Plagal Harmony As Other - Asymmetrical Dualism and Instrumental Music by Brahms

Plagal Harmony as Other: Asymmetrical Dualism and Instrumental Music by Brahms
Author(s): Margaret Notley

Source: The Journal of Musicology , Vol. 22, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 90-130
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jm.2005.22.1.90
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Plagal Harmony as Other:
Asymmetrical Dualism and
Instrumental Music by
Brahms
MARGARET NOTLEY
I
n his splendid final book, John Daverio invoked
the notion of harmonic “otherness” in reference to the finale of
Brahms’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello (op. 102, completed in
1887).1 Daverio quoted an article in which Hugo Riemann discussed a
90 passage from this finale and an analogous, better known passage from
the beginning of the Andante of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony (op. 98,
completed in 1885). Behind both passages the theorist had discerned
the same “minor-major” scale, which created a sound “resonating as if
from long-gone centuries and distant realms,” hence the effect noted
by Daverio.2
If applied more strictly than Daverio intended, “otherness” fits
within a well known tendency, prevalent especially during the last half
century or so, to understand binary oppositions as a basic mode of hu-
man apprehension, at least in Western cultures. In disciplines ranging
from linguistics to philosophy to psychology, and in critical approaches
that encompass feminist and post-colonial theories, “the other” and
similar concepts such as “difference” have assumed systems of opposing
1 John Daverio, Crossing Paths: Schubert, Schumann and Brahms (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2002), 227.

2 Ibid. I use Daverio’s translation of Riemann’s comment: “die ganz merkwürdige
wie aus vergangenen Jahrhunderten oder aus fernen Zonen herüberklingende Wirkung.”
See Hugo Riemann, “Einige seltsame Noten bei Brahms und Anderen” (1889); repr. in
Präludien und Studien: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Aesthetik, Theorie und Geschichte der Musik, vol.
3 (Leipzig: Hermann Seemann Nachfolger, 1901), 111.
The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 22, Issue 1, pp. 90–130, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347.
© 2005 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for
permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s
Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

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notley
terms, the most famous of which include mind/body, man/woman,

and a number of further examples.3 A related, overt dualism, begin-
ning with the fundamental opposition between major and minor
modes, also happens to provide the theoretical underpinning for Rie-
mann’s essay.
Since Daverio’s goal was to discuss passages in the Double Concerto
that deviate in a variety of ways from harmonic norms for common-
practice tonality, he expanded Riemann’s conceptual framework to
include idioms that derive from Gypsy style. In the interest of simplifi-
cation the discussion that follows will consider the original frame of ref-
erence in an article by Riemann that seems to have received little atten-
tion in the literature on either him or Brahms beyond Daverio’s book,
along with more recent work that builds on Riemann’s proposals.
The basic opposition between the major and minor modes that
forms a basis for Riemann’s comments brings with it additional pairs of
antithetical features. These secondary features rather than the primary
dualism between the modes themselves are my concern here. Accord-
ing to Daniel Harrison, concepts of major and minor involve not only a
variety of elements such as scales, chords, and patterns of modulation
but also, in his words, “something larger: a set of relationships that links 91
these items into a system.”4 Associated with the major mode is thus, in
Harrison’s formulation, an “authentic” system in which, most basically,
dominant harmony, authentic cadences, and characteristic upward
semitone motion between scale degrees 7 and 8 are prominent. Oppos-
ing these features is, again after Harrison, the minor mode’s “plagal”
system with its subdominant harmony, plagal cadences, and characteris-
tic downward semitone motion between scale degrees 6 and 5.5
Despite recent work that acknowledges the importance of plagal
harmony in late 19th-century music in general and in the music of
Brahms in particular,6 the idea of a plagal system seems not to have
3 The literature on structuralism, the most influential of the earlier approaches that
take binary oppositions as a premise, and on subsequent related approaches is of course

vast. For one brief but compelling discussion of the concept of “difference” and its perti-
nence to musicology, see Ruth A. Solie, “Introduction: On ‘Difference,’ ” in Musicology
and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. Ruth A. Solie, 1–20 (Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press, 1993). Solie lists several additional binary pairs on p. 11. See
also Daniel Harrison, Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music: A Renewed Dualist Theory and
an Account of Its Precedents (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994), 16.
4 Harrison, Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music, 23.
5 Ibid., 25–29; summarized in Table 1.1 on p. 27. In adopting these terms, Harrison
notes that the major-minor system replaced the previous dualism between authentic and
plagal in modal systems (18). More details of Harrison’s theory will be presented as they
become pertinent to the discussion.
6 See, among others, William E. Benjamin, “Tonal Dualism in Bruckner’s Eighth
Symphony,” in The Second Practice of Nineteenth-Century Tonality, ed. William Kinderman

and Harald Krebs, 237–58 (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1996); David Lewin,

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the journal of musicology
found widespread acceptance. For 20th-century treatments of tonal

harmonic theory, most notably those based on Heinrich Schenker’s
ideas, have tended to construe the subdominant and related chords as
serving only subordinate functions to the dominant and tonic, such as
“prolonging” one of them or “preparing” the former.7 As an apparent
consequence, most recent music theorists have shown little inclination
to acknowledge a full-fledged plagal system with equal status to an au-
thentic system in tonal music based on functional harmony. The alter-
native approach that I shall advocate accepts the validity of what are in
effect two subsystems, authentic and plagal, within an overarching dual-
istic system, but also emphasizes the inequality between them.8
Indeed, in contrast to the opposing terms in dualistic systems as
conceived by Riemann and other theorists, the paired features in a sys-
tem that gives rise to an acknowledged harmonic otherness can not be
equal in strength or in the frequency of their occurrence. According
to various 20th-century critical theories, binary pairs and the very con-
cept of otherness entail inequality of some kind between the opposing
terms, whether recognized or not. For example, in the pairs mentioned
at the beginning, mind has traditionally been understood to be supe-
92 rior to body, man to woman.9 To apply a label borrowed from linguis-
tics, the other and therefore less well regarded or less commonly used
term is “marked” with respect to its opposite.10 This George Lakoff ex-
plains as follows:
“Amfortas’s Prayer to Titurel and the Role of D in Parsifal: The Tonal Spaces of the
Drama and the Enharmonic C /B,” 19th-Century Music 7 (1984): 336–49; and Deborah
Stein, Hugo Wolf’s Lieder and Extensions of Tonality (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985).
And Harrison writes, “The Plagal system is evident in the works of other late nineteenth-
century composers, especially those influenced at some time by Brahms, a composer with
a marked fondness for Plagal effects.” His example is Brahms’s song “Wie Melodien zieht
es mir,” op. 105, no. 1. See Harrison, Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music, 99–102.
7 The following discussion of a plagal cadence, for example, suggests prolongation
as its function: “Because motion between IV and I lacks the key-defining power of the V–I
progression, plagal cadences have a much more limited function than authentic (V–I) ca-
dences. They typically occur at the very end of a composition. . . . In such cases the ‘final-
ity’ of the closing tonic has already been established by stronger tonal forces earlier in
the piece.” Edward Aldwell and Carl Schachter, Harmony and Voice Leading, 2nd ed. (Fort
Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989), 182. See also Harrison, Harmonic Function in
Chromatic Music, 98.
8 Harrison himself writes, “the Authentic system is by far the more privileged and
common structure in tonal music by virtue of the comparative strength of its functional
connections.” Harrison, Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music, 97.
9 Simone de Beauvoir wrote as follows about the man/woman pair: “She is defined
and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the inci-
dental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—
she is the Other.” Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. and ed. H. M. Parshley (New
York: Knopf, 1957), xvi.
10 For a full-scale treatment of this concept, see Edwin L. Battistella, Markedness: The
Evaluative Superstructure of Language (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1990).

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In general markedness is a term used by linguists to describe a kind of

prototype effect—an asymmetry in a category, where one member or
subcategory is taken to be somehow more basic than the other (or
others). Correspondingly, the unmarked member is the default value
—the member of the category that occurs when only one member of
the category can occur and all other things are equal.11
Robert Hatten has written cogently and at length about marked-

ness in music, citing as one of his basic examples the markedness of the
minor mode with respect to the major, although without reference to
19th-century dualistic theories.12 (The repertory on which he focused,
Beethoven’s music, predated those theories.)13 One objective here is to
suggest a potential extension of Hatten’s work, since Riemann and
more recent advocates of harmonic dualism do not seem to have fully
addressed the possibility of asymmetry between plagal and authentic
“subcategories” and the richness of its implications. (Riemann attrib-
uted the effect of strangeness that he heard in the two passages from
Brahms to a particular property of the minor-major scale, to be ex-
plained below, rather than to plagal harmony itself.) Yet the expressive
power of plagal idioms comes about through their lesser position
93
within the framework that defines them as other, that is, through their
difference from “more basic” or “default” idioms. Stated in more con-
crete terms, the relative infrequence with which plagal harmony plays a
nonsubordinate role accounts for its (largely unacknowledged) marked-
ness within the dualistic systems described by Riemann and others.
Theorists such as Richard Kaplan not sympathetic to dualism and,
in particular, to Harrison’s reinterpretation of it, have focused on the
problems posed by, in Kaplan’s words, “the conceptual parity of Domi-
nant and Subdominant” that seems fundamental to Harrison’s work.
Kaplan thus referred to the plagal subsystem as the “equivalent of anti-
matter: necessary in order that the system not collapse, but for all prac-
tical purposes purely synthetic, its rare manifestations tending to be ex-
tremely unstable and to break down rapidly under examination.” As
examples he mentions a relatively common type of cadence, V–iv–I, in
works by Mendelssohn and Richard Strauss.14
11 George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1987), 60–61; quoted in Battistella, Markedness, 41.

12 Robert S. Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Inter-
pretation (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1994). Hatten introduces the applicability of
markedness to music with a discussion of the opposition between the major and minor
modes on pp. 36–37.
13 Ideas of Jean Philippe Rameau and others anticipate the late 19th-century dual-
ism of, most pertinent for the discussion here, Riemann.

14 Richard A. Kaplan, review of Harrison, Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music,
in Music Theory Spectrum 18 (1996): 127–28. Heather Platt has discussed examples in

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Kaplan’s argument notwithstanding, stronger instances may be cited

in which plagal harmony does manage for a limited time to assume a
nonsubordinate function. When I write about such situations, I shall re-
fer to the plagal system’s “temporary autonomy” or “semi-autonomy.” I
have in mind passages in which the dominant with leading tone is ab-
sent, thus allowing the minor subdominant, decisively if also only for
a while, to take over the cadential function of the dominant. Although
ultimately the subdominant’s subordinate position will become evident
again (unless the passage concludes the piece), the plagal subsystem is
not, at least in these instances, as unstable or indeed illusory a phenome-
non as Kaplan asserts. Recognizing the plagal subsystem as an alternative
to the authentic subsystem affirms the autonomy that it can temporarily
achieve under certain circumstances. At the same time, acknowledging
the asymmetry between the two helps to account for the peculiar expres-
siveness that comes from applying plagal harmony in this way.
In arguing for the explanatory power both of the paired subsystems
and the inequality between them, I shall present Riemann’s ideas about
the Andante of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony before focusing on the
Adagio mesto of the Horn Trio (op. 40) and the opening Allegro of the
94 Clarinet Trio (op. 114). In these two chamber works, separated by two
and a half decades (the former completed in 1865, the latter in 1891),
Brahms connected the plagal subsystem with the scale of a church
mode, Phrygian and Aeolian (or natural minor), respectively.15 For pla-
gal harmony to attain the temporary autonomy apparent in these two
works, this step was almost if not completely unavoidable: In the article
cited by Daverio, Riemann wrote about a non-diatonic scale, the previ-
ously mentioned minor-major, that likewise allows plagal harmony to
become semi-autonomous. The discussion of Brahms’s Andante will ex-
plore the circumstances that limit this use of the plagal subsystem, a
type of harmony sometimes referred to as “modal,” but more precisely
regarded as plagal since the scales of only two of the church modes give
rise to it. While the association of plagal harmony with the two modes
heightens the sense of its otherness, Harrison’s theoretical framework
has more to offer in analyzing the movements by Brahms than do exist-
ing approaches to modern modal harmony.16
Brahms’s songs of final plagal cadences that do not refer to dominant function. This is
yet another use of plagal harmony, distinct from that which I am discussing. See Heather
Platt, “Unrequited Love and Unrealized Dominants,” Intégral 7 (1993): 119–48.
15 Harrison chose the natural minor or Aeolian among the various possible minor
scales for his dualistic theory.

16 See, for example, the various brief discussions of the Andante from Brahms’s
Fourth Symphony in John Vincent, The Diatonic Modes in Modern Music, rev. ed. (Holly-
wood, CA: Curlew Music Publishers, 1974).

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In the two chamber movements, to be treated in greater detail,

Brahms applied the markedness of the “lesser” set of features to give
each an individual shape and sound. Rather than attempting to ac-
count for every appearance of a subdominant in each piece, I shall pay
the most attention to situations in which the plagal subsystem, for the
time being, seems to function autonomously. In such passages within
both movements, admittedly—and by definition—unusual examples,
Brahms accentuated the status of plagal harmony as other through ad-
ditional features, including timbre, texture, and dynamics. His approach
in these places accords with the observation by the linguist Edwin L.
Battistella that “marked units tend to occur in marked contexts while
unmarked elements occur in unmarked contexts.”17 Because of its dif-
ferences from the norms of the authentic subsystem, plagal harmony,
as applied by Brahms in these two chamber movements, can suggest
qualities or states not easily conveyed in tonal music through harmonic
means: otherworldliness, distance, timelessness, possibly even alienation.
In these instances, plagal harmony appears in a strong sense as the
other of authentic harmony, perhaps of common-practice tonality itself.
Plagal Harmony and Riemann’s Discussion of the Minor-Major Scale 95

in the Andante of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony
Riemann wrote about the Andante of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony
in at least two different kinds of contexts: the article cited by Daverio
and a guide to the entire symphony. Example 1 gives the opening of
Brahms’s slow movement, measures 5–8 of which the article addressed
either directly or by implication. Riemann derived the minor-major
scale that he discerned in this passage from Moritz Hauptmann’s minor-
major key, an earlier product of 19th-century dualistic theory, which
Riemann represented in a schema used by Hauptmann and other theo-
rists, as well.18 Since I have chosen to concentrate on Riemann’s discus-
sion of Brahms’s symphonic slow movement, rather than of the Double
Concerto’s finale, I adapt the schema, which Riemann offers in C minor-
major, to the E minor-major of the Fourth Symphony’s Andante in Ex-
ample 2a. The A minor subdominant triad to the left and the B major
dominant triad to the right flank the E major tonic triad at the center.
Example 2b shows Riemann’s minor-major scale, again adapted to the
17 Battistella, Markedness, 7; quoted in Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 37. The
phenomenon described by Battistella is known as “markedness assimilation.” Hatten

briefly discusses this concept at several points in Musical Meaning in Beethoven.
18 Riemann cites “Hauptmanns ‘Molldurtonart’ ” and the “Akkordsystem” that arises
with it in “Einige seltsame Noten,” 110. See also Moritz Hauptmann, Die Natur der Har-
monik und der Metrik: Zur Theorie der Musik (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1853), 40.

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key of Brahms’s Andante. With an asterisk, Riemann pointed out the

adjustment, lowering the leading tone, necessary to form a scale from
the schema of three triads—in this case, D had to become D —the na-
ture of the adjustment suggesting the greater emphasis given to the
subdominant and tonic triads than to the dominant. The resulting scale
does in fact account for all of the notes in Brahms’s Andante from the
second half of measure 5 through measure 8.
Later in the same article Riemann wrote, “The exact counterpart to
this so new idiom in the domain of major harmony is a very old one in
the domain of minor harmony.”19 Stated in terminology different from
that used by Riemann, the non-diatonic collection of pitches shown in
Example 2b that Brahms drew upon in the opening of his E major An-
dante replicates the pitches in an ascending melodic-minor scale, in
this instance that of A minor. Riemann calls this the “major-minor”
scale. Example 2c gives the schema of three triads that he considered
to underlie the major-minor scale, while Example 2d shows the scale it-
self as he presents it, beginning on the fifth note if reckoned from the
tonic, with an asterisk to indicate the chromatic adjustment he made
between schema and scale.20 (Here the quality of the dominant and
96 tonic triads clearly takes precedence over that of the subdominant.)
Riemann’s interest lay in the different cadential patterns implied by
these two scales, along with a number of others.21 Analogous to the au-
thentic cadence complete with leading tone that the major-minor scale
enables in a minor-mode piece is the plagal cadence with minor sub-
dominant made possible in a major-mode piece through the alterations
represented in the minor-major scale. In other words, each of these
non-diatonic scales imports the properties of the plagal or authentic
subsystem—the kind of cadence and associated characteristic semitone
motion delineated by Harrison—into the mode not usually associated
with that subsystem.
Riemann’s arrangement of the minor-major and major-minor scales,
if calculated from the tonic pitch on the fourth and fifth scale degrees
respectively, does not clarify the cadential properties of the two non-
diatonic scales in question. Furthermore, the ordering deviates from the
pattern that seems natural today. Examples 3a and 3b therefore rotate
the two scales to begin on the tonic pitches, the first descending and
19 Riemann, “Einige seltsame Noten,” 111: “Das genaue Gegenstück zu dieser so
neuen Wendung auf dem Gebiet der Durharmonik ist eine sehr alte auf dem Gebiete der
Mollharmonik.”
20 Ibid., 112.
21 After discussing some of the possibilities in detail, Riemann gives a list of ca-
dences arising from scales that feature ascending or descending successions of two whole
tones followed by a semitone (ibid., 122–23).

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example 1. Brahms, Fourth Symphony, Andante, mm. 1–13
Ła 2 Ł ¦ Łý ¦ Ł Ł Ł ¦ Łý ¦ Ł Ł ý
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147.91.236.56 on Tue, 10 Dec 2019 10:41:51 UTC
example 1. (continued )
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$7 ²²²² ÿ
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the second ascending in accordance with their respective tendencies at

cadences. Although major, it seems, is to be understood as the basic
mode in the major-minor scale because of the quality of the tonic triad,
the upper tetrachord—when the scale is ordered to begin on the tonic
pitch, as in Example 3a—comes from the parallel minor scale. The situ-
ation is exactly the opposite in the major-minor scale, as given in Exam-
ple 3b: Whereas minor is apparently to be taken as the basic mode here
because of the minor tonic triad, the upper tetrachord derives from the
parallel major key.
Thus while the ascending upper tetrachord in the major-minor
scale can culminate in what Riemann terms a “major” or (perfect) au-
thentic cadence in A minor, the descending upper tetrachord in the

147.91.236.56 on Tue, 10 Dec 2019 10:41:51 UTC
$10 ²²²²
Fl. Š ŁŁ ýý ¦ ŁŁ ×² ŁŁ ðð ýý ŁŁ ý × Ł ŁŁ ² ŁŁ Ł ¹ ¼ ý

Š
² Ł Łý Ł Ł ² Ł Ł¹ Ł ýŁ Ł Ł¹ Ł ýŁ Ł Ł¹ ŁŁ Ł Ł ² Ł Ł ¹ ¼ ý
Clar.
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ý Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł Łý Ł ¦ ŁŁ ¦ Ł
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$ ²²²² ¹
Ł Ł Ł Ł ² Ł Ł ¹ Ł Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ ¹ ¹ Ł Ł
100
Š ¹ Ł Ł
!
Vn. I
\\
²²
Š ² ² Ł ¹ Ł ¦ Ł Ł × Ł Ł ¹ Ł Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ ¹ ¹ Ł Ł ¹
Ł Ł
Vn. II
\\
Va. š ²²²² Ł ¹ Ł Ł ¹ Ł Ł ¹ Ł Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ ¹ ¹ Ł ¦ Ł Ł ¹ Ł ¦Ł ¦Ł
\\
Ý ²²²² ¹ Ł Ł ¹ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ¹ ¹ ¹ Ł Ł ¹ Ł Ł
Vcl.
Ł Ł ²Ł Ł Ł Ł
\\
Ý ² ²² ¹ ¹ ¹ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ¹ ¹ ¹ Ł Ł ¹ Ł Ł
Cb.
% ² Ł Ł Ł ²Ł Ł Ł Ł
\\
minor-major scale can lead to, again using his word, a “minor” or (im-
perfect) plagal cadence in E major.22 In the violins’ treble line in
Brahms’s Andante, the upper tetrachord of the minor-major scale func-
tions exactly as Riemann suggested in measure 7 and again in measure
22 See the lower set of (unnumbered) examples in ibid., 113.

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example 2a. The system of chords that define Moritz Hauptmann’s

minor-major key, given here with E as tonic
Subdominant Dominant
A C E G B D F
Tonic
example 2b. The minor-major scale as presented by Hugo Riemann

in “Einige seltsame Noten bei Brahms und Anderen,”
but transposed to E
Ð ²Ð ²Ð Ð
ŠÐ Ð Ð Ð
*
example 2c. Riemann’s system of chords underlying the major-minor

key, as it appears in his “Einige seltsame Noten bei 101
Brahms und Anderen”
Subdominant Dominant
D F A C E G B
Tonic
example 2d. The major-minor scale as given by Riemann
Ð
Š Ð ²Ð ²Ð Ð Ð Ð Ð
*
8, descending to plagal (“minor”) cadences in E major with scale de-

gree 5 in the treble (see Ex. 1).
For Riemann, this aspect of the minor-major key did not account
for the archaic or otherwise foreign sound that he heard in the move-
ments from Brahms’s Fourth Symphony and Double Concerto. Rather,
to his ears, a descending succession of three major thirds possible
(because of its five consecutive whole tones) with the minor-major

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example 3a. Descending minor-major scale ordered to begin on the

tonic pitch E
Ð Ð Ð Ð Ð
Š ²Ð ²Ð Ð
example 3b. Ascending major-minor scale ordered to begin on the

tonic pitch A
Ð ²Ð ²Ð Ð
ŠÐ Ð Ð Ð
scale—but not with a diatonic scale—was the source of the effect.23 See
Example 4a for Riemann’s example, adapted from C to E minor-major.
By way of comparison, Riemann offered the ascending succession of
the same three major thirds, given here as Example 4b, that come
about through reordering the collection as the major-minor scale.24
102 These successions of thirds may offer unusual instances of a feature
of chromatic music that Harrison calls “specific accompaniment,” that
is, an accompaniment by “parallel motion that preserves specific inter-
vals,” in this case major thirds, rather than “generic” thirds. Whereas
the structurally more significant line in the examples that Harrison
cites is diatonic, the “specific accompaniment” uses chromatic notes,
but no such hierarchy is evident here.25 In this respect, and possibly
others, the minor-major scale presents unusual theoretical problems
beyond those that Riemann recognized in models such as that given in
Example 4a and in his commentary on them.
Brahms instantiated in a precise manner the abstract possibility
presented in Example 4a in the parts that he wrote for the clarinets in
measure 5 of the Fourth Symphony’s Andante, and less precisely in the
string parts in measures 5 and 6, in both measures maximizing sub-
dominant presence. (Over A in the bass, the second major third, F –D,
23 Ibid., 111.
24 Riemann was giving the schema in C for both passages from Brahms. Since the
succession of treble major thirds appears over a single bass note in the Double Concerto,
he presented only one in his adaptation of the pattern to C. In transposing the example
to E, I have included two bass notes, as these appear in the Fourth Symphony’s Andante,
measures 5 and 6.
25 These examples may not fit all of Harrison’s criteria, since there is no major third
in a culminating cadential point and the chromatic pitches arise from modal mixture.
His discussion of this concept and the criteria that limit it is, however, not completely
clear. See Harrison, Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music, 106–8.

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example 4a. Succession of major thirds in the minor-major scale, as

given by Riemann, but transposed to E
² ðð ² ð ðð
Š ð ðÐ
example 4b. Succession of major thirds in the major-minor scale, as

given by Riemann
Ð (² ÐÐÐ (² ÐÐÐ ÐÐ
Š ( ÐÐ Ð
Ð
Ð Ð Ð
forms the [major] subdominant of the [minor] subdominant in the

context of E major.) He thus saturated all of the measures that can be
explained by reference to the minor-major scale (from the second half
of m. 5 through m. 8) with plagal harmony.
That Riemann’s comments do explain the harmonic language in 103
these measures oddly enough seems to have distressed Brahms. Accord-
ing to an account of the composer’s reaction, which must come from
the theorist, “When Riemann had analyzed striking harmonic idioms in
his essay . . . Brahms was not very pleased about this revelation and said
with complete seriousness: ‘One should not show how it was made!’ ”26
Perhaps not surprisingly, the anecdote suggests full awareness on the
composer’s part of the theoretical basis for the harmonic innovations in
the movement.
In a guide to the symphony published in the year of Brahms’s
death, Riemann asserted that the four unison introductory measures of
the Andante “should probably be understood in the sense of A minor
(not C major).”27 Perhaps he chose A minor because the lower tetra-
chord of the minor-major scale, which he had discerned in the passage
26 “Als Riemann in seinem Aufsatz ‘Einige seltsame Noten bei Brahms und An-
deren’ frappante harmonische Wirkungen analysiert hatte, war Brahms über diese Ent-
schleierung nicht sehr erfreut und meinte durchaus ernsthaft: ‘Man dürfe nicht zeigen,
wie es gemacht würde!’ ” See “Einleitung: Hugo Riemann, eine biographische Skizze
nebst einem Verzeichnis seiner Werke,” in Riemann-Festschrift: Gesammelte Studien, ed. Carl
Mennicke (Leipzig: Max Hesses Verlag, 1909), XXIII. Mennicke presumably wrote this
unsigned introduction. I would like to thank Alexander Rehding for bringing this
Festschrift to my attention.
27 Hugo Riemann, “Johannes Brahms, Fourth Symphony (E minor) (1897),” trans.
Susan Gillespie in Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98, ed. Kenneth Hull, Norton
Critical Scores (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 206.

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that follows, tends to tonicize the minor subdominant (the E minor-

major scale can after all be rearranged as the A major-minor scale). He
did not note the possibility of E Phrygian in the opening measures,
which most other writers have assumed to be the best way to conceive
them. (When the line reappears at the same pitch level in the coda
[mm. 113–18] Brahms’s harmonization supports a retrospective read-
ing of E Phrygian—and of course E is the tonic of the movement.) Rie-
mann did, however, mention repeated use of “the Phrygian figure E, D,
C, B” in the Andante. (See, for example, the lower clarinet line that be-
gins in the middle of m. 5.) While this descending line, which had pre-
occupied him in the earlier article, could derive from the upper tetra-
chord in E Phrygian, it appears in the same place in an E Aeolian scale:
These are the only two possibilities in diatonic scales. The line does fea-
ture the same succession of two whole tones followed by a semitone
that also appears in the lower tetrachord of E Phrygian (A, G, F, E), but
the pitches E, D, C, B function specifically as a “Phrygian figure” only
in B Phrygian. Example 5 shows the relationships between B Phrygian,
E Aeolian, and E Phrygian scales.
What interested Riemann was the cadential pull of two descending
104 whole tones followed by a semitone, which he manifestly preferred to
associate with the unique lower tetrachord of the Phrygian scale rather
than with the upper tetrachord shared by the Phrygian, Aeolian, and
minor-major scales.28 In this instance, he would have caused less confu-
sion if he had referred to “the Aeolian figure E, D, C, B” or “the minor-
major figure E, D, C, B.” But whether the larger context of a passage
such as this one from Brahms’s Andante supports interpretation as Aeo-
lian, Phrygian, or minor-major, it is the same succession of intervals in
the upper tetrachord of the respective scale that allows the plagal subsys-
tem to achieve semi-autonomy.
Throughout most of the opening eight measures of Brahms’s
Andante—with the exception only of the first half of measure 5—
conventional dominant harmony with the leading tone is absent, but
then reasserts its “dominance.” Thereafter Brahms based the first the-
matic group (through m. 29) for the most part on authentic harmony,
with two brief plagal interludes—in the second half of measure 13
through measure 14, and in the second half of measure 22 through
measure 25. With the beginning of the transition in measure 30, the
consequences of the opposition between the two subsystems become
even more audible than before. Indeed, repeated appearances of semi-
autonomous plagal harmony in the first group may explain the effec-
28 Riemann takes the Phrygian scale as his model for this figure in “Einige seltsame
Noten,” 121.

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example 5. Placement of semitones in ascending E Phrygian, E Aeo-

lian, and B Phrygian scales
B Phrygian B C D E F G A B
(semitones) 1 2 5 6
E Aeolian E F G A B C D E
(semitones 2 3 5 6
E Phrygian E F G A B C D E
(semitones) 1 2 5 6
tiveness of this transition: after so many descending plagal lines, the ris-
ing sequence—on the same motive used in two of the plagal passages—
at the beginning of the transition has an unusual plangency.
To summarize: while the expressive effect of plagal harmony stems
from its asymmetrical relationship to authentic harmony, plagal har-
mony also enhances its opposite. And plagal harmony that is not sub-
sumed at every level by authentic harmony is possible only in passages
such as this one that draw on a non-diatonic scale with, in descending
order, two whole tones followed by a semitone in the upper tetrachord, 105
or on Phrygian or Aeolian scales. Like the minor-major scale, these two
diatonic scales (and no others) include a whole tone between scale de-
grees 8 and 7 and a semitone between 6 and 5, thus allowing the minor
subdominant but excluding the major dominant.
Plagal Harmony and the Phrygian Scale in the Adagio Mesto

of the Horn Trio
The decision by a composer such as Brahms to grant temporary
autonomy to plagal harmony should raise a number of questions for
a music critic. Where does the composer introduce this use of plagal
harmony? That is, how is a marked context created to suit its marked-
ness? A second question logically follows from the first: What role does
semi-autonomous plagal harmony play in the overall shaping of the
piece? And because of the merely temporary autonomy of the harmony,
how does the composer ultimately reestablish the default subsystem of
authentic harmony? Finally, what kinds of hermeneutic readings might
the composer’s use of plagal harmony imply? Working with one reper-
tory, the music of Beethoven, Hatten has demonstrated the applicabil-
ity of the concept of markedness to what he identifies as semantic or
expressive interpretations.29 The markedness of the plagal subsystem
29 See, in particular, Hatten’s discussion of his aims in Musical Meaning in Beethoven,
1. Along related lines, Gretchen A. Wheelock has written about the association of the

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that I describe here seems to open up similar interpretive possibilities

for later repertories and in particular for the music of Brahms. In this
regard, I do not pretend to match the rigor that Hatten, with his com-
mand of semiotic theory, has brought to his treatment of markedness
in the music of Beethoven. Rather, my aim is to suggest a perspective
on plagal harmony that adds another element to be considered in
analytical/hermeneutic approaches to Brahms’s music, one that is con-
sistent with John Daverio’s work and that because of the nature of
markedness is amenable to a degree of systematization.
In several respects, the Adagio mesto of Brahms’s Trio for Piano,
Violin, and Natural Horn offers a case study in markedness and its pos-
sible expressive significance. One basic aspect of this movement that
warrants consideration in a semantic interpretation is its very status as
an adagio, a movement type that as I have argued elsewhere, had been
elevated to a genre—and a lofty one at that—by the late 19th century.30
Closely connected with expressions of both subjectivity and spirituality,
an adagio ideally conveyed a single inner experience through the gen-
eration of a composite melodic line spanning the entire movement.
Although it is hardly necessary to connect an interpretation to docu-
106 mented events in a composer’s personal life, here Brahms may reason-
ably be understood to have represented mourning for his mother, who
died shortly before he composed the Horn Trio. Certainly, Max Kal-
beck and subsequent biographers have interpreted the work in this
light.31 In less personal terms, the adagio can be understood simply to
express mourning or grief, as indicated by the qualification “mesto”
and by the unusually somber tone throughout the movement.
To create a compelling and coherent melodic line that conveyed
the affective qualities expected of an adagio posed technical problems
that late 19th-century composers appear to have found especially tax-
ing. In accordance with his practices in other adagios from this period
of his life, in this movement Brahms addressed the problem of continu-
ity in a slow tempo by devising an ostensibly subsidiary theme to link
apparently more important thematic materials.32 Thus at the beginning
of the Adagio mesto, he gave the solo pianist a phrase, to be played una
minor mode’s instability with femininity in the late 18th century and has shown the possi-
bilities for musical and cultural interpretation afforded by Mozart’s use of “engendered”
minor keys in his operas. See Gretchen A. Wheelock, “Schwarze Gredel and the Engen-
dered Minor Mode in Mozart’s Operas,” in Musicology and Difference, ed. Solie, 201–21.
30 Margaret Notley, “Late-Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music and the Cult of the
Classical Adagio,” 19th-Century Music 23 (1999): 33–61. I discuss this movement on pp.
53–55.
31 Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 4 vols. (2nd and 3rd eds., 1912–1921; repr. Tutz-
ing: Schneider, 1976), 2:185-86.

32 Notley, “Chamber Music and the Cult of the Adagio”: 47–48.

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corda, that evokes the sound of a strummed instrument. Functioning as

a kind of refrain, the phrase returns a number of times, always played
by the pianist and always ending on a half-cadence (except toward the
close of the movement, from measure 77, where—to use Schoenberg’s
word—Brahms liquidates it). In a manner similar to that evident in
other adagios from the same period, recurrences of this phrase provide
a characteristic atmosphere and, by connecting and preparing other
thematic statements, simultaneously help keep melodic process in mo-
tion, avoiding full closure.
When the violin and horn enter with an initial presentation of the
brief “first” theme (mm. 5–9), the texture remains more or less homo-
phonic. A texture of theme and accompaniment is well suited for sub-
jective expression, but an adagio aroused expectations beyond the
mere expression of subjectivity. By this time it had become a genre
marked as different not only from quick movements but also from an-
dantes in its compositional demands and expected impact. One critic
wrote in 1868, “Just as we demand from tragedy different proportions,
different actions, and a different scope than we do from a comedy, so
do we require of an adagio greater depth, grander proportions, and a
broader outlook than we do of an andante, which, it must be said, does 107
not call forth and resolve a conflict, but rather is simply a ‘Lied,’ an in-
strumental song.”33 Joining together the various thematic materials,
Brahms produced an ongoing adagio melody that culminates in two
passages, based on extensive and powerful use of dominant harmony,
with an undeniable tragic sound (mm. 32–42 and 69–86). In compos-
ing the two climactic moments of crisis, he fulfilled one expectation of
the genre.
By placing the Adagio mesto in E minor, Brahms further distin-
guished it from the other three movements in the Horn Trio, all in E
major.34 In the key of E minor, the player of the stipulated natural
horn in E must stop many notes, fully or partially, thereby enhancing
the veiled but differentiated timbres characteristic of the instrument in
33 Louis Ehlert, “Robert Volkmann: Ein Portrait,” Leipziger allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung 3 (1868): 309. Ehlert was criticizing the adagios in Volkmann’s string quartets.
See Notley, “Chamber Music and the Cult of the Adagio,” esp. 34–35, 43–44, and 59, on
distinctions made between andantes and adagios. An adagio such as that from Beetho-
ven’s Ninth Symphony does not fit Ehlert’s description, as I note in ibid., 59.
34 In Austro-German music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, keys with
many sharps or flats seem to be more common in adagios than elsewhere. Consider, for
instance, the F Adagio affettuoso in Brahms’s Cello Sonata in F major, op. 99. Examples
by Bruckner include the D Adagio of the Eighth Symphony and the G Adagio of the
String Quintet. In Mahler’s music, the D Adagio of the Ninth and the F Adagio of the
Tenth Symphony come immediately to mind. Choosing “extreme” keys that place con-
straints on the players of stringed or other instruments, as in the case of the natural horn
here, may well be another way of marking adagio movements as special.

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general.35 He also particularized the sound of the movement by mak-

ing liberal use of the subdominant and of the flat or “Phrygian” second
degree (here F ), a notable feature of the plagal system as described by
Harrison. (Flatting the second degree in a minor scale produces the
minor scale a fifth down, that is, in a subdominant relationship to the
original key.)36 Indeed, the movement ends on a sforzando plagal ca-
dence (mm. 82–83) with a G in the horn part, which if played on a
natural horn, as one horn player describes the effect, “gives the note a
nasal, almost shocking quality.”37 Because of the indicated accent and
the fact that the player must partially stop the bell, the horn produces a
“stinging” sound that then decays much more rapidly than on the
valved instrument, making the plagal cadence a striking conclusion to a
remarkable movement.38
Despite the prominence throughout the Adagio mesto of effects
drawn from the plagal subsystem, plagal harmony gains temporary
autonomy only in the so-called second theme or B section (mm. 19–
42),39 which begins in B Phrygian: a rotated version of the same collec-
tion of pitches as that of the tonic key, E minor (see Ex. 6). This ada-
gio never modulates to another key. Because of the diminished fifth
108 between scale degrees 5 and 2, no dominant—minor or major—is avail-
able in the Phrygian mode. As a result, Brahms could suppress domi-
nant function altogether, as he has in fact done in measures 19–31 (see
Ex. 7 for this passage). In sum, within the general markedness of this
movement he made this section stand apart as different by placing it in
Phrygian rather than in a tonal key and consequently allowing the pla-
gal subsystem semi-autonomy, sources of harmonic otherness that he
further marked through textural contrast.
While the dynamic level stays as soft as before, the new section
opens as a fugato after a statement of the refrain and its concluding
half-cadence. To establish B Phrygian and the autonomous plagal har-
35 For a discussion of Brahms’s choice of instrument, see Eva M. Heater, “Why Did
Brahms Write His E-Flat Trio, Op. 40, for Natural Horn?” The American Brahms Society
Newsletter 19/1 (Spring 2001): 1–4.
36 Harrison, Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music, 31–32.
37 Heater, “Why Did Brahms Write for Natural Horn”: 3.
38 Ibid.
39 Elaine R. Sisman discusses the competing formal signals in this movement, which
to her suggest sonata form and then ternary form, in “Brahms’s Slow Movements: Rein-
venting the ‘Closed’ Forms,” in Brahms Studies: Analytical and Historical Perspectives, ed.
George S. Bozarth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 98–99. In “Chamber Music and the
Cult of the Adagio,” I make the point that discussions of the adagio in the late nineteenth
century argue against the explanatory power of theories of large-scale form with respect
to that movement type. In any case sonata form would appear to be a problematic cate-
gory for this movement for several reasons. For one, there are no gestures of transition.
Also problematic are the fugato texture and the use of Phrygian rather than a tonal key
in what would have to be understood as the second theme.

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example 6. Placement of semitones in E natural minor (Aeolian) and

B Phrygian scales
E minor E F G A B C D
(semitones) 2 3 5 6
B Phrygian B C D E F G A B
(semitones) 1 2 5 6
mony that comes with it, Brahms simply asserts a B -minor triad as tonic
after the B -major triad of the repeated half-cadence in measures 17
and 18, negating D , the leading tone of E minor.40 Given the subdued
quality of the fugato as well as the fact that no change in the collection
of pitches was necessary other than lowering the leading tone of E
minor, a more forceful approach, for example through a conventional
dominant-driven modulation, would have seemed incongruous. More-
over, the Phrygian scale does not allow for a dominant.
Fugal texture, the introduction of the Phrygian mode, and the con-
comitant suppression of dominant function in favor of plagal harmony
all mark this section as different from the rest of the movement, but 109
what are the semantic implications? In tonal music the use of dominant
harmony, the unmarked or default choice, gives rise to a frequently
noted strong sense of direction toward a goal, which composers have
traditionally accentuated by withholding resolution to the tonic. Brahms
does this himself in the two climactic passages of the Adagio mesto. To
acculturated listeners, the tension and release of harmony based on the
relationship of dominant and tonic are likely to convey a more differen-
tiated and dynamic experience of time than does semi-autonomous
plagal harmony, the passive effect of which in large part limits its use in
tonal music. Fugal texture, furthermore, has sometimes been regarded
as having an objective sound, especially in comparison with the perceived
subjectivity of a theme-and-accompaniment texture (the single important
line correlates to the solitary subject).41 Together, fugal texture and
40 This might thus constitute an unusual instance of a “bifocal close,” that is, a situa-
tion in which the “transition” concludes on dominant harmony that is then taken as the
new tonic. See Robert Winter, “The Bifocal Close and the Evolution of the Viennese Clas-
sical Style,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 42 (1989): 275–337. Since the so-
called transition here is a refrain-like phrase that has not made any traditional gestures of
transition, Winter’s term seems more appropriate than William Caplin’s alternative, “non-
modulating transition.” William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for
the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1998), 127.
41 See, for example, Arnold Schering, “Über den Begriff des Monumentalen in der
Musik,” repr. in Von grossen Meistern der Musik (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1940), 14.

147.91.236.56 on Tue, 10 Dec 2019 10:41:51 UTC
example 7. Brahms, Horn Trio, op. 40/iii (Adagio mesto), mm. 17–31
−
17
Š − −−−− ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ Ł ŁŁŁŁŁ ŁŁŁŁŁŁ

sempre \
−− − ÿ ÿ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Š Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł −Ł
\ sempre \ e legato

Ý −− − − ŁŁŁ ýý ¦ Ł ¦ ŁŁŁ ý Ł ŁŁŁ ýý ¦ Ł ¦ ŁŁ ý Ł ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ Š
−−
!
Ý −− − − ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ
− − ŁŁŁ ýý ¦ Ł ¦ ŁŁŁ ý Ł ŁŁ ý ¦ Ł Ł Ł Š
Łý Łý
−
23
Š − −−−− Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ł Ł
Ł Ł 5
Ł ¦Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł 4
− Ł
Š −− Ł Ł Ł
ŁŁ ŁŁŁŁŁŁŁŁŁ ¹ ¹ ¼ ¹
45
110 Ł Ł
Ł Ł Ł Ł 8va
− Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Š − −−−− Ł Ł Ł 45
! \ sempre e legato
−− −− − Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁŁ
Š − Ý
Ł Ł ŁŁŁŁ 45
Ł
− Ł
¦ Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł ²Ł
26
Š − −−−− 45 Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł 42
ÿ
\ dim.
− ÿ Ł −Ł Ł −Ł Ł −Ł ¹
Š − − 45 42 Ł Ł ¼ ¹
\ dim.
(8va)
¦Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł ¦ Ł
−−−− − 5 ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦Ł Ł Ł
24 Ł −ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦ Ł
Š − 4 Ł
!
\\ Ł ² Ł
dim.
Ý −− − − 5 Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł ŁŁ ¦ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł
−− 4 Ł Ł ŁŁŁŁŁ Ł Ł
42 − Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦Ł Ł Ł
Ł Ł Ł −Ł ²Ł

147.91.236.56 on Tue, 10 Dec 2019 10:41:51 UTC
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example 7. (continued)
− −Ł Ł ¹ ¹ −Ł Ł ¹ ¹
29
Š − −−−− ¦ Ł ² Ł ¹ ¼ ¹
¦Ł ¦ Ł ¦Ł ¦ Ł
− −Ł Ł −Ł −Ł −Ł ¹ ² Ł ¦ Ł ¦ Ł ¦ Ł ¹ ¹ ² Ł Ł Ł
Š −− Ł Ł Ł
²Ł ¦ Ł
−− −− − ¦ ² ŁŁ ¦ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ Ł ¦ Ł ¦ ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦ ŁŁŁ ¦ ¦ ŁŁ
¦ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ
Š − ²Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł ¦
!
² Ł ¦ ŁŁ

¦Ł
Ý −− − − ¦ Ł
²Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦ ² Ł ¦ ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦ ¦ ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł
− − ²¦ ŁŁ Ł Ł ² Ł Ł ¦ ŁŁ ¦ ¦ ŁŁ Ł Ł
¦Ł ²Ł ¦Ł
harmonic idioms associated with the Phrygian scale imply qualities

“other” than subjectivity and orientation toward a goal. In contrast to
the almost constant sense of striving typical of music from the common
practice period, this fugato, as a complex of moving parts that seem to 111
go nowhere because of the harmonic language, might be said briefly to
suggest timelessness and therefore eternity.42
How, then, has Brahms composed a fugato within the constraints
imposed by the Phrygian mode, and how does he connect it to what fol-
lows? The characteristic minor-mode semitone between scale degrees 5
and 6 is a salient feature of the fugato’s subject (mm. 19–20), while the
answer (mm. 21–22), which outlines an E -minor triad, locally the sub-
dominant, highlights the semitone between scale degrees 1 and 2 par-
ticular to the Phrygian mode.43 From a contrapuntal combination of
the first and the second measures of the subject arises a series of third-
related triads at the end of measures 24, 25, and 26: B minor, D ma-
jor, and F minor, respectively—each preceded by an “applied subdomi-
nant.” The appearance in measure 26 of C , which does not belong
within B Phrygian but rather B minor, brings the Phrygian fugato to a
42 Margaret Notley, “Discourse and Allusion: The Chamber Music of Brahms,” in
Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music, ed. Stephen E. Hefling (New York: Schirmer Books,
1998; New York: Routledge, 2004), 250.
43 Brahms has thus shaped the subject and answer so that the latter preserves the
semitone motion of the former, indeed the entire, exact succession of intervals after the
initial substitution of an ascending fourth for the subject’s ascending fifth. At the same
time, the subject and answer begin and end on the scale degrees prescribed by, for exam-
ple, Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, despite the fact that the answer outlines the subdomi-
nant rather than the dominant. See the excerpt from Marpurg’s Abhandlung von der Fuge
in Alfred Mann, The Study of Fugue (New York: Dover, 1987), 167.

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close: Brahms in this way eliminates two of the marked features, uses of
mode and texture. Still without reference to a dominant, another se-
quence based on third relationships follows, likewise derived from par-
tial statements of the fugue subject (mm. 27–31).
With the restoration of dominant function in measure 32—and
consequently the elimination of the final marked feature—come more
familiar-sounding formal processes: an aborted attempt at a modula-
tion to B minor (mm. 32–35), which upon repetition becomes a re-
transition (mm. 36–42). As in the Andante of the Fourth Symphony,
the very difference between the plagal and authentic subsystems makes
the subsequent rise to the first of the movement’s two climaxes in mea-
sures 32–36 via dominant harmony all the more powerful. Just as the
fugato had followed a half-cadence in the tonic key of E minor, the
larger section that it initiated eventually leads back to a half-cadence in
tonic at measure 42.
Plagal effects throughout the adagio create a larger context for the
harmonic otherness of the fugato. And the fugato’s subject reappears
later in the movement as a dark recollection (mm. 61–62 and 65–66)
that alternates with an unambiguous anticipation of the bright major-
112 mode theme of the finale (mm. 59–60 and 63–64; see Ex. 8).44 The
second recollection of the fugato’s subject leads through a reinterpreta-
tion of the meaning of its semitone—here scale degree 5 in D minor, A,
becomes the leading tone of B in measures 67–68—into the second
impassioned rise to a climax and, finally, to the searing plagal cadence
that ends the movement.
Features of this movement such as the recall and foreshadowing of
themes have meaning only within the Horn Trio.45 At the same time,
many elements have distinct connotations because of their historical
connection to other music or to attendant constraints: for example, the
ballad-like refrain that suggests the telling of a story, the contrasting
types of texture, and the choice of E minor as key for a piece scored
for a natural horn in E . Plagal harmony, as other of authentic har-
mony, adds an additional semantically rich element of the second gen-
eral type, features with historical resonance. In the Adagio mesto,
44 Heater writes of the effect of the first two-measure premonition of the finale’s
opening gesture in E major, which “for the most part uses open notes in a smoothly
melodic, idiomatic ‘horn-fifths’ duet with the violin. The pianissimo echoing of this pas-
sage in m. 63 is beautifully effective: when the horn passes the theme [now in F major] to
the violin, most of its own notes are now partially stopped, reintroducing the covered
sound so characteristic of this movement.” See Heater, “Why Did Brahms Write for Nat-
ural Horn”: 2–3.
45 See V. Kofi Agawu on this distinction, which he characterizes as one between in-
troversive and extroversive semiosis in Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic
Music (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993), chaps. 2 and 3.

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example 8. Brahms, op. 40/iii, mm. 58–71
−
58
Š − −−−− ÿ
Ł Ł ¦ Ł
Ł ¦Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł ¦ ðý
molto \
−− ¦Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł ¦ ðý
Š − ÿ Ł ŁŁ
molto \

− Ł −Ł
− Ł Ł
Š − −−−− Ł Ł ŁŁ −ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł ¹ ¼ ¹ ÿ ¦ Ł ¦¦ ŁŁ − Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł
! Ł \Ł ¦Ł Ł
\\
Ý −− − − −Ł ðý ðý
− − −Ł ŁŁ Ł ðý
−Ł Ł Ł ðý ðý ðý
−
62
Š − −−−− ¦ Ł Ł ¦Ł
¦Ł ¦Ł ¦Ł
¦ Ł Ł ¦ Ł ¦ ðý
¦ ðý \\
−− ¦ ðý ¦Ł Ł
Š − ¦ Ł ²Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł ² Łý ² ðý
\\
−Ł 113
¦Ł Łý Ł ¦ Ł ¦¦ ŁŁ − Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł
−−−− − Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł ý Ł ¹ ¼ ¹ ¦Ł Ł Ł
Š − Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł
! \\
Ý −− − −
− − Łý Ł ¦ Ł ð ý ¦ðý ðý
Łý Ł ¦Ł ðý ðý
−
66
Š − −−−− ¦ Ł ¦ Ł −Ł ¹ ÿ
poco accel.
Ł ¦Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł
− Ł
Š − − ²Ł ¹ ¼ ¹ ¼ ¦Ł ¹ ÿ

¦Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł
−− −− − ¦ Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł ¦Ł −¦ ŁŁ
Š − ¹ ¹ý Ý ¦ Ł ŁŁ ¾ ¦ ŁŁ Ł ¾ Š Ł ¦ ŁŁ ¾ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ
! cresc.
¦Ł
Ý −− − − Ł −Ł
− − Łý Ł ¦ Ł Ł ¦ Ł −−ŁŁ ¦ Ł Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł
Ł ¦Ł ¦Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł
Łý Ł ¦Ł Ł ¦Ł ¦Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł

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− ¦ Ł ¦ Ł Ł −Ł
passionata
Ł ŁŁ
69
Š − −−−− Ł −Ł −Ł
−Ł Ł Ł

[
− Ł ¦ Ł −Ł ý Ł ¹ Ł ¹ −Ł ¹ Ł ¹
Š −−
[
− ¦ ŁŁ −Ł ŁŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ¹ ý Ł ŁŁ −Ł ŁŁ ŁŁŁ
Š − −−−− ¹ ý ¦ ŁŁ ŁŁ ¹ ý Ł ¹ý −ŁŁ Ł ¹ ý −ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ¹ý
Ł
! [ Ł ŁŁ − Ł
ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ Ł
Ý −− − − ¦ ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ
−Ł Ł −ŁŁŁ ŁŁ
Ł −ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ Ł
ŁŁŁ ŁŁ
− − Ł Ł Ł
−Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ł −Ł
~
Brahms isolates this harmonic usage in a fugato thus marked as different

and expressing, it seems, an aspect of grieving (perhaps intimations of
114 time without end?) apart from the overt emotionalism of the climactic
passages. At the conclusion of the fugato, the subordinate position of
plagal harmony is revealed, as inevitably it must be in a piece of tonal
music. However, the asymmetry between the two subsystems in no way
diminishes the significance of the lesser one.
Plagal Harmony and the Aeolian, Phrygian, and Minor-Major Scales

in the Opening Allegro of the Clarinet Trio
The first movement of Brahms’s Trio for Piano, Clarinet, and Cello
includes an instance of a feature of Harrison’s dualistic theory that
appears to be a true rara avis: a plagal or “descending-fifth” half ca-
dence.46 On this one point, the plagal subsystem does come close to
seeming, as Kaplan asserted, “purely synthetic.” Neither Harrison nor
the authors he cites provides as convincing an example of this cadence
as occurs in Brahms’s Allegro at the end of the exposition, after the
movement has modulated from A minor through C major to E minor.47
(Ex. 9 shows the conclusion of the exposition and beginning of the
development.)
46 Harrison, Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music, 29.

47 Ibid., 29 n. 16; Yizhak Sadai, Harmony in Its Systemic and Phenomenological Aspects
(Jerusalem: Yanetz, 1980), 142–43. Neither of the other two authors mentioned by Har-
rison, Moritz Hauptmann and Otto Tiersch, gives an example from the repertory; each
offers the cadential type only in the abstract.

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example 9. Brahms, Clarinet Trio, op. 114/i (Allegro), mm. 76–86
− ¦ Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł ²Ł Ł Ł
¦ Ł ¦ Ł −Ł Ł
76
Š − − ²Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ²Ł ¦ Ł Ł ¦ Ł
Ý ÿ ÿ ÿ
Ý ²²² ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ¦ ²¦ ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ

!
Ý Ł Ł ²Ð Ð
Ł Ł Ð Ð
−
79
Š − − ¦Ł Ł ¼ Ł Ł Ł ½ ½ ¼ ¼ ½
\ dim. ¦ð ð Ł Ł
Ý ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ Ł
Ł Ł Ł
][ 115
ðð ðð ðð
Ý ð
ð ð ð
ð ð ÐÐ ¹ Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ
Ł
! \ \
Ý Ð
Ð Ð Ð Ð Ł Ł
Ł Ł
84
− ÿ ÿ ½ Ł Ł
Š −−
[
Ý Łý
Ł ð Ł Ł Ł Ł ²Ł ð ð
[
Ý ŁŁ
ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ

ŁŁ ŁŁ
ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ
! Š ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
^[
Ł Ł
Ý Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ
Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ł Ł Ł

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Since the standard musical literature provides so few examples of

this cadence, where could Brahms have encountered it? Arrey von
Dommer’s Musikalisches Lexikon, a book that Brahms admired and a
copy of which he owned and heavily annotated, did not recognize this
type in the entry for “Halbschluss.” Instead, Dommer considered any
subdominant-to-tonic cadence—that is, “full plagal” cadence, with ei-
ther triad potentially major or minor—a kind of half cadence.48 As is to
be expected, Riemann did acknowledge plagal half cadences. In one
discussion, he noted that in contrast to an authentic half cadence, a
plagal half cadence at the end of a four- or eight-measure phrase, “al-
most as a rule upsets the symmetrical construction, in that a [full] ca-
dence usually follows after two more measures.”49 The phenomenon
that he describes may help account for the effectiveness of the develop-
ment’s beginning in the Allegro of Brahms’s Clarinet Trio: the plagal
half cadence does seem to require immediate continuation (see Ex. 9).
Riemann prefaced a second discussion of plagal half cadences and
other unusual cadence types by deeming “our modern harmony, com-
pared with that of the flourishing period of the vocal style in the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries under the dominion of the Church
116 modes . . . one-sided, stereotyped, and poor.”50 Perhaps Brahms’s study
of Renaissance music indirectly inspired the plagal half cadence in the
Clarinet Trio, along with many other imaginative cadences elsewhere in
his music.51
Certainly, at a number of points in this Allegro, Brahms draws on
materials and recalls the sound of 15th- and 16th-century music.52 The
cadence itself forms part of a network of related harmonic idioms that
48 Musikalisches Lexicon auf Grundlage des Lexicon’s H. Ch. Koch’s, ed. Arrey von Dom-
mer (Heidelberg: J. C. B. Mohr, 1865), 401. The library of the Gesellschaft der Musik-
freunde in Vienna owns Brahms’s personal copy of this book.
49 Hugo Riemann, Musik-Lexikon, 4th ed. (Leipzig: Max Hesse, 1894), entry for
“Schluß,” 953. I would like to thank Alexander Rehding again, this time for reminding
me of the potential insights afforded by studying various editions of Riemann’s Lexikon.
50 Hugo Riemann, Harmony Simplified or the Theory of the Tonal Functions of Chords,
2nd ed., [trans. H. Bewerunge] (London: Augener, [1896]), 97. Riemann apparently be-
lieved that the “well being of the immediate future in music [was] to be sought . . . in the
path that Brahms chose: thorough study of the old” (“das Heil der nächsten Zukunft der
Musik . . . zu suchen ist . . . auf den Wege, den Brahms eingeschlagen hat: gründliches
Studium der Alten”). “Einleitung,” Riemann-Festschrift, XXII–XXIII.
51 Some other examples of unusual half cadences include that in m. 4 of the F Ma-
jor Cello Sonata, op. 99/i, which tonicizes the supertonic by means of an applied dimin-
ished seventh. Another is the cadence on a Neapolitan sixth in m. 24 of the F Minor Clar-
inet Sonata, op. 120, no. 1/i, approached sequentially via a suspension.
52 Peter Foster notes some of the connections to Renaissance music, including the
choice of alla breve meter in a movement devoted even more than usual for Brahms to
contrapuntal manipulations of various kinds. See Foster. “Brahms, Schenker and the
Rules of Composition: Compositional and Theoretical Problems in the Clarinet Works”
(Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Reading, 1994), chap. 5.

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he initiates at the beginning. Instead of confining semi-autonomous

plagal harmony to an internal episode as he did in the Adagio mesto,
he establishes plagal otherness in the opening as an alternative to au-
thentic harmony53 (see Ex. 10 for the first 22 measures of the Allegro).
As at least two scholars have noted, the first two phrases (measures
1–4 and 5–13) resemble a fugue subject (dux) and its expanded answer
(comes).54 The pair of phrases also stand in an antecedent-consequent
relationship: in the first phrase, the single voice of the cello suggests a
motion from tonic to dominant; the second phrase opens with the comes
version of the same basic thematic material and closes on the tonic. By
making the ascending gestures in both phrases triadic, Brahms man-
aged to avoid the leading tone altogether; in effect, he composed an
Aeolian/plagal period, at the end of which the dynamics become softer
and the clarinet descends into the chalumeau register.55 Both uses of
so-called secondary parameters (here, those of dynamics and timbre)
also mark subsequent appearances of semi-autonomous plagal har-
mony; the period itself never returns as an entity.
Despite the seeming straightforwardness of the phrase construc-
tion, the formal status of this period is not completely clear, since the
period includes no trace of authentic harmony, and its consequent 117
phrase never comes back. While the period may be construed as a
theme, it can also be understood to function as an introduction and,
perhaps even more aptly, as a frame.56 In pertinent comments, Hatten
wrote about “a narrower range of (expressive) meaning and a less-
frequent usage (or better, a more-constrained distribution of places
where they can be used)” connected with marked terms in contrast to
their “unmarked counterparts.”57 The narrower range of expression
53 In Hatten’s terms, the salience of the network is based on a system (the plagal) of
already marked values. See Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 42 and 64. I first discussed the
harmonic style of this movement in “Discourse and Allusion: The Chamber Music of
Brahms,” 270. In a later, short article, I introduced the notion of harmonic otherness and
noted Brahms’s use of secondary parameters to emphasize passages thus marked. See
“Brain-Music by Brahms: Toward an Understanding of Sound and Expression in the Alle-
gro of the Clarinet Trio,” The American Brahms Society Newsletter 16/2 (Autumn 1998): 1–3.
54 Foster, “Brahms and the Rules of Composition,” 264. Peter H. Smith also dis-
cusses the opening of the Clarinet Trio in this light in “Brahms and Subject/Answer
Rhetoric,” Music Analysis 20 (2001): 193–236.
55 That the final two measures can be explained with reference to the minor-major
scale rather than to the Aeolian minor with a Picardy third may seem trivial in this in-
stance. Placing the passage within Riemann’s framework, however, underscores the plagal
sound of the period to the very end. For the Riemannian counterpart to A minor-major
would be D major-minor, the latter tonic in a subdominant relationship to the former.
56 Christian Martin Schmidt finds this kind of introduction/theme more in evi-
dence in Brahms’s later works. See his Brahms und seine Zeit, 2nd ed. (Laaber: Laaber-
Verlag, 1997), 117.
57 Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 37.

147.91.236.56 on Tue, 10 Dec 2019 10:41:51 UTC
example 10. Brahms, op. 114/i, mm. 1–21
Klarinette
in A
− Allegro ÿ
Š −−‡ ÿ ÿ ½ ¼ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
poco [
š Ł Ł Łý Ł ð Ł ŁŁŁ ŁÝ ð ð
Violoncello ‡Ł Ł ð ð
poco [
Ý ‡ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ
Pianoforte ! [
Ý
un poco
‡ ÿ ÿ ÿ ½ ð
ð ð ð
Ł
Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Łý Ł ð
3
− Łý Ł ð
3
6
Š −− Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ð
ð
dim.
Ý ð ð ð ð ð ð ð ð Ð
dim.
118
ð ð ð ð ð ð ²Ð
Ý ÿ ð ð ð ð ð ð ²Ð
! dim.
Ý
ð ð ð ð ð ð ð ð ð ð
ð ð ð ð ð ð ð ð ð ð
−
11
Š −− Ł Ł
Ł Ł Ł ¦ð ð Ð Ð
Ý \
Ð Ł ¼ ½ ÿ ÿ
Ý ÐÐ Ł ¼ ½ ½ Ł Ł ŁŁl ¹ Ł Ł Łl Ł Ł
Ł Ł ¹ Ł
¼ ¦Ł
! \
3

3 3
Ý ¼ Ł Łl ¹
Ł ¼ ½ ½ Ł Łl ¹ Ł
3 3 3
ð
ð ð Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł

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−
15
Š −− ¼ ½ ÿ
ð Ł Ł Ł ¦Ł ¦Ł
Ý ½ ¼ Ł Ð ð Ł ²Ł Ł ¦ Ł
\
Łl ² Łl Łl ¦ Łl Łl Ł Ł ² Łl ¹ ² Ł Ł Łl ¹ Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł ² Ł ² Łl
3
Ý Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ² Łl Łl Łl Łl Ł ¼
!
Š
3
3
Ý ¹ ¹
3 3 3
Łl Łl Łl Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Łl Łl Łl ¼
Łl Łl Ł Ł l l
Ł Ł Ł Ł Łl Łl
Ł
− Ł Ł
18
Š −− Ł ÿ
Ł Ł Ł
Ł ÿ
\\
Ý Ð Ł Ł Ł −Ł 119
Ð Ł −Ł Ł ¦ Ł
\\
Š ðð ÿ ðð ÿ
! \\
ð ðð ²ð
Ý ÿ ð ðð ÿ
ðð ð ðð
ð ð
associated with plagal harmony came up in the discussion of the Adagio

mesto from the Horn Trio. With respect to Hatten’s second observa-
tion: More than any other type of tonal music, sonata form dramatizes
the tension between dominant and tonic, and that makes the boundary
of the form one of the few suitable places for semi-autonomous plagal
harmony.
These remarks suggest the unusual nature of this movement, with
its generally unrecognized harmonic subtleties but also its frequently
noted lack of melodic appeal. To the surprise of Brahms and several
of his friends and colleagues, the Clarinet Trio found little favor, far
less than the Clarinet Quintet, which he composed during the same

147.91.236.56 on Tue, 10 Dec 2019 10:41:51 UTC
summer.58 After the first performance of the Clarinet Trio, in December

1891, one hostile critic, Hans Paumgartner, remarked that “the melodic
invention is sparse, frequently stagnating or running dry altogether.”59
In books timed to coincide with the Brahms centennial year of 1933,
even a sympathetic biographer, Karl Geiringer, wrote that “the themes
are not quite so inspired, nor is their elaboration quite so captivating
as usual,” while Daniel Mason asserted that the themes “betray an
unmistakable apathy of the imagination.”60 Indeed, neither the themes
nor the uses of sonata-form procedures are the most memorable as-
pects of this movement. Rather, after the opening period, the most in-
dividual passages in the movement are harmonic moments that refer
back to it, but for the most part are fleeting and serve no vital formal
function. Sonata form is usually understood to be grounded in tensions
that arise from dialectical oppositions of several kinds.61 In placing the
most arresting harmonic moments, so to speak, “outside” and “against”
the sonata-form framework, Brahms established the most meaningful
opposition in the movement, although it is one that creates little tension.
As shown in Example 10, the period initiates a three-part thematic
group: a = measures 1–13; b = measures 14–17; a’ = measures 18–21.62
120 With the b section comes contrast, for here the entry of the leading
tone introduces authentic harmony in opposition to the plagal har-
mony of the opening. In the b section, Brahms sets up yet another op-
position, that between metric consonance and dissonance. Peter H.
Smith has written about this aspect of the Clarinet Trio, about the ef-
fect in passages based on the b motives of the bar line sounding in a dif-
58 Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 4: 247n2.

59 Hans Paumgartner, concert review, Wiener Abendpost, 23 December 1891.
60 Karl Geiringer, Brahms: His Life and Work, 3rd ed. (New York: Da Capo Press,
1981), 243; and Daniel Gregory Mason, The Chamber Music of Brahms (New York: Macmil-
lan, 1933), 223.
61 Oppositions mentioned in the literature on sonata form include those between
primary and secondary keys and themes, between particular uses of sonata-form proce-
dures and the abstract schema, and between the themes and the form, whether in a par-
ticular work or in the abstract.
62 That the theme bears only a faint resemblance to the Classical “small ternary”
type is not surprising, since Brahms did after all compose the Clarinet Trio in 1891 work-
ing with radically altered harmonic possibilities and formal assumptions. Yet the three
components of his opening theme are undeniable. In contrast to the Classical small
ternary type, the third section of Brahms’s theme does not close (it does have a distinct
beginning). In the recapitulation Brahms takes advantage of the open-endedness of a’: a’
leads into an extended and otherwise transformed version of the antecedent phrase of a
that substitutes for the exposition’s transition. For the Classical small ternary theme, see
Caplin, Classical Form, chap. 6.

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ferent place from where it appears on the page of the score, beginning
with measures 14–17.63
With the resolution of the metric dissonance in measure 18—the
meter as it is notated and as it is heard become the same again—the ab-
breviated a’ section opens; like the b section, it consists of only four
measures. While it combines motives from both a and b, this section re-
calls the harmonic style of only the opening, the bottom seeming sud-
denly to drop out of the sonata-form sound world introduced shortly
before. Subdominant-function chords precede statements of the tonic:
A minor and A major triads in measures 18 and 20, respectively; more-
over, a descending quasi-plagal line—E to D to the C in measure 18, C
to B to the A in measure 20—leads to the subdominant-function chord
each time.64 In short, the strangeness of the effect results from the mo-
mentary disappearance of dominant function, reinforced by a softer dy-
namic level and the clarinet’s characteristic descent into the chalumeau
register.
The recapitulation intensifies the effect of otherness, for an ex-
panded version of the b motives follows immediately (m. 126)—no part
of the opening period returns—from a traditional dominant-driven re-
transition that has a force and harmonic directness atypical at this point 121
in Brahms’s oeuvre65 (see Ex. 11). After the forte and fortissimo ex-
pression of dominant harmony in the retransition and recapitulation of
b, the return of a’ (mm. 132–37), likewise extended and beginning
both subito piano and with the clarinet part suddenly and completely
in the chalumeau register, contrasts all the more strongly. This time
Brahms does not present the descending lines in measures 133 and
135 in a unison texture, as in the exposition, but rather as parallel six-
three chords because of events in the development section.
As in many other development sections, he has applied techniques
of thematic transformation. Forte scales in measure 96 lead to the cen-
tral episode (mm. 97–105), based on the b motives, the appearance of
63 Peter H. Smith, “Brahms and the Shifting Barline: Metric Displacement and For-
mal Process in the Trios with Wind Instruments,” in Brahms Studies 3, ed. David Brodbeck
(Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2001), 191–229. Smith observes that listeners may
choose not to hear the first written metric displacement as such (213).
64 Considered in relation to the goal in each measure—an F major and a D minor
triad, respectively—the descending line in each instance moves from scale degree 7 to 6
to 5, the last a pitch within the triad itself.
65 Brahms problematized the point of recapitulation in the first movements of,
for example, the Fourth Symphony (op. 98), A Major Violin Sonata (op. 100), B Major
Piano Trio (op. 8, 2nd version), G Major String Quintet (op. 111), and F Minor Clarinet
Sonata (op. 120 No. 1). (He completed these particular works between 1885 and 1894.)

147.91.236.56 on Tue, 10 Dec 2019 10:41:51 UTC

125
− ²Ł Łl
Š −− Łl ¹ ¹ Ł ðý ¼
Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁŁ
Łl [[Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ý Ł Łl šŁ Ł¹ Ł¹Ł Ł Ł Ł
¼
[[
Ł Ł ² Ł ² Ł Ł Ł
Ł ² Ł ² Ł Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł Łl Ł Ł ŁŁ
Š ²Ł ²Ł ¹ Ł Łl ¹ Ł Ł Ł
3
ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł
! [l
Ł
3 3
Ł Łl
Ł [[Ł
Ý Ł ŁŁŁ
Ł Łl ¹ Ł Ł ¹ ð ŁŁŁ
¹
3 6
777777
²Ł Ł Ł
l
² ŁŁ Łl Ł Ł 3
ð Łl
− Ł ðý
128
Š −− ½ ¼ ²Ł Ł ¹ ²Ł Ł ¹ Ł Ł Ł ¼
Ł ² Ł ²Ł Ł Ł Ł ²Ł ²Ł
š ½ ¼ Ł Ł ¹ Ł Ł ¹ Ł ²Ł Ł Ł ¼ Ý
122
Łl ² Łl Łl ¦ ŁŁl ² ŁŁl Ł Ł l
ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦ Ł Ł Ł Ł ¹ Ł Ł ¹ ²²ŁŁŁŁŁ
3
3
Š
! lŁ ŁŁl [
3
Ł Łl Ł
Ł
Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ
² ŁŁ [[
Ý Ł ŁŁŁ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ¹ Ł Łl ¹
Ł
² ŁŁŁŁ
¹ ²
3
777777
777777
3 6
ŁŁŁ ŁŁ Ł Łl Ł Ł ð
777777
777777
l l
Ł Ł ð Łl
−
131
Š −− ÿ
Ð Ł ¦ Ł Ł −Ł Ð
[\
Ý ½
dim.
Ð
Łl ² Łl Łl ¦ Łl ÐŁ Ł ²Ł Ł ¦ Ł
[\
dim.
lŁ ¦ Łl Łl ² Łl ² Łl Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł
²Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ¼
Ł Ł ÿ Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł
Š Ł Ł
! Łl
² ŁŁŁ Ł ŁŁŁ
Łl [\
Ł
dim.
Ý
777777
777777
² ŁŁŁl ¼ Ð Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ð
777777
Ð Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ð

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−
135
Š −−
Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ð Ł ¦Ł Ł Ł
Ý Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ð Ł −Ł Ł Ł
Ł ²Ł Ł
Š ÿ Ł Ł ÿ Ý
!Ý Ł Ł ²Ł
Ł ²Ł Ł ¦Ł ²Ð Ł Ł ²Ł Ł
Ł ²Ł Ł ¦Ł ²Ð Ł Ł ²Ł Ł
ð Ł ð Ł ð Ł
− −Ł
138
Š −− ð ¼ ¼ ¼
Ł \ espress.
Ý ¼ ½
ðý Ł Ð Ð
\\ Ł 123
ðð ¦ ðð ² ððð ðð ¦ ðÐÐ ð ððð ŁŁ ýý
Ý ð ð ð Łý ¹
! \\
Ý ¹
¦ð ð ð ð ð ðð ŁŁ ýý
¦ð ð ð ð
which coincides as always with apparent displacement of the bar line,

but which have also undergone the kind of character reversal that he
especially favored66 (see Ex. 12). At the beginning of the movement,
only the pianist played these motives, which contrasted in their anima-
tion with the harmonic and rhythmic passiveness of the sections on
either side. Here Brahms divides the motives in antiphonal scoring
between the clarinet and cello, grouped together, and the piano. And
he makes the motives sound archaic, turning the incisive rhythmic
figures of the opening into even note values and harmonizing the al-
tered motives in the piano as parallel six-three chords in a manner rem-
iniscent of 15th-century fauxbourdon. Not all successions of six-threes
66 Smith, “Brahms and the Shifting Barline,” 226. Other examples of character re-
versal, a kind of thematic transformation, appear in the development sections of the A

Major Violin Sonata, op. 100/i (closing theme); D Minor Violin Sonata, op. 108/iv (first
theme); and Clarinet Quintet, op. 115/i (transition theme).

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96 Łl
Š ¼ ¼ Ł ¦Ł Ł Ł Ł ð ý Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ðý
\ Ł
Łl più \
Ý ²²² ¼ ¼ Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł Ł ðý Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ðý Ł
\ più \
²² Ł ¦Ł
Š ² ² ŁŁŁŁ ¦ Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł ½ ¼ ² ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ¼ ½
Ł ¼ ² ŁŁŁ ² ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ¼
! l
[
l
\ Ł ¦Ł
ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ðð ðð ýýý
Ý ²²² ¦ Ł Ł ¦ Ł
Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ½ ¼ ²Ł
ð ð ² ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ðð
Ł Łl
Łl
101
Š ¼ ½
Ł Ł Ł Ł ðý Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ð Ł
124 \\
Ý ²²² Ł ²Ł ²Ł Ł
Ł Ł Ł Ł ðý ŁŁ
Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ð Ł ²Ł Ł ²Ł ²Ł ŁŁ
\\
²² ¦ ŁŁ
Š ² ½ý ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł ¼ ½ ¼ Ł ¼ ¼ Ý
! più \
Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł ðÐ ²² ðð ² ŁŁŁ
\\ sempre \\
Ý ²²² ðð ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ð ð ýý Ł
Ł Ł Ł ðð ðð ý Ł ðÐ ²² ðð ² ŁŁŁ ¼ ¼ ¦Ł
¦Ł
call to mind that historical connection; as before, the scales on which

Brahms has based this episode create the sound of otherness.
Example 13a reduces the b motives, as they appear in the treble in
measures 14–17, to their basic forms—without the rhythmic figuration,
parallel sixths, and embellishing (neighboring) notes. In a similar fash-
ion, Example 13b eliminates the antiphonal effects in measures 97–
105, placing all the motives in the treble register of the piano. These
simplifications make it easier to assess the differences in pitch organiza-
tion in the two passages. Example 13a shows the ascending melodic mi-
nor (Riemann’s major-minor) scale as the basis for the opening version
of the motives, with the lower tetrachord (as ordered in Ex. 3b) in mea-
sures 14–15 and the upper tetrachord in measures 16–17.

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example 13a. Motives from Brahms, op. 114/i, mm. 14–17, rhythm
simplified
Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ²Ł
Ý‡ ½ ¼ ²Ł Ł Ł Ł ²Ł ²Ł ¼
example 13b. Motives from Brahms, op. 114/i, mm. 97–105, use of
register simplified
²² Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
96
Š ² ‡½ ¼ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
²²
101
Š ² Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ð ²ð ²Ł ¼
½
125
example 14. C Phrygian and minor-major scales versus F Aeolian/
natural minor and major-minor/ascending melodic mi-
nor scales
C Phrygian C D E F G A B C
C Minor-major C D E F G A B C
A more convincing interpretation than:
F Aeolian/natural minor F G A B C D E F
F Ascending melodic F G A B C D E F
minor/major-minor
In contrast, Brahms based the extended transformation of the b

motives in the development section (simplified in Example 13b) on the
C Phrygian (in measures 97–99, probably also measures 101–3) and,
most likely, minor-major scales (measures 100 and 104–5). As implied
earlier and shown in Example 14, these two scales differ only in their
lower tetrachords. Example 14 also rotates the same pitches to make
F tonic: Measures 101–3 (conceivably also mm. 97–99) might derive
from F Aeolian, measures 100 and 104–5, from F major-minor. With

147.91.236.56 on Tue, 10 Dec 2019 10:41:51 UTC
a bass line motion of C (mm. 97–100) to F (mm. 101–4) to C (m.

105), the passage could be construed as centered altogether on C with
a plagal cadence at the end.67 Alternatively, these measures could be
understood to modulate to F minor (or indeed to have opened in F
Aeolian) and to conclude on a half cadence in that key. However, the
overwhelmingly plagal sound of the entire passage and in particular the
use of D and E rather than D and E in measure 103, support read-
ing C as tonic throughout.
A similar transformation of the b motives appears in the coda. At
the end of the recapitulation Brahms introduces one last section in dis-
placed meter (mm. 201–17) and gradually reverts to harmonic idioms
resembling those from the beginning of the movement, the last leading
tone appearing in measure 205. In another type of archaism, the coda
itself (mm. 212 ff.) begins with an open-fifth chord. This leads to the
fauxbourdon transformation of the b motives, altered to fit the plagal
inclinations of, in this case, A Aeolian (see Ex. 15). With the plagal ca-
dence in measures 216–17, the meter as heard becomes reconciled
one last time with the notated meter. The concluding measures that fol-
low are better understood in reference to the A minor-major scale than
126 to A minor with a Picardy third;68 interestingly, the scales that begin on
the upbeats to measures 217–19 start on the fourth scale degree as in
Riemann’s prototype (see Ex. 2b). And clearly F, scale degree 6, is the
important pitch in the chord given to the piano part in measure 221,
which looks like but does not function as a G dominant seventh. (See
also the prominent F in the clarinet part in m. 223.)
Brahms thus placed the most extended passages based exclusively
on plagal harmony at the beginning and end of the movement, with
briefer moments in the development section’s central transformation,
the plagal half cadence that ends the exposition, and the a’ sections of
both the exposition and recapitulation. None of these passages im-
pinges on the definitive formal processes in a sonata-type movement.
Brahms presumably introduced alien elements into a sonata-form piece
because of the challenge and originality involved in doing so. But his
approach raises questions beyond those having to do with conscious
motivation.
The Clarinet Trio is a very late composition, written with the Clar-
inet Quintet after a short interval in which Brahms had relinquished all
67 The passing diminished four-three that harmonizes the D in no way undermines
the interpretation of the progression in measures 104–5 as a plagal cadence. Harrison

discusses an analogous passage in Richard Strauss’s Piano Quartet, op. 13, in Harmonic
Function in Chromatic Music, 66–68.
68 See n55 above.

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−− ½Poco meno AllegroŁ Ł Ł Ł

212
− ½ ¼ Ł
Š ¼ ¼ Ł Ł Ł Ł
\\
Ý Ł
½ ¼ Ł Ł Ł Ł ¼ ½ ¼ Ł Ł Ł Ł
\\
Š ŁŁ Łð Ł Ł Ł ð ðý ý ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ðð ŁŁ ŁŁ
! Ł Ł Ł Ł ðý Ł
ŁŁ
Ł
ŁŁ
Ł Ł Ł ð Ł Ł
Ý ŁŁ Łð Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ð Ł ŁŁ
ð ðý ý Ł Ł Ł ðð
Ł Ł Ł Ł ðý Ł Ł
216
− \\ sempre
Š −− ð ð ¼ ½ ½ ¼
¦Ł
ŁŁŁŁ
Ł ²Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ý
ðð ²Ł ¼ ¼ Ł Ł Ł ² Ł Ł ŁŁŁŁ
Ł ŁŁ 127
\\ sempre
Ł
Š ÐÐ ¼ ¼ Ł ²Ł ¼ ¼ Ł
! Ð
\\ sempre
² ŁŁŁ Ł ²Ł
Ý ðð ýý Ł ² Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ¼ ¼
ðý Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ł ²Ł Ł Ł
ŁŁŁŁ Ł
−
219
Š − − Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł ŁŁŁŁŁ Ł
Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ
Ł
Ł ŁŁŁŁŁ
Ý ½ ŁŁ
¼ Ł Ł ²Ł Ł Ł ŁŁŁŁ
² ŁŁ ² ŁŁ
Ł ² ŁŁ
Š ²Ł ¼ ² ŁŁ ¼ ¼ ¼
! ² ŁŁ
Ł Ł
² ŁŁ
Ý ¼ Ł ¼ ¼ Ł ¼
Ł Ł
Ł Ł

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− ¦Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
221
Š −− Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł ¦Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
ŁŁ ¦Ł Ł Ł
Ł ŁŁ Ł ²Ł Ł ŁŁŁŁ
Ý ²Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ²Ł Ł Ł ŁŁŁŁ
Ł
ððð ² ŁŁ ŁŁ
ð Ł Ł
Š ½ ¼ ¼
! ² ŁŁŁ
Ý ½ ¼ Ł ¼
ðð Ł
ðð Ł
q
223
− Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ð
Š −− Ł ¦Ł Ł
−Ł Ł Ł
Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
¦Ł Ł
Ł ²Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł q
128
Ý Ł Ł
²Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ł ²Ł Ð
² ŁŁ 8
ÐÐq
½ Ł ² ÐÐ
Š ¼
! ² ŁŁŁ q
Ý ½ Ł ¼ Ð
~ Ð
8
further ambition, thinking that he might never compose again.69 Sev-

eral other well known late works include similar archaistic elements,
which Adorno connected to the alienation, the sense of estrangement
from one’s time sometimes associated with late styles. Writing of obso-
lete forms of words that appear in a very late work by Goethe, the sec-
ond part of Faust, Adorno claimed that the anachronisms increase the
power of the passage.70 In a fragment from an unfinished manuscript
69Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 4: 247 n2.

70Theodor Adorno, “On the Final Scene of Faust,” in Notes to Literature, ed. Rolf
Tiedemann, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press,
1991), 114; and Adorno, “Alienated Masterpiece: The Missa Solemnis (1959),” trans. Dun-
can Smith, Telos 28 (1976): 113–24.

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on Beethoven, he observed of another late work, the Missa solemnis: “A

damming up of expressive means. Expression through archaism; modal
elements.”71 By likewise renouncing usual means of expression in the
19th century such as striking themes and compelling treatment of
them, Brahms frustrated the expectations of many listeners in the
opening Allegro of his Clarinet Trio. If the movement conveys alien-
ation, the effect is likely to derive not only from his frustration of such
expectations but also from the intrusion of moments such as the two a’
sections. In referring to a world decisively apart from that of sonata
form in the anachronistic passages, this Allegro allows a hermeneutic
reading of alienation.
As evidenced in this movement and in the Adagio mesto of the
Horn Trio, the significance of semi-autonomous plagal harmony has to
do above all with its ability to suggest something other than, outside of,
or prior to tonal music. As we have seen, the range of meanings is
therefore determined in large part by what plagal harmony is not: Un-
like authentic harmony, it does not suggest orientation toward a goal
but rather calls to mind something along the lines of, in Riemann’s
words, “long-gone centuries and distant realms.” Referring to such pas-
sages as “modal” is nonetheless inadequate because of their specifically 129
plagal harmony and their potential connection to scales of only two of
the church modes and to the non-diatonic minor-major scale. While I
have limited my discussion to two movements whose harmonic lan-
guage I have long tried to understand, no doubt any number of other
works by Brahms and contemporary composers such as Dvořák and
Bruckner include similar passages. As with all hermeneutic approaches,
compositions that set a text might prove especially instructive in further
study of semi-autonomous plagal harmony; it might also be possible to
apply the concept of otherness to more conventional “subordinate”
uses of plagal harmony.
Although Brahms overdetermined the otherness of the moments in
these two movements through non-harmonic as well as harmonic means,
the effects apparently are subtle enough to have been for the most part
overlooked in the scholarly literature on these pieces. The fact that pas-
sages as strongly marked as these have gone unrecognized underscores
the need for a theoretical framework such as that provided by Harrison
first to discern and then to analyze them. Considering alternative scale
types and acknowledging the plagal subsystem afford insights into such
71 Theodor Adorno, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans.
Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1998), 140. He made similar com-
ments about passages in Wagner’s Parsifal in which “diatonicism is . . . alienated and dark-
ened by means of modal chord combinations.” Theodor Adorno, “On the Score of Parsi-
fal,” trans. Anthony Barone, Music & Letters 76 (1995): 385.

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moments not offered by approaches more typically used in the analysis

of Brahms’s compositions. A Schenkerian reading of the Allegro from
the Clarinet Trio would most likely not distinguish, for example, the a’
sections, despite Brahms’s having overdetermined their otherness, from
appearances of subdominants and the sixth scale degree elsewhere. In-
deed, one point of semi-autonomous plagal harmony seems to be that
it lies beyond what can be analyzed through a conventional approach
to tonal music, and this again suggests the need for methodological
flexibility, for a willingness and an ability to draw on a variety of ap-
proaches. Doing justice to plagal otherness requires an awareness of
the binary oppositions that make it sound different, of the understated
power that comes with its lesser position, and of the possibility that a
method devised to clarify moments of formal significance might ob-
scure other, perhaps more important kinds of significance.
University of North Texas
ABSTRACT
130
The late 19th-century dualism of Hugo Riemann exemplifies a
widely recognized tendency in Western cultures to think in binary pairs.
In recent theoretical writing the primary dualism between major and
minor modes has provoked little or no controversy. But the attendant
opposition between, respectively, authentic and plagal harmonic systems
has not found widespread acceptance, because theorists have been un-
willing to grant the latter equal status to the former. An alternative is to
accept the validity of the two systems and at the same time to recognize
the inequality that comes with any binary pair, thus acknowledging the
“otherness” or, to borrow a term from linguistics, the “markedness” of
the plagal system.
In an essay from 1889, Riemann explored striking harmonic effects
in the Andante of the Fourth Symphony and another late orchestral
movement by Brahms, discerning the same non-diatonic scale behind
the (plagal) idioms in both. The Phrygian and Aeolian scales enable
similar unusual plagal passages in two chamber movements by Brahms,
the early Adagio mesto of the Horn Trio and the very late opening Alle-
gro from the Clarinet Trio. In these movements plagal harmony ap-
pears in a strong sense as the other of authentic harmony and perhaps
even of common-practice tonality itself. The semantic significance of
certain plagal moments in both has to do above all with their ability to
suggest something other than, outside of, or prior to tonal music.

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Plagal Harmony As Other - Asymmetrical Dualism and Instrumental Music by Brahms

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Plagal Harmony as Other: Asymmetrical Dualism and Instrumental Music by Brahms

Author(s): Margaret Notley

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Univ. Press, 2002), 227.

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terms, the most famous of which include mind/body, man/woman,

take binary oppositions as a premise, and on subsequent related approaches is of course

Symphony,” in The Second Practice of Nineteenth-Century Tonality, ed. William Kinderman

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found widespread acceptance. For 20th-century treatments of tonal

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In general markedness is a term used by linguists to describe a kind of

Robert Hatten has written cogently and at length about marked-

Press, 1987), 60–61; quoted in Battistella, Markedness, 41.

ism of, most pertinent for the discussion here, Riemann.

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Kaplan’s argument notwithstanding, stronger instances may be cited

scales for his dualistic theory.

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In the two chamber movements, to be treated in greater detail,

Plagal Harmony and Riemann’s Discussion of the Minor-Major Scale 95

17 Battistella, Markedness, 7; quoted in Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 37. The

phenomenon described by Battistella is known as “markedness assimilation.” Hatten

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key of Brahms’s Andante. With an asterisk, Riemann pointed out the

19 Riemann, “Einige seltsame Noten,” 111: “Das genaue Gegenstück zu dieser so

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example 1. Brahms, Fourth Symphony, Andante, mm. 1–13

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the second ascending in accordance with their respective tendencies at

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22 See the lower set of (unnumbered) examples in ibid., 113.

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example 2a. The system of chords that define Moritz Hauptmann’s

example 2b. The minor-major scale as presented by Hugo Riemann

example 2c. Riemann’s system of chords underlying the major-minor

example 2d. The major-minor scale as given by Riemann

8, descending to plagal (“minor”) cadences in E major with scale de-

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example 3a. Descending minor-major scale ordered to begin on the

example 3b. Ascending major-minor scale ordered to begin on the

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example 4a. Succession of major thirds in the minor-major scale, as

example 4b. Succession of major thirds in the major-minor scale, as

forms the [major] subdominant of the [minor] subdominant in the

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that follows, tends to tonicize the minor subdominant (the E minor-

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example 5. Placement of semitones in ascending E Phrygian, E Aeo-

Plagal Harmony and the Phrygian Scale in the Adagio Mesto

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that I describe here seems to open up similar interpretive possibilities

ing: Schneider, 1976), 2:185-86.

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corda, that evokes the sound of a strummed instrument. Functioning as

33 Louis Ehlert, “Robert Volkmann: Ein Portrait,” Leipziger allgemeine musikalische

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general.35 He also particularized the sound of the movement by mak-

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example 6. Placement of semitones in E natural minor (Aeolian) and

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Š − −−−− ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ Ł ŁŁŁŁŁ ŁŁŁŁŁŁ