Mead (2009) Lessons Learned About Tonal Music From A Post-Tonal Perspective PDF

Looking Back: Lessons Learned About Tonal Music from a Post-Tonal Perspective
Author(s): Andrew Mead

Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 47, No. 2 (SUMMER 2009), pp. 5-35
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
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Looking Back: Lessons Learned
About Tonal Music from a
Post-Tonal Perspective
Andrew Mead
Growing
music" up musically
as my bilingual,
most comfortable tongue, Iand
find actually
that, while Ispeaking
am very "aggregate
much aware of the fundamental differences between tonal music and
aggregate-based music, I am deeply intrigued by and attracted to those
features that they share, the opportunities for engaging music making
they both afford, and the lessons they can teach about each other.1
What I attempt in the following is to demonstrate some of these lessons,
and in the process, suggest what I find attractive in a fairly wide variety
of music.2 I find it interesting that the sorts of relationships between the
details and large-scale form, the particulars of a piece and the generali
ties of its musical language, the immediacy of a musical surface and how
its implications are played out in the strategies of a composition that I so
admire in Schoenberg are so closely paralleled in the music of Mozart,
6 Perspectives of New Music
Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and so many other musicians Schoen

berg claimed as his forebears.
I will start simply. Sometimes a single note, either as a pitch or as a
pitch-class, can take on a particular significance in an aggregate work,
emerging as a point of reference, and providing us with a trace of
relationships we can follow through the music. Such significance can
arise from the pitch-class's pattern of positions in the row-class, or
additionally from compositional decisions about its articulation. An
obvious example is found in Webern's Variations for Piano^ op. 27, in
which the A above middle C forms the axis of a literal pitch inversion
used to articulate the canons of the second movement.3 This is
illustrated in Example 1. The changing place of the pc A in the
movement's underlying rows participates in the music's overall pitch
progression, and provides a very readily heard signal. The pitch-class A's
broader significance in the work as a whole can begin to be recognized
when we realize that the highpoint of the third movement is also an A,
and from there we can begin to track other sorts of relationships that
prove useful in our understanding of the entire piece. The implications
suggested here have been well explored, so we shall turn to what I think
is a similar route into a tonal work.
Mozart's Sonata for Piano in Bt, K 333, as is well known, also
features a note, G, that takes on significance as both a pitch and a pitch
class, whose significance grows both from its position in the tonal
language of the work, and from its compositional articulation. * As
Example 2 illustrates, the G at the top of the G-clef staff is motivically
highlighted at the opening of all three movements. It is worth observing
that this particular note is the highest G on Mozart's piano, so much of
the interest in this pitch in the work has to do with negotiating this
particular compositional constraint. But the note G, as a pitch-class, also
takes on significance from its position in the underlying tonal language,
framed in the large in Bb Major. I will not trace this fully here, but will
offer a brief analytical vignette that helps to focus some of these issues.
Example 3 shows the very end of the exposition of the first
movement, followed by the beginning of the development. As may be
seen in Example 2, G, the very opening note of the piece, is scale degree
6, upper neighbor to scale degree 5, and participates in the opening bars
in a 5-6-5 move from I to II. We may observe without pursuing it
further that this same move, using these same notes, initiates the
tonicization of the dominant in the transition. Suffice it to say, this note
and these moves form a significant part of the opening argument of the
piece.
Sehrschuell j = ca. 100 ^ fii: ^ | ^J^^ J ^ ^ ^ '^J ^ | ~j ^ ^
8 9 5 7 4 (607l 2 t e 3 4 0 2 e rm] 9 5 6 t *~
EXAMPLE 1: WEBERN, VARIATIONS FOR PIANO, OP. 27. REPEATED A'S POSITIONS DETERMINED BY ROW POSITION.
t 9 1 e 2 l065J 4 8 7 3 ^ 2 6 4 7 ^ 9 10 8
(c)
EXAMPLE 2: MOZART, SONATA FOR PIANO IN Bb, K. 333.

OPENINGS OF EACH MOVEMENT.
A sense of the richness of the conflation of these details emerges in

the passage offered in Example 3. First, we can see that within the
tonicization of V, the move, G-F, is recontextualized as a motion from
scale degree 2 to 1, complete with an agogic accent on G. This moment,
just at the end of the exposition, has dual significance, first firing us back
to the beginning of the exposition for the repeat, and second, shifted in
position in the transposition of the opening motive at the beginning of
the development. Here, in the development, the 5-6-5 pattern is
replaced with what can initially seem to be a simpler expansion of I with
1-2-3 in the bass, but the goal of this move is not a 16, but a 116,
approached by an applied diminished seventh chord taking the place of
Looking Back 9
I VII6 VUgofll 116

(elides 16)
EXAMPLE 3: MOZART, K. 333. OPENING OF DEVELOPMENT.
the expected 16. Thus, several things come into play: functionally, the
exposition's move from I to II is intensified here in the development by
means of the applied chord; second, the sonority so reached here (the
116) is the sonority derived in the original 5-6-5 move at the opening (a
first inversion G minor triad); third, although G is locally now scale
degree 2, the highpoint of the line in this passage, D, is locally scale
degree 6; and so on: I'll simply mention in passing that the penultimate
goal of the development section (directly prior to the dominant that
leads to the recapitulation) is a very strong tonicization of G minor, and
still further, that a very similar game is played out in the last movement
as well. My point here is that much of the drama and interest in this
sonata flows from the attention to the interaction between a particular
note and the ways it fits into the work's underlying unfolding in tonal
space.
This is not to imply that any of these things individually is particularly
unusual: strong tonicizations of VI are prevalent in development
sections in the music of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, and stem from
the propensity to cadence in VI midway in the second half of binary
movements in the Baroque. Nor are applied dominants or appoggiaturas
at all rare. What makes all of these events significant is how they interact
in the music, how they compound into the series of interlocking
relationships that make up the story of the piece.
Another feature of aggregate music that provides some insight into
similar behavior in tonal music might be thought of in terms of figure
and ground, or in those pairs of drawings often found in the funny
pages in which one is supposed to distinguish sets of small differences.
One of the basic principles of aggregate music is that aggregates can be
compared to each other through multiple mosaic interpretations.
Schoenberg's tendency in some twelve-tone compositions to maintain a
hexachordal region for an extended passage while composing the surface
of the resulting aggregates to project different repertoires of collections
derived in various ways allows us to hear these changes against a

background of a fixed hexachordal partition. Example 4 is drawn from
the opening of his Violin Concerto, op. 36, and shows only a small
portion of the passage employing the hexachordal partition found here.
(Note: In Example 4, the rows are marked to show the derivation of the
violin's melody, as well as the emphasized dyad, Bb-Dl>, in the violin's
collection. The arrow under the C and Ab in the orchestral part indicates
an early entrance, producing a trichord, Ab-C-D, that becomes prom
inent about twenty-five bars later.) Very often in such passages certain
notes that are made to stand out signal important consequences
elsewhere in the piece. With regard to the example in question, the
collection found in the solo violin, a chromatic hexachord with an
emphasized minor third embedded in it not only points to other
chromatic hexachords in the body of the piece, but through the minor
third, foreshadows other members of the row class appearing at
important junctures in the first movement. Such foreshadowing pervades
the music of Schoenberg and Webern. Space does not permit me to
offer more than this cursory example, but much broader examples are to
be found in the literature on this work.4
Another example from Mozart illustrates the equivalent behavior in
tonal music. As may be seen in Example 5, the slow movement of the
Sonata in D, K. 576, opens with a little rounded binary, three of whose
four phrases open in similar ways. The similarities of these phrases
facilitate our tracking their differences, only one strain of which I will
follow here. The first phrase opens with a figured expansion of I, whose
underlying melodic pattern moves through scale degrees 3-4-5. The
second phrase alters the goal of this to a raised scale degree 5 (Ejt), while
the third phrase pushes the alteration to lowered scale degree 7 (Gt|).
There are several things to note about this passage. First, the similarity
of the phrases makes these differences stand out in a stark manner in the
musical surface. Second, these two chromatically altered scale degrees
are both pointing to scale degree 6, and this emphasis is also found in
this opening section by the way scale degree 6 is lingered over at the
end of the third phrase. But these signposts, locally absorbed in the
voice-leading of the passage, are both a foreshadowing of a larger move
in the piece, and the subjects of foreshadowing themselves. It comes as
no surprise that the middle section of this movement is in the relative
minor, but I find it particularly tasty that the two chromatically altered
scale degrees pointing towards scale degree 6 in these phrases first occur
in the music as part of the continuation of the first phrase, after the
arrival at scale degree 5. Thus, those notes that offer a little anomaly in
the otherwise diatonic opening phrase are featured as substitutions in
n
EXAMPLE 4: COMPOSITIONALLY EMPHASIZED NOTES AND COLLECTIONS IN SCHOENBERG'S VIOLIN CONCERTO, OP. 36. _
f9t13e4 6 ^ 7 8 2 5 ^80 7 5 ^4 3 96
It T t
Perspectives of New Music
(b) Second phrase (opening), with Efl replacing E in second bar.
(c) End of third phrase, with appoggiatura on scale degree 6.
(d) Beginning of fourth phrase, with Gt] replacing E (note the recurrence of Eft
followed by the diatonic G)) and El]).
EXAMPLE 5: MOZART, SONATA IN D, K. 576, II
Looking Back 13
(e) Opening of middle section, in F|{ minor.
EXAMPLE 5 (CONT.)
the following music, and all draw our attention to the scale degree that
will become tonicized in the middle of the body of the movement.5
Closely related to the two sorts of examples offered above is the
significance in aggregate music of the ways a given motive, as an ordered
or an unordered collection, might be derived from members of a work's
row-class. Examples abound, but I will limit myself to a particularly vivid
one, derived from Schoenberg's Violin Concerto, op. 36. Example 6
shows three ways that the opening motive of the solo violin's part may
be derived from the work's row class; all three of these are employed at
significant spots in the work. Associations of this kind are pervasive in
aggregate music, and allow the listener to compare disparate passages in
a work in light of the changing contexts of a fixed motive. In fact, much
of what holds my interest in such music depends on the interlocking of
diverse strategies for deriving motives from a row class, marshaled into
an overarching plan that forms the work as a whole.
Such associative connections are also pervasive in tonal music, often
cutting across the grain of the underlying voice leading. An instance that
is particularly vivid may be found at the top of Example 7, making a
connection between the opening of the second movement and the close
of the third movement of Beethoven's Sonata in C minor, op. 13. This
one, reproducing the register and spacing of an Ab Major triad, is vivid
not only to the ears, but to the hands of the player.
Example 7 contains a number of other examples of fixed tonal
motives that recur in shifted contexts, drawn from the music of Bach,
Brahms, Beethoven and Schumann. It is interesting to see the shifts of
stabilities associated with the various notes of each of these motives as
they are brought back. In the cases of the Bach and the Schumann
examples, the two examples of the motive are embedded in either the
same key or one very closely related (the relative minor and Major), but
P:9t3e46017825 First Movement, opening

RI9P: 47128935t6e0|471 First Movement, violin re-entrance, recap.
I6P: 9 8 3 7 2 0... Second Movement
RT4P: ... t 8 3 7 2 1
EXAMPLE 6: DERIVATIONS OF THE OPENING MOTIVE,

SCHOENBERG, VIOLIN CONCERTO^ OP. 36
EXAMPLE 7: SHIFTING POSITIONS OF MOTIVES IN TONAL COMPOSITIO
Looking Back 15
EXAMPLE 7 (CONT.)
in the cases of the Beethoven and the Brahms, the relationships are more
distant, even to the point of enharmonic reinterpretation of the interval
in question. In these latter cases, the examples in the more distant
contexts stand out so vividly in the musical surface it is difficult not to
notice them.6
(e) Brahms: Violin Concerto, II; enharmonic prefiguring of F# minor.
EXAMPLE 7 (CONT.)
So far we have dealt with fairly simple events: single tones, motives, or
issues of figure and ground. But I find that there are examples that take
in a more global view of a composition, examples that are based on
strategies or moves rather than on events and contexts. One of the more
vivid examples of the compounding of strategies in creating large-scale
form in Schoenberg can be found in the first movement of his Wind
Quintet, op. 26. In this work, Schoenberg is using his freshly-developed
technique of "composing with twelve tones related only one to another"
to provide a structure that can sustain an analogue of some of the ways
that earlier compositions unfold themselves. In brief, Schoenberg
employs segmental invariants in his row-class to form a linkage between
the two primary sections of what proves to be the exposition of a sonata
movement. In the development section, Schoenberg employs a different
strategy from that found in the exposition, using non-segmental
invariants to forge connections. The recapitulation seems to mimic tonal
form by offering its second primary section transposed up a fourth, but
what this does is reveal that the kinds of non-segmental invariants found
in the development section are now at work to link the two primary
portions of the recapitulation. To tie this to the movement as a whole,
Looking Back 17
we find that one of the primary non-segmental partitions used to link

the two sections of the recapitulation is present in the musical surface of
the very opening bars of the movement.7 These points are summarized
in Example 8.
We can find a similar kind of situation in certain tonal works, in which
moves introduced subsequent to a passage are employed to redirect or
recontextualize a return of that passage. Consider the opening section of
the third movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in F minor, op. 2, no.
1, as illustrated in Example 9. In the first phrase of the passage, a motive
is used to articulate an expansion of the initial tonic; it is then
transposed up a third to articulate an expansion of the relative major.
The phrase reaches a full cadence in III to close the opening of this brief
rounded binary. In the subsequent section we find the same motive now
supported by applied fully diminished seventh chords in a sequence
tonicizing IV prior to a move to the dominant in preparation for the
return of the opening. With the return of the opening we hear the
return of the motive in its original transposition expanding the tonic,
but also in its transposition up by a third. In this case, however, the
transposition of the motive does not impose a tonicization of III, but is
used also in an expansion of the tonic, made possible by the use of an
applied diminished seventh chord, the device introduced in the middle
of the passage. Thus, a technique introduced subsequent to the opening
passage allows the passage to return in a manner that will allow the piece
to use the same motivic progression as found at the opening while
remaining in the desired key.
A somewhat more elaborate example of compounding strategies may
be found in the first part of the scherzo of another Beethoven piano
sonata, op. 7 in Eb Major.
As we shall see, in this example one of the solutions to a problem
introduced by the application of a particular strategy is the subsequent
application of the same strategy to the resulting state, resulting in the
route back to our original position. This sort of compounding of the
same strategy is also found in Schoenberg's work, and I am not simply
referring to those situations in which an operation is its own inverse,
such as in the case of transposition by a tritone, or inversion around a
given axis. Example 10 illustrates two situations in which the application
of the same transposition value serves first to create a difference, and
with the second application, to provide the opportunity for a connection
back to the starting point. The first of these examples is taken from
Schoenberg's Klavierstiick, op. 23, no. 4, a work that was written just at
the time that he was developing the "method of composing with twelve
tones." As may be seen in the example, the hexachord that is used to
Exposition:
P: 3 79e 10t2 4685
I6P: 3e97 5684 20tl
Preserving segmental tetrachords
P: 379el Ot 24685
ItP: 731e9 tO 86425
Preserving segmental pentachords and dyads
The first example is used in what would be the "first tonal area."
the initial transformation of P in what would be the "second tona
Development:
The development uses various non-segmental invariance relationsh
including the following order-number partitions:
{0, 5,6, e} (1,2, 3,4, 7,8,9, t)

{0,1,2,6,7,8} (3,4, 5,9, t, c}
Recapitulation:
P: 379el0t24685
I5P: 0864351e97t
P: 379el0t24685
I5P: 08642351e97t
I5P TsItP and is used to articulate the music of ItP from the exp
EXAMPLE 8: INVARIANCE RELATIONS IN THE FIRST MOVEMEN

SCHOENBERG'S WIND QUINTET, OP. 26
compose the opening melody of the piece has an interval cl

maximizes the tones preserved under T4, and minimizes th
opening melody initially recurs at T2, followed not lon
version at T4 (ie, T2 of T2). At this point Schoenberg takes
the fact that his original melody parsed the hexachord registr
Looking Back 19
Allegretto
(a) Opening presentation of motives, first in F minor, then in Al> major.
(b) Continued use of motive, supported B fully diminished 7th chords.
(c) Reprise of opening motives, now both in F minor, using fully diminished 7th chord.
Note the continued use of these chords in the continuation to support another statement
of the original transposition of the motive.
(d) Motive at the opening, plus transposition.
EXAMPLE 9: BEETHOVEN, OP. 2 NO. 1, III
two whole-tone segments, facilitating a rapid cyclic tour of T4, To and

T8, and reveling in the degree to which each of these preserve a maximal
number of the notes of the original melody.
The second of these examples also involves compounding a given
transposition, in this case to a twelve-tone row, found in Schoenberg's
Fourth String Quartet, op. 37. Interestingly, in this case the transpo
sition level, T3, and its compound, T6, each provide the same minimal
degree of intersection with To by hexachord, but T6 maps a pair of
dyads onto each other between the two hexachords. As the example
shows, Schoenberg takes advantage of this fact in the way he composes
TO
T2(T2) = T4 T4(T4) = T8
(a) Schoenberg, op. 23 no. 4. Interval class index for 012569: <313431>.
T2 and Tt minimize intersection; T4 and T8 maximize intersection.
(b) Schoenberg, op. 37.

P:219t5340876e
T3P: 54018673et92
T6P: 8734e9t62105
T6P = T3(T3P)
EXAMPLE 10: SUCCESSIVE APPLICATIONS OF AN OPERATION MOVING AWAY

AND THEN BACK TOWARDS A LOCATION
out the melody at the outset of the first movement, and at the midpoin
of the movement. This move also returns to the dyads between the T
and its inversional combinatorial counterpart, as they will be mapped
among themselves automatically at T6.8
We shall turn now to Beethoven's Scherzo from op. 7, found in
Example 11. The following is only part of the story of the movement
but it illustrates our point. A general strategy of this movement is to
make us reconsider where things might end. The first phrase gives us a
moment's pause after four bars in which to realize that, despite the
Looking Back 21
(a) Opening phrase, with central change of texture.
(b) Consequent phrase, with deceptive cadence used to tonicize Bb major.
(c) Consequent phrase in reprise, with mode change and deceptive cadence to d> major.
(f) Deceptive cadences in return to Ei> major.
EXAMPLE 111 BEETHOVEN, PIANO SONATA IN Eb MAJOR
change of texture, the phrase is actually twice the length we might have
originally assumed. In the second phrase, this same spot is marked by a
deceptive cadence, which is sequenced and made into the mechanism
whereby the phrase tonicizes V. The little hesitance at this spot seems to
slingshot us into an extension of the second half of the phrase to
confirm the tonicization.
I'll pass over the opening of the second half, which, for our purposes
at present is relatively uneventful. Also, I will not dwell on the first
phrase of the reprise, which, through a passing tone in the bass,
reassures us that we needn't revisit our reinterpretation of its analogue at
the opening of the movement. This brings us to the return of the
second phrase of the opening, which should be (or would have been in
the hands of a less interesting composer) a piece of cake?a simple
repetition of the opening phrase with a full cadence would have brought
us home smartly, and in time to make the last train home.
But that's not what happens: Just as had happened in the case of the
opening two phrases of the opening section, we are handed something
to make us reconsider our assumptions of where things might end, in
this case a very belated mode-shift to Ek minor! This is a bit like
discovering a new suspicious character or odd circumstance in what we
think is the last chapter of a mystery, and as in the case in Dorothy
Sayers's "The Unpleasantness at the Belona Club," necessitates a lot
more working through.9
Where I want to draw a parallel with Schoenberg is in what happens
within this phrase, which is a repetition of the deceptive cadence move
found in the phrase's analogue in the opening. Here, however, the
change of mode gets us stuck on flat scale degree 6 (you can hear
Beethoven spinning the wheels in the mud here), and, enharmonically
respelled, what had lifted us before (the B natural in the first part of the
piece) now becomes stable, and holds us in the rut of flat scale degree 6.
A pair of phrases in Ct (lowered scale degree 6 of Eb) gives us a chance
to ponder a solution that arises through still another application of the
deceptive cadence move that got us into trouble in the first place. A
simple voice-exchange and a chromatic alteration provide us with the
augmented sixth chord to return us to the dominant of El?, and a chance
to regain traction towards a final cadence. The multiple deceptive
cadences in what follows can almost seem like a kind of nose-thumbing
at the near-disaster of the previous bars as we proceed to closure.
Still another feature to be found in Schoenberg's twelve-tone work
that invites comparisons to aspects of tonal music is his willingness to
revisit a feature of an earlier work and reinterpret how it can be used in
the structural argument of a different composition. Obviously, this finds
Looking Back 23
its most prevalent example in his recurring use of inversional

combinatoriality, but this became so systematic in his twelve-tone music
that it loses its individuality fairly rapidly. What I have in mind is more
along the lines of the sort of tetrachordal invariance under inversion
found most famously in the Fourth String Quartet, but already present
in the Wind Quintet, arguably the first mature twelve-tone composition.
These two instances are found in Example 12. In the case of the
Quartet, Schoenberg used this relationship to connect passages at a
distance in the score, but in the Wind Quintet, the same invariance
relationship is used within a passage dominated by one of the two rows
involved.
My analogy in Beethoven involves his use of a move inherited from
the Baroque, through Haydn, the use of a half-cadence in a minor key
(often approached as a Phrygian cadence) followed by a continuation in
its relative major. This is a typical way of linking movements or
preparing a da capo in the Baroque, but the move slips into the body of
movements in Haydn and Mozart, often found at the juncture of the
development section and the recapitulation in a sonata movement;
sometimes as is, but sometimes smoothed over with a quick shift to the
proper dominant.10
In Beethoven we find further play with this device. The set of three
Piano Sonatas, op. 10, would almost seem a test bench for experimen
ting with this kind of move, and Example 13 offers some illustration. In
the finale of op. 10, no. 1 (a sonata form movement), the half-cadence
at the end of the transition is on the dominant of the original key, C
minor, followed by the continuation in Ek Using a half-cadence on the
dominant in this spot is a perfectly routine option in major keys, but the
continuation here in the relative major replicates the move we are
following, and here represents a relocation of the move from the end of
the development.
Wind Quintet, op. 26
P: 379e 10t2 4685

I6P: 3e97 5684 20tl
Fourth String Quartet, op. 37
P: 2191 5340 876e

IeP: 9t21 687e 3450
EXAMPLE 12: TETRACHORDAL INVARIANCE IN TWO WORKS OF SC
(a) Beethoven, op. 10 no. 1, III; half-cadence in I followed by continuation in III.
m
(b) Beethoven, op. 10 no. 2,1; half-cadence in t
(c) Beethoven, op. 10 no. 2,1; end phrygian cadence

and outset of recapitulation in the "wrong k
(d) Beethoven, op. 10 no. 3,1; half-cadence in V

continuation in VI in exposition.
EXAMPLE 13: PHRYGIAN CADENCES FOLLOWED VA
Looking Back 25
The first movement of op. 10, no. 2 is the most complex, and in
point of fact, funny, exploration of this move. In the exposition, the
half-cadence reached initially in the transition is V of III, and it is
reached by means that can be reconciled with the Phrygian descending
half-step in the bass. This is immediately followed by music in V. Ill is
VI in V, of course, so here is the move shifted from a more familiar use
as a replacement of V at the end of the development to another position
in which a half-cadence is structurally crucial. But the punch line here is
what happens at the recapitulation: we arrive at V of VI in a cadence
that can be interpreted as Phrygian, but rather than continuing in the
tonic, the music treats this dominant literally, and the recapitulation
begins in major VI. Thus the piece reverses the treatment of half
cadences and plays on the shift of the Phrygian/relative major move
within the body of the sonata movement.
The game even spills over into op. 10, no. 3. This last example is a
little removed from the original move, but it is a story worth telling: in
the exposition of the first movement, the transition moves to a half
cadence in VI, without the tell-tale bass motion, but with the rising top
voice that would occur in a Phrygian cadence. The problem here, of
course, is where to go? To continue in the relative major would simply
take us back to the tonic, and render the tonicization of VI nugatory.
Beethoven chooses to treat the half-cadence literally, and the music
continues in VI, moving eventually to the dominant of the original key.
One of Milton Babbitt's many contributions to compositional
thought is his willingness to decouple the recurrence of structures in one
musical dimension with those in another. Typically, this creates a kind of
interdimensional counterpoint of the rhythms of structural recurrence, a
feature of much of his music from the outset. The Composition for Four
Instruments contains a rhythmic pattern that unfolds more than once
against the pattern of pitch-structures in the work; its recurrence near
the outset is signaled by a change of meter and tempo which, while
maintaining the absolute durations of the pattern, changes their
significance by altering their metrical placement in addition to changing
their pitch associations. Similar examples may be found in A Widow^s
Lament in Springtime, or the second movement of the Three Compo
sitions for Piano, and his later music is rife with the strategic play
between the boundaries of rhythmic structures and their analogies in the
pitch domain.11
This idea of interdimensional counterpoint is one that can apply in
interesting ways in the tonal repertoire. Beethoven's Piano Concerto
No. 5, op. 73 offers a complex story of the interaction between certain
kinds of chromatic moves and the more normative diatonic patterns that
unfolds over all three movements of the piece. One of the most
fascinating aspects of this work can be framed in terms of a counterpoint
between the deployment of its characteristic chromatic moves and the
formal sections of each of its movements. What follows is a synopsis of
some of this story, and is illustrated at length in Example 14.
Aside from some figuration in the soloist's opening recitative-like
cadenzas, the first chromatic move in the piece is the lowering of scale
degree 3, Gb, in a 16 moving to an applied dominant to V?this of
course is equivalent to scale degree \>6 moving to 5 interpreted in Bk
This is the first signal, both in terms of function and actual pitch (and
pitch-class), of a story that will entail chromatic moves to the dominant
from above and below, in the home key of Eb, and in related keys. The
next chromatic move, following almost immediately, is the mode switch
to Ei> minor, which brings back not only the Gk but adds Cb, scale
degree \>6 in the home key. The brief passage in Eb minor articulates the
melody 3-4-5-4-3-2, with scale degrees 4 and 5 articulated by VII and
III (V and I of the relative major of Gk) respectively. The melody is
directly normalized in Ek Major, but interesting seeds have been
planted, in particular the notion of a dominant/tonic relation (or, as
happens elsewhere, a tonic/subdominant relation) at a distance from the
home or local key, made possible by some local chromatic alterations,
some associated with modal mixture. All of this has happened in the
opening ritornello, prior to the entrance of the soloist and the exposition
proper. Furthermore, it is not all of the chromatic flags set out in this
opening passage that will have consequence later. I will mention only
one more, which is the move in the bass from scale degree 4 (Ab) up
through #4 (A) to the dominant.
With the entrance of the soloist, we commence that portion of the
movement in which chromaticism will have more than just local
consequence, participating in tonicizations as part of the form as a
whole. The first event to note is the orchestra's reentrance after the
piano's opening gesture, a Cb in the bass moving to Bk Thus, the
orchestra's first utterance in the exposition draws our attention to the
l>6-5 move in the home key, a move prepared in the previous passage
but associated with an applied dominant of the dominant. This note, Ck
and its associated key, along with the technique of modal mixture (Eb to
El> minor) participate in the preparation of the tonicization of the
dominant in the transition: a passage in Ck, the Neapolitan of the
dominant (Bk) unfolds over a Gk pedal, which then abruptly falls the
half-step to F, supporting a cadential II chord resolving to V of Bk This
conflation of scale degree \>6 as the dominant of \>2 and as the basis of an
augmented sixth (not immediately present at the move to V of Bk but
Looking Back 27
(a) Outer parts from opening ritornello introducing and the \>6 move. At m. 37, the
mode change to El? minor introduces Ck
^ r it rr r rr pr r it *r rr rf
(b) Mode change to El? minor, including dominant/tonic relationship between Gi> and Ck
(c) Orchestral entrance with Ck (lowered scale degree 6).
f V f 1* y f t 't r ?1=
(d) Lowered scale degree 6 as Neapolitan/augmented 6th complex in Bk
EXAMPLE 14: BEETHOVEN, PIANO CONCERTO NO. 5, OP. 73
(e) At m. 199, deceptive resolution to k> as V2 of Neapolitan. At m. 225, a V9 chord

combining F and Gk Spellings throughout are Beethoven's own.
(f) IV going to VII/V to V.
(g) k> and ((4 conjoined.
EXAMPLE 14 (CONT.)
Looking Back 29
(h) "Misplaced" b6 and \>2 (with enharmonic respelling).
i3t i? iss 212 214 216
U1
(j) Reduction of the move to the Neapolitan and back, mm. 94?220.
At m. 234, Ei> minor trill (with Cl>) to Ei> major for return.
EXAMPLE 14 (CONT.)
implied by the sound's presence as V7 of Cb in the passage) is a

technique more often associated with Schubert, but occurs here in stark
fashion.
Within the body of the second tonal area there are two features I want
to point out quickly, although I must ignore a couple of very interesting
details in the process. First, the primary cadential thrust of the section is
deflected by means of a deceptive resolution to a chord whose root is
flat scale degree k>, but is also a Vl of \>2?this move, beloved of
organists for Bach's use of it in the F major Toccata, allows a quick

revisit of the b6 Neapolitan nexus used in the transition, but it is quickly
reabsorbed into the cadence in Bb. The other feature I want to mention
is the V9 chord at the end of the passage that allows the conflation of F
and Gb, scale degrees 5 and b6 in Bb, in the same sonority.
All of this whets the appetite for hearing bVI moving to V in the
home key, Eb, and it also teases expectations for the emergence of Eb's
Neapolitan somewhere in the course of the music. Our flat-footed
expectation might seek these moves to occur at the analogous passages
in the recapitulation, but this turns out not to be the case. On the
contrary, the recapitulation's transition takes up another issue in the
work, the significance of IV, to engage a different chromatic story in the
piece, the raising of Ab to A to approach Bb chromatically from below.
The continuation of the first movement does have a couple of
interesting connections with what we are following, even while not
satisfying our desire for Cb to move to Bb. First, the development section
quite dramatically pairs our two strategies for moving to Bb, although at
this point the closure to Bb as the dominant of Eb is thwarted by the
mode switch to Bb minor. Second, by employing the same mode switch
as found in the opening ritornello and the analogous passage in the
exposition, the recomposition of the transition in the recapitulation
gives us a brief glimpse of the elusive Neapolitan and its dominant,
although in the wrong place. Lastly, the continuation of the
recapitulation gives us the analogous echo of b6 and b2 heard in Bb in
the exposition. But none of these passages places the move of flat scale
degree 6 to V in a spot that leads strongly to a cadence.
Another possible location for this move might be at the end of the
development section, and while Cb and Bb are conflated here, they are
done so not as two functions, but as Cb as the seventh of a diminished
seventh chord relinquishing to Bb as the root of the dominant. Even this
is a kind of fizzling out of Cb, and a reassertion of Bb.
While the movement finishes with interesting revisitations of our story
of chromaticism in both Beethoven's written-out cadenza and the coda,
we are still left wondering about Cb and Bb, as well as the Neapolitan of
Eb. By withholding payment on this, Beethoven has raised our interest,
as well as the stakes as to where he will locate the payoff.
And pay off he does: first, the second movement is written in B Major
(easier to read than Cb Major), and further, it is connected to the finale
(in Eb Major), complete with a passage that allows the B (read Cb) to
slip down to Bb. But further, the Neapolitan is reached in spectacular
form, in a passage that also invokes a primary diatonic motive from the
first movement. Here in the finale, the primary melodic material is
Looking Back 31
sequenced down, from Eb Major to C Major to Ab Major, a large-scale

arpeggiation of the subdominant, which is so prominent as a motive in
the first movement. But once the key of Ab Major is reached in the
finale, the music reapplies the mechanism just used to move from C to
At, and moves down still another major third. This arrival is clearly Fb,
although spelled as E major at this point, and marks a large-scale
declaration of Eb's Neapolitan, with which we have been teased since the
first movement.
While this is essentially the punchline of my story here, I want to
mention a couple of details fitted into this passage. First, while many of
the other enharmonic respellings in this piece are for ease of reading, in
this passage Beethoven actually does cross the enharmonic boundary,
and this is revealed in the mode by which the music returns to Eb. This
is accomplished by a descending circle-of-fifths progression initiated by a
mode switch applied to E Major: note that this once again proves to be
an example of a move we have heard before; after all, what started the
whole chromatic adventure was this same move applied to Eb in the first
movement. But the local circle-of-fifths progression, moving through a
series of applied dominants from A minor through G minor and F minor
to the dominant of Eb, is in effect implying that we are arriving at the
dominant specifically of Eb minor through the parallelism of the other
minor chords in the sequence. The passage leads to a trill on Bb in the
piano, first with Cb (implying Eb minor) but then shifting to Bb with C,
reversing the direction of the mode switch found at the opening of the
first movement, undoing the chromatic alteration found both there and
here, and ushering in a hushed, ecstatic, and ultimately rambunctious
return to Eb Major to conclude the movement.
To return to our original point about interdimensional counterpoint,
what we have been tracking in Beethoven's Concerto is the interplay
between some conspicuous harmonic moves (bVI to V in a major key;
the interaction between bVI as predominant and bVT as V of the
Neapolitan) and their locations and changing uses within some well
articulated large-scale formal patterns. One thing that makes these
interations so vivid in this and like examples from Beethoven (and other
composers) is the clarity of the role of chromaticism as applied to the
underlying diatonic framework of the music. It is precisely the loss of
this distinction in music at the end of the nineteenth century, despite its
continued use of triadic structures for local surface sounds, that led so
many composers including Schoenberg to experiment with other ways
of creating more than just local coherence.
In all of the examples in the preceding I have used some feature of
post-tonal music to motivate my observations. But this is not because I
think that such observations or their like can only be suggested by

engagement with the music of Schoenberg. Nor am I suggesting that
any of these examples do anything but supplement or exemplify various
familiar approaches to tonal music. My desire is to illustrate how two
bodies of music that might seem incommensurable may actually be seen
to have a lot in common, and that the pleasures that are afforded in one
can readily be had from the other, once one sees where the similarities
lie. I don't mean to suggest there aren't differences; in fact those
differences are as fundamental as our very sense of what pitch-classes
embody in each music ? in the case of diatonically based tonality,
pitch-classes represent those individualities of location, the scale degrees,
while in aggregate based music, they form in their dispositions the
individuality of each aggregate. But as I hope my examples suggest, each
of these approaches, in the right hands, can, to paraphrase Milton
Babbitt, afford us with music that can be as much as it can be, rather
than as little it can get away with.
Looking Back 33
Notes
1. I am using the term "aggregate music" to refer to that class of mus

that uses partitions of the aggregate to underlie its organization.
This may include twelve-tone music, but is not limited to it, nor is i
necessarily the case true of all music referred to as twelve-tone. Fo
the purposes of this paper I have limited my examples to ones from
Schoenberg and Webern, with some reference to ideas originating
from Milton Babbitt.
2. I had originally thought to call this "What Schoenberg has taught

me about Beethoven," but I realized in putting it together that it
could just as easily been called "What Beethoven has taught me
about Schoenberg."
3. This work, in particular, this movement, has received a great deal o
attention from a number of writers. See, for example, Babbit
(1960), Lewin (1962a) and Mead (1994).
4. See, for example, Babbitt (1961, 1968, and 1976); Lewin (1962)
Mead (1985 and 1987); and Peles (1983-84 and 1992).
5. These kinds of observations owe a great deal to Cone (1982).
6. I am particularly indebted to Stephen Peles for several conversation

on issues revolving around these kinds of observations.
7. See Mead (1994) for a fleshing out of these observations.

8. Babbitt writes of the use of similar transpositional levels in the thir
movement of this work in Babbitt (1961); I am grateful to Stephen
Peles for reminding me in conversation of the preserved combinato
rial dyads under T6.
9. In Sayers's novel, a conclusion reached that would seem to be th

end of things occurs at what then proves to be the mid-point of th
story, due to the appearance of some new evidence.
10. I am indebted to the late Ellwood Derr, with whom I had man
conversations on this and related issues.
11. Many of Babbitt's writings attest to this idea; an excellent represen

tative is Babbitt (1976).
References
Babbitt, Milton. 1960. "Twelve-Tone Invariants as Compositional

Determinants." Musical Quarterly 46, no. 2: 246-59. Reprinted in
Problems of Modern Music, ed. Paul Henry Lang (New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., 1960), 108-21; reprinted in The Collected Essays of
Milton Babbitt, ed. Stephen Peles et al. (Princeton: Princeton Univer
sity Press, 2003), 55-69.
-. 1961. "Set Structure as a Compositional Determinant." Journal
of Music Theory 5, no. 1: 72-94; reprinted in Perspectives on Contem
porary Music Theory, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (New
York: Norton, 1972), 129-^7. Reprinted in The Collected Essays of
sity Press, 2003), 86-108.
-. 1968. "Three Essays on Schoenberg." Perspectives on Schoenberg
and Stravinsky, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (New
York: Norton, 1968), 47-60. Reprinted in The Collected Essays of Mil
ton Babbitt, ed. Stephen Peles et al. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2003), 222-236.
-. 1976. "Responses: A First Approximation." Perspectives of New
Music 14, no. 2/15, no. 1: 3-23. Reprinted in The Collected Essays of
sity Press, 2003), 341-366.
Cone, Edward T. 1982. "Schubert's Promissory Note: An Exercise in
Musical Hermeneutics." 19th-century Music 5, no. 3: 233-41.
Revised and reprinted in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies,
edited by Walter Frisch (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1986), 13-30.
Lewin, David. 1962. "A Theory of Segmental Association in Twelve
Tone Music." Perspectives of New Music 1, no. 1: 89-116. Reprinted
in Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory, ed. Benjamin Boretz
and Edward T. Cone (New York: Norton, 1972).
-. 1962a. "A Metrical Problem in Webern's Op. 27." Journal of
Music Theory 6, no. 1: 125-132.
Mead, Andrew. 1985. "Large-Scale Strategy in Arnold Schoenberg's
Twelve-Tone Music." Perspectives of 'New Music 24, no. 1: 120-57.
Looking Back 35
-. 1987. "'Tonal' Forms in Arnold Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone

Music." Music Theory Spectrum 9 (1987): 67-92.
-. 1994. "Webern, Tradition, and 'Composing with Twelve
Tones . . ."' Music Theory Spectrum 15, no. 2: 173-204.
Peles, Stephen. 1983-4. "Interpretations of Sets in Multiple Dimen

sions: Notes on the Second Movement of Arnold Schoenberg's String
Quartet #3." Perspectives of New Music 22, nos. 1/2: 303-52.
-. 1992. "Continuity, Reference, and Implication: Remarks on
Schoenberg's Proverbial 'Difficulty.'" Theory and Practice 17 (1992).
Schoenberg, Arnold: "Composition with Twelve Tones (1) (1941)." In

Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein; trans. Leo Black (New York: St.
Martins Press, 1975): 214-44.

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Looking Back: Lessons Learned About Tonal Music from a Post-Tonal Perspective

Author(s): Andrew Mead

Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and so many other musicians Schoen

EXAMPLE 2: MOZART, SONATA FOR PIANO IN Bb, K. 333.

A sense of the richness of the conflation of these details emerges in

I VII6 VUgofll 116

EXAMPLE 3: MOZART, K. 333. OPENING OF DEVELOPMENT.

derived in various ways allows us to hear these changes against a

(b) Second phrase (opening), with Efl replacing E in second bar.

(c) End of third phrase, with appoggiatura on scale degree 6.

EXAMPLE 5: MOZART, SONATA IN D, K. 576, II

(e) Opening of middle section, in F|{ minor.

P:9t3e46017825 First Movement, opening

EXAMPLE 6: DERIVATIONS OF THE OPENING MOTIVE,

EXAMPLE 7: SHIFTING POSITIONS OF MOTIVES IN TONAL COMPOSITIO

(e) Brahms: Violin Concerto, II; enharmonic prefiguring of F# minor.

we find that one of the primary non-segmental partitions used to link

Preserving segmental tetrachords

Preserving segmental pentachords and dyads

{0, 5,6, e} (1,2, 3,4, 7,8,9, t)

EXAMPLE 8: INVARIANCE RELATIONS IN THE FIRST MOVEMEN

compose the opening melody of the piece has an interval cl

(a) Opening presentation of motives, first in F minor, then in Al> major.

(b) Continued use of motive, supported B fully diminished 7th chords.

(d) Motive at the opening, plus transposition.

EXAMPLE 9: BEETHOVEN, OP. 2 NO. 1, III

two whole-tone segments, facilitating a rapid cyclic tour of T4, To and

(b) Schoenberg, op. 37.

EXAMPLE 10: SUCCESSIVE APPLICATIONS OF AN OPERATION MOVING AWAY

(a) Opening phrase, with central change of texture.

(b) Consequent phrase, with deceptive cadence used to tonicize Bb major.

(f) Deceptive cadences in return to Ei> major.

EXAMPLE 111 BEETHOVEN, PIANO SONATA IN Eb MAJOR

its most prevalent example in his recurring use of inversional

Wind Quintet, op. 26

P: 379e 10t2 4685

Fourth String Quartet, op. 37

P: 2191 5340 876e

EXAMPLE 12: TETRACHORDAL INVARIANCE IN TWO WORKS OF SC

(a) Beethoven, op. 10 no. 1, III; half-cadence in I followed by continuation in III.

(c) Beethoven, op. 10 no. 2,1; end phrygian cadence

(d) Beethoven, op. 10 no. 3,1; half-cadence in V

EXAMPLE 13: PHRYGIAN CADENCES FOLLOWED VA

(c) Orchestral entrance with Ck (lowered scale degree 6).

(d) Lowered scale degree 6 as Neapolitan/augmented 6th complex in Bk

EXAMPLE 14: BEETHOVEN, PIANO CONCERTO NO. 5, OP. 73

(e) At m. 199, deceptive resolution to k> as V2 of Neapolitan. At m. 225, a V9 chord

(f) IV going to VII/V to V.

(g) k> and ((4 conjoined.

(h) "Misplaced" b6 and \>2 (with enharmonic respelling).

i3t i? iss 212 214 216

implied by the sound's presence as V7 of Cb in the passage) is a

organists for Bach's use of it in the F major Toccata, allows a quick

sequenced down, from Eb Major to C Major to Ab Major, a large-scale

think that such observations or their like can only be suggested by

1. I am using the term "aggregate music" to refer to that class of mus

2. I had originally thought to call this "What Schoenberg has taught

6. I am particularly indebted to Stephen Peles for several conversation

7. See Mead (1994) for a fleshing out of these observations.

9. In Sayers's novel, a conclusion reached that would seem to be th

11. Many of Babbitt's writings attest to this idea; an excellent represen

Babbitt, Milton. 1960. "Twelve-Tone Invariants as Compositional

-. 1987. "'Tonal' Forms in Arnold Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone