Society for Music Theory

Salome’s Grotesque Climax and Its Implications

Author(s): BLAIR JOHNSTON
Source: Music Theory Spectrum , Vol. 36, No. 1 (SPRING 2014), pp. 34-57
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Music Theory
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/90011998

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 Salome’s Grotesque Climax and Its Implications
 

In Part I, I draw from Hepokoski’s theory of deformation and the aesthetic category of the grotesque
to interpret the shattering climax at the end of Richard Strauss’s Salome. I suggest that the climax
involves a kind of hyperdissonance—a higher-order negative engagement of melodic/harmonic
frames—and outline a theoretical model for its pitch organization. In Part II, the implications of
this idea for understanding aspects of post-Romantic harmony and aesthetics more generally are
explored through analyses of passages by Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, and Prokofiev.

Keywords: Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Prokofiev, post-Romantic, climax, hyperdissonance,

grotesque, deformation, Hepokoski

 technical conditions for ascribing this kind of negativity to a

Many words have been written about the climax of Salome’s
monologue at the end of Richard Strauss’s Salome (1905; after
Oscar Wilde). The attention-grabber in the passage is the
chord labeled B in Example 1. The dramatic situation here is
disturbing—Salome has kissed the severed head of John the
Baptist and now exults—and authors have delighted in colorful
description. Chord B is “the most sickening chord in all opera”;
“the depth of degradation”; “monstrous, the mark of desire
gone as wrong as desire can go, [and] the ultimate spasm of dis-
sonance as pleasure that feeds the luminous perversity of C♯
major.”1 Salome is killed a few measures later, and the opera
ends, abruptly, in (or at least on) C minor. McClary comments
on the final moments:
The monstrosity of Salome’s sexual and chromatic transgressions
is such that extreme violence seems justified—even demanded—
for the sake of social and tonal order. However, the final gesture
indicates that the frame itself has lost its hegemonic authority,
that the treacherous chromaticism to which European composers
and audiences had increasingly become addicted could no longer
be rationally contained.2
For Lawrence Kramer, the entire monologue—a kind of “dis-
torted Liebestod”—is “symptomatic of a historical dysfunction.”3
Just so. A negatively charged hermeneutic context like this
challenges the analyst, and few accounts of the climax provide
detailed analysis in support of or instead of vivid interpretive
claims. It is perhaps not so easy to account rigorously for (appar-
ent) dysfunction. But the music-theoretic questions raised by
the passage are important for understanding Strauss’s style and
for understanding aspects of post-Romantic harmony and
early-twentieth-century aesthetics more generally. What are the
 Schmidgall (1977, 283); Kennedy (1995, 134); Kramer (2004, 163).
 McClary (1991, 100).
 Kramer (2004, 145, 163).
chord? Precisely what combination of structural and semiotic
features gives rise to the impression, conveyed in the above
accounts and in many others, that the climax is not only very
dissonant, but somehow too dissonant, or even—more fascinat-
ing still—wrongly dissonant?
.
The crux of the Salome climax is irresolvable incongruity. There
is the incongruity of Salome’s shimmering apotheosis and
Herod’s profound revulsion—our revulsion too—at its murder-
ous, paraphiliac source. And there is the incongruity of musical
elements that are bound to a conventional tonal frame of refer-
ence and musical elements that suggest a pungently contrary
frame of reference. The perfect authentic cadence at rehearsal
3605 is superseded one measure later by an “unorthodox
cadence” that “seems to rend the tonal tissue in twain.”4 The
priority of these two gestures is not clear, and the key of C♯ col-
lapses almost immediately afterward. Salome’s melody at
rehearsal 360 is diatonic except for one note, and the richly
doubled melody in the strings and winds from rehearsal 3605
through 361 (bracketed in Example 1) is completely diatonic;
yet the climax chord itself is manifestly chromatic and quite dis-
sonant (omitting the doubled passing tone in the melody, box
B is an octatonic collection). The priority of the diatonic
melodic framework and the dissonant setting is not clear.
Words written by David Murray about Strauss’s Elektra apply
well here: the music “absolutely presupposes a secure tonal
norm against which to measure its harsh, disorienting dramatic
 Ayrey (1989, 123); Newman (1955, 37). In this article, locations in operas
are identified using rehearsal numbers: e.g., 360 means the measure at
which that rehearsal number appears, 3602 means the measure immediately
following that one, and 3603 the measure after that; there is no 3601 (the
“first measure of 360” is 360). Locations in other works are identified using
measure numbers or rehearsal numbers as appropriate.



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 ’      

 . Strauss, Salome (1905), Scene 4 climax (r. 360–361).

effects for an audience with late Romantic ears.”5 That is to say,
the distinctive melodic/harmonic configurations emerge in part
from an entanglement of conventional methods and disorient-
ing latter-day methods, the latter acting negatively upon the
( positive) basis supplied by the former.
I mean the word “negative,” used several times in the pre-
ceding paragraphs, to suggest something about the way musical
materials are organized and something about the general tone
of the music. The consequences for analysis are significant: fea-
tures that are bold and original in Salome and Elektra ultimately
derive from the negation (but not the total removal) of selected
old features rather than a committed search for new bases.
This is not a new idea. Historians have long described the
musical ethos of the very late nineteenth and early twentieth
 Murray (1992, 35).
centuries in terms of a backward-oriented aesthetic perspective
rare in descriptions of other eras. Longyear’s summary of
“post-Romanticism” is a particularly juicy case in point: “a
period of transition, distortion, exaggeration, epigonism, and a
running up musical blind alleys, although many splendid
works were the result.”6 The decadence and malaise of the fin
de siècle are the stuff of liner notes, and perhaps rightly so.
In theoretical and analytical work that stems from this tradi-
tion, core features of the music are defined in terms of their rela-
tionship to a fading or damaged set of principles and premises.
Cone found it useful to understand Schoenberg’s early music
in largely negative terms: elements of sound, syntax, and
 Longyear (1973, 247–48). He refers specifically to “the music of composers
born between 1850 and 1880 who adhered neither to an overtly nationalis-
tic school . . . nor to the musical revolution accomplished by Debussy in
the 1890s.” Longyear (1988, 252) softens the description.

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      ()
succession are now inconsistent.7 Monahan has pointed out a
line of Mahler interpretation stemming from Adorno that “pre-
ferred to understand traditional forms as reference points for
purposeful deviation—semantically significant, but mainly in a
negative way.”8 Henze’s comment about Mahler follows suit
along more poetic lines: “For the first time in the history of
music, a music is asking itself about the grounds for its existence
and about its nature. . . . It is a knowing music, with the same
tragic world feeling as Freud, Kafka, Musil.”9 Sometimes, such
language has been used to dismiss, or to suggest that traditional
analytical approaches are no good here. But other times it has
been used to reflect the fact that the weight of an increasingly
voluminous tradition at the turn of the century, and a love-hate
relationship with that tradition, created fracture lines that are
crucial in the music itself. When Dahlhaus remarked that
“modern” music is “fraught with stylistic contradictions and
conflicts,” he did not mean to dismiss; quite the opposite.10
But still negativity creeps in. Hepokoski suggests that
although Strauss, Mahler, et al. saw themselves as breaking
new ground during the 1890s, eventually the “expressive tone”
of this generation became one either “of disillusioned
withdrawal . . . or of the last-ditch—but doomed—defence of
a beleaguered fortress.”11 He perhaps overstates the case here,
but there is a great deal of music that encourages such a view.
Charles Wilson has gone so far as to suggest that the endan-
germent of established tonal and formal processes—the classic
and Romantic inheritance—can itself be an aesthetic postulate
in post-Romantic music: “Hence, for instance, in the sympho-
nies of Sibelius and Nielsen, the long-range articulations of
functional tonality prevail only after a prolonged struggle, even
then leaving a palpable sense of their impermanence and vul-
nerability.”12 Even happy endings have an asterisk.
It is easy to ignore claims like these. If conventional
methods or models are problematic in analyzing a work, it does
not necessarily mean they have failed or been problematized in
 Cone (1986).
 Monahan (2011, 37).
 Henze (1975, 250): “Zum ersten Mal in der Geschichte der Musik fragt
eine Musik sich selbst nach ihrem Daseingrund und nach ihrer
Beschaffenheit. . . . [E]s ist eine wissende Musik, mit dem gleichen tragi-
schen Weltgefühl versehen wie Freud, Kafka, Musil.”
 Dahlhaus (1989, 334). The array of different labels that have been applied
to repertoires from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is
bewildering. Dahlhaus argues in favor of “modernist” for Mahler, Strauss,
and others because their music in some ways represents a “fresh start in a
new direction” (ibid.)—contradictions, conflicts, and all. He vigorously
rejects “late romantic” and “fin-de-siècle.” Hepokoski (1993), Kristiansen
(2004), and Youmans (2005) suggest that “modern” is precisely how many
composers born around 1860 (including and perhaps especially Strauss)
understood themselves; and Taruskin (2005, 1–4) discusses the relationship
between “modern” and “modernist” while understanding Mahler and
Strauss, like Schoenberg, as modernist composers. However, in this study I
will favor the elastic term “post-Romantic,” which suggests neither an end
nor a beginning, but which does suggest after-ness.
 Hepokoski (1993, 7).
 Wilson (2002, 1305).
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the work. New methods and models may apply.13 And it
would be wrong to understand any of the authors quoted above
as suggesting that post-Romantic music has no positive pre-
mises of its own. Yet well-considered negative theses can be
fruitful in analysis. Hepokoski’s theory of “deformation” was
originally focused on music composed between about 1890 and
World War I.14 As Hepokoski puts it in his study of Sibelius’s
Fifth Symphony, “It is clear that the musical world that [Sibe-
lius’s and Strauss’s generation] greeted differed significantly
from that of its predecessors. This was the first generation to
come of age in a post-Lisztian/post-Wagnerian world of
recently reified or crystallized musical systems. . . .”15 He con-
tinues: “A central feature of the modernist aesthetic game . . .
was to implicitly or fragmentarily refer to the generic formal
conventions, perhaps as lost gestures or the founding gestures
of the game, but then to override them.”16 In the resulting
“deformation,” an entire structure receives “quotation-mark
treatment.”17 Patterns of expectation from earlier music are
placed into an enlarged latter-day context where they can be
strategically recombined, reinterpreted, misinterpreted, perhaps
rejected.
From this insight, Hepokoski and others have developed a
framework for “dialogic” analysis of large-scale musical form.18
The focus up to now has been deformation of sonata form in
instrumental works, and the range of repertoires to which the
theory has been applied is broad. The idea that deformation is
particularly significant in post-Romantic music has faded some-
what from view.19 But I think this idea was right, and I would
reclaim it. The background conceptual premise, to which post-
Romantic composers were evidently receptive in a special way,
invites fresh speculation and application. Scholars have not
explored its implications for interpreting matters of extended
tonal pitch organization—I am thinking of contumacious
events like the Salome climax—with any vigor. But it is no great
leap to do so. In an early publication on deformation, Hepo-
koski writes:
 See discussion in Monahan (2011, n. 30).
 Hepokoski (1989) first applied the term in a study of Verdi, but quickly
(1992; 1993) turned his attention to the next generation of composers. See
also Darcy (1997) on Bruckner, Monahan (2011) on Mahler, and Harper-
Scott (2005b) on Elgar, which, taking deformation theory as a starting
point, use structural or procedural “failures” in turn-of-the-century music
as analytical or hermeneutic wedges. Harper-Scott (2005a) follows along
similar lines, but is Schenkerian in orientation.
 Hepokoski (1993, 3).
 Ibid. (5).
 Hepokoski (1993, 5).
 Works by Hepokoski and Darcy, separately and together, are listed in the
bibliography. Hepokoski and Darcy (2006) is the most comprehensive
account. Hepokoski (2009) clarifies the perspective on musical form.
 I do not intend a critique of either Sonata Theory or deformation theory
here. (For a list of some challenges and criticisms, see Monahan [2011].)
To be sure, there are good reasons for the change of repertoire focus in
Hepokoski and Darcy’s more recent work: a fuller account of the proce-
dures of the eighteenth century is essential for understanding the deforma-
tions of later eras.
 ’     
The term ‘deformation’ is most appropriate when one encounters
a striking nonnormative individual structure, one that contravenes
some of the most central defining traditions, or default gestures,
of a genre while explicitly retaining others.20
Large-scale form represents only one possible area of inquiry.21
Indeed, in the first years of the new century, deformation-ori-
ented compositional thinking penetrated the musical fore-
ground in increasingly pointed ways. This resulted not so much
from emancipation of the dissonance as from the increasing
actualization of dissonances—formal, harmonic, conceptual—
that were inherent (but often implicit) in earlier music. Defor-
mation provides a useful starting point, along lines quite distinct
from Sonata Theory, for understanding crunchy events like the
Salome climax, where normative, idiomatic tonal gestures and
contravening, dissonant transgressions are inseparably bound
and even simultaneously presented. For a composer like Strauss,
who was amenable to emerging possibilities in dissonant sound
but equally reliant on the conventional bases of tonality and
their associated gestural vocabulary, the potential here was sig-
nificant: not a deformation where the default is imagined or
remembered, but a more blatant deformation where the default
gesture and the nonnormative structure are actually heard at the
same time.
The situation I have just described is rooted in Hepokoski’s
theory (it is, as Monahan has put it, “deliberately and meaning-
fully nonnormative”), but it has a different focus, because the
interaction of default and deformation is so immediate that the
analyst must consider the tension between two different sound-
ing structures, not the dialogic interaction of sounding structure
with hypothetical prototype.22 This situation belongs more pre-
cisely to the aesthetic category of the grotesque, which suggests a
way to bring music and drama together in an analysis of the
Salome climax.23 The climax features “a tense combination of
attractive and repulsive features”24 resulting from “the presence
and clash, incongruity, or juxtaposition of two or more different
or even contradictory elements within the same work.”25
Harpham outlines the essential conditions for grotesquerie:
 Hepokoski (1992, 143).
 To be fair, Hepokoski binds genre and form almost inseparably. Still, this
need not prevent the analyst from taking other kinds of “gestures” as useful
starting points.
 Monahan (2011, 41). A certain strategic distance is required here, for I
mean to emphasize the commonality, not the equivalence, of Hepokoski’s
theory and my observations. It is not clear that Hepokoski’s theory would
allow the kind of blatant situation I am suggesting.
 Most recent study of the grotesque draws heavily from Kayser (1981),
Harpham (1982), and Bakhtin (1984). Treatments of the grotesque in
music include Pinson (1971), Beinhorn (1989), Sheinberg (2000), Brown
(2007), and Everett (2009).
 Meindl (1996, 14).
 Fingesten (1984, 420). Within the category of the grotesque, scholars rec-
ognize subcategories that differ in terms of the effect produced by the clash
or contradiction. The Salome event is not an example of Bakhtin’s carnival-
esque, life-affirming grotesque (Bakhtin [1984]); nor is it especially satiric
or caricatural. It is an example, rather, of the terrible or the macabre gro-
tesque. Meindl (1996, 19–20) writes that “a far reaching, but not total,
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
The grotesque is a structure, a structure of estrangement. . . . The
familiar and commonplace must be suddenly subverted or under-
mined by the uncanny or alien. . . . The grotesque must begin
with, or contain within it, certain aesthetic conventions which
the reader feels are representative of reality as he knows it. The
characteristic themes of the grotesque . . . jeopardize or shatter
our conventions by opening onto vertiginous new perspectives
characterized by destruction of logic and regression to the uncon-
scious—madness, hysteria, or nightmare. But this threat depends
for its effectiveness on the efficacy of the everyday, the partial ful-
fillment of our usual expectations.26
The dramatic situation at the Salome climax, a tangle of contra-
dictory frames of reference whose relative authority is not clear,
meets these conditions. Subversion is not hard to find. Deca-
dence subverts apotheosis. Perversion subverts religion. The
musical situation meets Harpham’s conditions too. Hearing the
climax as grotesque in a technical sense—as a tense compound
of proper, “fulfilling” impulses and contradictory impulses—a
way to understand it more fully begins to come into focus.
McClary is only half right: in Salome’s monologue, it is not
chromaticism that undermines, but more specifically dissonant,
contrary chromaticism. If analysis is to live up to the hermeneu-
tic context, the climax must be understood as a conventional,
satisfying tonal pattern and at the same time irreducibly disso-
nant; as a clash in which the tonal frame has in no way lost its
efficacy ( pace McClary), but, rather, has become part of a larger
environment of many frames.
In Example 1, musical subversion occurs in an obvious way
in the juxtaposition of the perfect authentic cadence (rehearsal
3605) and the “unorthodox cadence” that immediately follows
it (rehearsal 3605–361). The authentic cadence establishes an
apparently firm, superficially attractive context (its velvety setup
is “romanticism” at its lushest) and fulfills basic expectations.
The unorthodox cadence that immediately follows is by com-
parison quite alien. Less obviously, however, subversion occurs
as a result of a superimposition of frames within the unorthodox
cadence itself.
Example 2 gives the diatonic melodic material in rehearsal
3605–361. A scale degree profile is indicated (^5–^6–^1, doubled
in the highest octave by the piccolo), and basic harmonic impli-
cations (different from the actual setting) are shown. Two
motifs are labeled: a, the “Leidenshaft” ( passion) or “body”
motif (something carnal); and b, an anapestic rhythm that Willi
Krebs has associated with aspects of the divine throughout the
opera—at first, the Jewish god, and later, Dionysius.27 For
Krebs, the combination of motif a and motif b at the climax
displacement of [the Bakhtinian grotesque] . . . appears to have been
effected by romanticism. The carnivalesque grotesque expressed the joy of
life but remained related to fear. Beginning with romanticism, the situation
is reversed. The life-affirming message of the grotesque tends to fall into
abeyance. Its bright pole becomes hard to locate. . . . Under such circum-
stances, the grotesque . . . orients itself to its dark pole.”
 Harpham (1976, 462).
 Krebs (1991, 219–221). Kramer (2004, 148–49; 155).
      ()
 . Analysis of melodic material only at the Salome
climax (r. 3605–361).
represents “die Einheit von Göttlichkeit und Leidenshaft”
(the unity of divinity and passion).28
This material has been heard in the opera before, but only at
the climax are the two motifs fused into the particular shape
shown in Example 2—a reaching up to grab hold of the tonic at
a point of culmination. Never before the climax does motif b
end on ^1, and never before the climax is the affirmative, tonally
closed ^5–^6–^1 profile heard. Taken on its own, the melodic
material is rather satisfying. But ^6 is at odds with the harmoni-
zation. A♯ conflicts with bass tone A♮; the two melodic tones
that appear under the auspices of A♯ (G♯ and F♯) conflict with
chord tone G♮; and the tones that result from doubling the
melody at the third below (F♯, E♯, and D♯) conflict with chord
tones G♮ and especially E♮. G♯ and E♯ under ^6 are clearly
passing tones, but they are actually no more dissonant in
relation to the chord than the primary melodic tones on either
side. This suggests a kind of tonal incommensurability. The
melody’s structure and the harmonic context in which the
melody appears have been derived in contradictory ways, yet
the melody on its own seems well formed and even consonant.
The ^5–^6–^1 figure, a variant of the commonplace ^5–^ 6–^5, is
idiomatic in a way that earlier statements of b in the opera are
not, and its associated harmonic idiom, a plagal expansion of
tonic, is implicit in Example 2. Indeed, at the Salome climax,
the ^
5–^6–^1 figure might even have been set plagally, as shown in
Example 3. Such a harmonization suits the melodic material
and would be, on the face of things, appropriate: not so much a
cadence on its own but a post-cadential suffix to the perfect
authentic cadence on the downbeat of rehearsal 3605, even an
“amen” of sorts to mark Salome’s culminating (and final)
gesture. Taken on its own, the melodic material in rehearsal
3606 strongly implies F♯-major and/or D♯-minor triads. No
great effort is required to hear a plagal structure within (or
against) the dissonant climax chord. It is as though Strauss
composed a proper amen and then scrambled the notes on the
page.
 Krebs (1991, 221; see also 170–205). Krebs refers to the dissonant climax
chord as the “dionysische Akkord” (ibid., 182).
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 . Idiomatic plagal harmonization of melodic material
at the Salome climax.
There is the tantalizing possibility of allusion here. The
appearance of a plagally oriented ^5–^6–^1 idiom at this point in
the opera strongly recalls a cluster of interrelated motives in
works by Liszt, Wagner, and Mahler—works that have contex-
tually appropriate extramusical associations and harmonic
implications. Example 4 gives the Liszt, Mahler, and Wagner
excerpts.29 In each, the ^5–^6–^1 profile occurs at some marked
religious moment or point of spiritual clarity. In the Dante
Symphony, it appears at the beginning (and near the end, not
shown) of a Magnificat. In Parsifal, it is incorporated into the
“Grail” motive, where it is followed by the rising line of the
“Dresden Amen.” In the Mahler movement, which draws self-
consciously from the Liszt and Wagner works and which takes
Dante’s hell-to-heaven narrative as its programmatic starting
point, the figure appears in what Floros calls the “victorious
motif”—a synthesis of a “cross” motive (rehearsal 26–264) and
the Dresden Amen.30
These associations provide a way to hear the disturbing
pseudo-religiosity of the Salome climax. For Grail substitute
severed head; for cross substitute Salome’s death. Perhaps in
her final moments Salome manages to corrupt not only Isolde’s
Liebestod, as Kramer suggests, but Kundry’s redemptive death
and Dante’s moral journey too. As Kayser puts it, “The true
depth of the grotesque is revealed only by its confrontation with
its opposite, the sublime.”31 And although the harmonic set-
tings of ^5–^6–^1 in the Example 4 passages vary, each is diatonic,
and each has a clear subdominant bias (here I include the whole
 Floros (1993, 45–47) discusses the relationship between the Liszt, Wagner,
and Mahler works. To my knowledge, no one has yet suggested the possi-
bility of a connection with Salome.
 Ibid. (45–48). Introduced quietly in Example 4(c), the motif is a catalyst
for climax later in the movement, leading, appropriately, to a chorale.
Floros (1993, 43) discusses Strauss’s correspondence with Mahler about
this movement.
 Kayser (1981, 58).
 ’      

(a)

(b)

(c)

 . Appearances of the ^5–^6–^1 idiom in works by Liszt, Wagner, and Mahler. (a) Liszt, Dante Symphony, II. Purgatorio
—“Magnificat,” r. O13–O14. (b) Wagner, Parsifal, Prelude to Act I, mm. 39–41. (c) Mahler, Symphony No. 1, IV, r. 26–266.

family: IV, ii, vi) that suits such earnest contexts and resonates
with the implied harmonization in Example 3.32
Heard this way, the situation at the climax, where material
established earlier in the work takes a meaningful new shape
and in so doing refers to a contextually appropriate set of exist-
ing works, is not unlike the situation at the end of Strauss’s
 Additional works are surely relevant here, e.g., the last movement of Men-
delssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony, where the ^5–^6–^1 figure appears upon the
clarifying change from minor to major for the final Allegro maestoso assai.
Mendelssohn’s harmonization is plagal too.
Metamorphosen, where a long process of thematic metamorpho-
sis famously culminates in a quotation from the “Eroica”
funeral march. Whether an allusion to the Liszt, Wagner, and
Mahler works was intended or not, the extreme tension of the
climax is not just a matter of clashing semitones in an eight-
note chord. It is also a matter of the diatonic idiom, with its
plagal basis and its positive associations being stated even as it is
severely misharmonized—made grotesque—in the dissonant,
chromatic context. As a result, the melodic/harmonic space of
the passage is conceptually stratified in a way that supports the
fractured dramatic (and moral) situation.

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      ()
 . Richard A. Kaplan’s analysis of the Salome climax.
(Circled numerals are mine.)
I am not the first to suggest separating the climax into differ-
ent components for analysis.33 Kramer calls the climax chord “a
very pungent bitonal dissonance,” but offers few details.34
Ayrey suggests that the “climactic chord and its cadential
context . . . have multiple symbolic and formal functions.”35 He
separates pitch elements in the chord, remarking “the polytonal
nature of the chord: A7 in the lower parts is set against F sharp
(becoming D sharp at the end of the bar) in the upper
voices.”36 Drawing from associations elsewhere in the opera, he
suggests that “A7 symbolises potentiality and intention,” that
F♯ is “the key and chord of eroticism,” that the “bass progres-
sion of C sharp–A–C sharp (I–♮VI7–I)” recapitulates a signifi-
cant relationship of third-related keys, and that B♯ “is present to
intensify the dissonance.”37 The long-range connections Ayrey
makes are rich, and he is right to point out that the climax
unifies even as it shatters. And he claims, as I do, a significant
subdominant component (F♯) to the chord. But his reading is
focused on demonstrating the intra-work significance of the
chord, not on describing its troubled relationship with more
basic gestures.
Krebs and Kaplan, independently, suggest a compound of
chords built on roots A and B♯: CT+6 and viiø7, which sum to
OCT(0,1).38 Kaplan’s analysis is given in Example 5. (Circled
numerals have been added for comparison with other examples.)
This analysis is appealing. It shows that the dissonant sonority
is well formed, and it clarifies aspects of voice leading and regis-
tration. But it says nothing about how the melodic idiom and
its implications relate to the complex sonority—indeed, it says
 On polychordality in Salome and Elektra more generally, see Dinerstein
(1974) and Kaplan (1985).
 Kramer (2004, 163).
 Ayrey (1989, 126).
 Ibid.
 Ayrey (1989, 125–26 and n. 17 [188]). Ayrey mentions the B♯ only in the
footnote, commenting that it is “practically inaudible in performance.”
 Kaplan (1985, 47–49); Krebs (1991, 182–83). Krebs suggests, like Ayrey,
that the chord combines elements with different extramusical associations
(“death” and “kiss”). Krebs then goes further and imagines a root G♯
underneath the B♯, creating a dominant major-ninth chord of C♯ (ibid.,
184).
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nothing about the melodic material at all. By taking into
account not only the notes of the compound chord and the
immediate voice-leading context but also the idiomatic
melodic/harmonic basis and dramatic content of the climax as a
whole, it is possible to move beyond the idea of a compound
chord to the idea of a compound environment—an environment
in which meaningful higher-order processes may take place.
I have described the diatonic idiom and the dissonant struc-
ture at the climax as to some degree conceptually separate from
one another, and it is useful to represent them as such. In
Example 6, information about the diatonic/functional frame
(the perfect authentic cadence and the plagal idiom) is supplied
in layer A. Information about the dissonant structure at the
climax and about the highly chromatic music that follows the
climax is supplied in layer B. The separation into layers clarifies
the pitch organization of the passage and reflects aspects of dra-
matic perspective. Layer A belongs to Salome; this is the situa-
tion as she understands it. C♯ has been associated with her
throughout the opera, and her fulfillment and apotheosis are
projected by the authentic cadence in the major mode and the
plagal idiom. But Herod and the audience understand the situa-
tion rather differently.39 The plagal idiom is problematized by
the misharmonization in layer B, and this transforms it from a
postcadential suffix into an event whose structural significance
arguably surpasses that of the authentic cadence and whose
expressive significance undeniably does.
At this moment, the dramatic, moral, and stylistic tensions
in the opera as a whole and the monologue in particular come
to a head; they are verticalized, so to speak, as suggested in
Example 6 by the double-headed arrow between layer A and
layer B. The melodic material of the climax is immediately
echoed (segment a, then segment b, truncated and rhythmically
augmented), and this time the plagal orientation is more
explicit—the bass actually moves to F♯. The beginning of a
coda space is strongly suggested. But the subdominant never
quite coalesces. The key of C♯ collapses, erasing the authentic
cadence and with it the hope of unifying closure in the major
mode (the opera begins in C♯ minor). The ecstatic tone is nulli-
fied, and the stage is set for Salome’s execution. At the end, a
remnant of the plagal F♯ reverberates harshly in the highest reg-
ister, bereft.
The crucial point in the analysis is the relationship between
the diatonic structure in layer A and the dissonant structure in
layer B, as indicated by the arrow between layers in Example 6.
At the climax, both layers are explicit and both are well formed
(no new theory is required to account for the structure in A or
the structure in B). Both follow the same basic formula: A tonic
[stable], B nontonic [unstable], C tonic [stable]. But they differ
greatly at B. While B in layer A and B in the top staff of layer B
are to some degree compatible, B in layer A and B in the
 Details of staging (or, in DVD performances, filming and editing)—
actions, entrances, etc.—will have a powerful effect on the perceived associ-
ation of musical events and characters. Of particular significance here is the
moment that Herod’s movement disrupts Salome’s apotheosis.
 ’      

 . Analysis of Salome (r. 360–end).

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      ()

 . Conceptual Integration Network for the Salome climax.

bottom staff of layer B are not compatible, nor are B in the top
staff of layer B and B in the bottom staff of layer B. There is a
tension between the plagal idiom and the dissonant structure
that has no clear equivalent in earlier music. In the Salome
climax, higher-order engagement amounts to a kind of higher-
order dissonance—a hyperdissonance between the different
well-formed components of the compound melodic/harmonic
environment.
A Zbikowskian “conceptual integration network” provides a
useful way to visualize the main concepts involved in the inter-
pretation.40 (In this particular case, one is tempted to call it a
conceptual dis-integration network.) In Example 7, the “amen
space” and the “dissonant/chromatic space” are represented as
separate but equal spaces whose elements are mapped as shown
in the circle at the top of the figure. The result is the blended
“climax space”—the emergent structure, grotesque and hyper-
dissonant—at the bottom of the figure. The climactic effect
depends on the interaction of differentiated ways of organizing
the melodic/harmonic domain—one conventional and in this
context positive, one contrary. The idea of the plagal idiom (and
everything bundled with it) and the idea of the dissonant, chro-
matic structure (and everything bundled with it) are brought to
bear on one another. It is necessary in analyzing the event to
consider not only the climax chord’s unusual composition and
 Zbikowski (2002, 78–95). As Zbikowski notes, conceptual integration net-
works were developed by Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier.
immediate voice-leading context, but the preternatural circum-
stances in which such a chord can make sense too. A tidy solu-
tion to the problem these circumstances represent is neither
possible nor desirable in the context of Wilde’s decadent play.
The dissonance of the climax chord is resolved on the next
downbeat; but it is not so clear how or if the hyperdissonance is
resolved. In this event, Strauss deals with the problem by cir-
cumventing it—tonic, idiom, and perhaps functional tonality
itself are jettisoned in the opera’s final measures—and in so
doing, he prompts the kind of higher-level hearing I have
suggested.
.
This state of affairs is not unique to Salome. The model outlined
above may be developed to other extended tonal post-Romantic
works. As understood here, hyperdissonance is a higher-order
negative engagement in the melodic/harmonic domain—a type
of compound pitch organization that involves misharmoniza-
tion of a conventional basis or idiom for tense effect rather than
reharmonization for the sake of new color or innovative chord
progression. I mean it to be technically, affectively, and stylisti-
cally distinct from other kinds of higher-order engagement and
stratification in other repertoires, e.g., polystylistic/polygeneric
assemblages in postmodernist works, or competing metrical
frames and textural layers in Stravinsky’s works. Hyperdisso-
nance relates to the category of the grotesque, even if a specific

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 ’      

 . Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 26 (1921), II: Tema (reprise).

case need not be as obviously and dramatically grotesque as the
Salome climax. (A case need not be disgusting.) And it is associ-
ated with deformation, which I take to be a background concep-
tual premise independent of Sonata Theory.
I have not meant to imply that configurations involving more
than one kind of pitch structure at the same time are new in
post-Romantic music. I do mean, however, to draw on the fact
that such configurations reached new heights of explicitness,
complexity, and dissonance at the beginning of the twentieth
century, anticipating more radical recombinations of musical
materials in ensuing years. Joseph Straus, considering the fruit
of those ensuing years, has suggested that “what we need now is
a critical framework for understanding this sort of thing. The
framework we need should, above all, be sensitive to the tension
in these works between the traditional elements and the new
musical context that transforms them.”41 Straus’s comment is
directed primarily at music composed somewhat later in the
twentieth century; but when he writes, “the traditional elements
become a locus of musical tension. They evoke the traditional
musical world even as they are enmeshed in new musical struc-
tures,” he might well have had the Salome climax in mind.42
The Prokofiev passage in Example 8 (finished in 1921)
resembles the Salome climax in important ways despite obvious
differences in format and genre. The movement is in theme and
variations form. The excerpt is from the reprise of the theme at
the end of the movement. As at the Salome climax, an idiomatic
plagal structure—here, a double appoggiatura: ^6 to ^5, ^4 to ^3—
follows cadential resolution to tonic. Again, the plagal event is
entangled with a dissonant, chromatic structure. An analysis of
 Straus (1991, 435).
 Ibid. (431).
the passage beginning at rehearsal 87 is given in Example 9,
showing the plagal appoggiatura in the orchestra and the
restatement in the piano. In the restatement, the voice-leading
framework of the plagal appoggiatura is retained; but subdomi-
nant elements ^6 and ^4 are replaced by chromatic tones that
suggest a chord rooted on C♯, which is supported by the bass.
OCT(1,2) is suggested. A♮ (marked with an asterisk) does not
belong to the collection, but its appearance is logical: on the one
hand, it is part of an ascending chromatic line leading to B♮,
and on the other hand, it is a vestige—now a dissonant outsider
—of A♮– B♮ in the diatonic version.
The grotesquerie in this passage is not as overt as it is in the
Salome excerpt, in part because there is no dramatic situation to
support it and in part because the passage is quieter; but the
moment does stand out. At the end of the theme and the ends
of most variations, the plagal appoggiatura is played only once
as a kind of postcadential tag. Only in Variation 3 and in the
culminating reprise of the theme (itself a variation, though not
numbered) is the tag played twice. On both of these occasions,
the tag is recast dissonantly when repeated. This and a sudden,
striking change of instrumentation call attention to the event.
As in the Salome passage, an idiom that could (and should) have
been a neat plagal suffix is hyperdissonantly estranged at a
marked location in the work.
The issue here, and the opening for theory, is not just the
collision of two well-formed frames of melodic/harmonic refer-
ence, but the effect that the collision may have on underlying
tonal, formal, and rhetorical premises. It is useful for present
purposes to define such premises in a fairly broad way, especially
in later tonal music. In a study of a Wolf song, Wallace Berry
wrote that “one is almost tempted to assert that the tonal struc-
ture is best characterized not in terms of specific tonics, but,

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      ()

 . Analysis of the Prokofiev passage.

rather, in terms of the pattern (tripartite) stability-fluctuation-
stability.”43 “Fluctuation” is an appealingly plastic category into
which a variety of instability-inducing processes may be put,
and it provides a basic way to account for expectations of
tension and relaxation associated with those processes. Short
idioms like those in the Salome and Prokofiev passages and
larger, more elaborate structures may be accommodated.44
Many accounts of tonal organization and musical form
resemble Berry’s tripartite pattern without using his terms.
Other metaphors are often added. Ratner famously described
classic sonata form as a “two-stage action,” adding the meta-
phor of departure and return to a structure of three points: “cen-
trifugal motion (away from I)” begins during the exposition and
continues until a “critical point” (a “point of furthest remove”)
is reached in the development, after which “centripetal motion
(toward I)” begins.45 An important premise is the action’s goal-
orientation: the “principal object of the development . . . is to
regain the tonic.”46 Ratner means to describe the tonal plan of a
specific musical form during a specific period in history, but the
terms he uses (centrifugal and centripetal motion, point of fur-
thest remove) are suited to a variety of other musical contexts.
Indeed, Ratner was not the first to describe musical events or
 Berry (1976, 140); the song is “Das verlassene Mägdlein.” See also Hinde-
mith (1945, 115–20) on “harmonic fluctuation.”
 Berry initially associates “fluctuation” with conventional tonicization
(1976, 69–70) but later uses the term in a somewhat more general way. The
following passage (75–76) is especially suggestive for present purposes:
“While it may be obvious in both principle and in application, it is well to
make a particular issue of the importance of the concept of tonal structure
as alternating between, and opposing in various ways, areas of relative
stability and areas of relative fluctuation . . . and in late styles of the tonal
period and in the twentieth century, the delineation of tonal structure by
projection of, quite apart from specific tonics, areas of relative instability
(ambiguity, lack of clarity, nonresolution) contrasted with areas of relative
stability (focus, clarity of tonal direction, resolution).” He further suggests
(76) that “an entire form can be conceived of as deriving in an important
sense from this principle (as well as from the principle of ultimate tonal
‘rounding’ or reaffirmation of the initial, primary system).”
 Ratner (1980, 209, 225).
 Ibid. (225).
actions using the terms centrifugal and centripetal. As Cherlin
has discussed, the dialectical opposition of centrifugal and cen-
tripetal forces is central to Schoenberg’s concept of the Grundg-
estalt.47 For Schoenberg, “centrifugal forces are those that
require expansion,” while “centripetal forces are those that lead
to coherence, [that] hold the idea together and make us perceive
it as a unity.”48 Although Schoenberg’s dialectically opposed
“forces” are rather more flexible in nature than Ratner’s directed
tonal “motions,” Carpenter has described a tonal-functional
understanding of the Grundgestalt: “The function of the
Grundgestalt in effecting a coherent tonality in a work is to
make manifest that process by which instability is brought
about in a work and stability finally restored. When we compre-
hend the work, we understand that process, following it in the
developing harmonic, as well as thematic, aspects of the
Grundgestalt.”49 Along similar lines but with different theoreti-
cal justification, Candace Brower’s cognitive schema for phrase
structure combines tension-inducing fluctuation with departure
and return, which she suggests is an essential “music-metaphor-
ical schema.”50 Brower’s schema for phrase structure (repro-
duced here as Example 10) provides a model for “how the
phrases of a musical work can be understood as a series of goal-
directed motions, with smaller arcs of motion nested within
larger ones. [The diagram] captures the way that harmony,
melody, and rhythm work together to articulate a series of com-
pleted motions within an overall progression of departure and
return.”51 Brower continues:
The overall trajectory of harmonic motion shows the expected
cycling of harmony away from the tonic and expansion of the
tonic-dominant cycle . . . revealing a general tendency toward
motion leading away from tonic to a point of greatest tonal dis-
tance followed by a motion of return. . . . Each phrase is repre-
sented as having two distinct goals: the climax of the phrase—the
 Cherlin (2007, 59–60). See also Carpenter 1983 and Neff 1993.
 Cherlin (2007, 59–60).
 Carpenter (1983, 16).
 Brower (2000, 323–6, 331).
 Ibid. (350).

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 ’     
 . Candace Brower’s schema for phrase structure.
turning point between tension and relaxation, and the maximally
stable event at the end of the phrase.52
For both Ratner and Brower, something significant—a
change of direction or conceptual reversal; a limit or a climax—
occurs at a critical point, which Brower represents as the high-
point of an arc. In its way, this unstable peak may be as crucial
as the more stable events before and after it. Geoffrey Chew,
analyzing the Abschied from Act II of Tristan und Isolde,
observes that:
Dominant harmonies at the end of the refrains are points at
which the emotion (dependent on leading-note tension) has
passed its peak and subsided. . . . The climaxes themselves—the
points of greatest tension and instability—give the Abschied its
characteristic dramatic shape, and so they may have some claim to
be thought of as Grundpfeiler in a Kurthian sense, even though
they cannot be regarded as such in any Schenkerian sense.53
When dealing with post-Romantic music, of course, one
encounters the Romantic legacy of evanescent tonics, under-
mined closure, and problematized points of return, all of which
can shift structural and expressive emphasis away from the
pillars of conventional tonal syntax, and all of which can com-
plicate formal processes and grouping structures. Hyland has
suggested that in nineteenth-century music especially, tonal
parameters alone are not sufficient delineators of musical
spaces, because they are so often “non-congruent” with other
parameters—especially rhetorical ones—that delineate musical
spaces and articulate closure differently.54 It makes sense that
this principle should be taken further in many early-twentieth-
century works. Conventional tonal and formal frames, compet-
ing, explicitly dissonant frames, and rhetorical signals may
interact in dynamic ways—hyperdissonant ways—that can be
understood in relation to patterns like Berry’s and Brower’s.
In principle, there would seem to be two basic possibilities
for such negative interaction: (1) the point of maximal
 Ibid.
 Chew (1991, 187).
 Hyland (2009, 115, 135–36, 140). Hyland’s work draws from and
responds to Agawu (1984) and (1987), and Anson-Cartwright (2007).
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
disjunction between the frames—the focus of the hyperdisso-
nance—occurs during the fluctuation/departure stage of the
underlying pattern, greatly exaggerating fluctuation and poten-
tially complicating closure, return, etc.; or (2) the point of
maximal disjunction coincides with the stable/resolution stage
of the pattern, distorting and disrupting processes of closure,
return, etc. in more dramatic ways.55
The Salome climax is an example of the first possibility. The
corrupted plagal idiom is nominally closed (the resolution to
tonic is not contradicted), and some superficial rhetorical signs
of closure are provided upon the resolution to tonic (cessation of
rhythm, diminuendo, and general lowering of register). But the
hyperdissonant context exaggerates the fluctuation in the plagal
idiom as suggested in Example 11, exceeding the normal limit
of the idiom. This leaves a trace. And the larger issue—the
simultaneity of the amen and the point of maximal dissonance
—is rhetorically crushing. The orchestral music after the climax
(rehearsal 361 and following) may sound at first like the start of
a coda, but it crumbles, and the opera ultimately closes in a very
different way.
The astonishing climax in the first movement of Mahler’s
Tenth Symphony (1910), shown in Example 12, may be under-
stood along similar lines, although here the proper tonic ulti-
mately prevails. The nine-note chord in mm. 206–208 is
unmistakably grotesque: a kind of shrieking, chromatically dis-
astrous dominant-nineteenth chord in the key of F♯. As sug-
gested by Kaplan and Agawu, the chord is a compound of two
different dominant-ninth chords, V9 of F♯ and V9 of B♭, both
of which keys are significant in the movement.56 Example 13
puts the climax in a context, showing how it fits into a larger
I–ii–V–I action in the global tonic key of F♯. At the peak
moment, this large-scale tonal frame of reference and a second,
contrary frame of reference—one bound to a different key (B♭)
and to asynchronous formal parameters—collide. This amplifies
the tension inherent in the departure/fluctuation stage of the
underlying structural progression to an abnormal degree, and, as
 There is perhaps also the possibility of maximal disjunction at the begin-
ning of the tonal or formal process, but I will not consider this here.
 Kaplan (1981, 29–39) and Agawu (1987, 231).
      ()

 . Exaggeration of fluctuation at the Salome climax.

Agawu has discussed in some detail, it complicates closure in
the movement.57
A passage from Strauss’s Elektra (1908) is perhaps even richer,
showing both types of interaction described above—exaggerated
fluctuation and compromised resolution/return. In Example 14,
the character of Klytämnestra, diseased, haunted by nightmares,
and racked with guilt over the murder of her husband, confides to
her daughter Elektra: “I don’t have any good nights. Do you
know a remedy for nightmares?” The tempo changes, characters
other than Klytämnestra and Elektra leave, and the lighting
changes, too, in order to focus on the increasingly tense confron-
tation between mother and daughter. There are some fairly
obvious harmonic signs of Klytämnestra’s deterioration, including
the emphasis on a pair of triads related by tritone, F minor–B
minor (which are associated with her throughout the opera), and
the entire passage’s polychordality (triads in the highest register,
different triads in the middle register).
One layer in the polychordal environment involves a tonal
progression and idiomatic melodic figures, while the other does
not. Example 15(a) follows the registral layout in the music.
The progression in layer A has been altered to accommodate
the tritone relationship between F minor and B minor, but it is
coherent and its diatonic underpinning is clear. Layer B, a well-
formed string of chromatically descending diminished triads,
does not engage the functional syntax. Layer C supplies a cons-
tant tonic reference. Compound chords created by layer A and
layer B together are numbered in Example 15(a), and interval-
class vectors of the compounds are shown in Example 15(b). As
indicated by the vectors, the vertical sounds produced by the
A + B compounds and the progression in layer A are not con-
cordant: the compounds are most dissonant at the points where
functional pillars are stated in layer A. The effect of the passage
as a whole is thus like the effect of the Salome, Prokofiev, and
Mahler passages. As suggested in Example 16, between the
initial tonic and the goal tonic, the tension in the underlying
progression is exaggerated by the superimposition of layer B (as
well as by the chromatic alteration of the dominant).
Within this general intensification, a more intricate interac-
tion takes place. Example 17(a) is an analysis of just the first
two measures of the Elektra passage. Layer A involves the
familiar three-stage formula, A tonic [stable], B nontonic
[unstable], C tonic [stable]. The melodic material here is a
^3–♯^7–^1 reaching-tone idiom. Layer A departs from and returns
to the tonic in compliance with the melodic idiom’s implica-
tions. But the resolution to tonic in layer A at C is contradicted
by layer B, which does not resolve to a tonic triad at the same
time. As a result, the tension and intervallic complexity of the
A + B compound are increased at C rather than decreased. (The
interval-class vectors of the first three compound chords are
[001110], [102111], and [225222].) As suggested in Example
17(b), the moment of tonic resolution/return is the point of
maximal disjunction between layers A and B. This deserves
some attention. A goal tonic (or another clear, stable goal) that
has been problematized at the point of its return is perhaps
descended from the textbook deceptive cadence, where melodic
resolution to tonic is undermined harmonically. But the situa-
tion here is different, because the whole tonic triad is actually
stated even as it is contradicted. Leonard Meyer claimed that in
tonal music, “dissonance derives its affective power, its
elegance . . . from the fact that it is a deviant, delaying the arrival
of an expected norm, the consonance appropriate in the particular
stylistic, musical context.”58 Meyer suggests a correspondence
between systematic or syntactic constraints on the use and loca-
tion of dissonance and the affective differentiation of dissonance
(a deviant) from consonance (a norm). But in Example 17(b),
the boundary between norm and deviant—between consonance
and dissonance, tension and resolution—is compromised, and
their affective differentiation is confused as a result.
Musical activity pauses for more than a measure at C, high-
lighting the event. When things continue in rehearsal 1773,
tension is temporarily lessened. Compound 4, a half-
diminished-seventh chord, is relatively consonant—not because
of any action in layer A, but because layer B has moved
independently and the situation has been renormalized. The
reaching-tone figure is treated sequentially, resolving to new
goal VI (rehearsal 1774), but the point of resolution is again
contradicted, as is the next resolution to iv (rehearsal 1776). As
suggested in Example 18, compounds 3, 6, and 9 are all points

 Agawu (1987, 229–33).  Meyer (1956, 232).

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 ’      
 . Mahler, Symphony No. 10 (1910), I: Adagio, mm. 199–213.
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     ()

 . Analysis of the Mahler, Symphony No. 10 climax in context.

 . Richard Strauss, Elektra (1908), scene 4, r. 177–1784.

of local resolution to functional pillars inside layer A, but they This is striking. The effect is passing and understated in the
are points of maximal tension in the A + B compound structure. Elektra passage, which is hushed to the point of discomfort.
A paradox results: compounds 3, 6, and 9 are recognizably Quite unlike the Salome climax, which is arguably the culminat-
stable and undeniably unstable at the same time. ing point in the opera, the story is still developing in this part of

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 ’      

(a)

(b)

 . Analysis of Elektra, r. 177–1782. (a) Registral layout, compound chords, and functional interpretation. (b) Interval-class
vectors of A + B compounds.

 . Interpretation of Elektra, r. 177–1782.

Elektra. Exaggerated dynamic and rhetorical emphasis would
be rather out of place here. But the kind of interaction shown in
Example 17(b) (compromised return/resolution) has consider-
able expressive potential, and it could be made into something
more obvious—into a culminating moment. This occurs in
Example 19, where a hyperdissonantly troubled tonic is crucial
on a larger scale and at the point of climax in the composition.
The excerpt is from the Rachmaninoff song “A-u!” Op. 38,
No. 6 (1916), a setting of a Symbolist poem by Konstantin
Balmont. Example 19 contains the end of the poem—“I sing, I
look, ‘A-oo!’ I cry”—and the postlude. The poetic, dynamic,
and registral highpoint of the passage (and of the entire song) is
mm. 24–27. Example 20 is an analysis of the piano part in
these measures, showing how mm. 26–27 relate sequentially to
mm. 24–25, how the diminished-seventh chord in the treble
staff in mm. 24–25 transposes onto itself (enharmonically) in
the sequence, and how other tones in the treble staff may
be understood in relation to the diminished-seventh chord.
The four pitch classes in the bass form a second diminished-
seventh chord—presented as a pair of characteristically Russian
tritone oscillations—which relates to the treble chord octatoni-
cally, as shown in Example 21. The addition of any of the
bass notes to the sustained treble chord results in a dominant
minor-ninth chord that belongs to OCT(1,2). The vocal part and
the emphasized treble tones in each measure (C♯/D♭ and B♭) also
belong to OCT(1,2). In Example 22, the octatonic analysis is elab-
orated in the lower of the two grand staves (labeled B). OCT(2,3)
applies in mm. 22–23; OCT(2,3) and OCT(1,2) are overlapped at
the end of m. 23; and OCT(1,2) applies in mm. 24–27.
This octatonic reading of the passage is straightforward
enough. But it is insufficient, because, even as mm. 24–27 repre-
sent peak dissonance and tension in the song, they represent the
culminating return of D♭-major tonic content after an absence of
many measures—dynamically and registrally emphasized tonic

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     ()

(a)

(b)

 . Analysis of Elektra, r. 177–1772. (a) Contradiction of tonic resolution in reaching-tone idiom. (b) Hyperdissonant
interaction of layers A and B.

 . Tension in Elektra, r. 177–1782.

content, arrived at functionally. This is suggested in the top
grand staff (labeled A) of Example 22. The notes in the vocal
part at the climax belong to the tonic triad, and the right hand of
the piano part spends most of mm. 24–25 on a D♭-major triad
(sometimes spelled enharmonically). The text here, “A-u!”, is a
crying out, not a word. ^
1 is dissonant in relation to the structure
underneath (it is a member of OCT(1,2), but not of the dimin-
ished-seventh chord that controls the moment). Nevertheless, ^1
is emphasized through repetition, accented, and registrally
prominent; and the line it initiates proceeds to ^5 in mm. 26–27,
framing the tonic triad. When ^1 is transferred into the bass in
m. 26, it is supported above by a new voice in the tenor register
of the piano part: a broken octave F♮ (^3) that imitates the
broken octave A♭ (^5) in the vocal part, spreading unambiguous
tonic elements from the highest to the lowest register despite
the persistence of a dissonant octatonic frame.

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 ’      

At this point in the song, all tonal activity is over. The post-
lude that begins in m. 28 takes place entirely above a pedal
point and contains no real changes of harmony. The postlude as
a whole is built from the acoustic collection on D♭—a sort of
compromise between diatonic D♭ major and OCT(1,2), as
shown in Example 23. No additional tonic-establishing pro-
gression or melodic formula emerges, suggesting that m. 24
may indeed be heard as the initial thrust of a return/resolution
event in the song. And the climax and beginning of the post-
lude are clearly rhetorical points of arrival too. But hyperdisso-
nance prevents the return from providing any satisfaction.
During the climax, the tonic content sounds more like a tor-
tured projection in some hostile environment than an agent of
assurance. In a way, the point of return in the song has been
confused with the point of furthest remove.
As suggested in Example 24 and also at the bottom of
Example 22, the release of tension and the stabilization of
D♭ during the postlude are gradual: the tonic simply endures
and a new context of smooth melody, falling register, dimin-
uendo, and ostinato emerges. All the same, the song’s final
measures suggest that real stability is never attained. The cli-
mactic treble-register tonic content is reimagined in three
clear, bell-like triads in the same register (mm. 32–33), but
at the end all that remains is a bass-less ninth chord—tonic
enough that one feels it, yet without a core, and with ^2 on
top. This chord, and in fact the entire postlude, recalls har-
monic material heard near the beginning of the song, shown
in Example 25. What was a passing chromatic event in m.
2 becomes crystallized in the song’s final measures. The music
has come full circle—but past m. 1 to unstable m. 2, where fluc-
tuation has already begun. Hyperdissonance at the climax
undermines return despite the achievement of the tonic and
subsequent rhetorical markers of closing, and, as befits the
poem, closure becomes impossible.

 . Rachmaninoff, “A-u!” Op. 38, No. 6 (1916), mm. 22–34.

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     ()

 . (Continued).

 . Analysis of “A-u!” piano part, mm. 24–27.
 . OCT(1,2) in the “A-u!” piano part, mm. 24–27.
***
My goal in this study has not been to supply definitive readings
of the works discussed but to outline a way of hearing and
thinking about them. Some of the passages suggest the possibil-
ity of hyperdissonance on larger scales—or, more properly, the
possibility that a hyperdissonance event may show evidence of
long-range strategic thinking and have implications for under-
standing a work’s global organization. A complete work has not
been considered in detail. The interpretation of the Salome
climax included aspects of the whole, but as much dramatic as
musical, and selectively. The analysis of the Prokofiev excerpt
suggested a way to understand two variations as special in rela-
tion to the set as a whole, and therefore says something about
the form of the whole; but I made no attempt to be comprehen-
sive. Only a fraction of the Mahler symphony movement was
discussed. The process of departure and ( problematized) return
described in “A-u!” does encompass the entire work, but the
entirety in this case is only thirty-four measures, and, like many
songs after Schumann, the work is as much fragment as whole.
Fuller accounts of these and other pieces would be needed in

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 ’      

 . Analysis of “A-u!” mm. 21–28.

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      ()

order to determine what the model I’ve outlined suggests about
tonal integration and structural unity in post-Romantic music
more generally.
The ideas in this study would be put into a richer context by
investigating how hyperdissonance figures in music that bears
the imprint of Straussian-Mahlerian post-Romanticism in
certain matters of harmony, form, and rhetoric but goes beyond
post-Romanticism in other ways. One thinks of those Second
Viennese works that inhabit the tonal twilight zone. (Schoen-
berg’s analysis of tonal structures present yet denied in his own
Erwartung is suggestive along these lines.59) And one thinks of
works by Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten, of various kinds
of film music—even, perhaps, of progressive rock, where mate-
rials (or tracks) are sometimes layered in ways not unlike the
 . Relationship between collections in the “A-u!”
excerpt.
Salome and Elektra passages. These matters exceed the bounds
of the present study, and I’ll draw no conclusions here.
Still, one recalls Subotnik’s remark that “if structure in
romantic music, as in classical music, is defined narrowly, as an
abstract internal relationality or as the quasi-logical temporal
unfolding (which could be called the tonal unfolding) of events,
then most romantic works lack a complete internal structural
intelligibility.”60 I have suggested in some of the analyses that
the tension of hyperdissonance lies outside the scope of func-
tional tonal syntax, emerging instead from higher-order pro-
cesses; and that the intra-work solution of the hyperdissonance
may also be outside the scope of functional tonal syntax, result-
ing instead from the renormalization of material around the
tonal frame or the rejection of the tonal frame itself—a kind of
harmonic deus ex machina. In these cases, at least, it would seem
that post-Romantic composers developed a way of dealing with
the situation inherited from their Romantic predecessors. Intel-
ligibility and meaning emerge in part from the tonal unfolding
of events, but also in part from the working out of that unfold-
ing in an enlarged latter-day context.
My focus on pitch organization has been the by-product of
my starting point. Nevertheless, the analyses and the interpretive
model speak to more general aesthetic and stylistic issues. The
passages analyzed may be exceptional even for their era (these are
special moments), but the circumstances that make them possible
are ubiquitous in the era. I do not mean to suggest that we must
hear all post-Romantic music against a backdrop of constant,
lurking, potential hyperdissonance (though we could choose to
do so). The defense of the fortress, beleaguered though it may

 . Analysis of tension at the “A-u!” climax.

 Schoenberg (1978, 418–19). He refers specifically to mm. 382–84.  Subotnik (1991, 122).

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 ’      

 . “A-u!” mm. 1–3.

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     ()
have been, was perhaps not that doomed. But we could do worse
than to recognize that the ontology of early-twentieth-century
music is complex and even inherently complicated, and that it
must remain so in analysis if its structural and expressive premises
are to be meaningfully reflected.
 
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DOI: 10.1093/mts/mtu004

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