diatonic.) The sec-
ond-commonest usage is as a secondary chord, as in a vii07/V or some degree
than the tonic or vii. Figure out on your own why V/vii is unlikely. If you un-
derstood the previous paragraph you'll know why.
As a diminished seventh is made up of three minor thirds, taking any of
its factors as root will generate the "same" pitches, spelled enharmonically.
Composers do not always spell these chords "correctly," so identifying the
root should be based on the chord's resolution, not merely on its spelling.
On the downbeat of 7, however, none of the factors in the diminished
seventh moves up a half-step, so it isn't acting as a vii07 of anything. It is
spelled as if it were a secondary diminished seventh of ii in Ek but that does-
n't help explain its function here. Taking other factors as roots would give
vii07 of Ak D or B, none of which is applicable. Take time out to think about it
for a moment before you read on.
Play Example 7.3. Does that help? Can you hear now that the Dk E and
G are nonharmonic tones, appoggiaturas? So there's no diminished seventh
to bother worrying about! Many texts label this sort of thing a "common-
tone diminished seventh." Is that supposed to be an explanation? All it does is
state the obvious: the chord and its resolution share a tone. So what? I and V
share a tone, as do I and IV. Heard correctly, the Dk E and G are nonharmon-
ic tones. Combined with the root for the whole measure Bk they sound, out of
Example 7.3
context, the same as a diminished seventh. Don't expect to be able to establish

a Roman numeral slot for every sonority that sounds like a chord. In this ex-
ample the fact that the appoggiaturas add up to what sounds like a dimin-
ished seventh chord fits in very well with the expressive aim of the passage.
But if you can grasp with your ears and mind the fact that the downbeat of 7
is not a diminished seventh chord, you're doing very well.
This V7 resolves deceptively again, but only a half-step higher, to Ck (Is
C in the key of E^? Strictly speaking it is not to be found in E^ Major, but how
about E^ mijor?) As in 2, Beethoven simply stays in the key of the deceiving
chord, the music in 8 and 9 can be heard only in C^ major. The next phrase-
lets, as they are so brief, I would call on (as opposed to "in") E^ minor and A^
minor. From 12 on we're firmly back in the original tonic.
Let's survey all the keys that have been used: E^ Major, C minor and O ma-
jor for sure, with touches of E^ and A^ minor. These keys were hardly chosen as
the result of a whim. Think for a moment about how they are related.... C
minor is, of course, the relative of the basic tonic, while E^5 minor is the paral-
lel. C^ Major is VI in that parallel key and A^ minor is its relative. Beethoven is
not one for unrelated or very distantly related key centers. Innovative and
striking, yes, but just about always grounded in tradition.
The touch on the downbeat of 15 of Ab minor again is effective in an al-
most childlike way. The touch of sadness it supplies is going to be supplanted
by the upbeat major subdominant just three chords later. But it's still pp and
slow, making the assertive promise of 17 all the more effective. The duke may
be gone, but he'll return.
WALDSTEIN SONATA, OP. 53, FIRST MOVEMENT

Here's a little problem for you. Listen a few times to bars one through four-
teen of the first movement. Then, see if you can come up with a reason for
marking the first measure something more than simply I. The music surely
opens in C Major, and one can hardly deny that C-E-G constitute a tonic
chord, but there's more to it than that. You will be helped if you can first an-
swer another question: how is one label the B^ major triad in 5? Try it (see Ex-
ample 7.4). Don't just read on.
Congratulations! You realized that the BL major chord in 5 acts as the
subdominant of the up-coming F Major chord in 7, so you marked it IV/IV.
(It would have been a gross error to have labeled it ''VII, which is merely what
it is, not what it does). It is followed by the dominant of IV on the last beat of
6. While Beethoven is not modulating to the key of F, he is certainly stressing
F-ness temporarily. You saw (heard) that the chord on the last beat of 6
should be labeled V/IV, but did you think of the idea of marking the F chord
itself I/IV? That's a more apt name than simply IV because it tells us a little
Example 7.4
more how the chord functions. F Major is not even a fleeting tonic, as were
the E^ and A^ minor in the previous excerpt, the tempo is too fast for it to
sound like anything but IV, but calling it I/IV is better than simply IV.
Now, what about the opening harmony? You see now that the first
phrase presents the "same" music as the second, but a step higher. We hear a
IV-V-I ofV, followed by a IV-V-I of IV. Figure 7.2 shows an alternate, sim-
pler way of indicating all this.
The music in 8 through 13 is "borrowed from" the parallel minor, if you
Figure 7.2
insist on that odd terminology. Better is to keep in mind that the abstraction
"the key of C Major" includes all twelve pitch classes. Which of the five chro-
matic notes are used, and how they are used, is a matter of style and expres-
sion. A piece in C Major by Bach will most likely favor Bk as he is so fond of
the dominant of the subdominant. Next will be F#, in different versions of
V/V. These usages in Bach are not likely to be overtly expressive; usually their
function is to give impetus to the passage in which they occur. In 8 through
13 of our Beethoven excerpt, however, the minor music's function is dramat-
ic and mood setting; the energetic onrushing phrases just discussed are sud-
denly darkened by the minor subdominant in 8. The sixteenth notes increase
the excitement, but the quick diminuendo in 12 on the falling minor tonic
chord brings the music to a temporary halt. This interruption of the motion
only increases the pent-up urgency that was generated by the opening, so the
return to C Major in 14, in sixteenth notes this time, seems extra peppy.
Let's review what has occurred harmonically and what its effect is. The
structural movement has been from the major dominant to the major sub-
dominant, which becomes minor; then it moves to the major dominant,
which concludes the section on the minor tonic. In this style context the
movement from V to IV is retrograde; it is a backing up. The opening "tonic"
(really IV/V) has moved through V/V to the dominant, which of course
wants to move to I. But the music, by backing up to IV, increases this urge to
get to a proper tonic. The minorizing of the subdominant, combined with
the extended sixteenth notes, causes the desire for the tonic to frown. When
finally, in 12, we do arrive at the tonic, it is minor, and it quickly is hushed as
it descends to its unstable second inversion. Like a capacitor, the first page
stores energy for the rest of the movement.
Beethoven's innovations usually are tried out in a piano sonata before
appearing in a symphony or concerto. If you have studied many movements
in sonata-allegro form you probably noticed something unusual in this one
with regard to key structure: the chorale like main melody in the second
theme group, beginning in 35, is in E Major rather than the traditional G Ma-
jor. What this meant to Beethoven, to his contemporaries and to us is a prob-
lematic area which we can only touch on.
As mentioned in the discussion of his C minor symphony, keys had

strong and fixed emotional associations for Beethoven, C minor being tragic,
EL major heroic, and so on. I have never read how he felt about E Major, and
one wonders why it was never used as the main tonic in any major work of
his. Our E is of a higher frequency than his was, and we do not have the asso-
ciations that he and probably many of his contemporaries had. As most lis-
teners do not have absolute pitch, very few people, even trained musicians,
would be able to specify the key of this passage without looking at the score.
The interesting question is, would they be aware of the key relationship,
would they feel that this was an unexpected tonal area? Speaking only for my-
self, I experience this second group as being lighter in weight and in color
than the same music in G Major, but I cannot be sure that this is not just be-
cause I know it is in E.
The music of the second theme group traditionally reappears a fifth
lower in the recapitulation. But that would put this tune in A Major. Would
Beethoven do that? "Shouldn't" the second theme return in the tonic? Take a
look/listen and see/hear what he does and what effect it has on you. We will
now turn away once more from specific pieces in order to explore some of
the usually unexamined relationships between our musical value judgments
and our ethical opinions.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Aesthics:
Aesthetics Meets Ethics
If we are to take the notion of holistic thinking about music seriously, we

cannot omit the question of value judgements. What is it that I am really say-
ing when I claim that Mozart is better than, say, Clementi? Is it simply a mat-
ter of purely subjective taste, an I-prefer-strawberries, you-prefer-raspberries
sort of thing? It means nothing to claim that strawberries are better than
raspberries unless we have agreed to talk about something quantifiable, like
vitamin content and its relation to better nutrition. I want to talk of what
might be called musical nutrition.
It does mean something to say that Mozart's music is better than
Clementi's; I think we all know that. Anyone who preferred Clementi would
be properly considered immature, lacking in taste, or simply wrong. It's a
tricky area to deal with and, understandably enough, is usually omitted from
books on analysis or theory. Our holistic approach, however, requires us to
relate the technical and expressive with the problem of musical value. I be-
lieve we can be helped a good deal in this if we look at aesthetic judgments as
having an ethical component. I have coined the term "aesthics" to denote the
study of this relationship between the ethical and the aesthetic. It's an ugly
word, but that fact may help it to stay in your mind and prevent you from
falling into the error of thinking that questions of taste, beauty and the like
are self-contained or autonomous. Nothing is autonomous.
At least part of our taste in music is an expression of how we believe the
world should be, how people should act, even how people should feel. Con-
sider an incomparable piece, the first movement of the Mozart piano concer-
to in A Major that we looked at earlier. I'll try a few feeble verbalizations of
what are, for me, some of its characteristics: it is varied, but not so much as to
shatter its cohesiveness; it is tender, relaxed, unforcedly assertive, subtly bal-
anced, maturely cheerful with shadows of enriching sorrow, utterly lacking in
self-doubt but without Beethoven's occasional heavy-handedness, gently wit-
ty in places. Its beauty breaks my heart as it causes me to smile. Always, al-
ways graceful. I love and admire those qualities. I think the world would be a
far better place were they commoner in humans than they are. That's an ethi-
cal opinion. This piece embodies those qualities successfully and seemingly
effortlessly, guiding me, as I listen, through a musically integrated experience
of them. I am deeply moved by feeling how life might be, what some of its
possibilities are. That has a great deal to do with why I love Mozart's music.
(A very pessimistic friend of mine once said, "Mozart keeps alive the memory
of hope.") Not that his music always meant so much to me. When I was about
twelve years old, my grandmother, who was a musician and who had given
me my first piano lessons, asked me who my favorite composers were. "The
three Bs", I replied. "Bach, Beethoven and Brahms." "What about Mozart?"
she asked. I thought for a moment. "Oh, he's nice. I like Mozart." But I didn't
think he belonged with the giants; I guess I thought he wasn't "serious"
enough to be really great. She said, "You'll see." She was right, I did. From my
present perspective the whole idea of choosing favorite composers seems
childish, but now, like almost all classical musicians, I place Mozart among
the very greatest. And why? Because of purely musical values? But there are
no "purely musical" values any more than there are purely anythings when it
comes to human experience.
After all, how could it be that people love works of art to the point of
tears or exultation if these works didn't touch on matters that are supremely
important to us? To analyze such treasures as this concerto in a purely techni-
cal way, which I was required to do as a student, always made me uncomfort-
able. Purely technical analysis can be, at best, interesting. What of real impor-
tance can one learn from analysis unless one relates the technical to the
expressive?
"But what," you may be thinking, "about sad music, desolate music, mu-
sic full of tension, anguish, even despair? Do we want the world to feel like
that?" Certainly not, but here we touch on one of the knotiest problems in the
psychology of the arts, and this book is not the place to spend a lot of time on
it. But let's at least scratch the surface by going back to our Chopin preludes.
No two of us have precisely the same experience of these pieces, but I
think we can agree that while the A Major smiles and is relaxed, the E minor
is pessimistic, if not hopeless. Neither you nor I enjoy feeling pessimistic, not
to mention hopeless. Yet isn't this a marvelous piece? First of all, we should
note again that this is only No. 4 in a group of twenty-four preludes, and the
very next prelude dispels the gloom. But be that as it may, the piece itself ex-
presses successfully emotions that none of us would seek out. It is not that it
produces those emotions in us, which we wouldn't like, but it organizes them
into a representation of a completed action. We can, standing outside them,
view them, empathize with them almost: resignation and melancholy, the
struggle to break free of them, and then the bitter conclusion. Bitter, yes, but a
conclusion; the matter is ended, as is so often not the case in real life.
Aesthics: Aesthetics Meets Ethics 75
There are also large-scale works which clearly end without hope. Pucci-
ni's opera La Boheme ends with the pitiful death of the heroine in the arms of
her despairing lover. And yet opera lovers eat it up. It's one of the most popu-
lar and most often performed operas there is. The audience leave with tears in
their eyes, exclaiming, "Wonderful! So beautiful!" (Unless they didn't like the
singers!) I think this is so partly because they find it convincing, true to life.
"True to life, you say? People don't sing at one another in real life!" You're
right, of course, but if you want real life, you already have it; you don't have to
go to an opera house or concert hall for that. But you do go for "true to life"
or, perhaps, "bigger than life" experiences, as in the Beethoven Fifth. We saw
that Beethoven put us through various "types" of experiences, as opposed to
an opera composer who gives us specific, personalized experiences. During
the Beethoven, we vicariously go through a great deal, but in the end we tri-
umph. At the end of La Boheme we lament the death of the heroine and the
grief of the hero, so the ethical notions discussed earlier cannot be mechani-
cally applied in this case. If we triumph over great difficulties in real life, we
are elated, and if Beethoven helps us to feel what that triumph would be like,
we are elated. Lovers separated by death in real life break our hearts, but
lovers separated by death on a stage can seem oddly suitable dramatically,
quite touching, almost beautiful. There's mystery here, which I shall leave to
the psychologists of the arts, but part of the explanation probably lies in the
fact that in a successful artificial tragedy, be it opera, movie, play or concert
piece (listen to the last movement of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony,
which ends in the blackest Russian gloom) there are no loose ends left over.
All the tensions of the work have been resolved, even if bleakly, and this gives
us a kind of satisfaction. In real life, the hero of La Boheme would have to
consider what to do with the body. In the opera house, the final minor triad
concludes the music, the story is over, the curtain comes down and people
say, "I had a good cry." Then you and the singers can go out for a late supper.
To conclude: music is not at all a subset of ethics, but if we wish to un-
derstand the power of some music and the high regard in which it is held, we
are forced to include the examination of ethical questions in our attempt.
The true is the whole.
CHAPTER NINE
Two Schumann Songs

and a Bit of Brahms
Starting on any note of the scale with three sharps other than F# or A, play a
stepwise passage for two or three octaves in either direction, then reverse the
direction. The tones should be of equal duration, at about 80 to the minute.
What key was that music in? Was it major or minor?
Repeat what you did, this time giving a slight accent to every F#, A and
C . End the series on F#. Now it's easy to hear the passage as having been in F#
#
minor, even without the E being sharped as a leading tone. Play it again, this
time ending on A. Play an A Major triad. Clearly the tonic, isn't it? Now play
an F# minor triad, with a deep F# in the bass. Can you not just as easily hear F#
as the tonic? Play once more your original version, without accents. Pause
sometimes on an F#, sometimes on an A. What key was that music in? Was it
major or minor?
We could, perhaps, extend our field to include the modes. I say "per-
haps" because the worth of such a listening experiment would depend on
your familiarity with those scales. (I'm using the word "mode" here as a syn-
onym for "scale." Historically, there's much more to it; "mode" implied style
and even, to Plato, lifestyle.) I don't mean just your theoretical familiarity: if
you can hear uThe First Noel" as beginning and ending on the final, the do, of
the Phrygian mode, then you are familiar with that mode. If you hear it end-
ing on mi of a major scale, you're not. Depending on your familiarity, you
might hear our three-sharp scale as B Dorian, C# Phrygian, D Lydian or per-
haps others, but let's stick to major and minor for now.
"Was it major or minor?" I asked you. I hope some of you questioned
the question! By now you realize that musical experience is, in all but the sim-
plest pieces, much more subtle, sophisticated and elusive than we can express
in language, particularly in the arid language of music theory. Let's see how
all this applies to two very beautiful songs. As this book has offered a number
of personal interpretations of music with which you might not agree, we have
with vocal music the advantage of knowing the composer's expressive aims
because we have the text.
DICHTERLIEBE Song No. 1

Im wunderschonen Monat Mai, In the wonderbeautiful month of May
Als alle Knospen sprangen, As all the buds were bursting
Da ist in meinem Herzen There in my heart
Die Liebe aufgegangen. Love arose.
Im wunderschonen Monat Mai, In the wonderbeautiful month of May
Als alle Vogel sangen, As all the birds sang
Da hab' ich ihr gestanden Then it was I confessed to her
Mein Sehnen und Verlangen. My longing and desire.
Example 9.1
Two Schumann Songs and a Bit of Brahms 79
Example 9.1 (continued)

The arts, music in particular, can enable us to feel our way into the experi-
ences of others, in the case of the song in Example 9.1 a starry-eyed, love-
smitten German youth of the mid-nineteenth century. The high point of the
first quatrain is aufgegangen, "arose," in the way that the sun or bread dough,
among other things, rises. The buds were bursting, becoming flowers, which,
after all, are sexual organs. At the corresponding place in the second verse, on
the high G appoggiatura, which the tenor may have to strain a bit to achieve,
is the word for "desire." This is not spiritual love.
Depending on your personality and temperament, you may well find
these poems sentimental and corny; their emotional tone is far from the hip,
cool stance affected by so many of today's college students. But the beauty of
the music should make it possible for you to take advantage of the efforts and
accomplishments of Heinrich Heine, the poet, and Robert Schumann in
making available to yourself very different modes of feeling than those you
are probably familiar with. This can expand your repertoire of affective sensi-
bilities and thereby make the experience of living richer. Let us begin by
closely examining the opening of the first song to see how the technical
means used correspond to the intended expressive result. First, the use of
nonharmonic tones, then the importance of key.
What first strikes our ears is the sharp sweetness of the major seventh
between the treble and bass. Young love, In Heine's poetry, is both sharp and
sweet. As soon as the D enters in the bass, the C# is heard as an appoggiatura
with a strong tendency to rise a halfstep to D. With this C# still sounding, an
A# appoggiatura in the left hand catches our attention. It moves immediately
to the expected B, which sounds, because of the leading : tone effect of the A#,
like the root of the first harmony, B minor. As soon as this triad is completed
by the arrival of the F# on the second beat, the opening C# drops to B, leaving
us with a bit of unfulfilled desire; we had expected D all the more after the
upward resolution of the A#. The right-hand B lasts for but a sixteenth note
before it leaps up to yet another appoggiatura, the G#. This passes quickly
through its note of resolution, F#, to arrive on an active E#, the third of a
dominant seventh, with a touch of the minor ninth, on C#. This second mea-
sure is all dissonance, desiring F# minor. The first measure is all nonharmon-
ic dissonance except for the second and fourth sixteenth notes of beat two,
metrically the weakest spots in the measure. Its basic B minor triad does not
sound desirous of any specific resolution, but for only two separated six-
teenth notes of duration do we hear that chord without any yearning appog-
giaturas. These two measures are then repeated.
Now for the relevance of the opening exercises of this chapter. The first
four bars sound in F# minor, but in 5 the B minor chord, acting like a ii in-
stead of the subdominant of the opening measure, drops a fifth to an E7,
which resolves as a V7 to A Major, the first root position triad in the piece.
This A chord clearly sounds tonic, as F# minor would have on the downbeat
of 5. Any key and its relative are two sides of the same coin.
Further analysis shows 9 and 10 presenting iv6 V7 i of B minor, followed

by the same progression on D Major in the next two bars, another relative key
relationship. Then we're back to a C#7 for a repeat of 2-15 , the song "ending"
on the V7 of F# minor, the very last note being the dissonant seventh of the
chord. The published analyses I have seen all state that the song is "in" A ma-
jor, though only four of its twenty-six measures sound like it. Not only that,
only six bars, 5-8 and 11-12 sound major at all!
Now for a few observations about our second song, Example 9.2.
Example 9.2

DICHTERLIEBE Song No. 12

Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen In the bright summer morning
Geh' ich im Garten herum. I walk about the garden.
Es flustern und sprechen die Blumen, The flowers whisper and speak,
Ich aber wandle stumm. but I wander in silence.
Es flustern und sprechen die Blumen The flowers whisper and speak
Und schau'n mitleidig mich an: and look pityingly at me:
Sei unserer Schwester nicht bose, "Don't be angry with our sister,
Du trauriger blasser Mann! you sorrowful, pale man!"
What do you make of the opening chord? I'm sure you realized it is
some sort of augmented sixth, but chances are you did not know it was an
Irish sixth! Some years ago when I was introducing that family of chords to a
class, I had put the examples in Figure 9.1 on the chalkboard. The third ex-
ample is an enharmonically spelled version of the preceding German sixth,
DL spelled as C# in accordance with its upward resolution to the D in the fol-
lowing chord, a detail not always bothered with by composers, especially in
piano music, where spelling makes no difference. (A violinist might play a C#
a bit higher than a Dk) A student asked why this third chord lacked a geo-
graphical name. I had no answer for her. After a moment she said, "The word
'doubly' makes me think of Dublin, Why don't we christen it the Irish sixth?"
Since that day I have followed her suggestion, but I have yet to see the name
appear in any theory texts. Before the nineteenth century this chord would
not have been used to begin a piece because of its ambiguity, sounding, out of
context, the same as a dominant seventh. The tonic would have been estab-
lished before the use of any augmented sixth chord. But Schumann is dealing
with ambiguous emotions and magic (after all, flowers will speak to the
young man), so ambiguous harmony is apt.
When this sound occurs again in 8, it is spelled as an F# dominant sev-
enth, and it resolves down a fifth to a dominant ninth chord on B (C^), a
striking effect even when you have heard the song many times. This chord
Figure 9.1
would "normally" be followed by some sort of E chord, about as far away

from the home key, Bk as can be imagined. The B9 highlights "flowers" quite
magically, placing them in a different world. But only for a moment, because
it resolves deceptively up a half step to a C 7 acts as the dominant of the fol-
lowing V7, which in turn resolves to I and a repeat of the opening. The first
phrase is as before, but a very striking harmony surprises us on the second
beat of 16. How would you analyze it? Going by the spelling would lead you
to call it a B1* dominant seventh with a raised fifth, which would be an altered
V7/IV in the third inversion. But it's followed by a G Major triad, above which
the flowers speak to our lovelorn hero. As the G sounds like a temporary ton-
ic, did any of you interpret this chord as a doubly altered dominant of G? The
right hand plays an augmented V of G, D-F # -A # , spelled Bk while the bass
supplies Ak the lowered fifth of the chord. That's right; the chord has a split
fifth! But unlike the case of the forced analysis in chapter 2, this can actually
be heard as a D chord. If that still smacks too much of old Procrustes to you,
you might call the D a pedal and the other notes passing tones. But of course
then you are saying the beat is nonharmonic, not a chord at all. Can you
really hear it that way? Either way, it is a striking moment that calls attention
to and helps prepare for the charmed G major which follows. (See the second
beat of 21 for a similar enharmonic spellng. F-A-C # sounds like A-C # -E # , a V
of the following D minor. As with diminished seventh chords, augmented tri-
ads are often spelled "misleadingly." Listen for their function, and you can't go
wrong.)
The B9 in 9 wasn't around long enough even to suggest another key to
the ear, but the two and a half measures starting on the downbeat of 17 are
like a parenthesis containing music from G Major, becoming G minor on the
downbeat of 19, under the word "sorrowful." Now, had this piece not had a
text, how would you have described the effect of these five beats? Certainly
they sound special, almost as if standing outside the rest of the piece. To em-
phasize this, Schumann asks for a slower tempo and pianissimo. But knowing
from the text that these words are spoken by flowers, we can see why Schu-
mann has accompanied them with harmonies like these. Note how smoothly
the G minor chord on the downbeat of 19 moves through the augmented
sixth (this time spelled "correctly" as a German sixth, as it is going to V, not
I64) back to the real world of B^ major.
There is something artistically and psychologically just right about the
ten-bar closing section of this song. After having spent time in such an en-
chanted world, we need time to reflect on the experience before moving on to
the very different next song, in E^ minor, which begins, "I wept in my dream; I
dreamed that you lay in your grave."
Things will not work out well for our young dreamer. His beloved will
not die, but she will marry another. We have visited an emotional landscape
that would probably be unappealing to most of you in real life. But the genius
of Schumann has exalted it and made it available as part of our inheritance.
BRAHMS: SYMPHONY NO. 4, FOURTH MOVEMENT
Example 9.3 is a short excerpt that shows how, even for a conservative com-
poser like Brahms, the structure of tonality has been loosened. What do you
hear as the tonic? Might the concluding E chord be I? Follow it with the
parenthesized A minor chord. Doesn't that sound more conclusive? Decide
between them.
Example 9.3
Well, I've misled you a little. Brahms supplies a signature of one sharp,
which I omitted, and the music, without the final A minor chord, is the open-
ing of the last movement of his Symphony No. 4 in E minor, a highly elabo-
rated set of variations. The excerpt, scored for brass, winds and timpani,
sounds assertive and strong, not at all ambiguous. Upon analysis, however,
the key center turns out to be a little evasive. The added A minor triad can
easily be heard as tonic. But the E Major in 7 is both I and the dominant of
the iv that follows it and which opened the movement. It is made to sound
even more dominant by the preceding harmony, which is the V7 with its low-
ered fifth in the bass, identical to a French sixth in the key of A, Major or mi-
nor.
How does this less-than-solid establishment of E as the tonic contribute
to the personality of the phrase? Brahms's performance indication is "ener-
getically fast and passionate," and some of the energy comes from the fact
that the passage is not all that firmly grounded tonally. Change the bass to F#
in 7 and follow that with an E minor triad. The phrase comes to a complete
stop, like the themes of almost all sets of variations from the Classical period.
Brahms, however, opens up the ending, creating in the listener the expecta-
tion of and the desire for continued motion.
CHAPTER TEN
J. S. Bach:
The Well-Tempered Clavier,
Book I
FUGUE II IN C MINOR
In the pieces we have examined so far, we only needed to hear the opening
measures to immediately apprehend their expressive personality or stance.
Though we might not all choose the same words, we can probably all agree
that the following pairings are suitable: Chopin's A Major prelude, relaxed;
his E minor prelude, mournful; the opening of the third movement of the
Beethoven symphony, ominous; the last movement, exultant. But what about
the fugue which is Example 10.1? It is serious, energetic and busy, but no af-
fective terms like those just mentioned come to mind. The question "Is it
more on the cheerful side or the troubled, the sad?" is difficult to answer. The
question doesn't even seem appropriate for such music, which seems more
objective, less personal than any we've examined so far. We will tackle these
questions after a technical examination of the piece.
Contrapuntal Techniques
We will begin by analyzing this fugue in the way that such works have been
analyzed for more than a hundred years, which is to say that we will take it
apart and see how the parts relate to each other and to the entire piece. We
will try, at first, to talk about the piece with a small "p," putting off until later,
to the extent that we can, our usual concerns with expression and affect. You
will see that this is not as easy as it may seem.
An effective and engaging way to get to know the piece intimately, even if
you have performed it on the piano, is to get together with two fellow students
and sing it, shifting octave register whenever necessary. The three of you
should, in unison, sing each voice separately first. Then try putting it together.
88 THE PIECE AS A W H O L E
Example 10.1
J. S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I 89
It will undoubtedly sound dreadful, but you'll become intimate with the lines
by actually singing them in a way that fingering them can't approach.
The opening unaccompanied melody, called the "subject" (hereafter re-
ferred to as S) has embedded in it a descending tetrachord (hereafter referred
to as T). See Example 10.2.
Example 10.2
This, one might say, gives S a sense of direction; the jump from C down
to A1 implies continuation to G. (Note how we have already violated our in-
tention to avoid subjectivity! The existence of T with its internal structure is
an objective fact, but any "sense of direction" can be felt only by a listener. Let
us, however, try to postpone any labeling of emotional qualities until we have
completed a technical description of the "small p' piece.") One reads often, in
analyses of this fugue, how much of its material is "derived" from T. It would
be more accurate to say that much of the material is related to T (who did the
deriving, Bach or the analysts?). For example, the descending scale in 3 can be
seen as two connected statements of T, and the alto voice in 5 is an extended
version of T in contrary motion, followed by a variant in eighth notes. In 13,
there is a slightly altered eighth-note presentation of T in thirds, accompa-
nied by an extended contrary motion statement in sixteenths. In fact, only
the next-to-last measure of the fugue seems to contain no reference to T. Its
ubiquity, in one form or another, certainly contributes to the pervading sense
of unity, and its many transformations to the lively variety within that unity.
Now locate and number each appearance of S. Where does S end, by the
way, with the E^ on the downbeat of 3 or the middle C two beats later? As the
descending scale (is it the ascending or descending form of the "melodic mi-
nor," by the way?) follows two measures worth of S in the same voice only
twice in the entire piece, let's not consider it as part of the subject proper, but
rather as the beginning of what we will be calling the first countersubject.
(When you were first introduced to the jargon of theory, I'm sure you learned
that this form of the minor scale, with the sixth and seventh degrees raised, is
called the ascending form of the melodic minor. And yet Bach uses it here to
descend! What conclusion do you draw from this? Is Bach at fault, or is some
theory jargon silly?)
You should have found eight statements of S, beginning in 1,3, 7,11,15,
20,26, and 29. The second statement, a fifth higher than SI, and which briefly
modulates to the dominant minor key, is called the "answer." You will note
that it is not an exact transposition of S, having C as its fourth note rather
than G. Bach made this change, presumably, so that he could use tonic har-
mony at this spot, not wishing to jump so soon into a new key. The answer is
also found in 15 and 16. When one or more changes are made in an answer to
keep it, at least at first, in the original tonality, it is referred to as a "tonal an-
swer." Had Bach used an exact transposition, it would be called a real answer.
(During the nineteenth century, German and French theorists developed
horrendously elaborate sets of terminology and "rules" for the study of fugue.
When my father was a student, every student at the conservatory, no matter
what his or her major, was required to take two years of counterpoint after
completing two years of harmony. The final exam, for which they were al-
lowed four hours, was to compose a strict fugue on a given subject, following
a zillion rules, and without the availability of a piano. So stop complaining.)
Those sections of a fugue in which S is not present are referred to as
"episodes." There is much of interest in this fugue's episodes, but we should
first examine the material used in accompanying voices when S is present.
The counterpoint to S2, from the second sixteenth of 3 to the downbeat

of 5, is present with every appearance of S but the last. There are fugues in
which the counterpoint is different each time S appears. When, as here, the
same, or very closely related, material appears with all or most of the state-
ments of S, this material is called a countersubject (CS). Note that CS appears
above S three times and below it three times; we will return soon to this pro-
cedure, which is called double counterpoint.
The third entry of S appears in in 7, while the soprano presents CS. The
new, though related, material which the alto presents toward the end of the
measure is present, sometimes with slight alterations, at every appearance of
S and CS except the last, so it is referred to as the "second countersubject" (CS
II). Most of Bach's fugues have one countersubject, a few have three and some
have none, using new material each time to accompany the subject. To de-
scribe in words CS II's position relative to the other voices would be tedious,
so I offer two ways to make this aspect of a fugue clearly apparent at a glance.
Make a photocopy of the score. With a colored pencil, draw a line above
or below each statement of S and number each one. With different colors, do
the same for CSI and CS II. Another method is to construct a diagram dis-
playing the same information, something like the scheme in Figure 10.1. I
have substituted A, B and C for the earlier-used terms in order to avoid clut-
ter and to facilitate the following discussion of double and triple counter-
point.
Invertible Counterpoint
Invertible counterpoint is counterpoint so designed that it can also be per-

formed, within the harmonic constraints of the style, with the voices re-
arranged vertically; for example, soprano and bass might be interchanged.
When two voices are involved we speak of double counterpoint, with three
voices, triple counterpoint. (Toward the end of Mozart's Jupiter symphony
there are some instances of quintuple counterpoint!) Consider in Example
10.3 the following examples from our fugue (voices not involved in the verti-
cal rearrangements are omitted).
Figure 10.1
Example 10.3
Looking at 15, we see that the answer is below CS I, whereas in 3 the an-
swer was above. Comparing the resultant interval changes, we observe that
M6 has become m3,8 remains 8, m3 becomes M6 and so on. This procedure
is called double counterpoint at the octave, which should be defined as dou-
ble counterpoint which results in the interval changes shown in Figure 10.2.
Do not think of it as double counterpoint in which one of the voices has
been moved an octave, for while that is often the case, if the voices were far
apart to begin with, moving one of them an octave might not result in their
being crossed at all. Two other complications will be revealed by comparing
11 with 15. You will see that here neither voice has been moved an octave; 11
is in EL Major and 15 in C minor, but the interval changes agree with those in
Figure 10.2, so it is double counterpoint at the octave. Think of this as the
voices in 11 and 15 having been interchanged, and then the whole passage
transposed.
Change of mode will often affect the qualities of the intervals involved,
though not the numerals. Beat 3 in 11 is M3 (the fact that it is actually a tenth
is disregarded; simply reduce compound intervals) while the corresponding
spot in 15 is M6. This would not be the case in double counterpoint at the oc-
tave when both voices are in the same mode, in which case M3 would become
1 8
2 7
3 6
4 5
5 4
6 3
7 2
8 1
Figure 10.2
m6. There can be other slight deviations due to chromatic alterations and to
tonal compared with real answers.
Let's now look, in Example 10.4, at some of the double counterpoint in
the episodes, where S and CS are not involved. Compare 5 with 17.
Example 10.4
Checking the intervals will show the transformations in Figure 10.3.

The term "double counterpoint at the octave" comes from the fact that a
unison becomes an octave. In this case a unison has become a fifth. As mov-
ing a voice up or down a fifth would not usually result in crossed voices at all,
this procedure is referred to as double counterpoint at the twelfth. When we
compare 17 with the end of 18 and the start of 19 (see Example 10.5), we find
that these phrases are in double counterpoint at the octave. So we see that the
two ideas presented together in 5 and at the beginning of 6, the upper being
based on sequences of what is called the "head" of S and the lower on an ex-
tension of T in contrary motion, work well at the twelfth, and the result
works well at the octave. This is not always the case, as some counterpoint
that can be successfully inverted at the octave may lead to out-of-style disso-
nances at another interval. This book will not deal with the problems of how
to compose intricate counterpoint, but note that, if you are staying within
eighteenth-century harmonic restraints, you may not use parallel sixths in
your original version if you want to invert it later at the twelfth, because those
sixths will become parallel sevenths. In double counterpoint at the tenth,
even more difficult to bring off, thirds become unisons or octaves, and sixths
1 becomes 5
2 4
3 3
4 2
5 1
6 7
7 6
8 5
Figure 10.3
Example 10.5
become fifths, so consecutive parallel thirds and sixths must be avoided in

your original. That's a pretty rigid straightjacket to wear when composing!
Look once more at 5 and the same material starting at the end of 18 (see
again Examples 10.4 and 10.5). These two lines have not been crossed, but the
lower voice has been transposed down a fourth in 18 and 19 . This sort of
thing goes under the general heading of convertible counterpoint, a larger
category which includes invertible counterpoint. (Be aware when you come
across the term "inverted" that it sometimes means this sort of switching of
two lines, but occaisionally is carelessly used to mean "stated in contrary mo-
tion." If this sort of thing appeals to you, there is an immense tome you may
be able to locate called Convertible Counterpoint by Sergei Taneiev, student of
Tchaikovsky and teacher of Skriabin and Rachmaninov.) With two voices, of
course, there are only two ways to arrange them vertically. In this fugue,
which makes use of triple counterpoint, there are six possible arrangements
of the three voices:
12 3 4 5 6
A A B B C C
B C A C A B
C B C A B A
(Figure out how many arrangements of five voices are possible. You might
enjoy hunting for them in the coda to the last movement of Mozart's Jupiter
symphony. Don't expect to find them all.)
All but the fifth version can be found in this piece, and it would have
worked, meaning that the resulting harmonies and voice leading would have
been in style. A more academic composer would have made sure to get all six
in. Bach was a master of all these and even more intricate procedures. Listen
to and read about his A Musical Offering and The Art of the Fugue, in which he
makes a point of showing off his skills but still produces wonderful music.
There is nothing particularly noteworthy about other aspects of the
fugue, which is just as well, given the intricacies of the counterpoint. The har-
monies and their progression are conventional for the time, and the rhythms
are clear and not overly varied. Timbre, register and texture are neutral; these
pieces were composed for the klavier, which might have been any keyboard
instrument. They were intended not for presentation on a recital, but for "the
study and recreation of music lovers." I believe they can serve a higher pur-
pose as well.
Expressive Content
Up to this point we have tried to describe objectively what goes on in this

fugue. We have discovered much of interest, but it is time now to look into
what it all adds up to expressively. Here, as always, the temperament, back-
ground and conditioning of listeners, which determine what is called "taste,"
will lead to varying reactions and judgments. Some might ask, is this fugue
expressive at all? If so, of what? Is it perhaps merely interesting? Interest can
be intensely strong; it has been defined as love with all the animal warmth re-
moved, and it certainly can be very engaging, a powerful motivator for many
minds. But the music we have looked at in earlier chapters is still played not
because people find it "interesting," but because they choose, again and again,
to go through the aesthetic/emotional experiences offered by these com-
posers. A fine performance of Dichterliebe can be deeply moving in a very
personal way, leading you to feel the young poet's hopeless love. Listening to
the Beethoven symphony, we can share in his varied moods and eventual tri-
umph. But attitudes toward Bach vary widely among concert goers. My ency-
clopedia's article on him begins, "Bach was the most profound and original
musical thinker the world has ever seen." (Do the musicians of India, Japan
and Africa know this?) I know musicians who are attracted to Bach because
"he doesn't push you around the way Beethoven does." Others, especially
when it comes to pieces like this fugue, find him rather dry, too serious, a bit
stuffy, "too scholarly," too much of a "musical thinker? as opposed to "feeler,"
I suppose. The connections between technical procedures and expressive re-
sults are of a different order in a piece such as this than they were in the other
works we have studied. In Chopin's E minor prelude we came to understand
how that D 7 , promising but not granting the relief of the relative major,
helped to produce the affective mood of the prelude. In this fugue one cannot
point to similar direct correlations; nor do specific events call attention to
themselves in the dramatic manner they did in the Beethoven symphony.
Let's list some of the characteristics of the pieces we have dealt with earlier in
the book: long-range expectation and tension, surprise, a sense of the music
having lost its way, deceptive outcomes that avoid the expected, conflict, sud-
den or striking changes in register, texture, timbre, tonal center and rhythm,
juxtaposition of very different moods. These are all characteristics of the Ro-
mantic spirit, not to be found in our fugue; but their absence is in no way a
fault. Most of Bach's music is liturgical vocal music, and while it can be very
expressive and moving, these effects are not achieved in the ways just listed.
Almost all his music (there are over three thousand works!) is characterized
by confidence, consistency, ongoing and steady activity, contrapuntal com-
plexity and, for me at least, great emotional depth that is somehow imperson-
al. Bach, it would seem, had no desire to express himself; he wrote, "The sole
object of all music should be the Glory of God and pleasant recreation." By
"impersonal" I do not at all mean cold or without feeling. Listen to the Cruci-
fixus from his Mass in B minor: a powerful expression of heavy grief, but not
just of mere Bach's grief, and certainly not just of a Lutheran's grief. Perhaps,
instead of "impersonal" I should have said "metapersonal" or "transpersonal,"
beyond the merely individual. His faith surely had a lot to do with it; he was a
devout Lutheran, and as he grieved over the death of Christ, he believed that
the Resurrection was assured.
Now, how does all this relate to our fugue and other similar works? As
with the Mozart concerto discussed in the chapter on aesthics, I believe that
much of Bach's music allows us to spend time in an experiential world that is
not often available to us in "real life." It is one in which I would not particu-
larly want to spend all of my remaining days, but I am immensely grateful to
Bach for making it available to me. When I enter into the world of pieces like
this fugue, I feel basically alert and at peace, while immensely interested in
what is going on. Underneath it all there is a deep serenity that does not at all
prevent my becoming quite excited by the moment-to-moment activity, such
as the contrapuntal complexities we have been looking at, even though as I
listen I am almost never aware of the details. I am truly fascinated. I find my-
self focused, calm and full of admiration, a feeling I find very life enhancing.
This fugue is rather stern, but not at all in an off-putting way. I find such
pieces emotionally somewhat detached, uninterested in me, sometimes aloof,
but that can seem very refreshing after music that is always trying to make me
weep or exult. There is much intellectual pleasure and satisfaction to be had
from this music, much to admire in its working out. It is significant that all
the double counterpoint in this fugue can be heard, even if we are not aware
of the details of the intricacies as we listen. Many pieces from the twentieth
century are a great deal more complex, but not in ways that are audible. For
example, a widely used device in serial music is the presentation of previous-
ly heard material in retrograde, from right to left, so to speak. A very short
segment with a striking and memorable profile might be recognized when
played backward, but usually this device seems to be there for the benefit of
analysts, not listeners. Bach, with his immense output, used it just once, in a
short canon from his A Musical Offering, a piece whose purpose was to show
off his skills at this sort of thing. No, Bach didn't compose for theorists; he
wrote for his God and for us. We don't have to decide whether Bach's music is
"better" than that of other composers. Let us just be grateful that he lived and
composed. He's always there when we need him.
Suggestions for Further Work in the WTC
There is no CS in Fugue 1. Why? If you draw a diagram as we did in Fugue 2,

you will notice a technique not used there; the overlapping of different en-
tries of S, a procedure referred to as stretto, which produces brief canons.
They are classified according to interval- and time-distance; the one in 7 is at
the lower fourth and at a quarter note. Some of the strettos in this fugue in-
volve two voices, some three; one uses all four voices. There is much double
counterpoint involved; compare the stretto in 7, where the canon is at the
lower fourth, with that in 19, which is at the upper fifth. Do those numbers
give you a clue as to the interval of inversion? Can you put into words how
the expressive effect (if any!) of this fugue with one S, no CS and many stret-
tos differs from the effect of Fugue 2?
A series of forty-eight fugues, no matter how varied, would prove tire-
some. The intervening preludes are wonderfully inventive, each with its own
style and personality. For example, the short storm that separates the first two
fugues contains not a moment of counterpoint, so our analytical ears are
rested and prepared for the intricacies of Fugue 2. The cheerful, lively Prelude
3 completely lacks the studious severity of the first two fugues, but look at it
closely and you may be surprised to discover how much double counterpoint
is going on. Why doesn't it sound "contrapuntal"? For a marvelous example of
stern nobility with romantically tragic touches, listen to Prelude 8. How is the
mood achieved? Can a piece with a lot of triple counterpoint sound relaxed
and smiling? Try Prelude 19.
In Fugue 6, see if you can find the place where S is presented in stretto
with its "mirror" or contrary motion version. Fugue 9 is highly involved. Is
there more than one CS? Trace all the invertible counterpoint. (Watch out for
crossed voices.) Fugue 10 is for only two voices, so some scholars do not even
consider it to be a fugue. (If Bach thinks it's a fugue, that's good enough for
me.) Check it for double counterpoint. How many measures can you find
which are not in double counterpoint with other parts of the fugue?
Fugue 20, for four busy voices, is knotty and complex. There are thirty-
eight (!) entries of S, thirteen episodes and fourteen strettos. Here's a project
for you from which you can learn a lot about Bach's musical mind and end
up with an exciting performance for a student recital. Transcribe this fugue
for four wind instruments with different timbres, transposing the key if
need be. As it lasts for over six minutes at a moderate tempo, you will have
to give careful consideration to performance directions. Don't worry at all
about "authenticity"; although on a harpsichord the player has no control

over dynamics, I would not want anyone to have to sit through a perfor-
mance by wind instruments of this involved piece which was all on one dy-
namic level. Your other big challenge will be deciding on phrasing and ar-
ticulation. Scholars in the field of Baroque performance practice do not
agree with one another on how lines should be phrased, so feel free to make
clarity and playability your goals as you think about staccato, legato, and so
on. If this project seems daunting, you might prefer to try a shorter, three-
voice fugue first.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Wagner: Prelude to
Tristan and Isolde
Analysts of harmony love this piece; it is full of passages and chords that are
open to different interpretations. All of the published analyses of it that I have
read share two faults you have already been warned about, the either-or fixa-
tion and eye-analysis as opposed to ear-analysis. There actually exists an al-
most impenetrable "analysis" by one Benjamin Boretz that completely ignores
the sounding music and comes close to calling it a serial piece, not really tonal
at all. But you are now equipped to better them all! Find a good CD of the pre-
lude (I recommend Sir Georg Solti with the Chicago Symphony), dim the
lights and, without a score, listen to the entire prelude. Then play through the
piano version of the first twenty-four bars (Example 11.1) several times.
Example 11.1

Wagner: Prelude to Tristan and Isolde 101
After you've decided what keys are involved, label those harmonies
which seem clear to you. If you're not sure of the function, at least mark root
and quality. Then try to put in words what the music feels like, what it seems
to be trying to express. After all, Wagner didn't undertake the immense effort
to compose this opera for theoretical reasons or for the recreation of future
analysts.
Before we get to key and chord identification, let's consider what is
heard at the very beginning. On your very first hearing the leap from A up to
F might sound relatively placid because it could be presenting D minor har-
mony. But after a few experiences of hearing the phrase end on an E7, the F
will sound like an appoggiatura to the E. It is important to realize that it will
sound this way to listeners who have had no theoretical training; one doesn't
have to know what an appoggiatura is to react appropriately. The point is, the
first gesture in this piece is a leap up to a dissonant tone, creating tension, an-
ticipation. Can a tone be dissonant when it's unaccompanied? Yes, indeed;
your memory of the phrase's continuation supplies the harmonic context. An
upward leap like this one implies striving or yearning. So the F falls, through
E, to an ambiguous harmony which we will examine shortly, and then the E7.
And t h e n ? . . . . Especially in the Solti recording, a long silence, seven slow
beats of nothing. You are suspended in anticipation, right where Wagner
wants you. What key or keys is this music in? Or is that even a good question?
Perhaps this is one of those occasions on which we have to examine our tool
kit, in this case our kit of analytical tools. Will the concept of key that worked
for earlier music serve us well here?
What key was the Beethoven Fifth Symphony in? Well, it was in C mi-
nor, E^ Major, F minor, and so on. But there were no sections anything like
this Wagner, in which a tonic is so hard to pin down. Let's look closely at the
first seventeen bars.
The first phrase ends on an E Major-minor seventh, the second on a G7,
the third on a B7, all unresolved. Why three unresolved, dissonant phrase
endings in a row? The answer won't be found in theory. Langsam and
schmachtend is the indication, slow and yearningly, or with longing. You
won't create that kind of feeling with a lot of V-I progressions, that's for sure!
Play the first phrase followed by an A chord, major or minor. This kills Wagn-
er's mood, of course, but it "works." Resolve each of the next two phrases in a
similar manner. Mightn't one say that the first phrase is in A, the second in C
and the third in E? One might; yet none of those keys is ever really estab-
lished, just suggested. Is there anything wrong with that? Eduard Hanslick, an
erudite music critic of the time thought so. He wrote, "The prelude to Tristan
und Isolde reminded me of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose in-
testines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel." Others thought that
Wagner was an almost godlike genius who was writing the music of the fu-
ture. He certainly affected the music of the future, becoming the most widely
imitated composer of his day.
As for key, we can get some help here from the composer himself. Wagn-
er often conducted the prelude by itself, as part of an orchestral concert. He
wrote an ending for such performances, which he tacked on after 95. It closed
firmly in A major, with music from the end of the opera, transposed. (The
opera concludes in B Major.) That, plus the lack of key signature at the begin-
ning, and the first phrase's ending on an E7 make A minor/Major the
strongest candidate for a higher-level tonic, at least for a while. This can help
us understand much of the prelude if we are willing to enlarge our idea of
what it means to be in a given key or, another way of putting it, enlarge our
idea of what a key can be in the late nineteenth century. For example, the sec-
ond phrase suggests C, the relative major, and the third, E major, the domi-
nant, both traditionally closely related to A minor. A Schenkerian analysis by
Stephen Mitchell does not mention these suggested keys, but refers to the
roots of those dominant chords, E, G and B, as an "arpeggiation" of an E
chord. Does this seem to you to have anything to do with the sound of the
music? But let's continue; we'll return to Mitchell's analysis soon.
Measures 11 through 15 prolong the yearning B7, this V7/V finally re-
solving on the downbeat of 16 to a strong E9. This, the first loud chord we've
heard, longs to make it to an A chord (we haven't heard a single triad yet!) but
it, and we, will be doubly frustrated. The E9 resolves deceptively to F Major,
VI, and our first possible triad is stressed, in both senses of the word, by an
appoggiatura B which reaches upward for C but falls back, disappointed, to
A. Schmachtend is the word indeed!
Notice how the splendid melody that the cellos sing beginning on the
second half of 17 tries again and again to ascend, but falls back at the end of
each phraselet. The melody sounds in C Major briefly, hints at F Major in 20
but slides through a C# diminished seventh and a Neapolitan 6 onto a semi-
cadence from D minor, the subdominant key, in 22. This is immediately se-
quenced a step higher to place us on E Major in preparation for at least a brief
landing on the background tonic, A (this time major) at the end of 24.
It is significant that the key areas suggested are C Major, E Major and D
minor, the keys traditionally most closely related to A minor. These skeletal
supports are the traditional pillars of the key, even though the surface is
vague and quite novel for the time. Might this not help account for the
strength of the music? Soon after this many composers become so enamored
of extreme chromaticism that the music seems boneless, attractive as it may
be from moment to moment. Tonality will become so weakened that Arnold
Schoenberg, around 1907, will try to write music without it. We will study
one of his first "keyless" pieces later on.
We are obliged to examine the first harmony in the piece, the so-called
Tristan chord, because it has been discussed at great length by very many the-
Wagner: Prelude to Tristan and Isolde 103
orists and analysts. Most of them misconstrue it, but you won't. You will trust
your ears and avoid both the either-or fallacy and the temptations of "Dr."
Procrustes' bed manners.
Play it. Listen to it. You're in ear-training class; what does it sound like?
Out of context, like nothing but an F half-diminished seventh, three of the
tones spelled enharmonically. Does that get us anywhere? Diatonic half-
diminished sevenths turn up as vii7 in major keys or ii7 in minor. F as vii gives
us G^ Major, which is nowhere to be found in this piece. As ii it would point
toward E^ minor, which seems no more helpful. Some of you may be thinking
of that at first puzzling D 7 in the Chopin E minor prelude; is either of those
keys being hinted at for some expressive reason, as was the relative major, G,
in the Chopin? Well, there's not a hint of G^ Major anywhere in the piece, nor
is there any preexistent expectation of that key on the part of the audience, as
there was for the relative major in the Chopin example. What about E^ mi-
nor? Some of you might have noticed some E^ minorish music starting
around 77, and in 82 the Tristan chord, now spelled as an F half-diminished
seventh, resolves to a J$ ninth, the V9 of E^ minor, and this at the very climax
of the prelude. But it seems somewhat far-fetched to make connections over
such a long stretch of music, especially when the E^ minor is touched on so
briefly. I'll let you decide whether this is a good argument for saying that the
Tristan chord "is" an F half-diminished seventh. It certainly is in 82, but what
shall we call it at the opening?
Dr. Procrustes has a suggestion, which may not be completely wrong
this time. At the end of 2, the G# passes through an A on its way to the fifth of
the E7. Might the G# be an appoggiatura mirroring the F in 1 ? If you think of
the A as the chord-tone, what do you get? Right! A French sixth, which is an
inverted V7/V with its flatted fifth in the bass. The cycle of fifths rides again!
Most analysts do explain the chord this way, but the earlier-mentioned
Mitchell analysis disagrees. This is not the place to repeat his entire lengthy
argument, but he ends up claiming that it is not a French sixth at all, it is a
version, or derivation, of a G# diminished seventh chord. Can you hear it that
way? Could Mitchell? I wonder. As a G# diminished seventh is the upper four
notes of an E9, this interpretation would mean that there is no change of root
from 2 to 3. Could anyone possibly hear it that way? But then, to some ana-
lysts, the sound shouldn't be allowed to interfere with their logic.
Let's pause for a moment. Play the famous phrase a few times. What do
you think, how do you hear this chord? Which ''is" it, an F half-diminished
seventh, a French sixth, or an altered G# diminished seventh? It's at this point
that a few of you may be thinking, "After all, what difference does it make
what we call it? What it 'is' is what it sounds like and how it works in the
piece!" This book is not the place for me to tell you to what extent I may agree
with those sentiments, but let me point out that if you call it a C Major triad,
you're wrong. This implies that some labels are more appropriate for this
sonority than others, even if there may not be one single "correct" name for
it. There are valid arguments for F half-diminished seventh and for French
sixth, if not for altered G# diminished seventh. But to choose French sixth you
must claim that the G# is a nonharmonic tone.
Does it sound as if it were not part of the chord? Does that mean that it is
a half-diminished seventh, and the A at the end of the measure is nonhar-
monic? All right, it's ambiguous, as are many of the harmonies in this opera.
Unambiguous harmonies would hardly create the feeling of schmachtend that
the old magician wants to set up. A valid analysis will point out and explore
the ambiguity, not try to deny it. As you have freed yourselves from the ei-
ther-or syndrome, let's move on after agreeing that the best label is . . . "The
Tristan chord"!
CHAPTER TWELVE
Debussy: Prelude to The

Afternoon of a Faun
Pick up a flute. Ask a flutist to show you how to hold it, how to purse your
lips. Close no holes, press no keys. Blow gently. Work at it until you get a
sound that's not too bad. This may well prove difficult; even accomplished
flutists can have trouble with that particular C#, as the sounding column of
air is at its shortest. This produces a particular breathy quality, which De-
bussy obviously wanted.
You have just played the first note of this marvelous piece. Now ask your
flutist to play the first four bars at a very moderate tempo, quietly, sweetly and
with expression. (Those are Debussy's directions: Tres modere, piano, doux et
expressif.) You have entered the enchanted world of Vapres-midi d'unfaune,
or, to be more accurate, Debussy's prelude to the poet Stephane Mallarme's
poem of that name.
Now find someone who knows French, preferably native-born. Ask her
to read aloud, rather slowly and gravely, the following opening and closing
lines of the poem:
Ces nymphes, je les veux perpetuer.

Si clair,
Leur incarnat leger, quil voltige dans Vair
Assoupi de sommeils touffus.
Aimai-je un reve?
Sans plus ilfaut dormir en Voubli du blaspheme,

Sur la sable alteregisant et comme j'aime
Ouvrir ma bouche a Vastre efficace des vinsl
Couple, adieu; je vais voir Vombre que tu devins.

Ask her to attempt a translation for you. Here's one of many versions:
Those nymphs, I want to perpetuate them.

So clear,
Their light flesh, it hovers in the air
Oppressed by bushy sleepings.
Was it a dream I loved?
Now I must simply sleep, forgetting my blasphemy,

Stretching on the rumpled sand, happily
Yawning at the star which blesses the wines!
Couple, farewell; I go to see the shadow which you are becoming.
Bushy sleepings??? Well, poetry has been defined as what is left out in transla-
tion. This is a notoriously difficult poem; Mallarme, was less interested in
sense than in sensibility, one might say. The poetry, well read aloud, is beauti-
ful even if you know not a word of French. Listen again to that last line. But
what can it possibly mean? The couple is becoming a shadow? Might he mean
a memory? Or the memory of a dream? In the body of the poem the faun in-
dulges in sexual sport with two nymphs, or perhaps he only dreams that he
does. (In classical mythology, nymphs are lovely maidens who dwell in the
fields and forests; fauns are sometimes human in form, with horns and a tail,
sometimes they are goats from the waist down. Their main interest and activ-
ity was the pursuit of nymphs.)
I have tried to lead you to this music through your senses, not through
your analytical mind. Not to disparage the mind, but it must know its proper
role. In this case that means, to a certain extent at least, submit itself to, and
only thereby understand, the sensuous. Debussy wrote, "The purpose of mu-
sic is to please." This music pleases me very much, but not at all in the same
way that, say, the Bach fugue we analyzed does. I have heard performances of
that fugue on very different sounding harpsichords, as well as on clavichord,
organ, piano and on three saxophones. None of those performances de-
stroyed or even grossly distorted any significant aspect of the piece. I doubt
that Bach himself would have objected to any of them, as concern with tim-
bre was not very strong in those days. Bach even wrote several works for
which he did not bother to specify the instrumentation. But can you imagine
the Debussy piece for, say, concert band? I certainly wouldn't want to hear it!
The opening melody wouldn't sound too bad on an oboe or clarinet, I sup-
pose, but there are very few changes one could make in Debussy's instrumen-
tation or voicings without altering an essential aspect of the piece. Note the
almost precious care expended on the last five measures: strings divided into
ten parts, muted horns, harp harmonics, antique cymbals . . . what delicious
sounds! Before the late romantic period, particularly before Wagner, most
Debussy: Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun 107
pieces were composed and then orchestrated. There are, of course, excep-
tions. Berlioz (also French, I note) comes to mind, with his Symphonie fantas-
tique, but before that time it was rare for one's attention to be drawn to tim-
bre used for its own sake.
TONALITY AND HARMONY
Listen to the following reduction of the opening.
Example 12.1
The piece clearly ends in E major, and the key signature for most of the
time is four sharps. The beginning is vague, but that's far from a fault in this
piece. The poem is vague, the feelings appropriate to it are vague, feelings one
could hardly summon up by the hearty key sense of, say, Handel, with his
straight-ahead cycle of fifths progressions. What is the implied harmony at
the beginning? Don't think about it, but try playing different chords under it.
Most satisfactory to my ears would be a tonic triad under the C# and a
Tchaikovskian C Major under the G, but that's most likely because that's
what Debussy does in 21. Surely best at the beginning is the absence of any
background. The flute will outline an E chord in 3, and the first harmonic tri-
ad will be the tonic on beats 2 and 3 of 13. The C# in the horn, added sixth or
appoggiatura as you wish, also leads to my hearing the opening as I do. (Do
any of you "hear" this as an inverted C# minor seventh? If you do, go stand in
the corner!)
The strikingly highlighted chord presented in 4 appears to be traditional
enough, a vii7/V. It quickly changes to what appears to be a $> Major-minor
seventh, but does it sound like one? Well, if you play it out of context and lis-
ten to it for long enough, yes, but you know better than to do that! (Try fol-
lowing it with an E^ Major triad, and see if you don't wince.) The D and F
might be looked at as upper neighbors to the C# and E, but 5 certainly doesn't
sound as if there were any non-harmonic tones there, does it? Might it be that
the distinction between harmonic and nonharmonic tones is getting fuzzy?
Let's look ahead. Where does Debussy take the "B^th"? Nowhere! We get an
unexpected, mysterious measure of silence; then the two chords we have been
discussing are repeated, the mystery chord fades away and remnants of it lead
to the opening of a beautiful blossom, the D Major seventh chord, if that's
what it is. (I hear it, rather, as a D Major triad with the C# as an appoggiatura
to a brief added sixth.) But, whichever it "is," the root is D, and what in the
world does that have to do with the key of E? How can we explain it? Now's
the time for a brief anecdote.
When Debussy was a student at the conservatory in Paris he would often
go to the piano, before the harmony professor arrived to teach a class, and
play outrageous, forbidden progressions, such as strings of parallel unre-
solved ninth chords, fifths and all. A very strict adherence to rules was the
policy at that time. One day the professor asked the young wise guy, "I under-
stand, Monsieur Debussy, that the rules which were good enough for the
great masters are not good enough for you. Pray tell, what rules do you fol-
low?" Debussy's reply was simply, "Mon plaisir." My pleasure. Whatever I
want.
So do we simply say that Debussy wanted that chord there, and that's
why it's there? Well, that is why it's there, there's no denying that. But why did
he want it there, and, more importantly, how does it work in the piece? The
last chord in the Chopin E minor prelude is there because Chopin wanted it
there, but why did he want it there? Well, he wanted the piece to sound com-
pletely over, and the only way to do that in the mid nineteenth century was to
end on the tonic triad, which was still true for Debussy and his contempo-
raries. This piece was written in 1894, and it won't be until thirteen years lat-
er that Schoenberg will write music that dispenses with the whole idea of
tonics and triads, or at least tries to. We'll explore that in the next chapter.
It's clear how the E major triad at the end of this prelude works, and we
can be sure that's why Debussy wanted it there (not that he had to give the
matter much thought; it just wouldn't have entered his mind to end else-
where.) But what about the D chord in 10, how does it work? It's main func-
tion, in my view, is to sound the way it does, not to function as part of a pro-
gression, not even to suggest a specific resolution, as did the originally
Debussy: Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun 109
puzzling D 7 in the E minor prelude of Chopin. Those who insist on fitting

everything into some preexisting scheme might come up with something like
this: D Major is the dominant of G, which is the relative major of E minor,
the parallel minor of this piece's E Major. That's true, but does it really ex-
plain anything? Hardly.
The arrival of this harmony could only have been surprising to all who
heard it back then, and probably distasteful to a great many of them. A
Boston critic wrote, "Debussy shows himself to be a firm believer in modern
ugliness in this prelude. The faun must have had a terrible afternoon." A
French critic wrote, "Rhythm, melody and tonality, these are three things un-
known to M. Debussy. They are deliberately disdained by him." A listener's
temperament would unavoidably have played a big part in his or her reac-
tion, as it always has and as it does today. To greatly oversimplify a complex
and subtle psychological reality, some folks like novelty and some don't.
Much of the novelty in Debussy's music lay in its deliberate directionlessness
much of the time, its immersion in the sensuous enjoyment of a delicious
present. Well, the poem is about sexual pleasure, after all; and there were, and
are, people who don't really quite approve of that sort of thingisn't that so?
I believe there were people who understood this piece quite well and who had
a moral objection to the sort of lifestyle it so effectively presented, while there
were others who delighted in it. This is another example of the interplay be-
tween ethical and aesthetic opinions discussed in the chapter on aesthics.
What follows the D chord? It backs up for a moment to a chord spelled
as an inverted German sixth, but one which would traditionally be found in
the key of B. The chord, therefore, might be construed as a secondary Ger-
man sixth, aiming for the dominant of the home key. The memory of tradi-
tional progressions is not absent in Debussy; we do hear a B chord on the
downbeat of 13, a ninth or thirteenth which resolves traditionally to the ton-
ic, E major. Jazz students always claim to hear the G# in the flute as the thir-
teenth of the underlying B harmony. Others, myself included, hear it as an
anticipation, belonging to the upcoming E chord. You should now try some
harmonic analysis on your own of spots you find attractive and/or interest-
ing. It will not take you long to discover that just about anything goes when it
comes to root progressions and chord qualities. You will not be unable to in-
fer anything remotely approaching a system. The only procedure you will not
find is the obvious use of cycle-of-fifths progressions spanning more than
two chords. Those progressions produce a sturdy and sure sense of direction
that would violate the exquisitely meandering and lingering progress of this
music.
This free use of harmony is not to be explained simply by attributing it
to Debussy's taste and imagination. How much deliberate thought he gave to
it we cannot know, but like all successful innovators he was very in touch
with what audiences were ready for, sophisticated audiences at least. (By "sue-
no THE PIECE AS A WHOLE
cessful," I mean one whose music lasts. It's easy to be an innovator.) Wagner,
Franck and others had made use of their audiences' familiarity with late Clas-
sical and early Romantic music by being able to merely suggest harmonic and
tonal structure and progression. Conditioned expectations had been well
enough established that composers could count on calling on them in subtle
and indirect ways, as in the opening of Tristan. By 1894 Debussy could take
this a step further. We are at the point now when any chord could precede or
follow any chord as long as, every now and then, a tonic was made fairly clear.
Listen to the last four bars (Example 12.2). The movement from E major to C
major halfway through 107 recollects the earlier-mentioned harmonization
in 21, but those intervening triads? C minor, D major, B^ minor . . . is that a
progression of chords or just a succession? Would you care to try to fit that
series of harmonies into some sort of theoretical scheme? Don't waste your
time. The final chord is clearly the tonic, but what precedes it? It's the same A#
half-diminished seventh which was the first chord in the piece, in 4. Tradi-
tionally, this would be labelled vii7/V. It's moving directly to the tonic works
perfectly for us but must have sounded arbitrary and wrong to those earlier
quoted critics. Try placating them by playing a V7 just before the tonic. Quelle
horreur!
Example 12.2
Here is an instructive experiment for you: choose one of the twelve

pitch-classes. Now build any sort of seventh or ninth chord on it. Play that
chord on the downbeat of 109 in place of the A# chord and resolve it to the fi-
nal tonic, arranging some kind of reasonable voice leading. Chances are it
will work. I do not mean that any chord would do as beautifully as Debussy's
choice, but, to our ears, no chord would sound "incorrect."
What will happen after this in the history of harmonic style? In the next
chapter we will see what Arnold Schoenberg did in 1907, after he had written
a good deal of rich, beautiful music in a post-Wagnerian style flecked with
Debussy. First, here are a few suggestions for further work on this piece.
There is an excellent, detailed and very perceptive study of this music by
William W. Austin, in one of the volumes in the Norton Critical Scores series
Debussy: Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun III
(1970). It contains the full score, Austin's analytical essay, Mallarme's com-
plete poem, and comments by a number of musicians, including Debussy
and his friends.) Unlike far too many analysts, Austin devotes his attention to
the heard piece. Before reading it, however, you should try on your own to
puzzle out the overall form of the prelude, and then to formulate in words
your characterization of Debussy's uses of rhythm. Neither will prove easy.
Not because the music is intricate or theoretically complex, but precisely be-
cause it is not. Remember, you will discover no scheme, but the piece does
hold together and move through time in a unique and beautiful manner.
Here's one clue from Austin: "Debussy's music characteristically evades or
blurs all sorts of classifications and abstractions." And a final comment from
the composer himself, responding to a friend who complained that some pas-
sages were "theoretically absurd": "There is no theory. You have merely to lis-
ten. Pleasure is the law."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Analysis of
Twentieth-Century Music
The general approach to analysis which we have been taking in this book will
serve well for much of the music written since 1900, but to what extent it is
appropriate for music by the more "advanced" composers is a matter of dis-
pute. This book is not the place for an exploration of analytic techniques suit-
able for the music of Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Milton Babbitt or
Elliot Carter, but in this chapter we will make use of our holistic strategy in
looking at a historically important work by Schoenberg from early in the cen-
tury (see Example 13.1). We will see what we can learn about it as heard mu-
sic, not, as is usually the case, a mere example of historical development or
technical procedures. This will be followed by a brief discussion of later
trends and then by some suggestions on how to listen to and avoid being in-
timidated by formalist, academic music and its composers.
The first of Arnold Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 is famous for
being the first completely atonal composition to be published. The term
"atonal" is usually used to describe music lacking a key center, a tonic. But
where, precisely, do tonics exist? Not in the notation, as you well understand,
but only in the heard piece. Here we must come back to the question "Heard
by whom?" Many sections of Tristan would have been heard by eighteenth
century listeners as lacking any tonic, those listeners were simply not
equipped with the aural experience and conditioned expectations necessary
to be able to hear the subtle uses of tonality in that music. A critic at the time
of Chopin wrote of one of his pieces, "Are,we then to have music in no key
whatsoever?!" It looks as though the answer is "Yes." But can that be said of
this piece? Before going on, play or listen to it a few times.
Example 13.1
The Analysis of Twentieth-Century Music 115


How are we to talk about harmony and tonality in this piece? In other
respects, it is not particularly original. Perhaps this is because Schoenberg
felt that the novelty of its tonal character was enough for audiences to have
to handle. The overall form is a clear A-B-A', the first section ending on a
Wagnerian "semicadence" in 33, then a continuous middle section that is
followed by a shortened return of the opening material in 53. Some rhyth-
mic events look wild on the page, but with changed pitches they could have
been written by, say, Liszt. Texture and the use of the keyboard is far less ad-
venturous than in many Romantic piano works. Close examination of the
melodic material will reveal many motivic relationships, hardly a new idea.
But, and it's a big but, the music sounds unlike anything that had preceded
it. This is entirely due to its harmonies and the resultant lack of a familiar
sense of a tonic.
Play the first melodic phrase. Even better, sing it. Is this really without a
tonic? Sing it again, adding an A, a fifth below its final note. Doesn't that
sound as if it were at least a potential tonic? Hardly surprising, as the phrase's
pitches are all to be found in an A minor scale. If Schoenberg had wanted to
write a really tonicless tune, he could have done better than this!
What about the chords in 2 , 3 and the third beat of 4? Do they really
sound as if you've never heard anything like them before? Play the opening
through the beginning of 5, omitting the lowest pitch of each chord. What do
you hear? Play it that way again, but add the bass notes after striking each
chord. What have you learned from doing this? Now listen to Example 13.2.
Example 13.2
The marked notes are, in this context, nonharmonic tones. But what
about the "same" sounds in the Schoenberg; are those bass notes nonhar-
monic tones? The short answer is "No." This is not a triadic piece; those dis-
sonant sounds are the harmonies. In fact, all the harmonies in this piece are
dissonant. They are so not only in the sense that they do not belong to the
common-practice period's repertoire of consonant chords but also in the
sense that we expect them to be followed by sounds that are more consonant.
Now, having heard the piece, or others in the style, we do not actually expect
resolutions to occur during this piece, but the usually overlooked point is
this: these sonorities carry with them unavoidable memories and/or sugges-
tions of tonal harmonies with unresolved nonharmonic tones. These traces
are the key to the expressive personality and mood of the slow sections, at
least, of all three pieces in this opus. Sounds that in earlier music always re-
solved to more consonant sounds are now followed by more dissonance. No
more tension-release, now it's tension-tension. Let's turn now to your reac-
tions.
Just what were your responses? What kind of music is this? How would
you characterize the emotional climate it creates? It is what we might call a
culturally objective fact that the last movement of the Beethoven symphony
is forceful, upbeat and triumphant. Anyone who hears that music as depress-
ing is simply wrong, just as wrong, though not in the same way, as someone
who says the moon is larger than the sun. The Chopin E Minor Prelude is
mournful, trying at one point to snap out of it, but failing to do so. To call it
lighthearted would be grotesque. But this piece . . . ?
Well, I think we can all agree it's not lighthearted, but to be much more
precise than that is difficult if not impossible. The question "Heard by
whom?" is much more salient here than with any of the earlier pieces in this
book. When I have played it for non-music majors who have heard almost
nothing other than popular music, their reaction is astonishment almost to
the point of disbelief that anyone would have wanted to write such a piece. To
their ears there is a complete absence of melody, pulse and, more important-
ly, of any sense of direction or expectation. It isn't just boring to them, it's an-
noyingly ugly and "sick." Other common responses have been, "nightmarish,"
"gloomy and frightened," "spooky monster music," "crazy." These responses,
though naive, are not at all to be dismissed, as they usually are by analysts
who take an arid pleasure in reducing the music to its interval numbers and
then applying involved procedures to those numbers in ways that may or may
not prove interesting but bear no relationship to the sounding music.
Schoenberg was, as attested to by his letters, his paintings, and his
friends and colleagues, a troubled man, very pessimistic and much concerned
with the anxieties and fears that occupied so many artists in the German-
speaking countries at his time. "Expressionism" is the term used for the group
of styles, found in much literature, drama, painting and music, which were
obsessed with intense and painful inner experiences. This unhealthy out-
growth of late Romanticism produced much powerful art. Your attitude to-
ward it will unavoidably have an ethical component. Many composers and
other proselytizers for modern music, when faced with the negative respons-
es of audiences to so much of the music of this century, attribute it to a lack
of familiarity and/or a lack of artistic sensibility. This may, of course, be true
for some, but it overlooks the possibility that people who frown and turn
away from such music are, in fact, responding quite sensitively. They simply
do not choose to put themselves through such experiences. You may recall my
father's comment about not having to go to the concert hall to find out that
life is full of difficulties.
Schoenberg said that he composed "from the heart." I see no reason not
to believe him, but this does not mean that he didn't use his intellect as well.
A great deal of the material in this piece is related intervallically to the open-
ing three-note cell. If we allow the cell, as a whole, to be transposed freely, to
be presented in contrary motion and/or to have its constituents permuted,
we can find all sorts of references to it. Some are obvious to the ear, as at the
start of the middle section in 34. The first three pitches heard, E-D^-F, and
the three "pick-ups", F-D-DS are clearly related to the cell. The upper voice,
beginning F-D-D L , presents the entire opening phrase. And listen to the bass
in 46 and 47. There are many more such references, which you may enjoy
seeking out and then pondering over just how much they have to do with the
heard piece. There is a great deal of published analysis that consists of noth-
ing but interval chasing. For some music this is appropriate, as the composer
had no aims other than the formalist procedures the analysts are trying to
uncover, but to analyze this Schoenberg piece only that way, without treating
the expressive, is to ignore the music.
This intervallic aspect of the piece is often stressed by analysts who see it
as a tentative application of the sort of musical thinking that will lead to
Schoenberg's noted invention, "the method of composing with the twelve
tones." But motivic interrelations and derivations not only had been in use
for a long time, they have nothing to do with the expressive qualities or artis-
tic significance of a piece. All they supply is a guaranteed modicum of cohe-
siveness. Precisely the same procedures might be used in music of an entirely
different character and of far lesser artistic value. Schoenberg's piece may be
famous because it was the first published piece to "abandon" tonality (al-
though, as we have seen, it did not abandon the memory of tonality), but its
value comes from its success in capturing in music a significant area of twen-
tieth-century European experience, whether or not most people will ever
want to spend much time there.
A few more observations will reveal how the uses of harmony and ges-
ture establish the expressionistic flavor of the piece. On beat two of 11 we
hear a familiar dominant ninth chord, an icon of the previous century. The
traditional tendency of the half note A would be to descend to G, an octave
above the bass. But not in this music; the ninth "resolves" on beat three, as ex-
pected, but up to Bk, a strong dissonance. It might be said to resolve into pain.
Certainly there is conflict between the traditional rhythmic gesture and the
contradictory increase in harmonic tension on beat three.
Now play 18. Here's that A again, this time an octave above one of the
other notes in the chord, which is a dominant seventh. This will never do!
Again, a stylistically consistent expression of conflict; the A descends this
time, but to the disturbing G#. The mood of the first eleven bars is introspec-
tive and gently gloomy. The rising eighth note figure which first emerges in 4
and is then repeated twice is somewhat hopeful, but never gets anywhere. In
9-11 there is, gesturally speaking, a traditional altered sequence of the open-
ing phrase. The bass in 10 conflicts with the familiar chord above it, as did the
bass notes in 2,3 and 4. But the mood is about to be shattered, the reverie in-
terrupted.
No phrase of melody so far has extended beyond an octave. The rhyth-
mic activity has been placid. Suddenly, the scurrying thirty-second notes in
12 cover three octaves and a sixth in one beat! Their being played ppp makes
them even more striking. This frightening flurry and the following measure
are new in another way, there is no hint or trace or memory of tonal harmo-
ny whatsoever. On the last beat of 11 the collapsing augmented octaves seem
to annihilate tonal coherence entirely. Surely it is not far-fetched to call spots
like this nightmarish. There is terror here.
The middle section, beginning in 34, starts nostalgically, with sweet Jo-
hann Straussian thirds in the right hand. The intervallic connections with the
opening cell are far less important than the echoes of old Vienna, which are
not at all rare in Schoenberg's music. There's much of this in his Serenade,
Op. 24, a wonderfully inventive and expressive piece. But once more the bass
contradicts, with grotesque ascending augmented octaves. I hear fear and
nostalgia contending with one another in the middle section, but there is
nothing to be gained by my giving you a blow-by-blow account of my inter-
pretation; yours may well be different. (But only within limits; if you hear this
music as carefree, you're in need of help.)
This piece, like all fine music, is concerned with human experience, in
this case, very troubling and restless experience. Note the ending: the final
chord presents the same harmony which, after the three "grace notes," begins
the startling activity of 12. Things do not work out in the end; the loose ends
are not tidied up; the tensions remain unresolved. "Well, that's life!" some
may say. From that point of view, Mozart is an escapist or seduces us in that
direction. Certainly Mozart has offered us a vision of beauty, balance, grace,
tenderness (and much humor, which we have not dealt with here). But listen-
ers who prefer Mozart to Schoenberg's morose introspection do not deserve
to be called Philistines who crave only the safety of the familiar. This is not a
matter of musical or artistic worth. It is foolish to ask whether Mozart or
Schoenberg is the "greater" composer. You may, given your temperament and
circumstances, be much more drawn to the intense world of expressionism
than to the classical balance of Mozart, but that does not mean that Schoen-
berg is the "better" composer. Chances are, if your inner life is like that repre-
sented in the Schoenberg, you will crave some Mozart.
LATER DEVELOPMENTS
With early Schoenberg Western art music was on the verge of astonishing in-
novations that are beyond summing up here. Of all the attitudes and opin-
ions, both avowed and unconscious, held by composers, performers and au-
diences up until this time with regard to the meaning and purposes of music,
there is not a single one which has not been called into question, if not con-
tradicted and derided. The great majority of composers, it must be pointed
out, continued the tradition of the common-practice period in that they cre-
ated artifacts in sound through which they hoped to communicate with audi-
ences by giving them pleasure; sensuous, emotional, intellectual and/or "aes-
thetic." One thinks of Benjamin Britten, Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron
Copland and others, but it was the iconoclastic composers who attracted
much more notice than either their numbers or accomplishments merited,
because what they did was so talkable-about, so amenable to being publi-
cized. After all, if a man says, "I don't care whether my music is any good" and
"composes" a silent piece, or one in which the pitches and rhythms are gener-
ated by throwing dice or tossing coins, as John Cage did, everyone concerned
about new music will talk about it because such acts do raise raise fascinating
and profound questions about the very nature of our art. These questions can
provoke an awareness of previously unexamined beliefs and attitudes, always
to be welcomed. But no one bothers to analyze such "pieces." This is not the
place for extended discussion of the issues involved, but certainly everyone
concerned about music is obliged to to listen to and read about experimental
music as sympathetically as possible before dismissing it.
An apparently entirely different approach to composition has been tak-
en by the academic formalists. (I say "apparently" because, although the com-
positional procedures are distinct one from the other, the sounding results
are often remarkably similar.) These composers produce pieces by what they
call precompositional procedures, mathematical in nature. Whereas Cage
does not care what sounds appear where in his pieces, a Milton Babbitt can
rigorously justify every event. There has been an immense amount of analysis
published about this sort of music. It describes the intervallic and rhythmic
interconnections and puzzles out the compositional procedures, but usually
ignores the heard result. Some of these pieces can generate a lot of excitement
because of their intricacy and difficulty of performance, but few offer any-
thing more after repeated hearings. This is at least partly due, perhaps, to the
fact that composers lacking rich musical imaginations are more likely to be
drawn to extramusical procedures that can easily churn out a lot of notation.
However, the musical worth of such pieces can only be determined by repeat-
ed listenings to the sounding music, not by arguments about methods. You
must decide this for yourself with each new work. To do technical analysis of
such music can be intiguing, but don't be fooled by a piece's complexity and
difficulty of performance into believing that there must be something else
there, something deep. You may well be making the mistake of imputing
depth and artistic significance to works that do not deserve it. There may well
be less there than meets the ear.
I will close with a very instructive anecdote. Listen to Example 13.3.
Example 13.3
When teaching at Juilliard some years ago, I decided to 'compose' a piano

piece in which every aspect was derived mechanically from the word 'non-
sense'. Starting from the ordinal numbers of those letters in the alphabet, I
applied a few simple procedures to generate out of them an ordering of the
numerals one through twelve. Arbitrarily choosing the pitch-class C as num-
ber one, I then had what is called a twelve-tone series, or row. To determine
durations I read the numerals backwards; 1 would mean a sixteenth note, 4 a
quarter, and so on. Similar silly procedures determined register and dynamic
level. A very intense, fiercely bearded piano student, who was not in on the
swindle, played the piece with impressive, frowning concentration for the
composers' forum, attended by composition majors and faculty. It was taken
quite seriously by all; some disliked so dissonant a style, others found it 'in-
teresting.' The point is, there was no way to know that it was a fraud, or, in a
kinder view, an experiment. Happily, almost no composers are spending time
at this sort of thing any more. The results of those experiments are in; they
were, at best, merely interesting. As most of these pieces were challenging to
perform, I suppose they served some purpose as etudes, but such approaches
were an avoidance of the noble task attempted by the composers we have
been studying: to create artifacts in sound which relate to the full breadth and
depth of human experience.
Suggestions for
Further Reading
Clifton, Thomas. Music as Heard. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.
Cone, Edward T. Musical Form and Musical Performance. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1968.
"Music: A View from Delft" and "Beyond Analysis." In Perspectives on
Contemporary Music Theory. Edited by Benjamin Boretz and Edward T.
Cone. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972.
Cone thinks and writes very clearly. The two articles from the second book
are admirably reasonable, in contrast to the formalist thinking found in
most of the book.
Cook, Nicholas. Music, Imagination and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1992.
A Guide to Musical Analysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
The Guide offers thorough explanations and examples of many approach-
es to analysis, followed by critical comments. The 1992 book contains
some fascinating results from studies of how music is, in fact, heard and
interpreted, as well as wide-ranging discussion of how this should relate to
analysis and aesthetics.
Cooke, Deryck. The Language of Music. Oxford University Press, 1950.
Goes almost too far in making direct connections between musical ges-
tures and emotional responses, but better too far than not far enough.
Cooper, Grosvenor and Leonard B. Meyer. The Rhythmic Structure of Music.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
Very detailed and technical, but ground-breaking.
124 Suggestions for Further Reading
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Putnam, 1958.

A profound and very important book. It is intellectually so healthy, always
treating works of art as wholes, inclusive of the viewer or listener.
Kramer, Lawrence. Music as Cultural Practice, 1800-1900. Berkeley: Universi-
ty of California Press, 1990.
Langer, Suzanne K. Philosophy in a New Key. New York: Mentor Books, 1951.
Not at all an easy read for undergraduates, but at least skim the chapter on
music. Many profound observations.
Lester, Joel. The Rhythmic Structure of Tonal Music. Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1986.
Broader in scope than Cooper and Meyer.
Lippman, Edward A., ed. Musical Aesthetics: A Historical Reader. New York:
Pendragon Press, 1986.
A fascinating collection of very different views.
Meyer, Leonard B. Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1967.
Music, the Arts and Ideas. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1967.
Explaining Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
A bit narrow in scope, but all these add to your repertoire of approaches.
Mitchell, Donald. The Language of Modern Music. London: Faber, 1966.
Pople, Arthur, ed. Theory, Analysis and Meaning in Music. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994.
Slonimsky, Nicholas. Lexicon of Musical Invective. New York: Coleman-Ross,
1965.
An absolutely marvelous collection of reviews and other opinions on new-
ly presented music from the time of Beethoven to the early twentieth cen-
tury. You won't believe some of them, but you'll learn a lot. And laugh.
Solomon, Maynard. Mozart, A Life. New York: Harper-Collins, 1995.
Thorough and perceptive. Some very profound discussions of meaning in
Mozart's music, particularly in Chapter 12, Trouble in Paradise.
Storr, Anthony. Music and the Mind. New York: Macmillan, 1992.
Relatively easy reading, with much of interest.
Don't neglect at least skimming the bibliographies in these books for further
leads.
Index
Aesthetics in music, 73-75 Chopin, Frederic Francois: Prelude

Analysis, technical, and relationship No. 7 in A major, 5-13, 74;
to performance, 11-13 Prelude No. 2 in A minor, 28;
Architectural form: Piano Concerto Prelude No. 4 in E minor,
in A major, K. 488 (Mozart), 17-27, 74; twenty-four
39-40; Prelude No. 7 in A preludes, 6
major (Chopin), 6-7; Contrapuntal techniques, 87-91. See
Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven), also Invertible counterpoint
56 Convertible counterpoint, 94. See
Austin, William W., 110-11 also Invertible counterpoint
Counterpoint, 87-95
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 10-11;

Fugue II in C minor, 87-97; Debussy, Claude: Prelude to The
Prelude in D minor (The Well- Afternoon of a Faun, 105-11
Tempered Clavier, Book I), Dichterliebe Song No. 1
15-16; The Well-Tempered (Schumann), 78-81
Clavier, 87-98 Dichterliebe Song No. 12
Beethoven, Ludwig van: Sonata "Les (Schumann), 81-85
Adieux" Op. 81a, 64-68; Double counterpoint, 91-94,97-98.
Symphony No. 1,10; See also Invertible counterpoint
Symphony No. 5,45-61,75; Dramatic form: Piano Concerto in
Symphony No. 7,63-64; C major, K. 467 (Mozart), 43;
Symphony No. 3 in E flat, Op. Prelude No. 7 in A major
55 (Eroica), 36-37; Waldstein (Chopin), 11
Sonata, Op. 53,68-71
La Boheme (Puccini), 75
Brahms, Johannes: Symphony No. 4 Emotions elicited by music. See
in E minor, 85 Expressive content
126 Index
Eroica Symphony (Beethoven), Performance and relationship to

36-37 technical analysis, 11-13
Ethics in music, 73-75 Piano Concerto in A major, K. 488
Expressive content, 29-34, 73-75, (Mozart), 35-41, 73-74
87; Fugue II in C minor (Bach), Piano Concerto in C major, K. 467
95-97; Piano Concerto in A (Mozart), 41-43
major, K. 488 (Mozart), 40-41; Prelude a l-apres-midi d'unfaune
Prelude No. 4 in E minor (Debussy), 105-11
(Chopin), 24-26; Symphony Prelude in D minor from The Well-
No. 5 (Beethoven), 50-56; Tempered Clavier (Bach), 15-16
Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 Prelude No. 2 in A minor (Chopin),
(Schoenberg), 118-20 28
Prelude No. 4 in E minor (Chopin),
17-27,74
Fifth Symphony (Beethoven), Prelude No. 7 in A major (Chopin),
45-61,75 5-13,74
Fifths, cycle of, 15-16 Prelude to Tristan and Isolde
First Symphony (Beethoven), 10 (Wagner), 36-37,99-104
Franck, Cesar: Violin sonata, 9 Puccini, Giacomo: La Boheme, 75
Fugue II in C minor (Bach), 87-97
Schoenberg, Arnold: Serenade, Op.

Harmonic styles, 8-10 24,120; Three Piano Pieces, Op.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 11,113-20
27-28 Schumann, Robert: Dichterliebe
Heine, Heinrich, 80 Song No. 1, 78-81; Dichterliebe
Song No. 12,81-85
Serenade, Op. 24 (Schoenberg),
Invertible counterpoint, 91-95. See 120
also Contrapuntal techniques Significance in music, 29-34
Irish sixth, 83 Sonata in C major, Op. 53
(Beethoven), 68-71
Sonata "Les Adieux" Op. 81a
Mallarme, Stephane, 105-6 (Beethoven), 64-68
Meaning in music, 29-34 Split fifth, 15-16
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: Piano Symphony No. 1 (Beethoven), 10
Concerto in A major, K. 488, Symphony No. 3 in E flat, Op. 55
35-41, 73-74; Piano Concerto (Beethoven), 36-37
in C major, K. 467,41-43 Symphony No. 4 in E minor
(Brahms), 85
Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven),
Norton Critical Scores (Austin), 45-61,75
110-11 Symphony No. 7 (Beethoven), 63-64
Index 127
Technical analysis and relationship Violin sonata (Franck), 9

to performance, 11-13
Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11
(Schoenberg), 113-20 Wagner, Richard: Prelude to Tristan
Triple counterpoint, 91,94. See also and Isolde, 36-37,99-104
Invertible counterpoint Waldstein Sonata (Beethoven),
Tristan and Isolde, Prelude 68-71
(Wagner), 36-37,99-104 The Well-Tempered Clavier (Bach),
Twenty-four preludes (Chopin), 6 87-98
About the Author
HUGH AITKEN recently retired as Professor of Music at The William Paterson

College of New Jersey. He studied composition at The Juilliard School and taught
there from 1950 to 1970. He is the composer of over eighty works.
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1 Chopin: Prelude No. 7 in A Major 5

2 The Split Fifth: A Cautionary Tale 15

3 Chopin: Prelude No. 4 in E Minor 17

5 Some Mozart Excerpts 35

6 Beethoven: Fifth Symphony 45

7 Three Beethoven Excerpts 63

8 Aesthics: Aesthetics Meets Ethics 73

9 Two Schumann Songs and a Bit of Brahms 77

10 J. S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I 87

11 Wagner: Prelude to Tristan and Isolde 99

12 Debussy: Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun 105

13 The Analysis of Twentieth-Century Music 113

Suggestions for Further Reading 123

The true is the whole.

A question rarely asked in textbooks on musical analysis is this: What precise-

changes in air pressure cannot be triumphant, but parts of that symphony

It simply sounds wrong, while adding D and G# instead makes it clear

The Split Fifth:

In fact we will find a progression almost exactly like this in a Robert

Chopin: Prelude No. 4

ty and function is obvious to your ears. In common-practice music these will

Doesn't that sound familiar? The raising of the G to G# brightens the

Meaning involves a relationship, and it always requires at least three

pectation or with tension/release drama. This is true as well of several pre-

Some Mozart Excerpts

PIANO CONCERTO IN A MAJOR, K. 488

Returning to the Mozart, the opening progression, I-V 7 /IV-IV 6 4 , gives

flavor of the opening. Additional lightness is provided by the absence of the

Figure 5.1 is a diagram of the "architectural" form of the first sixty-six

CONCERTO IN C MAJOR, K. 467

Mozart's music almost always sounds transparent, uncomplicated and un-

It's intriguing, though fruitless, to speculate on what sort of music this

What a forceful and strikingly original way to begin a symphony! Of

horn-call in 303. Was Beethoven making some ironic comment, as he will in

Beethoven, when he harmonizes the high E^ in 9, not to add a seventh to the

The merits of Beethoven's 7th we have before discussed 8c we repeat that it

The juxtaposition of such differing, even contrasting, moods is most un-

To return to the music: the optimistic brassy music wasn't allowed to

tative eighteen measures, which have undermined the composure established

Three Beethoven Excerpts

SEVENTH SYMPHONY, INTRODUCTION

SONATA "LES ADIEUX." OP. 81 A. INTRODUCTION

context, the same as a diminished seventh. Don't expect to be able to establish

WALDSTEIN SONATA, OP. 53, FIRST MOVEMENT

As mentioned in the discussion of his C minor symphony, keys had

If we are to take the notion of holistic thinking about music seriously, we

Two Schumann Songs

DICHTERLIEBE Song No. 1

Example 9.1 (continued)

Further analysis shows 9 and 10 presenting iv6 V7 i of B minor, followed

Example 9.2 (continued)

DICHTERLIEBE Song No. 12

would "normally" be followed by some sort of E chord, about as far away

BRAHMS: SYMPHONY NO. 4, FOURTH MOVEMENT

Example 10.1 (continued)

The counterpoint to S2, from the second sixteenth of 3 to the downbeat

Invertible counterpoint is counterpoint so designed that it can also be per-

Checking the intervals will show the transformations in Figure 10.3.

become fifths, so consecutive parallel thirds and sixths must be avoided in