Musics With and After Tonality

Musics with and after Tonality
This volume is a journey through musics that emerged at the turn of the
twentieth century and were neither exclusively tonal nor serial. They fall
between these labels as they are metatonal, being both with and after tonality,
in their reconstruction of external codes and gestures of Common Practice
music in new and idiosyncratic ways. The composers and works considered
are approached from analytic, cultural, creative, and performance angles by
musicologists, performers, and composers to enable a deeper reading of these
musics by scholars and students alike. Works include those by Frank Bridge,
Ferruccio Busoni, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Rebecca Clarke, John
Foulds, Percy Grainger, Mary Howe, Carl Nielsen, Franz Schreker, Erwin
Schulhoff, Cyril Scott, and Alexander Scriabin. In the process of engaging
with this book the reader, will find an enrichment to their own understanding
of music at the turn of the twentieth century.
Paul Fleet is a Senior Lecturer in Music at Newcastle University, UK with

research specialty in Authentic Music Theory. He is also a husband, father,
National Teaching Fellow, QAA Subject Expert and Reviewer, Senior Fellow
of the HEA all whilst remaining a music theory lecturer, keynote popular-
music education speaker, and a published author.
Ashgate Studies in Theory and Analysis of Music After 1900
Series Editor:
Judy Lochhead, Stony Brook University, USA
The Ashgate Studies in Theory and Analysis of Music After 1900 series
celebrates and interrogates the diversity of music composed since 1900, and
embraces innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to this repertoire.
A recent resurgence of interest in theoretical and analytical readings of music
comes in the wake of, and as a response to, the great successes of musico-
logical approaches informed by cultural studies at the turn of the century.
This interest builds upon the considerable insights of cultural studies while
also recognizing the importance of critical and speculative approaches to
music theory and the knowledge-producing potentials of analytical close
readings. Proposals for monographs and essay collections are welcomed on
music in the classical tradition created after 1900 to the present through the
lens of theory and analysis. The series particularly encourages interdiscip-
linary studies that combine theory and/or analysis with such topical areas
as gender and sexuality, post-colonial and migration studies, voice and text,
philosophy, technology, politics, and sound studies, to name a few.
Compositional Process in Elliott Carter’s String Quartets

A Study in Sketches
Laura Emmery
The Music of Pavel Haas: Analytical and Hermeneutical Studies

Martin Čurda
Concepts of Time in Post-War European Music

Aaron Hayes
Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras

Intertextuality and Stylization
Norton Dudeque
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

music/series/ASTAMN
Musics with and after Tonality
Mining the Gap
Edited by
Paul Fleet
First published 2022
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Paul Fleet; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Paul Fleet to be identified as the author of the editorial material,
and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-138-31636-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-18286-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-45171-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713
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by Newgen Publishing UK
Access the companion website: www.routledgemusicresearch.co.uk
Note for the Reader

Supporting audio examples can be accessed via the online Routledge Music Research
Portal: www.routledgemusicresearch.co.uk
Please enter the activation word RRMusic and your email address when prompted.
You will immediately be sent an automated email containing an access token and
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For my Dad and Grandpa, who both lived remarkable lives and
had such positive beliefs in the value of working hard by doing the
best that you can do. My Dad passed away when I was 20 and my
Grandfather when I was 31, yet their moral compass and sense of
adventure remains with me every single day.
Contents
Under each title and author is a selection of listening that is recommended

to help the reader engage with the content of each chapter. These are not
all of the musics that are discussed in this book, rather each is a selection
to be enjoyed before, during, and after reading the chapter.
List of music analysis abbreviations x

List of contributors xii
Acknowledgements xvi
1 Mining the gap of musics with and after tonality 1

PAU L F L E E T
• Western European Art Music from roughly 1880–1930
2 Mining the gap: what gap? 11

AL I S TAI R H I NTO N
• Arnold Schoenberg (1899), Verklärte Nacht
• Franz Liszt (1878–9), Via Crucis
• Frédéric Chopin (1847), Melodia
• Leo Ornstein (1915), Sonata for Violin and Piano
3 Savage minds in British early-twentieth-century music 33

AN N I K A F ORK ERT
• Cyril Scott (1914), Diatonic Study
• Rebecca Clarke (1918–19), Sonata for Viola and Piano
• Frank Bridge (1913–17), Cello Sonata
• John Foulds (1905), Cello Sonata
4 Space and structure in metatonal musics 54

PAU L F L E E T
• Percy Grainger (1916), ‘Pastoral’ from In a Nutshell
• Rebecca Clarke (1922), ‘The Seal Man’
• Mary Howe (1928), ‘Sand’
viii Contents
5 Carl Nielsen’s musical vitalism 85
C H RI S T OP HER TA R R A N T
• Carl Nielsen (1894), Symphonic Suite
• Nielsen (1916), Fourth Symphony (‘The Inextinguishable’)
• Nielsen (1922), Fifth Symphony
• Nielsen (1924), Sixth Symphony (‘Sinfonia Semplice’)
6 The cautious experiments of M. K. Čiurlionis

(1875–1911): tonalities and realisms in his art and music 106
G E ORG E K EN NAWAY
• Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1904/5), ‘Besacas’
Variations (VL 265)
• Čiurlionis (1904), ‘Sefaa Esec’ Variations (VL 258)
• Čiurlionis (1904), Prelude (VL 256)
• Čiurlionis (1904), ‘Pater Noster’ VL (260)
• Čiurlionis (1900), Fugue in B flat minor (VL 345)
7 J. S. Bach and metatonality in the early piano pieces of

Ferruccio Busoni 126
E RI N N K N YT
• Ferruccio Busoni (unknown), Fuga a 2 voci in stile libero
• Busoni (unknown), Invenzione in C Major
• Busoni 1878), Racconti Fantastici
• Busoni (1883), Macchietta medioevali
• Busoni (1884), Variationen und Fuge in freier Form über
Fr. Chopin’s C moll Präludium
The recordings for this section have been specifically made for this volume
from the scores prepared by Erinn Knyt and performed by the following
author Fred Scott. To listen to these visit [www.routledgemusicresearch.
co.uk/].
8 Ferruccio Busoni –mirror and enigma: transcendence

and the later piano works 150
F RE D S C OTT
• Ferruccio Busoni (1904), Piano Concerto, Op. 39
• Busoni (1881), Prelude in B minor, Op. 37, No. 6
• Busoni (1912), Sonatina seconda
• Busoni (1917), Sonatina in Diem Nativitatis Christi MCMXVII
• Busoni (1921), Drei Albumblätter
Contents ix
The recordings of the Prelude in B minor and the Sonatina seconda have
been specifically made for this volume and performed by the author. To
listen to these visit [www.routledgemusicresearch.co.uk/].
9 Diatonic refraction through metatonal spaces 182

K E N N E T H SMI TH
• Franz Schreker (1912), Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin
• Schreker (1918), Der Schatzgräber
• Schreker (1915), Die Gezeichneten: Overture
• Schreker (1916), Kammersymphonie
10 Transformed desire: Scriabin’s transition away from

functional tonality 205
J E F F RE Y S C OTT Y U N EK
• Alexander Scriabin (1910), Prometheus
• Scriabin (1912), Op. 63, No. 2
• Scriabin (1889), Op. 2, No. 2
• Scriabin (1905), Op. 49, No. 3
• Scriabin (1905), Op. 45, No. 2
11 Musicology, mediation, metatonality: rethinking the

music of Rebecca Clarke and Erwin Schulhoff 229
C H RI S D ROME Y
• Rebecca Clarke (1918–19), Sonata for Viola and Piano
• Erwin Schulhoff (1925), Duo for Violin and Cello
Index 244
List of music analysis abbreviations
Twelve-Tone Technique (Schoenberg, 1975)

P Prime Form (also known as Basic Set (BS))
I Inversion
R Retrograde
RI Retrograde Inversion
Set Theory (Forte, 1977)

pc Pitch class, one of the 12 chromatic pitches represented by
numbers, usually C =0 through to B =11.
pcs A pitch class set, defined in two numbers separated by a hyphen,
for example:
• 3-1 The set (group of pitches) contains three notes that when
ordered are the most packed left, e.g. C, C#, and D.
• 4-11 The set (group of pitches) contains four notes that when
ordered are the11th most packed left, e.g. C, D, E, and F.
{ } A set in normal form.
[ ]‌ A set in prime form.
ic Interval class, the seven most compact intervals (e.g. a major
seventh would be classed a minor second by inversion).
Tx The set under transposition by that number.
WTx A whole-tone collection of pitch classes.
Sonata Form Theory (Hepokoski & Darcy, 2006)

P Primary Theme
TR Transition
MC or ’ Medial Caesura
S Secondary Theme
EEC Essential Expositional Closure
ESC Essential Structural Closure
C Closing
List of music analysis abbreviations xi
References
Forte, A. (1977). The Structure of Atonal Music. New Haven; London: Yale University
Press.
Hepokoski, J. A. & Darcy, W. (2006). Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and
Deformations in the Late Eighteenth-Century Sonata. New York; Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Schoenberg, A. (1975). Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg
(L. Black, trans. L. Stein ed.). London: Faber and Faber.
Contributors
Chris Dromey (Middlesex University, UK) wrote The Pierrot Ensembles:

Chronicle and Catalogue, 1912– 2012 (Plumbago, 2013), co- edited The
Classical Music Industry (Routledge, 2018), and is currently editing The
Routledge Companion to Applied Musicology (Routledge, forthcoming).
He has also written essays on neomodernism in music, British contem-
porary music, and Anglo-Brazilian musical relations for Tempo (2018),
Music in the Social and Behavioural Sciences (SAGE, 2014), British Music
and Modernism, 1895– 1960 (Ashgate, 2010), New Makers of Modern
Culture (Routledge, 2007), and Zemlinsky Studies (Middlesex UP, 2007).
Formerly of PRS for Music and the Open University, Chris is now
Associate Professor in Music at Middlesex University, where he teaches
applied musicology and convenes the university’s Concerts & Colloquia
series. Chris also serves as Trustee for the Society for Music Analysis.
Paul Fleet (Newcastle University, UK) is a Senior Lecturer in Music at
Newcastle University, UK with research specialty in Authentic Music
Theory. He is also a husband, father, National Teaching Fellow, QAA
Subject Expert and Reviewer, Senior Fellow of the HEA, all whilst
remaining a music theory lecturer, keynote popular- music education
speaker, and a published author. His publications include (2009) Ferruccio
Busoni: A Phenomenological Approach to his Music and Aesthetics; (2017)
‘Do we need to teach music notation in UK Popular Music Studies?’; (2017)
‘Rethinking the Guidonian Hand for twenty-first century musicians’; and
is the co-editor and author for (2021) The Routledge Companion to Aural
Skills Pedagogy: Before, In, and Beyond Higher Education.
Annika Forkert (Royal Northern College of Music, UK) is a musicologist and
Lecturer in Music at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.
She held posts as Lecturer in Music at Liverpool Hope University and
as Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Bristol. Before
her PhD on British musical modernism at Royal Holloway, University
of London, she studied Musicology and Philosophy at Humboldt-
University Berlin. Her research centres on the techniques and philosophy
of musical modernism, twentieth-century women composers, and ideas of
List of contributors xiii
collaboration in music. Recent publications include an article on micro-
tonal aesthetics (‘Microtonal Restraint’, JRMA, 2020) and on Elisabeth
Lutyens’s serial technique (‘Magical Serialism: Modernist Enchantment
in Elisabeth Lutyens’s O saisons, ô châteaux!’, Twentieth Century Music,
2017). Annika is currently working on a book about Lutyens and her hus-
band Edward Clark’s work in music.
Alistair Hinton (Composer and Founder of The Sorabji Archive, UK) was born
in Scotland. Hearing John Ogdon playing Chopin’s 4th Ballade on the radio
at the age of 11 encouraged his desire to be a composer. The largely post-
war avant-garde-influenced tutelage of Emile Spira brought him to a cul-
de-sac and the need for a fresh start. Benjamin Britten’s interest in his work
led to his attending Royal College of Music for lessons with Humphrey
Searle and Stephen Savage. He persuaded Sorabji to relax his long-standing
embargo on performance of his music and founded The Sorabji Archive,
a research source for performers and scholars. He published articles and
reviews in various journals, acted as executive producer of numerous
recordings and contributed to broadcasts in USA, Scotland, Netherlands,
and England. The author of two chapters in Sorabji: A Critical Celebration,
ed. Paul Rapoport (Ashgate), he assisted Marc-André Roberge towards his
substantial biography of Sorabji, Opus Sorabjianum, published online in
2013. His output includes pieces for orchestra with and without soloists,
songs, chamber music, organ music, and a substantial collection of piano
music, of which some is recorded on the Altarus label.
George Kennaway (Performer and Conductor, UK) studied at the universities
of Newcastle and Oxford, the Guildhall School of Music, and the University
of Leeds. After a period as Director of Music at the University of Hull,
he is now Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield’s
Centre for Performance Research, and Visiting Research Fellow at the
University of Leeds. In 2008-12 he was a post-doctoral researcher at
the University of Leeds, investigating nineteenth- century annotated
editions of string music. His book Playing the Cello 1780–1930 (Ashgate)
appeared in 2014. Other publications include articles and book chapters
on editions of Haydn cello concertos, opera orchestra contracts, theoret-
ical aspects of historical performance and historiography, and the music
of the Baltic states. He is the leading UK specialist in the music and art of
the Lithuanian M. K. Čiurlionis, with publications on Čiurlionis in UK
and Lithuania, and regularly lectures on Čiurlionis and on Baltic topics –
most recently for the University of Leeds. In 2012 he was an invited key-
note speaker at an international conference in Vilnius in honour of Prof.
Jonas Bruveris, and he has frequently contributed papers at conferences
in Kaunas, Vilnius, and Druskininkai. He has conducted orchestras in
the UK, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Italy, and Lithuania, and
has taught at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Lithuanian
National Academy of Music.
xiv List of contributors
Erinn Knyt (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA) is an Associate
Professor of music history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
She received her BA in Music (Music History and Piano Performance)
with highest honours from the University of California, Davis in 2003,
an MM in Music from Stanford University in 2007, and PhD in Music
and Humanities from Stanford University in 2010. Knyt specializes in
nineteenth-and twentieth- century music, aesthetics, and performance
studies and has written extensively about Ferruccio Busoni. She has art-
icles in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, American Music,
the Journal of Musicology, the Journal of Music History Pedagogy, and
Twentieth Century Music, and has presented papers at conferences
throughout the US and abroad. Her first book, which was published by
Indiana University Press in 2017, documents Busoni’s relationship with
early and mid-career composition mentees, including Jean Sibelius, Edgard
Varèse, Otto Luening, Louis Gruenberg, and Philipp Jarnach. She received
a Faculty Research Grant for archival research related to her book.
Fred Scott (City, University of London, UK) has been active professionally as
performer and composer since the mid 1980s in multiple musical contexts.
His works have been performed in significant venues in UK (South Bank,
Alexandra Palace, Wigmore Hall, Royal Court Theatre) and Australia
(Sydney Opera House). He made his London debut as a soloist in
Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto whilst still a student at the Royal Academy
of Music, subsequently performing widely in the UK, USA, Canada,
Russia, and Europe. As a teacher he has run successful Summer Schools
for many years and his students have won national prizes in for compos-
ition and piano. Several have made an impact in music professionally. In
April 2016 the Kazakevich/Zozina piano duo gave the premiere in London
of his Toccata seconda for two pianos, a tribute to Busoni.
Kenneth Smith (University of Liverpool, UK) is professor of Music Theory
at the University of Liverpool and is president of the Society for Music
Analysis. His first book, Skryabin, Philosophy and the Music of Desire, was
published early in 2013, and his second, Desire in Chromatic Harmony in
2020. A third book is forthcoming for 2022, Listening to the Unconscious,
co-written with Stephen Overy. Kenneth has published essays on
Alexander Skryabin, Karol Szymanowski, Charles Ives, and Alexander
von Zemlinsky. He analyses post-tonal music from the perspective of neo-
Riemannian transformation theory, combining music theory and Lacanian
studies. Kenneth has also written about popular music analysis, editing
a special issue of Music Analysis and co-editing the Routledge Guide to
Popular Music Analysis.
Christopher Tarrant (Newcastle University, UK) has broad interests in art
music of the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. His doctoral research,
at Royal Holloway, University of London, funded by the AHRC, focused
List of contributors xv
on Franz Schubert as a composer of sonata form. This research grew
out of a critical engagement with recent theories of Classical form, espe-
cially Hepokoski’s and Darcy’s Sonata Theory. The research also drew on
psychoanalytic approaches originating in Freud and Lacan, and which
crystallized in the work of Slavoj Žižek. Since then, he has developed an
analytical interest in the symphonic repertoire that emerged in northern
Europe around 1900. Chris has a particular interest in the Danish com-
poser Carl Nielsen (1865–1931), but his work also engages with the music
of Mahler, Bruckner, Sibelius, Elgar, and others.
Jeffrey Scott Yunek (Kennesaw State University, USA) earned a master’s
degree in music theory from Florida State University, and a doctorate
in music theory from Louisianan State University. His dissertation work
focuses on mapping Skryabin’s philosophical influences onto his post-
tonal harmonic language. Yunek’s work on Skryabin has been presented
at two international conferences at the Moscow Conservatory, as well as
numerous regional conferences. He teaches theory, analysis, and aural
skills at Kennesaw State University as a Limited Term Assistant Professor
of Music Theory. His research interests focus round the music of Skryabin,
key relationships in twentieth-century Russian music, and the operas of
Rimsky-Korsakov.
newgenprepdf
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Heidi Bishop, Emma Gallon, Annie Vaughan, Kaushikee
Sharma, Navin Prakash, and Martin Noble, who have invaluably steered this
work towards its publication, and also Judy Lochhead as the Series Editor who
recognized its contribution to the Ashgate Studies in Theory and Analysis of
Music After 1900.
I would also like to thank Richard Harrison for his historical, and at times
hysterical, support; Fred Hollingsworth, David de la Haye, Kath Martin, and
Annie Barrett for their software and technical solutions during these times
of remote working; Liane Brierly and Anne Coxhead for their patience and
ability to listen to my random ideas whilst working on other projects; Kent
Cleland as the co-editor of our book The Routledge Companion to Aural
Skills Pedagogy Before, In, and Beyond Higher Education (2021) for his will-
ingness to stray into discussion and support for my chapters in this volume,
and Ruairidh Patfield during his stint as my research assistant.
The musical examples were recorded at Phoenix Piano Systems Ltd,
Hurstwood Farm, Kent, TN15 8TA by kind permission of Richard Dain.
The piano used was a Phoenix Model 272 Concert Grand, the recordings
were engineered and produced by Jack Scott and the piano technician was
Douglas Chapman. The Sonatina seconda was recorded in a live concert per-
formance at Royal Academy of Music, London and the remastering engineer
was James Bacon.
This book is borne out of patience and for that I am most grateful to
its contributors who have spoken, conference called, and sent messages of
support and encouragement throughout. Their contribution to this volume is
more than their respective chapters, it is their wisdom and passion for music
in a most fractious of musical periods that has made this a rewarding aca-
demic journey. We have grown together as colleagues and although we had
previously published separately in this field of study, this book is the first of
its kind where we come together in our love of such music with and after ton-
ality; I am sure it will not be our last collaboration.
1
Mining the gap of musics with
and after tonality
Paul Fleet
There are three questions we need to ask: (1) what are the musics that are with
and after tonality, (2) do we need yet another term for music at the turn of the
twentieth century, and (3) what is the gap that can be mined? We need to address
these questions not only because they help explore the central themes of the
following chapters but also because they are the most likely questions a reader
may have on picking up such a book. This chapter and the next are designed
to create a virtual parlour before the narrative corridor that leads to the rooms
which embody Chapters 3–11. From its first usage, the ‘parlour was a space
removed from daily work and reserved for social interaction’ (Logan, 2001,
p. 13) and it is in this sense that we use the term here; as a place for speaking
and for social and cultural debate. So, if you would care to, please join us, take
a seat on the rather plush red-velvet armchair and enjoy the conversation…
Question: what are the musics that are with and after tonality?
At the turn of the twentieth century Berlin, Paris, Munich, and Vienna were
capitals of modernity. In the visual, literary, and performing arts as well as in
political and social thought these Central European cities contained the people
and movements that helped define what can be understood as guiding principles
of a movement which, as Christopher Butler (2010) summarizes, saw…
the loss of belief in religion, the rise of our dependence on science and
technology, the expansion of markets and the commodification brought
about by capitalism, the growth of mass culture and its influence, the
invasion of bureaucracy into private life, and changing beliefs about
relationships between the sexes.
This was a radical moment not only in social and cultural history but also
in music history, which includes its own reading of social and cultural his-
tory. Composers in this time period were not suddenly set free from the
chains of music for purpose or pleasure but they were more easily able to
move around, express, and include the aesthetic and philosophic beliefs that
informed their compositions. Within this freedom to move around previously
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713-1
2 Paul Fleet
constructed ideals, many composers embraced such openness in their music,
and between 1880 and 1930 a wealth of music was composed and performed
that reconstructed the external codes and gestures of Common Practice ton-
ality in reconsidered and idiosyncratic ways.
To help put this into context, one of the most typical extroversive codes
in a piece of tonally driven music is the perfect cadence. In its most simple
form, the movement from the secondary-dominant chord to the dominant
chord then onto the tonic chord signals closure by the progression from
secondary-dominant to dominant acting as a preparatory step before reso-
lution in movement from the dominant chord to the tonic chord. It does this
by utilizing the harmonic energy of a tonally driven cycle of fifths whose
Pythagorean energy and culturally coded movement from harmonic tension
to resolution (leading notes ‘wanting’ to resolve to the tonic of the consequent
chord) informs the progression towards closure (see Example 1.1).
Example 1.1 A simple Common Practice three-chord perfect cadence in a generic

orchestration of voices.
Source: Author.
It is its externality that matters, not what particular key the piece of music
is in nor where the individual orchestration of voices/instruments are during
the sounding. The movement from V to I is enough to carry with it the signals
of closure. To further illuminate this point outside of musical pieces, such
is the external ubiquity of a perfect cadence (and its partner the imperfect
cadence) that these sounds when reduced to two single notes (dominant root-
note to tonic root-note) were adopted by Microsoft in the late 1990s and have
since remained as the auditory notifications for the plugging-in (opening) and
unplugging (closing) of a USB device.
Music that is with and after tonality is not bound to follow an external
code to generate a sense of closure. Rather the idea of closure is introversive;
the codes and gestures that signal tension and resolution throughout the
music are reinforced through their repetition-in-context and therefore become
themselves the signals of closure. Kofi Agawu (1991) discusses the coding of
Musics with and after tonality 3
tonal music and it is worth adapting his sense of play between the extroversive
and the introversive for the purposes of understanding music that is both with
and after tonality. Musical signs (topics) that consist of a signifier (in this
example the form of a cadence to generate closure) and the signified (the con-
ventional function of a cadence to generate closure) move beyond ‘Classical
music [which]… is conceptually laden with topical signification’ (p. 49) to
become music that is introversively structured with idiosyncratic signification.
The following example is deliberately simple in its construction to show how
such idiosyncratic signification can be created by a composer.
Example 1.2 A simple metatonal three-chord closure in a generic orchestration of

voices.
Source: Author.
This closure does not use chord V or I in the key area nor a secondary-
dominant connection, and the use of a secondary triad in first inversion has
been deliberately constructed to avoid any sense of Common Practice extro-
version. Instead, the sense of closure is created through a narrative declar-
ation on a repeated chord that remains within the key area that does not seek
to serve as a tonic. The movement from tension to resolution is still with three
chords but it is done with the restatement and then prolongation of the har-
mony marked against the constant duration units (Parks, 2003, p. 199). We
might imagine that the time signature and the presentation of harmony in
the bars preceding this closure represent events on and across four-beats in
every bar. At the close of this imagined section a secondary triad is heard
for two beats. It is then repeated to restate its position as a structural marker,
and the two soundings of the same chord create tension by stasis which is
in contrast to the flow of harmony heard beforehand. The chord is repeated
again but this time it is heard for four beats, and this releases the tension of
the stasis by creating a familiar space inclusive of the harmony we have just
heard but over a longer period of time that includes a natural decay even
if it is not orchestrated as such. The rule of three in defining the sense of
connected events (Carlson & Shu, 2007) is the only common element between
the Common Practice cadence (Example 1.1) and the Metatonal Closure
(Example 1.2) and it is hoped that these two musical examples will help in
providing an aural understanding of the extroversive nature of the former as
a phrase in Common Practice music and the introversive nature of the latter
as a simple exemplar of metatonal musics.
4 Paul Fleet
The above is true not just for harmonic elements but also for all the elem-
ents of music including pitch, duration, loudness, timbre, texture, and spa-
tial location (Burton, 2015). If we simply take the first on this list then a
composer’s selection of major and minor seconds and thirds are controlled in
tonal music by the scale of the current key area. For example, if a Common
Practice composer is in the key area of C major then they will preference the
movement from C to D (being a major second) and the movement from C to
E (being a major third) over the movement from C to D flat (minor second)
and C to E flat (minor third). These latter minor intervals are still in play but
they would likely be used by the composer to challenge the authority of C
major and potentially signal a new key area. Within music that is with and
after tonality the major seconds and thirds hold reference to a recognized
key area but crucially the inclusion of the minor seconds and thirds do not
disrupt but rather work alongside the major intervals to create a sense of
third-space (Bhabha, 2006). Their function sits after their role as the other to
an incumbent scale, outside any signalling of a new key area, but before their
full inclusion into the equality of a chromatic scale. In essence, if we locate
the tonality borne of Species Counterpoint (Fux, 1965) in one corner with
its rules of consonance and dissonance clearly in place and serialism/aton-
ality in the other corner with its emancipation of dissonance (Schoenberg,
1975) in full throw then the music being discussed in this volume moves to
just over the centre position where dissonance is accepted within a sense of
tonality but is more than a chromatic inflection moving back to the preferred
interval. We might recognize this as the same space that Dmitri Tymoczko
(2011) places in between ‘the chromatic tradition, which rejects five-to eight-
note macroharmonies in favour of the chromatic scale; and the scalar trad-
ition, in which limited macroharmonies continue to play a significant role’
and an environment where there are ‘new possibilities lying between these
two extremes’ (p. 181). However, such descriptions are difficult to unpack
further without the context of the music in question. This book does not seek
to categorize all variables in this third space, but it does hope to represent
the commonalities of the interplay of musical elements between a scalar and
chromatic tradition as each author, in their respective chapters, explores the
musical rethinking within the context the composer’s pieces. Therefore, it is
perhaps worth leaving this description for the moment as having just enough
detail to answer the question of ‘what are the musics that are with and after
tonality’ with the answer that they are musics that consciously refamiliarize
the codes and gestures of tonality in idiosyncratic ways.
Question: do we need yet another term for music at the turn of the
twentieth century?
In short, yes we do but I am firmly aware that this answer is more complex
than a simple affirmation of need. Speaking for the collective of academics,
performers, and composers in this volume who work in this time-period we
have often felt conflicted with the not exclusive list of potential synonyms
below. To select just four of these: neo-tonal/neoclassical (which we felt
embodied the revival of Classical forms and structures (Whittall, 2021) rather
than the fundamental re-thinking of tonal possibilities), post-tonal (which
we felt uncomfortable with by its close association to serialism and particu-
larly the theory of Allen Forte (1977)), nor pitch-centric (which we could
not completely align with as the term we were looking for needed to include
elements of music that were beyond the control of pitch-centres and Stanley
Kleppinger (2011) has eloquently acknowledged the ‘tangled connotations of
the term’ (p. 65)), nor pan-tonal (which was discounted due to its preference
by Schoenberg (1980) to represent music that was without tonal centricity) is
quite right for the music by the composers listed in this volume who produced
works in this time period.
In 2009, I used the term metatonal in reference to the music of Ferruccio
Busoni (Fleet, 2009) as the prefix meta holds the etymology of both
‘with and after’ (OED). Busoni was a composer who had a Janus-like char-
acter and believed that tonality had yet to be fully explored. He proposed
and developed junge Klassizität [young Classicality] in his teachings and
compositions, and in a letter to Paul Bekker stated that this idea was ‘the
mastery, the sifting and the turning to account of all the gains of previous
experiments and their inclusion in strong and beautiful forms’ (Busoni, 1965,
p. 20). In the conclusion to the aforementioned book on Busoni, I made ref-
erence to Anthony Pople’s ‘Tonalities project’ (Cross & Russ, 2004) where the
late author had begun work considering music that sat in between the bound-
aries of tonality and atonality because it was such a ripe place for musical
analysis. I suggested that my work on Busoni contributed to this engaging
space but the idea of describing music as being with and after tonality was
something that could equally apply to other composers who inhabited the
same social and cultural period in music history.
However, this was not the first appearance of the word ‘metatonal’ in
published print regarding musical materials. Randy Sandke (1995), in his
Hal Leonard publication, introduces Harmony for a New Millennium: An
Introduction to Metatonal Music, where, and I quote, ‘scales and tonality
are dispensed with’ (p. 6). Sandke’s use of the word metatonal is therefore
employing the ‘beyond’ aspect of its construction and is defined in reference
to its author’s classification of four-note chords. Here I do not make any crit-
ical comment on his work, which I recognize as an engaging approach to
improvisation in jazz music, but the term as read by Sandke takes only the
‘after’ element of the prefix and I do not feel that it has become too exclusive
to not be adopted for our purposes.
More closely but not totally aligned to this project is the use of the word
metatonal by Yves Knockaert. As Kenneth Smith goes on to argue in Chapter 9
of this book, this usage is characterized in terms of tonality being ‘presented
as an alien force’ and in Knockaert’s own words is described as being ‘about
a reminiscence’ (2017, p. 162). A backwards-facing definition –like Sandke’s
6 Paul Fleet
forwards- looking definition –does not quite align to the bi- directional
inclusivity of this useful noun and adjective. Therefore, given that there is
only a single use of metatonal prior to 2009 and one use post 2009 –and fur-
ther noting that ‘metatonal’ has not entered widespread use in the lexicon of
musicologists –we, as a collection of authors who recognize its value for the
time period, would seek to claim the word metatonal for current and future
use: for music that is both with and after tonality.
Most recently, and helpfully, the term overtonality has been introduced by
Daniel Harrison (2016) to mean ‘a property of any tonal hierarchy that relies
on spectral overlap for its stability conditions’ (p. 17). In other words, which
are also Harrison’s words, ‘referential elements that can be said to function,
act, or serve as to substitute for, and represent a tonic, and those elements
that feel and sound traditionally like tonics’ (p. 17). The assembled authors
recognize the value of these descriptors in the music of Bartok, Bernstein,
Chen, Duruflé, Hindemith, Martin, Prokofiev, and Messiaen (which Harrison
lists in his book), but do not feel it fully represents the music of Frank Bridge,
Ferruccio Busoni, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Rebecca Clarke, John
Foulds, Percy Grainger, Mary Howe, Carl Nielsen, Leo Ornstein, Franz
Schreker, Erwin Schulhoff, Cyril Scott, and Alexander Scriabin (which is
considered in this book). These latter composers similarly fall into the same
wide gap as the former set of composers, between the polar extremes of
tonal and serial/atonal music, but crucially their music can have elements
that do not act nor represent the function of a tonic; and for some of their
compositions the third-space (as described above) is created by such musical
elements being untied from a tonic. If we are therefore to be clear about why
we are using a different term then we could rephrase Harrison’s words (but
not to be against his position): metatonality has stability conditions that are
held within the construction of the composition itself where the tonal hier-
archies are weakened yet their signification remains. Further, these referential
elements can function and act as tonics but do not necessarily serve as nor
substitute for tonics.
Metatonality is a term we are ready to use and confident to support in
this proposed volume as a descriptor of music at the turn of the twentieth
century that is both ‘with’ and ‘after’ tonality. It is these prepositions that
are the glue that stick not only the term to the types of musics under con-
sideration, but also cohere the collective understanding of the term as used
by the authors in each of their respective chapters. For Hinton, Knyt, Scott,
and Dromey metatonality is found within emerging spatial connections of the
preposition that can be found in the compositional pull of tonality, the expan-
sion of tonality through contrapuntal collisions, the polyphonic connections
of tonal structures without the constraints of an overarching tonality, and the
driving of new knowledge and structures from within tonality (Chapters 2, 7,
8, and 11 respectively). For Fleet, Tarrant, and Smith metatonality is found in
the prepositional direction pulling away from an expectation of tonality but
not so far as to not become disconnected by composers playing with tonal
language games, reconsidering codes and gestures from within tonality, cre-
ating structures that have a problematic relationship with tonality, and seeking
filial alternatives to diatonic tonality (Chapters 4, 5, and 9 respectively). Whilst
for Forkert, Kennaway, and Yunek metatonality is found in the prepositional
space between tonality and serialism/atonality in a bricolage between pas-
toralism and pantonality, the sense of poise just before a movement away
from tonality into the fin-de-siècle but not quite, and the competing impulses
of chromatic tension and tonal security (Chapters 3, 6, and 10 respectively).
Whilst some of us choose to expressly use the term and others recognize its
value without being so explicit, we collectively believe it is the most appro-
priate term for music that is represented by our collection of composers, and
others, who considered and composed music between 1880 and 1930.
Question: what is the gap that can be mined?

If we accept that a ‘gap’ is a break in the continuity then what is the continuity
which has such a gap? The answer is a general perception in the timeline of
music history, and the main culprit for setting this misperception is a music
history curriculum. Any music curriculum has a tough job, it has to create
sections of learning into discrete chunks for ease of understanding. But with
this task comes the division of music into time periods. For example, a quick
search on the internet using the keywords ‘Baroque+music’ tells us that this
period ended around 1750. Whilst this position can be helpful it does create
a division between one period and the next. We should always be careful of
what we read on the internet. However, the point still stands that there is
a common perception that the Baroque period ended around 1750. James
Webster argues ‘a periodization is not true or false, but a reading, a way of
making sense of complex data; periodizations serve the needs and desires of
those who make and use them’ (2004, p. 49) and it is this position we need to
take into account when we consider the broader periodization of music his-
tory into the Western Classical Tradition (1650 to 1910) and Art Music since
1910. A division which is often read in the same curricula as the break from
tonality and serialism/atonality.
At Key Stage 4 in England (as an example that is replicated in other edu-
cation systems and is used here as a representative of the majority of edu-
cational journeys but is not singled out as such), school children who select
Music as a GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) have in their
curriculum the following guidance regarding areas of study: ‘at least one
area of study must be drawn from music composed in the Western Classical
Tradition with all or the majority being composed between 1650 and 1910
and at least one other area of study must not be drawn from the Western
Classical Tradition’ (DfE, 2015). This is an early and unhelpful divisional
marker in an understanding of music history. Should the student wish to pro-
gress to ‘A’ Level then one typical exam board document states that there
are seven areas of study of which the first is compulsory ‘Western classical
8 Paul Fleet
tradition 1650–1910’ and then there is a choice between ‘Pop music’, ‘Music
for media’, ‘Music for theatre’, ‘Jazz’, ‘Contemporary traditional music’ and
‘Art music since 1910’. Should the choice be made to select the latter as an
area of study then a helpful descriptor of the element ‘tonality’ in this area of
study is given as ‘bitonality, tonal ambiguity, atonality and modality’ (AQA,
2019). Whilst the language of the A level curriculum for ‘Art music since 1910’
includes the useful addition of ‘tonal ambiguity’ it is unlikely that much time
will be spent unpacking what this means. The area of study is up against more
popular choices and if it is chosen, it is one of four descriptors that has the
least chance of definition given its very ambiguity. Whichever this is, we find
repetition of the earlier divisional markers
Aligned to this unhelpful periodization is the association with tonality as
a core element of the Western Classical Tradition and serialism/atonality as a
core element of Art Music since 1910. This can be found in the specifications
for both GCSE and A Level qualifications that define the Western Classical
Tradition as containing major and minor tonalities and modulations around
related key areas, and Art Music since 1910 as representing movements away
from tonality and including serialism/atonality. To repeat my earlier pos-
ition, I am not making any judgement upon any particular awarding bodies
or guidance documents, as those selected are representative of the field, but
in this typical educational journey a young musician is encouraged, either
explicitly or implicitly by the curriculum, to think of a defined space in music
history, around 1910 and with tonality on one side and something else on the
other. This is the break in continuity which creates the gap, and which can
unhelpfully inform the listening habits of those who stop their formal music
education journey after GCSE or A Level qualifications (either by not con-
tinuing onto degree level education or by taking another subject at degree
level). For those who do continue onto degree level education in Music they
are met by educators who most likely have to disrupt such a preformed pos-
ition and open the door to the multiplicity of musical modernity. Hinton picks
up these points in greater detail, but it is safe to say there is the perception of a
gap in music history which straddles the middle of this identified time period.
So how do we explore this gap with the goal of it not being seen as a gap
anymore? The latter part can only come with a change in perception, and to
change the perception we need to mine that gap and see what lies between such
divisional markers. At this point, I hold the hope carried in Gloria Ladson-
Billings centennial address to the American Educational Research Association
where she quoted Sylvia Wynter’s (1995) opinion that ‘new studies would
change the shape and form of the curriculum because of the transdisciplinary
and interdisciplinary ways they were shaped and articulated… and looked at
those experiences across traditional boundaries’ (Ladson-Billings, 2016). To
then help move us into this transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary space we
conclude this chapter with the words of Adolf Loos, architect and theorist,
who was contemporaneous with our time period:
Do not fear abuse for being unmodern. Changes in the old building style
are only permitted when they represent an improvement; otherwise stay
with the old things. Because the truth, even if it is hundreds of years old,
has more of a connection with us than the lie that walks beside us.
Quoted in (Illies, 2013, p. 227)
The ‘lie’ that walks beside us in this musical journey is that the periodization
of music history, largely through curricula, has created a simplistic binarist
division between tonality and serialism/atonality. The music in between these
spaces is ignored, or regarded as a path away from tonality, or as being tonally
ambiguous whatever that may be, or reduced to being experimentations that
led towards serialism/atonality. But what if we confront that lie and consider
the musics at the turn of the twentieth century that sought to rethink tonality
from within themselves. Instead, and whilst it can be a way of making sense
of the complex data it can create, what if we work with a truth that such peri-
odization creates an unnatural continuity and leaves gaps for us to mine? If we
do this, then the exploration of such gaps through transdisciplinary and inter-
disciplinary ways could eventually seek to change the shape and form of the
curriculum, and ultimately change this space from being a gap to a recognized
space in music history.
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2
Mining the gap: what gap?
Alistair Hinton
What follows is very much a composer’s-eye (or -ear) view of the subject of
this book and, as such, it represents a stance originating in personal experi-
ence rather than an academic analysis of musical history since the so-called
‘bonds’ of tonality were gradually released more than a century ago.
My initial thought about the notion of Mining the Gap was ‘what gap?’,
in that the frequently encountered implicit notion of a ‘post-tonal’ age seems
never fully to have manifested itself in practice, nor does it seem likely to
do so. Whilst not everyone might agree as to whether or not music can be
considered as a ‘language’ (as that term is generally understood), its purpose
remains that of expression and communication, so it does at least share that
characteristic with verbal language. In the present context, however, it might
be more appropriate to write of the manner, matter, and methodologies of
musical creativity rather than of ‘linguistic developments’ in music.
Whilst some readers might have encountered attitudes to the ongoing
history of musical creation that are predicated upon an assumption that
developments in one era largely supplant and supersede those of previous
ones (and should be expected to do so), the vast majority of music written
since, say, 1900 suggests that this has rarely been the case. We continue, for
example, to perform and listen to many styles of music, both ‘tonal’ and
‘atonal’, that seem not to seek to espouse such an agenda; not only have much
jazz and popular musics of many kinds been dependent upon an overtly tonal
persuasion, the sheer variety of what might loosely (and inadequately) be
termed ‘art music’ since 1900 has continued to this day to evidence a similar
recourse to tonality.
Musical creativity through its composers

One particular example of this stance may be found in the polemical
statements of Pierre Boulez (1925–2016) in the years following the end of
World War II, for example ‘any musician who has not experienced –I do
not say understood, but truly experienced –the necessity of dodecaphonic
music is USELESS...for his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his
epoch’ (Fisk, 1997, p. 419), yet he contradicted himself at the same time
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713-2
12 Alistair Hinton
by describing serial dodecaphony as devised and practised by Arnold
Schoenberg (1874–1951) as ‘a direction as wrong as any in the history of
music’. His further observation in the same essay that ‘creation exists only
in the unforeseen made necessary’ (Fisk, 1997, p. 421) is less obviously dog-
matic but might be taken as supportive of this idea. When, in 1951, his elder
compatriot Henri Dutilleux (1916–2013) had presented ‘his vibrantly dia-
tonic First Symphony, Boulez greeted him by turning his back’ (Ross, 2007,
p. 273). A piece in the UK daily newspaper The Guardian (Hazelton, 2015)
usefully draws together several of Boulez’s often barbed pronouncements,
spread across some six decades from 1952, in which composers as diverse
as Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975), John Cage (1912–1992), Karlheinz
Stockhausen (1928–2007) and even, as we have seen, the widely accepted
father of serial dodecaphony Schoenberg all fall under the maître’s marteau
like so many lots at a musical auction.
What –especially in view of the irony of Boulez’s later comment ‘I don’t
want my statements to be frozen in time’ (Hazelton, 2015) –should we make
of such trenchant observations today, almost seven decades after they began?
In general terms, perhaps the most charitably pragmatic response might be
the recognition of a perceived need to overthrow the past in the light of the
most heinous aspects of the history of the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury, as if in some kind of attempt at catharsis; this would be understand-
able insofar as it goes. His remark that ‘a civilisation that conserves is one
that will decay’ nevertheless remains typically unrepentant –and it dates from
1975, a full three decades after the close of World War II; in adding that it
‘attributes more importance to memory than [to] the future’, he seems to take
another indirect swipe at Dutilleux, who the author Alex Ross notes ‘reflects
his fascination with time and memory in his compositions, and uses involun-
tary memory to link past, present and future’ (Ross, 2007). The assertion that
follows –that ‘the strongest civilisations are those without memory –those
capable of complete forgetfulness’ –smacks of effortful special pleading in
an attempted defiance of overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary.
Boulez concludes ‘conducting has forced me to absorb a great deal of his-
tory, so much so, in fact, that history seems more than ever to me a great
burden…in my opinion we must get rid of it once and for all’, though quite
how he might have envisaged consigning history to history is left unclear
(and, after all, no one forced him to continue his conducting activities). For
all the talk of a gradual softening in attitude in Boulez’s latter years, how-
ever, he wrote as late as 2011 that ‘they decry the Taliban for destroying
everything, but civilisations are destroyed to be able to move on’ (and Boulez
seems not to have commented on the attacks in his home city of Paris and its
northern suburb Saint- Denis on 13 November 2015 for which another
notorious terrorist organization, so-called Islamic State, claimed ‘responsi-
bility’). The common notion of fundamentalist terrorist destruction committed
in the name of Islam might tempt one, however ill-advisedly, to draw a par-
allel with Stockhausen’s much misunderstood, widely misinterpreted though
Mining the gap: what gap? 13
still profoundly unfortunate description of 9/11 as ‘the greatest work of art
imaginable for the whole cosmos’ (Rundfunk, 2001).
As perhaps the most consistently vociferous of Stockhausen’s contempor-
aries in such matters, Boulez arguably has much for which to answer here and
there can be no doubt that his dictatorial expressions exerted significant influ-
ence in the early days of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse. Yet even in its ardent
championing of ‘modernism’ in the days when total serialist practices enjoyed
their relatively short-lived existence, it is clear that any suggestion that the
pursuit of dodecaphony and concomitant rejection of tonality represented
the ne plus ultra of musical progress is flawed on a number of grounds.
Firstly, not only did Schoenberg’s own initial aim to undermine the domin-
ance of the octave and sweep away other hierarchical relationships (as in ‘12
tones equal only to one another’) hold sway for but a brief period in his own
music, he also continued to write the occasional tonal works almost until the
end of his life.
Secondly, other composers before him had toyed with similar experimental
procedures for organizing tones, including Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915),
Nikolay Roslavets (1881–1944) and Joseph Matthias Hauer (1883–1959), but
the ever-questing Franz Liszt (1811–1886) had given thought to such possi-
bilities as long ago as the early 1830s, having attended lectures by the Belgian
music theorist François-Joseph Fétis (1784–1871). From these, he derived the
idea of an onde omnitonique (akin to a tone row) as a logical replacement for
traditional tonality, based on the notion of an historical process from ‘ton-
ality’ via ‘polytonality’ to an ‘omnitonality’ in which every note would become
a ‘tonic’–a concept that seems remarkably close in principle to Schoenberg’s
‘12 tones equal only to one another’ (Ramann, 2018) and which he referred
to as an Endziel, or ultimate goal, of this process. As an illustration of his
ideas on this, he composed a Prélude omnitonique, long thought to be lost
but recently rediscovered, but he planned to take matters further in sketches
for a treatise on modern harmony which do still appear to be lost; Liszt’s stu-
dent Arthur Friedheim (1859–1932) wrote of having seen and discussed them
with Liszt who apparently replied to his questions ‘I have not published it
because the time for it is not yet ripe’. The book was to be called Sketches for
a Harmony of the Future, a title curiously predictive of Busoni’s (1911) Sketch
of a New Æsthetic of Music.
Thirdly, non- serially oriented undermining of tonality and tonal
relationships and an ‘emancipation of dissonance’ had already characterized
some of the music of such composers as Charles Ives (1874–1954), Edgard
Varèse (1883– 1965), Matthijs Vermeulen (1888– 1967), and Leo Ornstein
(1893–2002), all before Schoenberg’s first forays into serial dodecaphony in
1924. For all of that, it is significant in the present context that none of these
composers ever abandoned tonality and tonal references altogether.
Alex Ross’ intriguing reference to Dutilleux using ‘involuntary memory to
link past, present and future’ brings to mind two other composers: one later,
one earlier. The composer, pianist and author Ronald Stevenson (1928–2015)
14 Alistair Hinton
was a leading authority on Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924), even describing
him as his mæstro in absentia. He regarded one significant feature of Busoni’s
work as seeking to link the past and the future together in the present (Varèse,
whom Busoni nicknamed l’illustro futuro [the illustrious future], apparently
found this aspect of Busoni contradictory, with his Sonatina Seconda for
piano seeming to look into the future while his extensive editing and tran-
scribing work on the music of J. S. Bach (1685–1750) suggested an almost
devout embracing of the past). Busoni’s thoughts about this might have been
inspired in part by H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Busoni was familiar with
a number of Wells’ works and mentions this one in a letter written to his
wife from Bergamo dated 26 September 1913 (Busoni, 1938, pp. 234–235).
Several allusions to his pensées about time are also to be found in the exten-
sive collection of Busoni’s letters to his wife. From Chicago he writes ‘Kant
is right; time is only an idea’ (Busoni, 25 April 1910, pp. 177–178). From the
same city, he states ‘I have almost accounted for the omnipresence of time;
but I have not found out why we humans think of time as a line going from
backwards, forwards, whilst it must be in all directions like everything else
in the system of the world’ (Busoni, 30 March 1911, pp. 194–195).… From
Cassel he notes ‘the following idea occurred to me: if one admits that there are
such things as ‘presentiments’ and ‘second sight’, and if one can look into the
future (if only for the tiniest moment and shortest distance), it is logical that
one should have the same capacity for looking backwards into time’ (Busoni,
26 February 1913, p. 219). This seems to fly in the face of –or perhaps even
render impossible –the notion that the musical expressions of one era over-
throw those of earlier ones; had Busoni lived for another quarter century or
more, it would have been fascinating to hear him arguing with Boulez about
such things! It might also be tempting to wonder what Busoni might have
made of researches emerging from Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) almost a century after his death, an article on which was published
under the title A New Theory On Time Indicates Present and Future Exist
Simultaneously (Unknown, 2019); speculations within the world of physics
they may be, but their possible impact upon how we perceive time and its
passage might seem to reflect and indeed support Busoni’s own speculations.
Closer to Busoni’s own time and perhaps also related to his ideas on this was
Chagall’s painting Time Is a River without Banks.
One composer who revered Busoni from the time of his initial encounters
with his music and piano playing was Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892–1988).
Sorabji met Busoni in London in 1919 and played to him a piano sonata that
he had recently completed (this is the one now known as his first, although
he had already written another in 1917 which was never published). Despite
some reservations, Busoni seemed impressed by the younger composer’s work
and asked what he would like him to do, whereupon Sorabji asked for a letter
of introduction to help him have the score published and Busoni duly obliged.
Sorabji was a late starter as a composer; his earliest known works date from
1914 when he was already in his twenties, so the sonata that he played to
Busoni was very much a work from his apprenticeship (if one can deploy that
term in the context of an auto-didact). His prolific correspondence with the
composer Peter Warlock (Philip Heseltine, 1894–1930) commenced in 1913
and reveals Sorabji to be a fervent advocate of the latest trends in European
and Russian music with which he had developed surprising familiarity for
a young aspiring musician in the largely backward-looking England of the
early years of the twentieth century. He voraciously devoured the music of
Bartók, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg and wrote about it with vibrant enthu-
siasm, much to the perplexity of some of his peers. As he developed during
the 1920s, his music earned him a reputation as an outrageously modernist
maverick.
The perception of Sorabji the ‘modernist’ may unreasonably have clung
to him for too long (due perhaps in part to a lack of performances of his
work); he gradually came to find himself less and less sympathetic towards
‘new’ musical thinking as the century progressed, as evidenced in many of his
published critical reviews in English journals (most notably The New Age and
The New English Weekly) of the music of Stravinsky and Schoenberg in par-
ticular. Whilst his music struck some critics as uncompromisingly challenging,
it was always largely tonal. His attitudes and responses to tonality identified
that, for him, ‘tonality’ and ‘atonality’ were by no means mutually exclusive;
his own compositional methodology espoused a freedom of expression that
witnessed tonal harmony sitting side-by-side with music whose tonal roots
were far less overt. He was to reject serialism, Stravinskyan neo-classicism and
many post-war musical persuasions.
A composer’s view of such musical creativity

In my own work, I have tended largely to adopt a similar stance that has
encouraged me to regard stylistic developments over the years as effectively
enabling the expansion of composers’ modus operandi rather than as a route
towards any kind of narrowing factionalization. A number of composers
have described initial encounters with particular works as springboards
for their own creativity, Oliver Knussen (1952–2018) and Colin Matthews
(b. 1946) citing Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, Elliott Carter (1908–2012), and
numerous others Le Sacre du Printemps by Stravinsky (1882–1971) and David
Matthews (b. 1943) the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven (1770–1827). Having
been raised in a music-free zone, my first chance encounter with music was a
broadcast by John Ogdon (1937–1989) of the F minor Ballade of Fryderyk
Chopin (1810–1849); this had the same kind of impact. After the briefest of
acquaintances with the Piano Trio and Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé
by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937), the third and fourth symphonies of Albert
Roussel (1869–1937) and Stravinsky’s l’Oiseau de feu, my earliest education as
a composer was very much Darmstadt-oriented. I was immersed in the works
of Boulez, Nono, Stockhausen and others at a time when I knew nothing
of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. With so little previous musical
16 Alistair Hinton
experience, I accepted this as the music of my own time and pursued it for a
while until finding that I seemed to lack a sense of perspective and that the
initial excitement had begun to wear thin. Attending a live performance of
Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra proved to be a catalyst to get me back
on track, following which I began to familiarize myself with earlier music by
Schoenberg as well as that of Mahler, then Wagner and then a great deal more
from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for the first time.
Widening my experiences in this way led to a belief that, in much music
of the past century and more, ‘atonality’ is often a matter of degree rather
than something specifically quantifiable and that, in this and so many other
aspects of music, listeners with different experiential perspectives will in any
case perceive and respond to tonal and ‘atonal’ references differently. My
early experiences with the work of Boulez et al had certainly proved to be of
immense value in sharpening the ears and no doubt also came to influence my
aural perceptions of tonal music.
Compositional creativity through its music

The establishment of equal temperament arguably gave rise to a broadening
vocabulary of tonal hierarchies and relationships; with this came ever wider
means of expression. By the time that the dominance of and dependence
upon tonality began to be called into question in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, Western European Art Music had come to embrace a
vast variety of ideas of which most would have been unimaginable in Haydn’s
day. The third and ninth symphonies of Beethoven and the music-dramas
of Wagner had opened the way for the vastness of scale to be espoused by
Bruckner and Mahler in their mature symphonies; a concomitant expansion
of orchestral forces and textural and polyphonic complexities –the former
enhanced in part by instrumental design developments and performers’
virtuosity –reached its zenith in the first decade of the twentieth century in
such works of high late-Romanticism as the operas Salome and Elektra by
Richard Strauss (1864–1949), Mahler’s later symphonies and Schoenberg’s
Gurrelieder.
All of this was accompanied by a tendency towards increasing harmonic
chromaticism, the ‘shifting sands’ of more rapid modulations and a lessening
of a sense of ‘home key’ in that the tonal centre of the end of a piece might
be different to that of its beginning; for example, of Mahler’s ten symphonies,
only three –the sixth, eighth, and tenth –end in the same key as they begin.
Even, then, however, in the heady years leading to the outbreak of World
War I, a profound sense of building upon past traditions continued to
inform even the most challenging scores, tempering any notion of the kind
of ‘newness’ that seeks to overthrow the past; there are many fascinating
examples of precedent here, which I will illustrate in no particular order.
Wagner had famously extended the scope of tonality in Tristan und Isolde
and parts of Der Ring des Nibelungen (although the much-quoted ‘Tristan
chord’ seems still to be misunderstood by some as a new harmonic departure
when it is not the harmony itself but the contexts in which it is used that
is arguably ‘new’). Much of the Gurrelieder of Schoenberg seems to sym-
bolize a Wagnerian apotheosis, yet its opening is one of its rare moments of
tonal stasis; even here, however, the Wagner legacy is revealed as potent when
comparing it to the opening of Das Rheingold, both works beginning firmly
in the key of E flat major and remaining there for some considerable time,
the Wagner slowly rising from the depths of the Rhine and the Schoenberg
descending from the stars above it. Curiously, even the first change of tonality
in each has a common factor, the Wagner dropping by a perfect fifth to A flat
major while that in the Schoenberg rises by the same interval to B flat major.
The two works are separated in time by some half century.
That some audience members appeared to struggle to keep pace with
developments in certain music early in the twentieth century seems evident
from riots that broke out at a number of premières, notably Schoenberg’s
String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7 (1905), Varèse’s Bourgogne (1911)
and, perhaps most famously of all, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (1913),
although the last of these might have originated more in outrage at Dyaghilev’s
choreography than Stravinsky’s music. In Schoenberg’s case, eyebrows had
already been raised at the emergence in his string sextet Verklärte Nacht
(1899) of one particular chord despite its place in a modulatory sequence
whose logic is endorsed by the voice-leading; it is no more out of the ordinary
than a dominant ninth in which the ninth happens to be in the bass. Whether
Schoenberg had seen the score of Liszt’s Via Crucis (1878–79) is open to
question, although he would not have heard it as its first performance did
not take place until 1929; based on the Stations of the Cross, the fourth of
them, Jesus begegnet seiner heiligen Mutter –its tonal instability in many ways
anticipatory of Busoni –also has as its first harmony a dominant ninth with
the ninth in the bass.
Example 2.1 From Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4.

18 Alistair Hinton
Example 2.2 From Liszt: Via Crucis.
A decade later, Farben, from his Funf Orchesterstücke, Op. 16 (1909) finds
Schoenberg obsessing over a similar ninth chord, this time with its third in
the bass.
Example 2.3 From Schoenberg: Farben (Funf Orchesterstücke, Op. 16 –iii).
Verklärte Nacht, which has long been one of its composer’s most popular
pieces, nonetheless embraces passages that doubtless disturbed some of its
early listeners in which modulations and progressions between distant tonal-
ities abound; some of these can be quite rapid and, whilst they do not under-
mine tonality as such, they certain blur any sense of tonal centres:
Example 2.4 From Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4.
Again, there are numerous earlier examples of this kind of practice, such as
the following three from Chopin:
Example 2.5 From Chopin: Nocturne in B major, for piano, Op. 62, No. 1 (1845–46).
Example 2.6 From Chopin: Ballade No. 2 in F major, for piano, Op. 38 (completed
in 1839).
20 Alistair Hinton
Example 2.7 From Chopin: Piano Trio, Op. 8 (1829) –ii.
The following passage, which opens Schoenberg’s symphonic poem Pelleas

und Melisande (1902–03), is unquestionably tonal, yet any sense of a ‘tonal
centre’ is elusive if not absent:
Example 2.8 From Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande.

Likewise, the well-known and oft-cited 12-note theme that opens Liszt’s A
Faust Symphony (1854; revised 1857–61 and 1880) is overtly triadic yet offers
no hint of any tonal centre:
Example 2.9 From Liszt: A Faust Symphony.
Tonal harmonic practice had largely been predicated upon the dominance of
triads and triadic progressions, yet any sense of a ‘comfort zone’ that might
be afforded by this is ravaged by the famous agonizingly dissonant pile-up of
thirds in the first movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 (1910):
Example 2.10 From Mahler: Symphony No. 10 (i).
A far gentler, though in some ways no less potent, example is found in Brahms’
Intermezzo in B minor, Op. 119, No. 1 (1893) which opens as follows:
22 Alistair Hinton
Example 2.11 From Brahms: Intermezzo in B minor, for piano, Op. 119 (i) and, in
1879, Liszt, in his Ossa Arida, undermines the sense of a triadic ‘root’
when piling up thirds, as follows:
Example 2.12 From Liszt: Ossa Arida.
The introduction of quartal harmony represented an enhancement of –if not

a departure from –such traditions; a famous example is found in the opening
measures of Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie No. 1 in E major, Op. 9 (1906):
24 Alistair Hinton
Example 2.13 From Schoenberg: Kammersymphonie No. 1 in E major, Op. 9.
but, as in so many such instances, it has its precedents, among which are the
following from Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 from the year before it:
Example 2.14 From Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (i).
and the third of Liszt’s four Mephisto Waltzes from a quarter century earlier:
Example 2.15 From Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 3.
Long before even these, Chopin had hinted at quartal harmony in his use of
13th chords, as in his aforementioned Ballade No. 2:
Example 2.16 From Chopin: Ballade No. 2 in F major, for piano, Op. 38.
His use of the 13th chord was undoubtedly an influence upon Scriabin,
whose famous ‘mystic chord’
Example 2.17 Scriabin: ‘mystic chord’.
might be seen as having grown out of it. An even more striking example,
albeit en passant, is found in the following passage from his Ballade No. 4 in
F minor, Op. 52 (1842):
Example 2.18 From Chopin: Ballade No. 4 in F minor, for piano, Op. 52.
Another example of doubt being cast over a tonal centre is when a ton-
ality is stated at the outset but then moved away from almost immediately;
an instance of this is in Busoni’s Sonata No. 2, for violin and piano, (1900),
which opens thus:
Example 2.19 From Busoni: Sonata No. 2 in E minor, for violin and piano, Op. 36a.
Although Busoni was familiar with some of Alkan’s music at the time of
writing this, it is not clear whether he knew his Grand Duo Concertante,
Op. 21 (1840), scored for the same forces, yet the above undoubtedly shares
26 Alistair Hinton
more than a little with the sinister opening of its middle movement, a depic-
tion of Hell:
Example 2.20 From Alkan: Grand Duo Concertante, for violin and piano, Op. 21
(ii –l’Enfer).
Whilst the pedal point that informs the Alkan example gives it an impres-
sion of tonal underpinning, the sense of a tonal centre remains far from cer-
tain, as no principal tonality is established until the close of that movement’s
first page.
Though widely regarded as luminaries of the music of the first half of the
twentieth century, Stravinsky and Schoenberg were largely poles apart, yet
there is a striking similarity, not least of mood, between the opening of Part
II of the former’s Le Sacre du Printemps and a passage near the close of the
latter’s Pelleas und Melisande, each of which centres around conflicting tonal-
ities over a pedal point:
Example 2.21 From Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps, Part II.

Example 2.22 From Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande.
Written shortly after Richard Strauss’s ground-breaking opera Salome, the

ballet score Le Tragédie de Salome (1907) by Florent Schmitt (1870–1958)
was certainly known to Stravinsky –he even cited it with some pride as an
influence on Le Sacre du Printemps –but it is unclear whether Stravinsky
was aware of Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande at that time or whether this
passing likeness is purely coincidental.
Another instance of coincidental tonal ambiguity may be found in the
following motif from Wagner’s Die Walküre
Example 2.23 From Wagner: Die Walküre.
which might be seen as having its origins in Chopin’s song Melodia,

28 Alistair Hinton
Example 2.24 From Chopin: Melodia.
which itself bears some passing resemblance to a passage towards the close of
Schubert’s Impromptu in G flat major, D899, No. 3.
In citing numerous examples from Chopin, it is perhaps worth noting
some contemporary views on his work. The pianist and composer John
Field (1782–1837), often mentioned as a significant influence on Chopin’s
Nocturnes, called Chopin’s ‘a talent of the sick chamber’. Another pianist
and composer, Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870), while admitting Chopin’s ori-
ginality and the value of his pianistic achievements, confessed to dislike of his
‘harsh, inartistic, incomprehensible modulations’ which he regarded as ‘arti-
ficial and forced’. These opinions might seem extreme and even perplexing
to us today, yet they –or at least some memories of them –seem to have
prevailed for some time; the musicologist William Henry Hadow went so far
as to write, as late as 1904, that ‘fifty years ago Chopin’s harmony was unen-
durable’ (Hadow, 1904).
Whilst it is unlikely that Chopin ever considered his calling to embrace
the notion of hurling of a lance into the future of music (as might be said of
Liszt at certain stages of his development), it is clear that his influence, espe-
cially in terms of harmony, reaches across the nineteenth century and into the
twentieth.
In exploring the role of tonally oriented music in the century and more
since ‘atonal’ music began to appear, I have sought not only to consider the
enrichments of tonal language in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
with illustrations from Chopin, Liszt, and several other composers but also to
consider perceptions of time itself and its passage and direction as something
open to examination rather than to be taken for granted and, accordingly in
such a context, to throw open the question as to what might be regarded as
‘progress’. In remembering that Schoenberg and other composers of ‘atonal’
music never abandoned tonality altogether as an outmoded and antediluvian
concept, it is arguably apposite to cite George Rochberg (1918–2005) and
Krzysztof Penderecki (1933–2020) as more recent examples of composers
who to some degree turned their backs upon ‘atonality’ as a compositional
prerequisite. Perhaps one of the most remarkable and earliest examples of a
similar change of heart (or maybe vacillation in his case) is Ornstein. One has
only to consider the dissonances in his 1915 sonata for violin and piano:
Example 2.25 From Ornstein: Sonata for violin and piano, Op. 31.
30 Alistair Hinton
and contrast this work with the first of his two sonatas for cello and piano
from 1918
Example 2.26 From Ornstein: Sonata No. 1 for cello and piano, Op. 52.
to note that, within a very short space of time, the composer had moved
towards a kind of tonal lyricism that might not have seemed out of place in
the music of Rachmaninoff (indeed, another of his sonatas for violin and
piano that also dates from 1915 is so much more obviously tonally oriented
than the example above that one might be given to wonder whether some
kind of musical schizophrenia had set in –and, after all, Ornstein is reputed
to have remarked of the example above ‘beyond that lies complete chaos’).
Ornstein had made quite an impression early in his career as a pianist intent
on presenting piano works by the ‘avant-garde’ of the day; his repertoire
included Schoenberg and Bartók as well as his own music. The cello and
piano sonata is, incidentally, dedicated to the cellist father-in-law of another
composer whose early works (notably the first of his six string quartets) also
explore a kind of ‘atonality’ but whose later ones have a greater tendency
towards more overtly tonal expression, namely the Dutchman Bernard van
Dieren (1887–1936).
The compositional ‘pull’ of tonality

It might be worth considering why such composers seemed exercised by a kind
of ‘atonal’ expression at one time but evidently remained equally at ease in
writing more tonally based music thereafter (or even, in Ornstein’s case, simul-
taneously); might Busoni’s take on Wells’ time machine (Wells, 1895) and the
thoughts that this might have inspired tell us something about this? Who can
say with certainty? The fact remains, however, that a sense of ‘progress’ from
tonal to ‘atonal’ writing seems at best questionable. It seems to me that, with
the passage of time, an ever-greater breadth of musical expression has taken
hold –one which respects no boundaries and takes no prisoners –and the fact
that technology has lately given us access to millions of hours of music from
many centuries has helped to reveal so many richly varied seams of musical
expression.
I have refrained from including more recent examples of tonally oriented
music because their sheer volume from such a vast variety of composers
shows the continuing ‘pull’ of tonality to speak for itself with such eloquence
that further illustrations seem unnecessary; there are likewise so many more
examples of the expansion of tonality in pre-twentieth-century music that
I could have cited but, again, as their numbers would have defeated the object,
I have sought to concentrate on a handful of the more remarkable ones.
In the above, I make no apologies for placing the word atonal within quota-
tion marks. I think that the reasons for this are clear; they would doubtless
be endorsed by Schoenberg (who famously deprecated the term) but, perhaps
more importantly, different listeners’ perceptions of ‘atonality’ will inevitably
vary according to listening experiences.
Back in the latter 1960s, a course at London’s Royal Academy of Music
sought to explore the subject Is the Symphony Dead? Clearly, it wasn’t then
and still isn’t more than half a century later; likewise, as Mark Twain might
have put it, reports of the death of tonality are exaggerated.
Acknowledgments
All music examples in this chapter were prepared by Frazer Jarvis.
References
Busoni, F. (1911), A Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, translated by Theodore
Baker. New York, USA: G. Schirmer.
Busoni, F. (1938), Ferruccio Busoni: Letters to His Wife, translated by Rosamond Ley.
London, UK: Edward Arnold.
Chagall, M. (1930– 1939), Time Is a River without Banks, oil on canvas,
c.103cm×c.83cm: Collection of Kathleen Kapnick. New York, USA: © 2013
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York /ADAGP, Paris.
Fisk, J. (ed.) (1997), Composers on Music: Eight Centuries of Writings, Pierre Boulez.
Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Hadow, W. H. (1904), Studies in Modern Music (Second Series): Frederick Chopin,
Antonin Dvořák, Johannes Brahms. Oxford, Fifth Edition, London, UK: Seeley &
Co. Ltd.
32 Alistair Hinton
Hazelton, C. K. (26 March 2015), Boulez in his Own Words, The Guardian. London,
UK; Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/mar/26/boulez-
in-his-own-words.
Ramann, L. (2018), Franz Liszt als Künstler und Mensch. Germany: Wentworth Press.
Ross, R. (2007), The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. New York,
USA: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Rundfunk, N. (24 September 2001), Tape transcript from public broadcaster, at
Hamburg Music Festival, Germany, as reported by Julia Spinola in Monstrous
Art, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 September 2001 and also commented on
by BBC, UK. www.osborne-conant.org/documentation_stockhausen.htm; similar
observations were reported in Stockhausen provoziert Eklat mit Äußerungen zu
USA, Associated Press, USA.
Unknown (8 January 2019), A new theory on time indicates present and
future exist simultaneously. Retrieved from: https://physics-astronomyblog.
blogspot.com/ 2 019/ 0 1/ a -n ew-t heory-o n-t ime-i ndicates- p resent.html?fbclid=
IwAR1WT0TAIUbIFl8lYHnmXJcXs0O8-1oZNQ9Hy-H-4 30X6laPa1JMkiu2oa8
Wells, H. G. (1895), The Time Machine. London, UK: Heinemann.
3
Savage minds in British
early-twentieth-century music
Annika Forkert
Debates surrounding the emergence of middlebrow and anti-intellectual

sentiment in dominant strands in early-twentieth century British musical cul-
ture have come to inhabit a deservedly central space in today’s scholarship
about music written in Britain at this time (e.g. Chowrimootoo, 2018; Guthrie,
2021; Collins, Clinch, and Zuk, 2018). This chapter explores metatonal com-
position as a participant in these debates, because this music reflects in its
own sounds some central oppositions and debates of its day through its use
of metatonal strategies.
One of the most hotly debated relationships at the time was that between
what was seen as Schoenberg’s intellectual, systematic, rigorous music, and by
extension its Germanness; and desirable alternatives that British music should
provide. Could this new music of the twentieth century still be beautiful, mean-
ingful, and, not least, intelligible for the listener glued to their radio appar-
atus? At the time, British composers and critics established debates around an
understanding of two contrasting types of composer, which, following both
the writing of the time and Claude Lévi-Strauss, I will theorize as engineer
(or mathematician) and bricoleur. Generally opposed to music exhibiting
an engineering aesthetic, the metatonal music written in Britain in the early
twentieth century is often eclectic and operates with a bricolage of new scales
and chords within tonal frameworks. It is perhaps best introduced through
an example.
Cyril Scott (1879–1970) took part in this game of adventurous tonal pos-
sibilities, both as a composer and as a writer. His Diatonic Study (1914) for
piano is one of over 150 pieces he wrote for his own instrument (he had
studied with Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatoire in Frankfurt). The piece’s
harmonic task as a ‘study’ is to explore the limits of tonality, while allowing
pianists of all abilities to enjoy its melody and impressionist soundscape.
Although set firmly and formally in D major, it lacks common signifiers such
as perfect authentic cadences or indeed an ending in unfettered D major. The
challenge to the tonic begins in the introductory left-hand bars. While both
D or A have a claim as a tonal centre here, the pitch content could be spelling
out fragments of major Locrian on E or of a whole-tone scale from B♭ to
G♯ with an added A.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713-3
34 Annika Forkert
Example 3.1 From Cyril Scott, Diatonic Study, bb.1–6.

Source: Author and reproduced by Permission of Hal Leonard Europe Limited.
The short piece travels through modal, diatonic, and quartal harmony to
arrive via a neo-Riemannian Leittonwechsel from F♯ minor with added B (the
last confirmation of a strong quartal harmonic strand running through the
piece) on a D major chord with added E and B. This D chord is also quintal
(if stacked as D –A –E –B –F♯), as well as the major pentatonic scale (pitch-
class set 5-35).
Example 3.2 From Cyril Scott, Diatonic Study, bb.58–61, where D major has an
added sixth and ninth.
Source: Author and reproduced by permission of Hal Leonard Europe Limited.
The strangeness of the Study lies in the diversity and number of the harmonic
ambiguities and their overlap. Traditionally in a study of c. two minutes, one
might expect one new element to be introduced, rather than five (quartal,
quintal, whole-tone, pentatonic, and modal elements). Did Scott want to cram
as many ‘modern’ devices as possible into this piano piece without letting go
of the idea of D major?
Scott and other composers’ aesthetics of music and the wider musical cli-
mate provide a clue in answer to this question. For although no less split than
Vienna itself between the avant-garde and tonal traditions, specific factors
Savage minds in early-20th-century music 35
shaped the discourse in early twentieth-century musical Britain. The most
important was perhaps that British music traditions of instrumental and
operatic music were felt to be younger and less robust than the omnipresent
genres of German symphonics and Italian opera, and this feeling shaped what
this new British music should be achieving or attempting. A symptom was the
Royal College of Music, whose history from an idea of lighthouse builder
George Grove to the nation’s ‘goodly house’ and foundation of British musical
pastoralism has been criticized in Meirion Hughes and Robert Stradling’s
book(s) on the English Musical Renaissance (1993, 2001). The Royal
College had been founded with the aim to ‘enable us to rival the Germans’
(Stradling & Hughes, 2001, p. 29), but in 1900 was still merely 17 years of
age. Challenges to this young musical tradition, whose intense self-reflexion
was coloured nationally from the beginning, drew immediate responses from
composers and critics concerned with the state of their fragile national music.
The most popular of these are probably Ralph Vaughan Williams’s essays
on national music, which compare music to fauna in different climates, the
outdoors, and in hothouses (written 1934, for a lecture series in the US). In
recent interdisciplinary scholarship, the English Musical Renaissance with its
pastoral and tonal conservatism has been perceived to send British music on
an imaginary journey back rather than forward in time: ‘Although there was
a handful of composers, like Joseph Holbrooke and Cyril Scott, who were
prepared to explore continental modernism, Vaughan Williams and his fellow
pastoralists had already mapped out the route. Theirs, however, was […] a
journey back to a (largely imagined) English past’ (Hughes, 2002, p. 189).
This past, according to Matthew Riley and Anthony D. Smith’s Nation and
Classical Music, frequently centred on the idea of a Wesleyan ‘English dia-
tonic dissonance’ (strong dissonances, which are, however, resolved immedi-
ately and orthodoxly; Riley & Smith, 2016, p. 124; Dibble, 1983).
Arnold Schoenberg, mathematician

At the centre of this British anxiety over Germanness and Englishness, and
over tonal and atonal music, sat Arnold Schoenberg, whose music served as a
foil in order to explain specific British aesthetic preferences that also powered
Scott’s Diatonic Study. Schoenberg’s music had been promoted during the
early decades of the twentieth century in Britain, be it at the Proms or at the
BBC (Doctor, 1999, 2008). The challenges offered by the Second Viennese
School’s music were regularly presented to a wide audience. BBC Music
Department personnel such as Edward Clark and Kenneth A. Wright pro-
grammed a mixture spanning Bach Cantatas and Schoenberg’s Verklärte
Nacht or Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat (Doctor, 1999). But the BBC did not
stop there: Herbert Howells and many other prominent figures gave music
appreciation broadcasts (Guthrie, 2021; Clinch, 2018). Yet even before the
foundation of the BBC Robert Newman and Henry Wood’s Proms fulfilled
a similar popular mission to ‘educat[e]‌the public by interweaving novelties
36 Annika Forkert
with the classics’ (Wood, 1938, cited in Doctor, 2008, p. 94). Contemporary
European music –including Schoenberg’s –was performed here regularly and
fired the debates about the direction music was taking.
One consequence was that parts of British musical imagination began
heated debates on what was perceived as modernist artificiality and intel-
lectualism, and this can be traced along criticism of Schoenberg’s music.
As Deborah Heckert has shown, commentary on Schoenberg’s music in
the British press and music writing increased considerably with the prem-
iere of Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces in 1912 (Heckert, 2010). One of
the earliest and most candid reactions was a response to Philip Heseltine’s
positive review in The Musical Standard the month after the premiere. One
writer claimed: ‘I know a little of the writing of Schoenberg, and I hate
it because I am convinced that it is ugly, brutally ugly.’ (S. O. G., 1912,
p. 40). Dislike of this intensity reached another peak in a symposium on the
occasion of Schoenberg’s death in 1951 in Music & Letters (vol. 32, issue 4,
pp. 305–323), which had assembled an all-male cast of 25 living ‘greats’ of
British music from John Amis to Egon Wellesz to comment on Schoenberg’s
achievements shortly after his death. With the exception of Second Viennese
School members such as Wellesz or Humphrey Searle, few contributors hid
their dislike of Schoenberg’s music. Ralph Vaughan Williams led the con-
sensus with his jibe ‘Schoenberg meant nothing to me –but as he apparently
meant a lot to a lot of other people I daresay it is all my own fault’ (Vaughan
Williams, 1951, p. 322). Embedded within these broad typologies of intellec-
tualism in music is a notion of Schoenberg’s music as engineered, and of the
composer as an engineer or mathematician. Arnold Bax’s invective belongs
in the same collection and rejected Schoenberg’s alleged mathematics and
neuroses:
I instantly developed an ice-cold antipathy to Schönberg and his whole

musical system on the far-away day when I first came upon those three
piano pieces, Op. 11. I conclude that […] he deliberately resolved to turn
himself into the world’s premier mathematician in sound. I believe that
there is little probability that the twelve-note-scale will ever produce
anything more than morbid or entirely cerebral growths. It might deal
successfully with neuroses of various kinds, but I cannot imagine it
associated with any healthy and happy concept such as young love or the
coming of spring.
(Bax, 1951, p. 307)
The concern that atonal and serial music is ‘cerebral’ and ‘mathematical’
(and, at the same time, hysterical) rang through the majority of contributions
to this collectively critical obituary. Hans Keller defended Schoenberg
from similar attacks in the British music press in 1951 (Zuk, 2018, pp. 334,
340) and Schoenberg himself had been painfully aware of this type of criti-
cism, reflecting in ‘New Music, Outmoded Music, Style and Idea’ of 1946:
Adversaries have called me a constructor, an engineer, and architect, even
a mathematician –not to flatter me –because of my method of compo
sition with twelve tones. […] [T]‌hey called my music dry and denied me
spontaneity. They pretended that I offered the products of the brain, not
of the heart.
(Schoenberg, Stein, 1975 , p.121)1
The fear of a modernist ‘system’ had found its way into various British
publications on the state of music earlier in the century between the 1912
premiere and Schoenberg’s death in 1951. This stands out in the writings of
generally progressively minded and internationalist writers and composers
such as Scott, John Foulds, or Arthur Eaglefield Hull.
In The Philosophy of Modernism –Its Connection with Music, Scott (1917)
defended an idea of romanticism underlying experimental music. He likened
a composer leaving tonal, rhythmic, and formal constraints behind, to a
‘business man [sic] starting out from the dingy regularity of a town’ (p. 62) to
have a holiday in the country. Scott claimed that one would expect this trav-
eller to return to his dingy town, and the composer to write a recapitulation
in the tonic key and a regular meter; but ‘the most artistic, interesting, and
romantic thing to do would be for him never to return to it, but die in ecstasy
amid those beautiful meadows, or wander away into some new and entran-
cing fairyland’ (p. 62). However, Scott was quick to reign in this daring idea
by pointing to its potential excess:
this supposed prerequisite for greatness on the part of the academically-

minded, this admiration for mechanical adjustors and fitters of every
musical, or rather unmusical, description, is on the high road to reduce
music to the plane of mathematics, and to cause it to fall from the pin-
nacle of its artistic heights into the abyss of mere mechanicalism.
(pp. 63–64)
The name Schoenberg was not mentioned in this warning against a profane
musical ‘mathematics’. However, in a slightly earlier publication celebrating
Percy Grainger, his friend from their days at the Leipzig Conservatory, Scott
contrasted both composers and found that Schoenberg’s rigour and system
‘lead[s]‌us into the excruciating’ (1916, p. 433). Scott preferred Grainger’s more
eclectic early harmonic experiments, which were at that point still couched in
tunefulness, for example in the orchestral suite In a Nutshell from the same
year as Scott’s article.
Scott’s fellow theosophist John Foulds (1880–1939) felt even more strongly
about the dangers of systematization to the expressiveness of contemporary
music. With regard to Schoenberg, he warned in Music To-Day (1934, p. 253):
The value of Schönberg’s contribution to the progress of music is that in

the making it he has helped to hew out a new road. That he has become
38 Annika Forkert
absorbed in his engineering to such an extent as to have forgotten whither
his road leads; (so utterly obsessed indeed as to be indifferent to its
leading anywhere at all), is all that need be said in depreciation of this
sturdy iconoclast.
[…] Now in the case of Schönberg we have a specific instance of a
composer elevating reason above imagination; allowing the machine
to usurp instead of sub-serving the higher function. […] Despite all of
which, he may be considered the most stimulating figure in the musical
world to-day.
Neither Foulds nor Scott were averse to post-tonal innovations (Foulds even
used quarter-tones in several pieces to express musical ideas he felt impossible
to convey in semitones; he also kept well abreast of Schoenberg’s development
of atonality and later serialism). The comparatively internationalized outlook
of Foulds and Scott was partly facilitated by their theosophical beliefs, which
frequently break into their discussion of musical aesthetics and are one reason
why these two found themselves outsiders among their native music scene, as
van der Linden has argued (2008). Nevertheless, the vocabulary they chose to
discuss musical innovation was similar to that of Bax and Vaughan Williams
when it came to Schoenberg’s style.
A similar language provides the backdrop of Constant Lambert’s Music
Ho! (1934). In Lambert’s Sibelian world, Schoenberg was condemned as
a master of the ‘Black Mass’ (p. 247) and the ‘violence of [his] revolution’
was attributed to an ‘extreme feminine emotional sensibility shown by [his]
first works combined with [his] inquiring, mathematical and detached intel-
lect’ (p. 250). According to Lambert, this meant that Schoenberg’s ‘peculiar
methods of approach have degenerated into a mechanical and easily applied
formula.’ (p. 246).
A taste of this distrust of system and rigour can even be found in the con-
temporary music theoretical textbook Modern Harmony. Its Explanation and
Application (1915) by Arthur Eaglefield Hull. The influential book sought to
provide guidance through what its author presented as a thicket of growing
possibilities among scales and chords, up to and including his description
of Scriabin’s mystic chord (p. 72). Eaglefield Hull acknowledged the com-
position with twelve independent pitch classes without a tonal centre as well
as whole-tone and other chromatic scales, but wherever possible sought to
ground them in the classics, mostly Purcell, Bach, and Beethoven (pp. 1–7).
His judgment of Schoenberg’s Piano Pieces, Op. 11, however, is damning.
Eaglefield Hull lists the endings of Nos 1 and 3 as possible representatives of
his worst type of music with ‘no tonal centre’: ‘the conveyance of ideas of a
very hazy and nebulous type’ (pp. 50–51). Nevertheless, his conclusions were
of a more conciliatory nature; the student of music, Eaglefield Hull declares,
should know ‘the whole technique’ (p. 192). After all, according to his credo,
many modern experiments that may not even sound like music could be saved
by an intelligent orchestration. While study of Schoenberg in particular is
neither condemned nor encouraged, Eaglefield Hull’s ideal music embedded
‘beautiful thoughts in beautiful language’ (p. 193).
In conclusion of this brief survey among a variety of composers and
theorists, the Schoenberg conundrum highlighted the perceived dangers of
atonal music that was ‘engineered’, ‘mechanical’, ‘cerebral’, or ‘mathematical’
(but sounded chaotic, ‘cacophonous’, or primitive), and which was losing a
desired ability to communicate, beautify, or forge nationality. If Schoenberg
was an ‘engineer’, what might a British response be called, and what might
this music sound like?
Bricolage in music
In The Savage Mind, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1966) juxtaposed ‘two types of
scientific knowledge’, the engineer and the bricoleur. The French expression
implies a juxtaposition of professional and amateur in method and habit
(p. 17); but in this chapter the bricoleur, or the ‘savage’ mind, is no more
connoted negatively than the engineer. Both are imaginary types, not real
people; and while they are usually contrasted, both relate in their interest
in ‘scientific knowledge’ in Lévi-Strauss and in their shared search for new
expression in music as explored here.
Lévi-Strauss defined the engineer as someone ‘always trying to make his
way out of and go beyond the constraints imposed by a particular state of
civilization while the “bricoleur” by inclination or necessity always remains
within them’ (p. 19). The bricoleur
is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks; but, unlike the

engineer, he does not subordinate each of them to the availability of raw
materials and tools conceived and procured for the purpose of the project.
His universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always
to make do with ‘whatever is at hand’, that is to say with a set of tools
and materials which is always finite and is also heterogeneous because
what it contains bears no relation to the current project, or indeed to any
particular project, but is the contingent result of all the occasions there
have been to renew or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains
of previous constructions or destructions.
(p. 17)
In this appreciation of the ‘savage mind’, the bricoleur is credited with pri-
oritizing the event or product over the tools necessary to create it; a notion
that overlaps almost uncannily with what Sarah Collins identified as a
British nineteenth-century ‘fiction’ of ‘the English as “doers” rather than
thinkers’ (Collins, 2018, p. 209). It is along these lines that Foulds’s criticism
of Schoenberg’s alleged problem can be understood: ‘engineering to such an
extent as to have forgotten whither his road leads’ (Foulds, 1934, p. 253). The
‘road’ or journey, for Foulds and his fellow composers, was not the destination,
40 Annika Forkert
and any material innovation could never replace the main goal: music that
communicated through its beauty and intelligibility.
The notion of bricolage can also be useful in the analysis of the music
stemming from this aesthetic. Musicological work on and with bricolage has
sought to understand social groupings of popular music, and in particular the
subcultures of British youth and their music of the 1950s and 1960s (Hebdige,
1979). With this bricolage came a rejection of conventional musical training,
which could be perceived as the bricoleur’s rejection of ‘engineering’ (as
Hebdige quoted, Punks were ‘into chaos, not music’ (1979, p. 109)). Bricolage,
however, was never exclusively confined to the application to subcultures
(Clarke, 2006). Generally, the bricoleur stands at the centre of a cultural prac-
tice that employs found or alienated objects, tools, methods, or materials and
creates new art, events, and meanings with them. As Lévi-Strauss argues, this
may look ‘primitive’ or chaotic, but is used to create order or causality (or at
least its illusion) within a specific cultural environment. It can ‘reach brilliant
unforeseen results on the intellectual plane’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1966, p. 17). In this
sense, Scott’s Diatonic Study might be read as bricolage; it utilized quartal
harmony, extended chords, and new scales in a ‘bewildering’ (Hebdige, 1979,
p. 103) array, but created sense for listeners who were tired of Brahms and
spooked by Schoenberg. Bricolage, in this wide definition, could be said to be
at home in many different styles and pieces of the early twentieth century (and
for different reasons: Ernest Bloch, for example, in his self-reflexion as a genius
and a Jewish composer, is known for his ‘eclectic use of Eastern and Western
modalities, his frequent polytonality and less frequent experimentation with
microtones, as well as his utilization of Gregorian chant, Renaissance-style
polyphony and of classical forms’ (Solomon, 2017, p. 1)).
British early-twentieth-century metatonal music twentieth-century metatonal
music in the vein of Scott’s Diatonic Study can be conceived as its own par-
ticular subculture facing the perceived stylistic opposites of the mathematician
Schoenberg on the one hand and English Musical Renaissance tonality and
modality on the other. Using a bricolage approach of scales, chords, harmony,
and form in an idiosyncratic array could be used in order to rejuvenate ton-
ality.2 In doing so, these bricolage composers would have followed Clarke’s
processes of transformation, translation, and adaptation to produce a new
meaning: ‘when the object is placed within a different total ensemble, a new dis-
course is constituted, a different message conveyed’ (Clarke, 2006, pp. 149–150).
Wresting these modernist materials from their normal signification and placing
them in a new, tonal environment follows similar lines of thought.
What unites practices of bricolage is that their creator, the savage mind, and
their context (what and why) must be credited as a giver and owner of meaning
in order to understand associated practices (despite the danger of slipping
into the intentional fallacy). In musical practice, the what of this bricolage
often takes the shape of, for instance, small or brief innovative –even atonal
or otherwise modernist –experiments nested like alienated or found objects
more or less safely within an overarching tonal framework, thus giving their
surroundings an edge without losing tunefulness. In this sense, bricolage
can be found across music of the later nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
tury regardless of its composers’ nationalities (apart from Ernest Bloch, other
examples might be the Russian ‘Mighty Handful’; Charles Ives’s interest in
manifold new sounds, or Milhaud’s polytonality). Within these frameworks,
the eclectic and sometimes bewildering mix of modernist collage, which often
resists a standard analytic approach, becomes meaningful within the broader
musical climate (the bricolage’s why, which in the case of British music of its
time was the fear that music would be forced into an engineering tradition à
la Schoenberg).
In the remainder of this chapter, I offer three readings of such music
and some of its metatonal devices in Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata and the
Cello Sonatas by Frank Bridge and John Foulds: combinations of quartal
harmony, octatonic and whole- tone collections, modality, and quarter-
tones. This is not an exhaustive list, but these elements are read here as
found fragments within strong tonal contexts that are meant to stabilize
and beautify modern music, preventing it from an engineered slippage into
atonality. Apart from similarities in timbre and genre, all three pieces are
commonly seen as milestones in their composers’ individual œuvres and are
therefore comparatively accessible (scores and recordings are not yet easily
available for the majority of Clarke and Foulds’s music), and their composers
had international connections and an interest in modernism. Context and
reception are interwoven with description of the bricolage and its nesting
within tonal frameworks in these works.
Clarke’s quartal-octatonic bricolage

Strong quartal, modal, octatonic, and even whole-tone elements account for
the entire first movement of one repertoire piece by Rebecca Clarke, her Viola
Sonata of 1919. The Sonata’s story is well known: how the piece tied with
Bloch’s Suite for first prize at Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge’s Berkshire Festival
of Chamber Music competition of that year, how Clarke lost the prize to
Bloch by Sprague Coolidge’s own vote, and how, upon discovery of who the
composer of this mysterious tied winner was, critics questioned whether a
woman could have written this piece (Jones, 2004).3 This Sonata is not only a
staple of solo viola repertoire, but it is also a complex bricolage by a British
composer for an anonymized international competition in the immediate
wake of the First World War. I concern myself here with the first movement,
Impetuoso –poco agitato, which, for want of a better label, has been described
as romantic and impressionist (Kohnen, 2002, p. 130; Ponder, 1983, p. 84),
although its widespread octatonicism was also noted by Bryony Jones in a
comparative analysis of the Piano Trio and the Sonata (Jones, 2004). In the
present collection, Chris Dromey adds to these challenges a warning about the
piece’s ‘progressiveness’ (for more information, see Chapter 11 in this book).
The piece questions all these labels. Within sonata form, the movement has an
42 Annika Forkert
E-dorian quartal Introduction, P and S zones dominated by three different
octatonic collections, and a partly whole-tone ‘modulation’ (see Table 3.1).
Table 3.1 Rebecca Clarke, Sonata for Viola and Piano, harmonic structure and
sonata form.
Formal Thematic area Rehearsal Pitch content Pitch content

section figure dispersal
Introduction 1-[1]‌ E dorian (va), modal & quartal

quartal pedal
point (pf)
Exposition P [1]‌ (Fm7– D7– A♭7) octatonic coll. ‘P’
(w/o B)
in lieu of [2]‌-1 pcs 6-35 (pf & va) whole-tone
modulation
Transition [2]‌ A7–C; G7– E7– B♭7 fragments of oct.
[3]‌ quartal colls. ‘Tr1’, ’Tr2’
(D&G based) quartal
A♭– D fragm. of coll. ‘P’
G –D♭– B♭ –A fragm. of coll. ‘Tr2’
S [4]‌, [5] G chromatic – quartal-quintal, +
F –D –C fragm. of coll. ‘P’
(A♭– B)
Codetta [6]‌ C7
Development [7]‌ C +A♭ bitonal
C –G –D7 diatonic
[8]‌ G7–Fm –B♭7– D♭7 fragm. of coll. ‘Tr2’
[9]-6--1: standing
on B♭, augm.
6th-chord
Recapitulation P [9]‌ see Exp. coll. ‘P’
in lieu of [10]-1 see Exp. whole-tone
modulation
Transition [10] see Exp. colls. ‘Tr1’&‘Tr2’
[11] quartal (D based) quartal
A♭– D fragm. of coll. ‘P’
G –D♭– B♭ fragm. of coll. ‘Tr2’
A IV --
S [12] E –C; -- I
[14] E –C; ‘Tr1’ stabilization of E as
chord –E – tonic
whole-tone – E
Coda [15] E chromatic, quartal,
whole-tone
elements
Source: Author
Quartal harmony is very much at home in twentieth-century music, one of the

best-known examples perhaps being Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1
with its stacked fourths leading into F major. (This is a bricoleur side of
Schoenberg not fully appreciated in British reception and criticism of his time.)
Clarke’s own construction is cunning, because she invites her listeners in
with an introductory staple of early-twentieth-century British music, a Dorian
statement based on E, which, as the listener discovers later, is the movement
and the whole sonata’s tonal centre. What follows this Introduction, how-
ever, is not the expected pastoral idyll and can perhaps be explained with
the piece’s function as an international competition piece. The quick chase
between octatonic collections (more of them fragmentary than complete)
pervading the movement is not done justice by a description as romantic
or impressionist. If anything, it resembles the Russian provenance through
the early British Scriabin reception which Clarke might have been familiar
with.4 But even this pedigree is not fully applicable because the three octatonic
collections are dispersed sporadically and very often applied as triads, rather
than seventh-chords.5 In the transition ([4]‌+9), for example, the right hand
alternates A♭ and B major triads.
However, even the modal beginning destabilizes the piece’s pastoral prov-
enance. The viola recitative, while firmly in E Dorian, descends in forte and
‘impetuoso’, rather than peacefully rambling along as in Vaughan Williams’s
The Lark Ascending. Clarke’s piano accompaniment consists of one single
pedal of a quartal chord that is, and isn’t, E major: dropping A to G♯ is all
that would be necessary to turn this fully tonal.
Example 3.3 From Rebecca Clarke, Viola Sonata, first movement, bb.1–2.

The variety of non-tonal events embedded into the Sonata presents a dense,
albeit not unusual, level of British bricolage. It combines not one, but sev-
eral metatonal devices, such as whole-tone scales and quartal chords. Clarke
did not play the tonal/modal game of her mentors (above all Charles Villiers
Stanford), in which ‘English diatonic dissonance’ is produced in the form of
dissonant suspensions that are immediately and orthodoxly resolved (Dibble,
1983). There is but one structural –plagal –cadence in the movement, at the
relatively minor point between the recapitulation’s Transition and S zone at
[12]. Other cadencing moments deceive the listener; for example at [9]‌, where
a French augmented sixth-chord short-circuits to D major, but not through
A major,7 but A major’s hexatonic pole, F minor. However, F minor forms the
44 Annika Forkert
first bar of the recapitulation’s P zone and therefore barely fulfils this caden-
tial role anyway.
Example 3.4 From Rebecca Clarke, Viola Sonata, first movement [9]‌.

But at the same time, Clarke did not play an engineer’s game: E is set as a
clear tonal centre at the beginning and pervades the movement, as well as the
Sonata’s ending. Besides E, G major, and C major materialize as temporary
tonal centres and overlap with the octatonicism in the S zone and Codetta of
the exposition.
The success of her bricolage finds expression in the praise the piece has
been garnering for its beauty: labels such as ‘atmospheric’, ‘exciting’, ‘emo-
tional’ (Kohnen, 2002, p. 132); ‘ardent Romanticism’ (MacDonald, 1987,
p. 20); or ‘rich expansive’ (Curtis, 1996, p. 17) show this.
Bridge’s diatonic-chromatic bricolage

Like Clarke, Bridge benefitted from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge’s patronage.
It is likely that Clarke recommended Bridge’s music to the patron, who entered
into an enduring patronship with Bridge (rather than just commissioning
music, as she did from Clarke and several other British composers; see
Banfield, 1986).
Bridge’s music before the post-tonal Piano Sonata of 1921 and Coolidge’s
subsequent support shows a different type of bricolage at work, and it is useful
to see his Sonata for Violoncello and Piano of 1913–17 as representative of
a transitional phase that gently drifts away from tonality (see Huss, 2015,
chapter 3, ‘Transitional period’). Rather than to retrospectively explain the eclec-
ticism of this piece as an individual post-tonal gesture, the Sonata’s closeness
to such experiments as Clarke’s or Scott’s enable an alternative understanding.
The powerful second movement of Bridge’s Cello Sonata encompasses a slow
section and a scherzo with reminiscences from the previous first movement and
allusions to the respective other section of this movement. The appeal of the
Sonata, according to Huss, lies in its ‘continuous spans of sustained melodic
material’ (2015, p. 119). This contrasts somewhat with its advanced, but elusive
harmonic structure. Huss comes close to identifying the second movement as
bricolage, when he speculates on Bridge’s harmonic decisions and alternative
styles that might have been possible:
neither neo-Classical pastiche nor the complete chromaticism of seri-

alism would have been congenial options, and the harmonic language he
had begun to develop (based, significantly, on colouristic impressionism
rather than escalating chromaticism) gave rise to highly idiosyncratic
reinterpretation of traditional forms and structural logic that would sat-
isfy his aesthetic proclivities and technical ambitions.
(p. 125)
Huss identifies four characteristics of Bridge’s pre-Piano Sonata style in the

Cello Sonata: chromaticism, added degrees, chromatic appoggiaturas, and
non-functional progressions (p. 123). Further elements include bitonality
(between the two instruments or between right and left hand in the piano),
and a bi-harmonic rhythm, whereby the cello frequently obscures progressions
in the piano by articulating the next harmonic section synchronically. The
piece does not lack tonal key signifiers (every bar belongs to one key, some-
times several synchronous ones). But it discards unifying tonal means such
as diatonic harmonic progressions or standard cadences, and instead uses
bitonality or parallel triads. The loosening of tonality’s dictate is central to
Bridge’s bricolage.
The movement begins in F minor and ends its first, slow, section ([9]‌) in
a stalemate of Fm7 and B♭, disguised as a pastorally sounding B♭-F fifth
pedal with parallel triads in the piano’s right hand. The scherzo section in
[10] begins in A minor (albeit obscuring this in almost all but key signature),
trailing along C major in [15] in a reminiscence of the last idea of the slow
section (which had previously been in C flat, [5]), and reaching back to the
initial theme in the ‘tonic’ F minor ([18]).
46 Annika Forkert
Example 3.5 From Frank Bridge, Cello Sonata, second movement [5]‌.

Source: Author.
Bricolage does not just reside in the choice of this movement’s distantly
related temporary tonal centres, but it is reflected in the freedom achieved by
the non-systematic avoidance of cadences and (even common-tone oriented)
modulation, in combination with a plethora of devices such as whole-tone
chords or chromatically enriched chords merging and diverging.
Edwin Evans’s lucid review of Bridge’s music in 1919 (two years after the
premiere of the Cello Sonata) acknowledged the composer as the ideal ‘good
eclectic’ (1919, p. 55; one year later, in an article called ‘Extremists versus the
Rest’, Evans referred to some examples of Schoenberg’s music as ‘horrible’
[1920, p. 381], by contrast). Evans’s ‘definition’ of this type of ‘good eclectic’
composer is a rare description of British bricoleurs…
who, without being revolutionary in themselves, are in sympathy with

modernity, or rather with those elements of modernity which can be
assimilated into their own set style, for it is the test of such composers
that they really have a personal style which acts as a solvent upon any
ingredients they may introduce to enrich.
(Evans, 1919, p. 55)
The idea of an ‘assimilation’ of ‘elements’ taken from an undefined ‘mod-

ernity’ and integrated eclectically into a ‘personal style’ mirrors Lévi-
Strauss’s description of the bricoleur, including the rejection of the engineer’s
‘revolutionary’ structural processes. It is no coincidence that Evans held up
the popular and controversial Bridge as the prime representative of this eclec-
ticism/bricolage found in the ‘modern British composer’. Even Lévi-Strauss’s
(and Hebdige’s) claim that the ‘bewildering’ elements of bricolage make sense
to those in the same (sub-)culture, is addressed in Evans’s musings: ‘[E]‌ven
those, if there be any, who find nothing else to admire in his music, will readily
concede to him the great quality of knowing exactly what he is doing, and
doing it with remarkable precision’ (Evans, 1919, p. 55).
In his review, Evans also remarked on Bridge’s allusions to Scriabin. Evans
judged these to be ‘processes of harmonic thought which are, so to speak,
in the air, and that composers of an adventurous turn of mind are bound to
explore them sooner or later […]’ (1919, p. 59). The Cello Sonata, for example,
utilizes a chord very similar to the mystic chord (pcs 6-34; a favourite also in
other pieces of Bridge’s at the time) in the ante-penultimate bar of the second
movement. It serves as a highly dramatized chromatic replacement of an A7
chord reaching towards its D major resolution.
Example 3.6 From Frank Bridge, Cello Sonata, excerpt of the coda of the second
movement.
Source: Author.
The conclusion of this tonally vagrant movement is reached by bricolage

as well. From [22], D major drifts into focus, but is still veiled by mani-
fold interjections. One such moment is the transition into the coda at [25]-4,
48 Annika Forkert
where the A-phrygian cello scale over an A pedal in the piano’s left hand is
complemented by a bitonal D minor/B♭ major chord in the right.
The end then comes swiftly. The piano’s rising D locrian scale somewhat
mirrors the previous A phrygian one in the cello but gathers momentum
through its dynamics, parallel octaves, animato character, and range. At its
end stands a series of statement chords in the piano over a, now descending, D
locrian scale in the cello and a D pedal in the left hand: C7, CØ7, pcs 6-34 (mystic
chord), and, finally, D major, albeit in inversion. Here, the bricolage lies in the
combination of bitonality, extended chromatic chords, modal scales, and D
major. In this movement, these dramatic and melodically beautiful elements
are also very little restrained by sonata form; this makes their bricolage even
freer than perhaps Clarke’s, but also less straightforward to categorize.
Foulds’s microtonal-modal bricolage

The fate of Foulds’s Cello Sonata is somewhat typical for its composer’s career.
Written in 1905, while its 25-year old composer still worked as a cellist in the
Hallé Orchestra, the piece was only published in a revised version in 1928 by
Editions Maurice Senart during Foulds’s time in Paris. Only in 1975 did it
receive its British premiere in a recital at the London Purcell Room by Moray
Welsh and Ronald Stevenson (Wood, 1975). The first recording followed in
1997 (English Cello Sonatas: John Foulds, Ernest Walker, York Bowen, BMS,
1997). After its premiere 70 years after its composition, Hugh Wood defended
the Sonata’s ‘sheer vitality and natural musicality’, as well as its profession-
alism (which had been challenged in an unnamed newspaper article calling
it ‘amateur’, that Wood referred to (Wood, 1975, pp. 50–51)). Drawing on
the names of no fewer than six major composers as possible influences
(Rachmaninoff, Reger, Debussy, Strauss, Mahler, and Britten), Wood sought
to situate the Sonata firmly among other modern repertories, and pointed to
its richness in advanced techniques: whole-tones in the first, quarter-tones in
the second, and ‘diatonic discord’ in the third movement (Wood, 1975, p. 51).
In his Programme Note preceding the 1928 publication, Foulds himself
described his bricolage combination of what Hepokoski has called ‘ “old-
world” melody’ and modern style (Hepokoski, 1993, p. 4). There is, however, a
more systematic rigour to Foulds’s bricolage and its intention. Foulds pointed
out his use throughout all three movements of two English Puritan tunes
‘which had been in the composer’s mind since early boyhood’ (Foulds, 1928,
n.p.). He then highlighted aspects of ‘modern style’ in each movement: the
first movement’s minor-major inflections, ‘some atonal writing’, and a sonata
form recapitulation with P only in the coda; the second movement’s minor/
major inflections, the cello’s ‘harp-like pizzicato chords’, and quarter-tones;
and the third movement’s counterpoint and return of material from the pre-
vious movements. Each movement thus explores a new idiom within the
frame of a strictly defined key area. At the same time, the Sonata’s cyclic idea
rests on the mediant and dominant key relationships within and between all
movements (B –D –G), the infusion with the Puritan tunes of all movements,
and the return of other thematic material in the Finale.
Foulds’s post- tonal interjections in the first two movements have a
modulatory function, in that both ‘atonality’ and quarter-tones are used in
transitional spaces. In the first movement, a strongly diatonic frame consists
of the P zone in B minor and the S zone in B major (b.60, dolce consemplicita
in the cello), and the recapitulatory S (which, following Foulds’s own thinking,
emerges without prior statement of P) in G major in b.177 (dolcissimo). S is
thus not in the traditional minor-third mediant relationship, but is a major
third away from the keys of the exposition. The movement closes in B major
with an authentic cadence, the last of many such stabilizing events throughout
the movement. This stability is only endangered in the brief episode without
key signature functioning as a codetta after S.
From John Foulds, Cello Sonata, first movement, bb.84–87, calmo assai.
Example 3.7
Source: Author.
The cello ascends chromatically by a fourth, while the piano combines

descending (RH) and ascending (LH) thirds beginning from E♭ major. These
third parallels can be read two ways: either horizontally as four parallel
scales which are partly whole-tone, partly chromatic and partly octatonic; or
vertically as a constantly changing bitonal or simply atonal chain of more or
less chromatic triads and thirds (if one quaver’s delay between RH and LH
is taken into account). Whichever way, at the beginning of each of these four
bars, a tonal chord emerges in cello and piano: E♭, E, and B♭. Foulds thus
integrates a fleeting glimpse of post-tonality with reassuring tonal resting
points.
The second movement’s transitional quarter-tones fulfil a similar function,
and they appear in similarly strong and safely isolated surroundings. The
first of these two quarter-tone episodes appears at a regress from the first
D major thematic area into a recapitulation of the D minor Introduction
(b.49; the second quarter-tone episode is similar). Foulds used quarter-tones
50 Annika Forkert
almost exclusively in parallel fifths (Forkert, 2020) and this movement is no
exception. This particular use is typical for bricolage insofar as the metatonal
device is limited to a particular interval and thus embedded like a found
object within a D major/minor frame. The dominant pedal of an A octave
in the piano and what Foulds called ‘pizzicato harmonics’ in the cello pre-
pare a quarter-tonal slide between the two fifths F-C and G♭-D♭ in the cello,
which might otherwise lead into the unknown. It is against this backdrop that
Foulds juxtaposed his bricolage technique with his Puritan melodies. In this
movement, this is his ‘amen’-like fragment in the piano in A mixolydian in
parallel triads, which are mirrored in left and right hand. The quick switch
between small-scale parallel modal triads and the ultra-chromatic sound of
the following quartertones is one of the strangest moments in the piece, but
justified in Foulds’s reasoning with the need to introduce new elements in
small doses and enclose the slippage through melodic modality.
From John Foulds, Cello Sonata, second movement, bb. 45–49, ‘amen’
Example 3.8
fragment.
Source: Author.
Concluding remark
Scott, Clarke, Bridge, and Foulds all skirted the danger of ‘allowing the
machine to usurp instead of sub-serving the higher function’ (Foulds, 1934,
p. 253). In this metaphor, the ‘machine’ would have been modernist dissonance
and chromaticism, which, if discarding its ‘higher function’, might risk losing
its audiences together with its melody, intelligibility, and ultimately beauty. The
solution these composers suggested was bricolage; the avoidance of rigorous,
systematically emancipated dissonance (the ‘machine’ running wild) in favour
of tuneful experiments with some of these very elements. Nevertheless, these
British bricoleurs’ priority of retaining elements of tonality while creating
new and original music led them to their own modernist metatonal aesthetic,
a blend of music that is easy to lose sight of between the strong rhetoric of the
two dominant camps of its time: pastoralism and pantonality.
Notes
1 Despite Schoenberg’s reference to dodecaphony, it is clear from the British recep-
tion discussed here that these accusations were levelled not only at Schoenberg’s 12-
tone music. His hurt over these accusations is a reminder of their darker undertones
in the context of the anti-semitism Schoenberg had experienced (see Cahn, 2010).
2 In its intention, however, this bricolage approach differs somewhat from the
‘primitivist’ modernist approach of Stravinsky or Bartók, whose systems sought
to ‘bypass the tonal language of German late Romanticism (Wagner and Richard
Strauss) with a new kind of chromaticism no longer based on major/minor har-
monic tonality’ (Riley & Smith, 2016, p. 77).
3 In another article on this piece’s sonata form, Liane Curtis has also rightfully drawn
attention to the sonata’s singularity in Clarke’s output as a ‘public’ composition in a
‘masculine’ formal tradition and with a male-dominated jury in mind (Curtis, 1997,
p. 407).
4 Although nothing is known about Clarke’s Scriabin reception, from her occasional
writings re-published in Curtis’s A Rebecca Clarke Reader (2004), it emerges that
she was familiar with the String Quartets of, among others, Debussy, Ravel, Reger’s
op. 109, Schoenberg’s no. 1 in D minor, and Bloch’s no. 1.
5 Dmitri Tymoczko (2011) argues that seventh-chords are better suited to octatonic
progressions, while triads lend themselves to hexatonic progression (pp. 97 and 220).
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4
Space and structure in
metatonal musics
Paul Fleet
It would be quite tempting to begin with reference to a final frontier (Daniels,

1966), but I shall resist. Instead, and to help unpack the goal of this chapter,
I will return to the reference of architecture made in Chapter 1. As we walk
into a generic hotel room, we often know what to expect, and I am sure many
of you will be familiar with the following spatial experience when attending
conferences away from home. We arrive at the check-in desk and greeted with
a request for confirmation of who we are before we are given our key. Our
room is reached by an ever-familiar lift/corridor experience that is remarkably
universal, yet somewhat comforting in a new city. We open the door and on
entering ‘our’ room, a bathroom is to the left (or right) whilst an open ward-
robe is to our right (or left). We move beyond this mini-corridor and on one
side of the room is a bed with two table lamps helping to frame the duvet and
pillows, whilst on the other side is a desk/table/TV area with the ever predict-
able quick-boil kettle, a cup, a selection of dried beverages to rehydrate, and,
if you are lucky, a few choice biscuits. This blank canvas quickly becomes
homelike as we put down our luggage, hang up our coat and unpack our
clothes for the next day, make a beverage, and then plug in the chargers to our
electronic devices (not necessarily in that order). What we have done spatially
is inhabit a room that could have been any one of the rooms in the hotel, and
attach elements which belong to the current experience to structures that were
ready to receive them. This story is not told to invite comments about how
many times we may need a replacement kettle from reception (even if that
happens a lot only in my experience). No, it is a story about how we interact
with architectural spaces in order to make them our own. To make the ana-
logy transparent to this chapter, Common Practice forms (hotel rooms) can
be understood as architecturally similar spaces that do not define a piece as
binary or sonata form (the generic placement of familiar places of inter-
action: bathroom, bed, or desk) but can be identified in connection with the
placement of musical elements within those structures that are at the guiding
hand of the composer.
This position aligns with a long history of academic authors (notably
including Dahlhaus, 1989; Hepokoski & Darcy, 2006; Rosen, 1980) who have
all made the point that, for example, a piece in sonata form is just that: a piece
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713-4
Space and structure in metatonal musics 55
that exhibits the common characteristics of a structural sonata form pattern
that was only collectively identified after a common understanding had been
gained. To be clear it is not that such forms are without the influence of their
generic architecture on the musical material, but that the musical material
inhabits a structure that is most familiar without being too restrictive. As
Christopher Small comments, ‘the concept and the vocabulary of sonata form
that was developed through the study of scores… [has] misled musicians into
viewing synoptically, as a structure, all of whose features exist simultaneously,
what is actually a series of events in time’ (1998, p. 163). This is the key to
unlocking the structural door –by understanding the series of events in time
neither as a ‘preformed’ structure nor as a random series of events but instead
as a template, or if you will a ‘performed’ structure. But what do we do with
pieces that do not exhibit a structure that is recognizable within a generic
architectural space? More particularly, what do we do with pieces that are
considered in this book and can be understood as being metatonal?
There is a potential clue in solving this puzzle to be found in the opening
pages of Ferruccio Busoni’s Fantasia Contrappuntistica (1910) where the com-
poser produces the following image as a graphic contents page for his musical
composition (see Example 4.1).
Example 4.1 Ferruccio Busoni, ‘Plan of Works for the Fantasia Contrappuntistica’,

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fantasia_Contrappuntistica_Plan.
jpg
56 Paul Fleet
Busoni places the analytic (Analytischer) list of compositional titles, many
of which define their generic structure (an idealized listener knows what
to expect from a fugue or set of variations), above an architectural plan
(Architektonischer) where 11 numbers are placed in front of the discrete faces
of a building that the composer had imagined. Aside from the elephant in the
room which I will return to in a moment but not be able to address (where is
number 12, the Stretta, on the architectural plan?), we can quickly discount
the structural proportions as being neither relative to the size of either the
bar numbers nor performance timings. For example, within the three fugues
(architecturally marked Nos 2, 3, and 4), the third (No. 4) is twice as long (172
bars, c. 6mins) as the first two fugues (Nos 2 and 3 are 61 bars, c. 2.30 mins; 73
bars, 2.30 mins respectively), yet they are shown as the same width and height
on the drawing. In other words, the drawing is not to scale.
However, the grouping of the materials in the structure makes more sense
with the opening chorale being the start of the facing wall; the three fugues
being grouped in the first set of arches; the intermezzo returning back to
the main wall; the three variations standing proud again as three arches; the
cadenza returning to the wall; the fourth fugue being a single large arch before
a chorale returns back to the same plane as the first wall. And this grouping
is supported in the musical analysis by Brett Kingsbury (2006) who argues
that there are two kinds of musical development at play in this composition
with the ‘transcription of the old in the first group, set in contrast with the
use of the latest contrapuntal techniques applied to the fugue subjects in the
second group [before the material] bursts forth in the final group in a kind of
Hegelian synthesis’ (p. 33). This mapping makes sense: the wall behind the
three transepts contains chorale material and is related to the B-A-C-H motif
(Boyd, 2001); the fugues are grouped together, as are the variations, and these
two sections each contain three elements that are separated by an intermezzo.
The final fugue, which brings together the elements of the first three fugues
and the variations, stands as an important gesture towards the bringing
together of the old and the new. Whilst we are not in danger of over-reading
any structural placement of elements in direct relation to any expected norm
by consulting this architectural design, we are given a loose framework of
understanding, a particular shape if you will, in which the musical elements
will be performed.
The puzzle of where is 12, the final chorale, on the diagram is not solved,
but that is most definitely a question to be asked in any future research on this
piece; this chapter is not about an analysis of the Fantasia Contrappuntistica,
but instead it is about demonstrating a way of showing that the link between
architectural design and musical form is not as restrictive, in extremis, as the
three types of fundamental structure that Schenker (1979) proposes, and
neither is it a whimsical sketch that bears no relation to the music. It is a way
of understanding a structure that is particular and deliberate to the music.
The composer has chosen to use elements of Common Practice structures
(the foundations of a fugue or expected developments of a variation form)
but place them together in an idiosyncratic form that combines old and new
elements together (both Knyt and Scott develop this thinking in Chapters 7
and 8 respectively). If we continue the analogy of the hotel room, then in this
example we find ourselves in a boutique hotel room that still has a floor, four
walls and ceiling in which to provide a foundation, set boundaries and an
enclosed space, but the layout is strangely familiar without being expected.
For example, as we enter the room we are not greeted with the typical bath-
room on one side and an open cloakroom on the other but instead with a
small living space where two chairs and round table invite the occupant to
immediately place their identity in the room by hanging their coat over the
first chair they approach. Such a design does not cause us to immediately
return to the desk and demand a different room, it rather invites us to con-
sider the space in a way that is not predetermined before our arrival.
The dichotomy between form and function is one that has been a con-
sistent narrative in architectural design and one that Bill Hillier has grappled
with in his book Space is the Machine (1996). He suggests that ‘through con-
figuration buildings, like organisms, both contain and transmit information’
(p. 303) and that ‘the act of building, through the creation of configuration
in space and form, converts these into a single world’ (p. 305). This is a most
useful theory to consider, not for only the sake of this chapter but also for
metatonal spaces. The composer, in their act of building, configures musical
codes and gestures in space and form to contain and transmit information
that can be understood by the listener. They are not seeking to prevent the lis-
tener from understanding their musical space but rather inviting a collection
of imagined listeners to understand the interrelation through musical space.
It is the duty of the listener to engage in this space and build a structure from
the familiar and reimagined gestures that are experienced in space through
time to create a single world. How music is experienced in time is once again
a subject that has a long history of consideration by academic authors
(Epstein, 1995; Kramer, 1988; London, 2012; Marsden, 2000; Ricœur, 1990).1
However, I would like to return to a book that is now over ten years old,
and was driven by the need for an ISBN related publication soon after my
PhD where I published a phenomenologically driven theory of music analysis
based upon the compositions of Ferruccio Busoni (Fleet, 2009). Within that
book I proposed a temporal model that represented the salient moments of
the music in two linking axes: one of experience and one of memory. This was
taken from the Husserlian model of temporal intentionality (Husserl, 1991)
and the original methodology can be found in chapter 6 of my 2009 publi-
cation. Since then this methodology has been refined. Whilst its underlying
principles of generating a ‘Temporal Intentionality Graph’ (TIG) remains, its
presentation and its mode of creation has changed. The next few paragraphs
will summarize the methodology and show how to create a spatial representa-
tion of the musical form, before we consider some case studies.
58 Paul Fleet
Temporal Intentionality Graphs

A Temporal Intentionality Graph is really a rather simple concept. To under-
stand the form of a piece of music, we shall consider its configuration in space
as experienced through time. This is the ‘Intentionality’ part of the title, an
understanding of the active yet holistic connection between the subject and
the object and, to quote Husserl from which this theory is based: ‘the mean-
ingful element in each such single act must be sought in the act of experience’
(Husserl, 2001, p. 79). Each graph represents the experience of an imaginary
representative listener (there is no claim to a universal truth in this method,
but rather a desire to find a common understanding of non-generic musical
structures). The graph has two axes: one is of the memory of the sound and
one is of the presentation of sound. This is the ‘Temporal’ element of the
title. Both axes run in parallel (a development from the initial methodology
where they started from a single point of emergence, and to better show the
connections in an equal rather than incremental representation of space) and
are read from left to right. Along the axes are segments of material, moments
of salience that Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983) might refer to as divisions of
the whole that ‘when confronted with a series of elements or a sequence of
events, a person spontaneously segments or ‘chunks’ the elements or events
into groups of some kind’ (p. 13). Such moments can consist of rhythmic,
melodic, harmonic, dynamic, textural, orchestrational, or a mix of these and
other characteristics to create saliency. The labels of the salient moments are
shown in this chapter within curly brackets ‘{}’. There are no hard and fast
rules for segmentation in this methodology; such a decision is left to the critical
listener to make, but we can be reasonably sure that to employ this mode of
putting the music into discrete sections there must be a consistent and critical
rationale for each action. The lines that connect the salient moments along the
axes are those that show recognizable similarity of material or exact repeti-
tion. The structure emerges from the density and spatial presentation of these
lines along a temporal experience. Gaps between the lines emerge where new
materials are heard, dense connections occur where material is repeated and
reconsidered in quick succession, and connections are made between struc-
tural markers where the repetition of materials act as formal signifiers, such
as opening and closing materials. To read this graph is not to identify a set
of common structures across metatonal compositions, although we will find
some top-level commonalities, but to reveal the structure of the music that is
being considered in a space that can then be discussed in its own terms and
analytically unpacked without any need for the catch-all of ‘moment form’.
In 2009 I applied this theory to five representative compositions by
Ferruccio Busoni and drew each graph using Microsoft Paint®. Thankfully,
since that date and after a chance connection with a young academic studying
computing, the task of generating the graph is much easier: https://tiganaly
sis.com/ For this I am forever grateful to Adam Chatterley who wrote the
programme and to Jack Scott who has created the visual design. There is a
‘how to’ section on the opening page of the program and you will note that
it has capabilities for showing harmonic and performance labels in the score,
as well as performance tempo levels represented by a constant, thickening or
thinning line (between the ranges of 1 and 10). For the moment, let us keep
this simple and divide the explanation of how to use the graph into two parts.
Firstly, by producing a short graphic analysis of a simple minuet attributed
to J. S. Bach (but most likely written by his contemporary, Christian Petzold
(Al Bakri, 2018)) that was composed to be a demonstration of keyboard skill
and basic theory, and therefore its musical organization is helpfully explicit to
this chapter (see Example 4.2). Then, secondly, by considering an imaginary
metatonal piece that is 20 bars in length (see Example 4.4).
Temporal Intentionality Graph of the Minuet in G.

Example 4.2
Source: Author.
The Minuet in G (BWV Anh. 114) has the typical structure of a piece in
binary form: two sections, each contained within 16 bars. However what the
graph reveals is something a little more complicated and a representation of
the connections between salient moments (see Example 4.3).
Salient moments from the Minuet in G.

Example 4.3
Source: Author.
60 Paul Fleet
Each of these moments contains a melodic, harmonic, and/or rhythmic iden-
tifier which is aurally significant within the piece. For example, {a} is the
opening two-bar melody that has a distinct harmonically driven melodic-
pattern moving from the dominant note, with a decorative ascent back
to the dominant, before dropping to a repeated tonic; this is rhythmically
supported with the dominant note being heard on the strong beats. The
material in bars 3 and 4 is an alteration of this pattern as it is recognizably
related to the first sounding of this salient moment: there is repetition of the
rhythmic elements whilst the melodic elements are stretched away from their
dominant harmonic underpinnings. Such logic is true of each sounding of
{a}, including its most diverse which is heard at bar 25. This time the har-
monic directive is maintained (the dominant dropping to a repeated tonic,
although there is quaver neighbour-note decoration of the tonic) with the
melodic skeleton remaining but losing the decorative ascent. There is no true
version of {a}, not its first, second, nor last sounding. {a} is to be under-
stood in its collective essentiality, where its recognizable aural (and visual, if
consulting the score) traits create the connections (lines on the graph) across
the time and experience of the minuet. This process of assigning letters to
the salient moments is the subjective element of the analysis, but it must
be defendable in terms of its aurality. Rather than go through the logic of
each assignation in this well-known musical piece, I will now look at what
the graph reveals beyond the simple structural understanding of it being a
piece in binary form. The graph does nothing to deviate from this position
of material in two contrasting sections, yet it offers much more. For example,
the role of {a} as the main element of the first half is shown by its presence
in that section, but it is also important to note that it has a role in tying the
sections together as {a} returns in the second half to announce the beginning
of the closing of the piece. We can also note the presence of {h} in the second
section as a strong, harmonically driven moment that utilizes the leading-
note motion as a closing gesture and as a linking gesture to the consequent
phrases. What the graph gives us in this tonal example is a framework for
discussion beyond the generic, externally facing structural descriptors. It
does not discount such collective labels but, and as we will find most useful
in metatonal musics that defy extroversive structures, it offers more to the
understanding of the piece being listened to than connections to others that
share such top-level descriptors.
Now let us consider an imaginary metatonal piece of music. It is in the time
signature of 38TS2 for ten bars and then 44TS for the next ten; and is divided
into nine salient moments that are labelled {a}, {b}, {b1} (as a development
of {b}) and {c}. This imagined piece has each salient moment allocated a
section timing (with the first ten bars having a constant durational unit of 3
for the quavers and the second ten having a constant duration unit of 8 also
for the quavers), and allocated a box with its label for the length of time it is
heard within (see Example 4.4).
Example 4.4 Temporal Intentionality Graph of an imagined piece.

Source: Author.
In the remarkably simplistic graph above some elements can be seen that
represent the form of this imaginary piece. For example, the presence of {a}
throughout is its main element, which acts as opening, golden-mean point,
and closure; {c} appears to be a mode of preparation for closure in this piece
as it occurs just before {a} at bar 11 and bar 20. One might argue then that
the form is some kind of section B heavy binary structure, and if we were
counting the bars in this graph then it would look so inclined. But as this
graph is a representation of the music in time, the relative spatial distance
of the 38TS against the 44TS clearly shows that material up to bar 11 is not
equal in time and space as the material from bar 11 to bar 20, therefore the
label of binary form is not helpful. We might push this even further and say
that if we take into account the distancing to scale in the graph, then the
piece could be a rounded binary form, with the salient moments outlining an
a-b-a structure that equates to the {a}-{b}-{a} presence. And once again this
would be a mistake as it would underplay the importance and recurrence of
{c}. In both cases, such descriptions remain unhelpful when we consider that
the label of binary form or rounded binary form comes with much Common
Practice baggage that then needs to be either accepted or rejected upon inves-
tigation of the musical material.
A Temporal Intentionality Graph takes a step away from the a priori and
instead seeks to represent only what is given in the experience. However, the
graph alone is not enough to justify any discussion of form, as an analytic
commentary of the music within those salient moments is needed; as it is
with many forms of graphic analysis. That said, and as will be explored in
the following case studies, a Temporal Intentionality Graph is open enough
in its format to represent the spatial identity of a metatonal composition; it
seeks to understand a series of musical events in time as a performed structure
62 Paul Fleet
that connects what is heard by the listener in between the experience and the
memory of the music material, and it converts into a single presentation the
configuration of the musical space in a representative form. The next three
case studies are chosen as representative examples of metatonal music by
composers who may not be as well-known to a typical concert-going audi-
ence, and to show this methodology working on pieces from a solo instru-
ment to small chamber ensemble. In order of compositional date, the first
is Percy Grainger’s ‘Pastoral’ (1916) from his piano suite In a Nutshell that
he started composing and orchestrating from 1905 until 1916. The second
is Rebecca Clarke’s ‘The Seal Man’ (1922) which sets John Masefield’s
prose text for ‘medium-high voice and piano’. The third and final is the first
movement ‘Sand’ (1928) from Mary Howe’s chamber piece Stars and Sand,
which the composer described as an ‘imaginative piece on the substance itself’
(D. Indenbaum, 1958).
Case study 1: Percy Grainger, ‘Pastoral’ (1916) for piano

The obvious choice, on the surface, for such a potential case study from the
composer Grainger, would seem to be his Immovable Do (composed between
1933 and 1939) which uses building blocks of material that centre around the
note of ‘C’ in a dialogic manner and does not represent an identifiable form
beyond a somewhat distorted binary structure. But the harmony of this piece
better fits the description of overtonality (see Chapter 1) that Daniel Harrison
identifies, and we are interested in music that is in keeping with our investi-
gation of metatonality. It is important to note that Grainger, who is often
known by an imagined concert-going audience for his setting of English folk
tunes, had a compositional side that ranged from overtly tonal and modal folk
transcriptions right up to the extreme of his free compositions that were only
realized after his death (Classic, 2019). Such was the flex of his compositional
range that his composition ‘Pastoral’ comfortably sits within our defined
descriptors of metatonal harmony. But not only that, what makes Grainger’s
composition a suitable hunting ground for such an inquiry is that the com-
poser ‘continually sought to avoid theoretical blueprints of musical forms
that analysts could use for identification’ (Correll, 2009, p. 54). To make this
point further and to return to our theme of architectural understandings, in
an unpublished address to the American Guild of Organists on 29 December
1952, Grainger used the following subject heading: ‘Musical form freed from
unsuitable “architectural” conceptions’ (Grainger, 1999, p. 376). ‘Pastoral’
from In a Nutshell is representative of this avoidance of blueprints and unsuit-
able architectural conceptions.
This piece is one of Percy Grainger’s longest continuous movements. It
has no section markings, and its nine minutes of music are differentiated by
meter and tempo indications which range from a given number of beats per
minute to the direction ‘very free in time’. It is written in a metatonal har-
monic language where the central themes and opening melody are defined
by F minor harmonies, which are indicative of a Dorian tonal field, at the
beginning of the work to echoes of that same melody heard above and within
charging arpeggios and block chords that mix major and minor sound worlds.
The choice of the title is a little curious –to give the impression of scenes
of a rural life would seem to be a clear signal, but we should not be misled.
Whilst Grainger is indeed using this label in the ‘New English Music’ sense
as outlined by Tim Rayborn (2016), the incorporation of a folk melody into
the composition is not a faithful translation. For example, in the opening
melody, the act of splitting the tune into three phrased sections (labelled
{a}, {b} and {c}) makes the flow a little uneven (see Example 4.5). A trad-
itional player would instead more likely use the final note of each phrase not
to close the tune but as an upbeat to the next, and therefore the phrasing
is counter-intuitive to the way a performer would naturally understand the
melodic structure.
Example 4.5 Bars 1–4 from ‘Pastoral’.

Source: Transcribed by author and reproduced by permission of Schott & Co. Ltd
(London).
With this information, that it is not quite a pastoral and that Grainger avoided
blueprints in his compositional forms, we now have the permission from
the piece to complete a Temporal Intentionality Graph. The graph is quite
complex (see Example 4.6) and may take some time to decode, but that is
exactly what I shall be doing in the commentary that follows.
newgenrtpdf
64 Paul Fleet
Example 4.6 Temporal Intentionality Graph of ‘Pastoral’.
The piece begins with several consecutive statements of the main theme –
salient moments {a}, {b} and {c} (see example 4.5) –moving through grad-
ually more developed harmonic surroundings that increasingly blur the early
harmonies. By the time the music reaches bar 12, we have heard the main
theme three times and it has moved from an F minor sound world to the pres-
entation of {c} amongst the slipping major and minor thirds that characterize
metatonal music that quickly moves through potential key areas. While this
first section suggests that the composition is going to be about the presenta-
tion of this melody, once it begins to transform, it never returns with similarly
clear presentations throughout the remainder of the piece. Unlike structural
forms that welcome a recapitulation after development, this piece states the
pastoral theme and then continues to weave its melodic and harmonic influ-
ence through the remaining material. A restatement or recapitulation is not
the goal of this music; instead, the piece continues with its unrelenting trans-
formations of material. This is a technique of such compositions where the
larger view of a ‘section A’ followed by a ‘section B’ is too large scale to be
able to understand the connections that the composer makes in their music,
and it is evidence of the need to look at saliency in a composition in smaller
moments before abandoning any description to ‘moment form’.
From bar 13 two new salient moments are heard. Salient moment {d} is an
arpeggiated pattern that is characterized by a rising flurry of thirds and fourths
that chromatically inflect on each presentation, whilst {e} is characterized by
a stepwise descending pattern of chords, most of which are in second inver-
sion and are characterized by diminished and augmented intervals. It would
be a misrepresentation to give a musical example of this material, as each
sounding is a textural salient moment rather than an overtly harmonic or
melodic salient moment. In other words, the description I give above is more
useful than a single representation of its aural presence throughout the work.
These chords appear in sequence, and are interspersed with soundings of {c}
(shown as {c1} as it is a fragment of the end of the {c} melodic line that is
harmonized) until a four-bar passage breaks this weaving of material. This
salient moment has an echo of {a} in its construction, but is aurally signifi-
cant enough in its own right to be labelled anew (see Example 4.7).
Example 4.7 {f} first shown at bar 21 (note the tail melodic fragment of {a} shown
which is heard within this phrase and highlighted with a darker note-
head in the example).
Source: Transcribed by author and reproduced by permission of Schott & Co. Ltd
(London).
66 Paul Fleet
After this point, {f} is not heard again until the close of the piece, and on
thinking of this musical phrase as an intentional experience, we can associate
this moment with closure at both a micro and macro level. At the micro level,
its inclusion at this point is highlighted by it being the only moment which is
heard for a significant period of time, by itself, and not in close repetition. At
the macro level, its signification is the connection to the material being the
closing sounds of the opening moment. Therefore, not only does it capture
the sense of closure through its association to the closing of the first heard
moment, but its presence is also heightened by its clear presentation at this
point in the experience.
As soon as {f} has finished its sounding, a second phase begins with the
rippling arpeggios of {d}, signalling the return of the pastoral tune, now
heard alongside and interwoven with {d} and {e} as the interplay of harmonic
major and minor seconds and thirds moves through harmonies that deliber-
ately avoid any sense of a tonal centre. If this chapter was concerned with a
full analysis of the ‘Pastoral,’ it would be wise to unpack this dense metatonal
harmony, but as we have another two case studies to consider, and that the
purpose of this chapter is consider the spatial setting of the music, it is with
some intellectual regret that we cannot explore this further at the moment.
The next section of significant structural interest occurs at bar 57, has the
performance marking ‘very free in time’, and is at roughly the half-way point
of the music. Whilst the piece has 125 bars and bar 57 is not the half-way
point numerically, it is important to note that the varying time signatures and
tempo directions which are used throughout this music mean that bar 57 is
roughly at the half-way point, and the Temporal Intentionality Graph, with its
scaled bar sizes and performance directions, means that the image has a more
accurate representation than if we were working simply from bar numbers.
This may sound obvious, and I apologize if it is, but it must be made clear
that the spatial presentation of the music in metatonal compositions is not
governed externally by pre-existing forms. Nor is such music always equally
balanced in time signatures, tempo, and performance directions. While the lis-
tener may perceive form, they experience the music not as a series of measures
but as events that happen in time –sensing the proportionalities not numeric-
ally (as in number of bars) but temporally (as in amount of time elapsed). As
such, this information needs to be captured from what is given in the musical
experience, and this presented methodology can account for the intentional
experience of the music. Bar 57 is therefore a breathing space in the music: it
allows the listener to process all the musical information that has been heard
up to that point, and its freedom in time suspends the flow of materials with
washes of rising arpeggios and descending major and minor thirds. The
only element that lightly characterizes the sounding is salient moment {c1}.
This closing fragment of the Pastoral’s tune is used in a similar manner to
the closing fragment of {a} that we heard at bar 21 when {f} was presented to
us. The technique is the same: as the ending phrase of {a} was delicately used
within the setting of {f}, so is the closing phrase of {c} used in this section as
an aural signifier that the material just heard has reached a point of closure.
But here it is further emphasized by the pace of the music moving into space
that is without a consistent time.
As this freely timed section finishes, a tempo direction asks the performer
to play at a speed which is slightly slower than the first speed and which
moves the music into a third phase where materials from the earlier sections
return. Significantly, from the last beat of bar 86, {a}, {b}, and {c} return
in clear presentations but are supported by rising and falling arpeggios
constructed by the now familiar interplay of major and minor thirds along-
side perfect and diminished fourths and fifths. To be clear, these returning
salient moments are designed to trigger memories of the opening of the
piece rather than act as opening signals of a recapitulation section. The piece
closes with three presentations of {f} that are heard in the simple, rather than
previously compound, time signature of 24TS. The triplet pattern of octaves
(shown on the note ‘F’ in Example 4.7) moves towards a tremolando pattern.
Its constant repetition is like a bell ringing to signal the end of play-time. It
is heard first in a clear and simple time as quavers that iron out the triplet
feel. After an interruption from {d}, again with the instruction ‘Top notes to
the fore’ so that they sound striking above the harmonic movements below, a
final return to the moment is heard where the tremolando pattern on the note
‘G’ crescendos through to a slowing decrescendo ending on pppp. The thrice
repeated pattern is a clear signal of closure in the music and replaces the need
for a traditional cadence. It uses both spatial and temporal gestures with a
striking pattern coming to a gradual and softened halt. However, Grainger
is not finished with this reimagination of Common Practice gestures. The
repetition of the note ‘G’ is the structural force that creates closure, but in
the final bar the composer cannot help but reframe the I –V –I gesture into
a movement into the deep voices of the piano: moving from ‘C’ down to
‘G flat’ before playing the lowest ‘C’ of the standard piano range, with the
instruction ‘Strike the strings of the piano with a medium-wound Marimba
mallet’.
This piece has three distinct sections that are created by the presence of
{f} at bar 21 and {c1} at bar 57. It would be wrong, however, to label the
movement as being a ternary or a type of rounded binary. Such descriptions
are akin to the act of ‘fitting’ an octagon in a round hole (think of the toy
which invited the child to fit the correct shape into the correct hole) –the
octagon loses its shape through the process, and there is the unhelpful pre-
sumption of the round hole being able to accommodate the octagon. What we
experience in this music are three sections that are bespoke to the piece itself.
They are woven with the pastorlesque-tune captured in salient moments {a},
{b}, and {c}, and use the harmonic and melodic structures of {d}, {e}, and
{f} to weave a narrative that enables the music to sound coherent and planned
without needing a preformed structure. It creates its own architecture as it is
performed and has clear enough signals that are adapted from tonal practices
to enable the listener to realize that structure in their mind, and which can be
68 Paul Fleet
represented by the Temporal Intentionality Graph that enables a fruitful and
revealing commentary upon the music itself.
Case study 2: Rebecca Clarke, ‘The Seal Man’ (1922) for

medium-high voice and piano
The analyst Deborah Stein writes that this composition ‘mixes tonal elements,
particularly the tonally resolving diminished seventh chord, with modal and
non-tonal elements’ (2004, pp. 53–54), and if ever there was an invitation to
consider a piece from a metatonal perspective, it would seem that this second
case study offers a perfect opportunity. But not only that, in terms of selecting
a work from Rebecca Clarke’s output to consider, we know that she began
the piece in January 1922 and completed it (according to her diaries) on 24
January 1924, and, in an interview reflecting upon her work, the composer
commented that it was ‘the best song I ever did, I think’ (Lerner, 2004, p. 218).
This is justification enough. The piece is a setting of John Masefield’s (1878–
1967) ‘A Mainsail Haul’ that was part of a set of prose writings the author
composed regarding Gaelic legends of the sea and its people (Babington
Smith, 1978). Clarke adapts the wording of the poem rather than setting the
words to music, so that Masefield’s original meanings are preserved but are
not the driving force of the structure of the music. To note, this is not the first
analysis of the piece, as Stein (2004) conducted a discussion of the work that
made use of Fortean pitch-class analysis to unpack the tonal and seemingly
atonal elements. I do not seek to replace nor remove any of Stein’s work and
talk more about the structure than the harmony per se (as we did with the
Grainger case study), but as we shall discover it is difficult to consider one
without the other in such works.
The time signatures of ‘The Seal Man’ are in constant change from bar to
bar but always have a consistent durational denominator of the crotchet beat.
As such, and to show the Temporal Intentionality Graph working in a less
complicated but still representational way, the bars numbers are no longer
accurately represented in this graph. Instead, the material that is heard within
a salient moment has been counted in its number of crotchet beats per pres-
entation. For example, the first six bars have the time signature of two bars
of 34TS, one bar of 24TS, one bar of 54TS, and then two more bars of 34TS.
To show this on the graph, the total number of crotchet beats has been added
together to give a count of 19 (see Example 4.8).
newgenrtpdf
Example 4.8 Temporal Intentionality Graph of ‘The Seal Man’.
Source: Author.
70 Paul Fleet
The piece begins with the piano sounding moment {a}: a set of rising and
falling arpeggios set as sextuplets moving to septuplets with a melodic con-
struction based on a ‘C’ pedal, but with a motion featuring the stepwise pro-
gression of ‘A flat’, ‘B’, and ‘C’. This figure is only heard twice more in the
piece: once as a fragment at bar 25 where the rising arpeggio in the piano line
introduces a play of a minor thirds in a sparsely accompanied vocal section,
and again at the close of the piece where the pattern of tuplets is reversed
(moving from septuplets to sextuplets) with the movement from ‘B’ to ‘A flat’
under the return of the ‘C’ pedal (see Example 4.9).
Example 4.9 ‘ab’ bar 72–75 (piano line only. No vocal part in this section)
Source: Transcribed by author and reproduced by permission of Boosey & Hawkes
Music Publishers Ltd (London).
Just before we move to the structural placement of salient moment {a},

it is worth exploring the closure created in these four bars which does
not rely upon a typical Common Practice cadential gesture. The material
that opened the piece returns, and in this way the listener is reminded of
the start of the musical journey and brings the sound-world full circle. It
is not an exact repeat but instead a fading echo that decelerates in time
(moving from quaver motion to crotchet to stasis), descends in registral
voice (the way a spoken gesture can signal closure by using lower tones at
the end of sentence), and decreases in volume (with diminuendos on each
repeated phrase). These three elements signal closure in a way that does
not need the external coding of a perfect cadence, but rather through a
narrative gesture that slowly fades the music away. Such a technique can
be found in many metatonal pieces, as they create closure within the piece
by using material from within the piece to decelerate, diminish, descend,
decrescendo, etc., which can be recognized as a technique that relies upon
the use of introversive material more than it uses extroversive Common
Practice gestures.
The placement of {a} in this piece is structural. It opens and closes the
music, and it is also heard as a fragment where its sparse texture sits in con-
trast to the density of the piano and vocal line that it precedes and proceeds.
However, the music has two other structural markers that are presented on
this Temporal Intentionality Graph. The first is salient moment {g} which is
heard by itself as a repeated single note of ‘E’ at bar 25 in the piano and then
at bar 59 in the vocal line. These moments act as ellipses (although there are
five soundings rather than three dots), creating an audible double-bar line for
the listener. In any calligraphic presentation of music no bar line is ever heard,
but a double-bar line is a signal to the performer that a new section is begin-
ning. These pips are the sonic equivalent of the double-bar line.3 The second
structural salient moment is {e} where it is not the timing of the material that
signals a spatial marker but instead the harmonic make-up of the phrase;
but before we explore this we must digress in order to understand {e} in con-
text of the piece as a whole. The majority of the music is based upon richly
connected intervals that play with the a priori tonal convention of giving the
major second and third preference over minor seconds and thirds in a major
key and vice versa. Clarke dislocates such preferences, and we need only
look at salient moment {i} to find rippling D major arpeggios and F-sharp
diminished seventh chords underneath a melodic arc that moves comfortably
between major and minor intervals that belong to both keys and yet to neither
at any particular point (see Example 4.10).
Example 4.10 Analytic reduction of {i}, bars 40–56 showing the pattern of melodic
intervals above a lightly-held cantus.
Source: Created by author and reproduced by permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music
Publishers Ltd (London).
The term ‘cantus’ in the example’s descriptor is very loosely used (and I do
not mean it in the full species counterpoint sense, but in the association of
a underpinning harmonic note) but it does serve as an underpinning as the
piano’s sounding of ‘D major’ arpeggios is the primary generator of the
major thirds, and the ‘F sharp’ diminished arpeggios give the harmonic
authority for the minor thirds. We can see in this reduction that such a har-
monic underpinning plays with major and minor thirds spelled from the
same first note (being careful not to use the term root-note for this section as
there is no connection to Common Practice tonality), but does so in a struc-
tural way: with careful repetition of those notes so that they carry weight
underneath the melodic line above. The reduction of the top line is made by
72 Paul Fleet
keeping only the first appearance of any consecutively repeated notes and
using phrase lines to show the syntax of the vocal line. The presence of minor
thirds in the vocal line is not a surprise given our understanding of the con-
struction of a diminished arpeggio and that the upper third of a major triad
is a minor interval. However, what is interesting is the placement of these
minor thirds which do not relate directly to the intervallic structure of these
chords, but which instead sit above them (for example, the motion from the
notes ‘B’ to ‘D’ and back again is the movement of a minor third that is not
used in either of these piano arpeggiations). As this moment nears the end of
its phrase, the melodic line moves into major thirds in an act of word painting
as the singer moves from the present tense of two lovers walking towards their
watery graves to the reflective setting of love being stronger ‘than the touch of
the fool’. The harmonic construction of this section is indicative of the piece
as a whole: the careful intervallic use of paired major and minor intervals
creates a metatonality that is neither in one key nor two nor three, but instead
suspended above the control of key signatures whilst retaining the aural signi-
fier of major and minor soundings.
It is within this context that we can now understand why {e} stands out,
for the presence of these two linked salient moments is characterized by open
perfect fifths in bold descending patterns supported once again by a pedal
note (see Example 4.11).
Example 4.11 {e} at bars 57–58 (piano and vocal line).

Source: Transcribed by author and reproduced by permission of Boosey & Hawkes
Music Publishers Ltd (London).
Whilst we have necessarily strayed into discussing the harmonic composition

of the piece rather than its structure, I hope it will have been understood
that in metatonal compositions the two are largely inextricable. Where a pre-
formatted binary form structure realized into a tonally elegant minuet or a
sarabande can be analytically understood as two sections that are driven by
reference to Common Practice tonality rather than the composition itself,
Clarke’s composition relies upon internal references to create its balanced
structure. The guiding hand of Masefield’s prose is present in the phrasing of
the song, but the structure of the composition is most firmly the composer’s.
‘The Seal Man’ can be understood as a composition that begins with {a}
and {b} setting the out the musical characters of a ‘C’ pedal and a stepwise
melodic motion from ‘A flat’ up to ‘C’ which has four roughly equal sections
(see Example 4.12). The first section closes with the bare fifths of {e}, and
the second closes with the melodic punctuation of {g}, and the third, almost
developmental, section draws to a close with {e} and {g} being heard in
succession, as if to emphasize it was these two musical elements that were
used to previously draw to an end defined but not concluded sections, before
the final section returns to those opening moments of {a} and {b} and where
the rising melodic pattern is now a descending interval slowing coming to
a halt.
It is the density of the lines on the Temporal Intentionality Graph which
gives us the clue to its structure. These sections reveal themselves in an inten-
tional listening of the music which can be transcribed onto a graph that
then invites the listener/analyst to explore what it is in the musical material
that is spatially perceived yet cannot be understood through tonally conven-
tional means.
newgenrtpdf
74 Paul Fleet
Example 4.12 Structural annotation of the Temporal Intentionality Graph for ‘The Seal Man’.
Source: Author.
Case study 3: Mary Howe, Sand (1928) for chamber ensemble

Our final case study is deliberately chosen, not only because it is from a com-
poser who is most under-represented, but also because its content is one
that would be resistant to traditional forms of melodic and harmonic ana-
lysis. Mary Howe was at the forefront of ensuring that the works of women
composers were being heard. Alongside Amy Beach, she helped set up and
organize the Society of American Women Composers in 1925, and was a sig-
nificant part of the Women composers’ concerts that were held for Eleanor
Roosevelt at the White House between 1934 and 1936. However, research into
this composer is limited. Very few publications examine her music, and those
that do are predominantly from one author. The preceding information is not
justification for Howe’s inclusion in this chapter (for that would be patron-
izing), but instead show that there is much work still to be done to equally
acknowledge the compositions of composers of all genders (binary and non-
binary) in analytic musicology.
While rehearsing the piece, Leopold Stokowski wrote to the composer: ‘I
enjoyed so much conducting your short but masterful work. I have had much
pleasure in rehearsing it and it has developed in me a new conception of stac-
cato’ (Indenbaum, 1958). This letter to the composer reveals more than an
admiration for a technique. Many musical elements could have been selected
for comment by the conductor, but he chose a performance technique rather
than an element of pitch or rhythm. This highlighting of a technique is not
just because the majority of the composition relies upon staccato in the string
or woodwind sections, but also because the pitches chosen for the melodies
and harmonies are not tonally constructed. To be blunt, we are not left with
a singable tune nor an easily repeated harmonic pattern after listening to the
piece due to its use of melodic and harmonic minor seconds colouring the
composition. Howe described the music as an ‘imaginative piece on the sub-
stance [sand] itself… what it appears to be when sifting through your fingers
on the shore’ (Indenbaum, 1958). This gives us a clue as to why the staccato
technique is so featured. It representatively breaks the phrasing of the material
into the smallest possible units of the substance: the grains of sand being indi-
vidual notes. These individual notes are accompanied with connected legato
phrases –for it is not a piece of musical pointillism –but they are not the
main feature, and one might argue that the long smooth phrases represent
the collective movement of the individual units, or at least highlight through
contrast the individuality of the notes moving across space and time. Its
melodic and harmonic style (as terms used in the broadest sense) are a key
to understanding Howe’s mode of composition which she called ‘ “spanning
and bridging”, a style of composition reaching from the past through to the
contemporary’ (Indenbaum & Oja, 2001). This descriptor of the piece by the
composer and the evidence presented above is justification enough to con-
sider this piece as being metatonal and to use it as a case study for demon-
strating the value of spatial analysis in a Temporal Intentionality Graph (see
Example 4.13).
newgenrtpdf
76 Paul Fleet
Example 4.13 Temporal Intentionality Graph of Sand.
Source: Author.
The piece begins with the triplet rhythm sounded on the rim of a snare drum.
The salient moment is shown on the graph as {z}, and is represented by a dotted
line. This is not only because the connections of the moments are incredibly
dense and the dotted line helps show this important structural moment, but
also because we can use this to graphically represent the rhythmic rather than
melodic nature of the musical material. The rhythm of the element finds itself
in two further salient moments –{a} and {c}, see Example 4.14) –and we will
discuss these in due course but, to concentrate upon {z}, its placement at the
beginning is more than a knock at the door of the piece.
Example 4.14 The five musical salient moments of Sand presented in their first
hearing.
Source: Transcribed by author and reproduced by permission of ECS Publishing
(Missouri).
The rhythm carries structural and therefore spatial signification in its orches-
tration (either heard on an percussive or melodic instrument) as it is heard in
structurally significant places (1) after the main musical elements have all been
presented for the first time at bar 12 (just before the composer’s rehearsal mark
‘2’ on the score), (2) after the full chamber ensemble have finished sounding all
of the musical material to be heard in this composition at bars 20 and 21 (just
before the composer’s rehearsal mark ‘3’ on the score), (3) as the orchestration
begins to thicken out at bars 37–38 (just before the composer’s rehearsal mark
‘5’ on the score), (4) after the loudest collective presentation of the music
descending through the registers of the string section at bars 64–65 (and
before the composer’s rehearsal mark ‘9’ on the score), and (5) finally at the
close of the piece where the melodic material gives way to the characteristic
triplet rhythm that first opening the music. This rhythmic element is there-
fore a deliberately placed, sonically structural marker given its occurrence
78 Paul Fleet
after important musical sections. Its alignment with the composer’s rehearsal
marks reveals an almost Fibbonacian-style sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, and 9) which
creates mathematically related lengths of sections that are heard not in terms
of the equally placed rehearsal marks (they occur roughly every 7 to 8 bars),
but instead as a gradually expanding space that is being progressively filled
with increasingly orchestrated musical material.4
This salient structural moment has two further transformations that
are heard in succession. The first is {a}, which is where the rhythm gains a
melodic contour that is characterized by minor second ornamentation, and
the second is {c} where the range of the interval is expanded to become
ambiguous or ‘bridging’ triads that could be understood in individual triplets
(in Example 4.12 we might label as ‘Am’, ‘Fm’, ‘Am7/no third’ and ‘Fm7/no fifth’).
The movement between ‘Am’ and ‘Fm’ is not a tonally driven relation (at
best it might be considered a leading-tone relation in Neo-Riemannian theory
(Cohn, 1998)) but we need only consider the voice leading to see that the
upper voice of each triad slips and slides carefully around a stepwise motion
rather than being a tonal juxtaposition of key or chord areas. This is true
for the further examples in the piece. As {a} preserves its semitonal orna-
mentation of the triplet through the music, each presentation of moment {c}
could be perceived as hinting towards prior tonal construction of chords but
does its best to avoid any direct relation by concentrating more upon indi-
vidual voice-leading in minor second steps across the three voices rather than
forming any coherence as a tonally related sequence.
The development of the triplet rhythm {z}, through the repetition its
semitonal movement {a}, to its arpeggiated presentations {c}, not only
increases in range but also in orchestration as it moves from the percussion
section, to the wind section, to the string section, to both, and then into the
whole ensemble in the moments leading up to rehearsal fi gure 9 (bar 65) where
the triplet rhythm on a single pitch returns and descends through the registers
of the string section to draw this 65 bar development to a close. Accompanying
this musical material is a contrasting element. Whilst the staccato rhythm of
the triplets, as noted by Stokowski as a key feature, is developed across the
ensemble, it is complemented by a smooth harmonic pattern that is either
heard in long minims, moment {b}, or in connected crotches separated by
rests, moment {d}. The motion between these harmonies once again avoids
tonal reference and plays more with voice leading connections in stepwise
movement and intervallic distances that avoid the major and minor thirds.
Much like the harmonic construction of {a} and {c}, one could over-read
the tonal connotation of the construction (looking at the presentation of {b}
in Example 4.12, we could read a progression of Am /Fm /C major/flat 5 /G
minor and F5) but we would miss the intentional complexity of the voice-
leading descending through these chords, and we would fail to acknowledge
the later presentations where minor second inflections are used to continually
throw us off any tonal scent.
Whilst the presentation of {b} and {d} is not as prominent as the moments
{a} and {c}, they are heard in contrast, firstly in the opening bars and then
within the melodic motion of the triplet driven material. They follow the same
harmonic logic, they work in the ensemble both within the instrument fam-
ilies (for example, as {a} is heard in the upper strings at bar 25–26, {b} is
heard in the lower strings) and across the ensemble as a whole (for example, as
{a} is heard in the ‘cellos and bassoon at bars 41–42, {d} is heard in the flute,
oboe, clarinet, and violins), and their presence is never heard without associ-
ation to moments {a} and {c}. However, they are as the ‘straight man’ is to
the comedian in a double act: their importance can be easily overlooked but
without their presence the overall effect would be much weaker.
There is only one last salient moment to discuss in this piece and it is
one that helps explain the structure of the piece in terms of the density of
connections which increases until bar 49, where it is heard prominently after its
first two unobtrusive soundings. Moment {e} is a melodic line, almost a scale,
in each of its presentations. It takes the character of linear movement heard
in the harmonic presentation of {b} and {d} and stretches this across a single
instrument. When we hear it first at bar 29, it is amongst the soundings of {a]
and {b}, and its French horn melody is almost lost within the texture of {b}
of its related woodwind instruments. At bar 41 it is heard again in the French
horn, but amongst the whole chamber ensemble sounding presentations of
{a} and {d}. It is no theard again until bar 49, where it emerges from the soft
middle registers of the horn and moves into the upper ranges of the flute. Its
gradual emergence as a salient moment has been camouflaged within textures
that have been using the granularity of {a}, {b}, {c}, and {d} to create an
ever developing tapestry of sounds in a continually increasing orchestration
and dynamic. When it is heard prominently at bar 49, it signals the beginning
of the end of this development of musical material with its lyrical nature
and vaguely tonal scalic nature acting in opposition to the fragmentation of
material that has gone before. Moment {e} is heard again in bars 57 and 60 in
an increasingly obvious presentation, and whilst the general movement of the
music moves towards its structural climax –as previously noted –at rehearsal
mark 9 (bar 65), this moment which is heard from bar 60–63 soars above
the material (see Example 4.15) and aids the closing of the layered salient
moments by providing a fixed melodic line that the return to {z} at bar 64
emerges from.
Example 4.15 {e} at bars 60-63 (flute).

Source: Transcribed by author and reproduced by permission of ECS Publishing
(Missouri).
80 Paul Fleet
This figure announces the return of the main protagonist in its earliest form
by its cross-cutting presentation, in a way that is similar to a calm voice con-
tinually seeking to quieten the increasing noise of a crowd but gradually has
to increase its presence to allow for the one who began the conversation to
return to their main point.
This is how the piece closes, with the motion of material in its fragmented
and connecting forms reaching its most developed point. The gradual sur-
facing of {e} calls this movement to a halt, and the return of {z} creates
closure as a moment that is heard three times in preparation, suspension,
and then resolution across the soundings of {a}, {b}, and {c}. The prepar-
ation of {z} is heard at bar 64 in its single-note melodic presentation emer-
ging from the climax of material. The suspension of {z} is at bar 72, where it
carries through the next three bars as a minor second interval in the violins;
its dissonance provides the suspension. The resolution of {z} in the final bar
is facilitated by the developed presentation of {a}. Moment {a1} begins at bar
72 where the rhythmically important triplet figure no longer acts as an orna-
ment fluctuating between minor second, but is now a rising pattern moving
from the bassoon, through the clarinet to the flute. This three bar ascent is
not melodic in the sense of a heard tune, but a movement in action of the
staccato rhythm rising towards an important point, a point of closure. After
this reimagined structure of closing which uses the principles of tonal codes
but not tonality itself, a single note on the triangle carefully brackets the final
rise of the violin’s ascent creating an emphasis to the rhythm which began
the piece.
The construction of this piece is complicated yet its structure is not. If we
were to approach this from a tonally or post-tonally driven perspective, we
would not have a meaningful understanding of its structure being composed
of the interaction of the elements across the work as a whole, and not as
might have been presumed a developing harmonic experience. Similarly, if
we were to have approached this from a purely motivic perspective, we may
well have reached a similar conclusion to the narrative analysis provided
above, but we would not have had the overarching context of the graph that
showed the spatial connections. The piece can be understood as the composer
suggested: as sand running through our hands and falling to the beach below.
A handful is picked up in the first few bars, and the rhythmic energy of the
staccato triplets signals its slow slippage through the gaps between our fin-
gers. As the sand falls more quickly and in greater volume, the materials of
the composition increase but do not fully unify into a mass (the individual
moments retain their presence by their individual characteristics but remain
connected by recurring rhythms and semitonal construction in the voices).
Slowly a sensation of flow is experienced as the sand falls steadily, represented
by the melodic line of {e}; but as soon as it does, the sand begins to run
out and the flow quickly dries up so that we become aware of the individual
moments/grains again. This would all seem to indicate one long presentation
in space, were it not for the placement of these elements as structural markers
to the experience. We cannot and should not try and fit such a piece into
a Common Practice structure, neither should we be content with calling it
‘moment form’. The piece informs us of its structure in its intentional experi-
ence, and can be seen by considering the Temporal Intentionality Graph. The
staccato rhythm, represented by the dotted line and the emergence of {e},
creates structural markers that help define the aurally significant elements of
the music and provide a structure in space. Alongside these fixed points of
recognition are the partially mathematical yet musically constructed series
of {z} that create a forward moving organically driven form which is specific
to the piece. As the piece progresses the increasing size of the sections could
be argued to represent the increasing flow of sand falling through the opening
fingers. It is this flow of materials that can be seen in the density of the lines
on the graph and used to explore the material without falling into the trap of
presuming a blank canvas or a preformed structure.
Revealing the architecture of metatonal music

The above case studies have elements in common, but as was said earlier, that
should not be taken out of context. Yes, there are common characteristics of
metatonal harmonies (for example, the interplay of major and minor seconds
and thirds), but these are elements that inhabit the space of the music and
here we are more concerned with the architecture of the space that those elem-
ents create internally. Returning to the boutique hotel room that began the
chapter, we still know that this is a hotel room that we can inhabit and occupy
even though the placements of the items may not be in a familiar pattern, nor
may those items be totally familiar in their design but instead are transparent
in their function. For example, if there is an object which has a platform that
is roughly under half the height of an average adult and is supported with
vertical posts that keep it stable on the floor then it is a chair; even though
it might not have the typical four legs at each corner of the platform, a soft
leatherette padding, and a back rest. In short, if we think of mid-century
modern furniture and twentieth-century decorative arts these pieces of furni-
ture do not look much like chairs, but their function is nonetheless apparent.
How we understand those elements in time which create the architectural
space is through an open reading of reimagined Common Practice codes and
gestures. For example, and as was found in each case study, the sense of closure
was created through the same method as a tonally constructed cadence, but
with its extroversive melodic and harmonic associations suspended. What sits
above a perfect cadence is the sense of motion (preparation) being held at a
point of interest (tension) before coming to rest on elements that are familiar
to the piece (resolution). For a perfect cadence in a Common Practice setting,
the movement from the prior harmony to the re-established chord I is the
preparation, the expression of chord V uses the harmonic tension of a dom-
inant wanting to move back to the tonic, and that anticipated move back
to the tonic forms the resolution when it arrives. Metatonal music has the
82 Paul Fleet
freedom to move outside of these tonally constructed harmonic movements
and lifts the tonal association away from the movement. In each case study,
closure was created by the interplay of familiar elements that we had heard in
repeated structural settings (replacing the need for a tonic chord), that were
then held in suspense through temporal or textural presentations (replacing
the need for a dominant), before coming to a rest with decreased, diminished,
decelerated, and other musically related ‘de-’ words. The prefix is important
here, as its etymological root is one of ‘coming away from’ or when added
to a noun or verb shows that the opposite process is in play. In each case the
material that helps bring the moment to a stop is through the prior activity
being halted by the use of the same materials in a different way. This is an
openness, a request to engage in an intentional experience with the music, and
it is one that enables such metatonal musics to be understood.
Temporal Intentionality Graphs support an introversive reading of the
musical elements: they rely upon the listener to unpack their spatial pres-
entation, and –to paraphrase Hillier –they convert the configuration of
space and form into a single world by being able to contain the transmitted
and active information from the composer to the listener. The graphs are
dynamic interpretations of the performance and the listener’s mapping of
the connections made between experience and memory. It is hoped that the
methodology behind these graphs are flexible enough to be used by anyone
vested in the analysis of music. To be clear, there would be little point in
using this technique on a piece which exhibited such a strong Common
Practice structure but I would not confine such a method only to metatonal
compositions.
As a general principle, to approach a piece of metatonality with an idea
of a preformed structure is to prepare to ignore the intentional experience
of the music. As representative musics of this period, the composers of these
case studies have signalled in their writing a desire to avoid blueprints or write
music that bridged elements of old within the new, and that is not unusual in
the composers that are featured in this book. What is therefore being proposed
in this chapter is to invite you to consider this methodology for compositions
that would otherwise seem resistant to predetermined forms, and instead not
ask why they are resistant but allow them to inform you of their performed
structure. By doing so, the moments that are comprehended by the imagined
listener can be charted through space, connected through time, and ultimately
plotted onto a Temporal Intentionality Graph to reveal the space and struc-
ture of metatonal musics.
Notes
1 This is not intended as an exhaustive nor representative list, merely a starting place
for the curious from books that I have valued and that sit on the shelf behind me.
2 38TS is a short-hand for the simple triple quaver Time Signature. This convention
will be used throughout the chapter.
3 Before we get too carried away with these metaphors it is worth pointing out that
the time-keeping signal of the six pips was first aired by the BBC in 1924, two years
after the composition of this piece (Pollard, 2020).
4 It should underscored that this mathematical analogy is not perfect in terms of
number of bars nor rehearsal marks to be an exact Fibonacci sequence, however
that does not detract from understanding the more than coincidental association
between the sounding of the rhythm and sections that gradually increase by a for-
mula that does not confine the spacing of the material but expands in a pattern
associated with nature.
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5
Carl Nielsen’s musical vitalism
Christopher Tarrant
It is a well-known fact that Carl Nielsen was an outspoken critic of Wagner’s

music. Nielsen expressed this critique in his writings and especially in his
compositions as he set himself apart from the Austro-Germanic mainstream
by forging distinctive and original approaches to tonality and syntax. Even
this statement –apparently a truism –is complicated by the important early
influence he drew from members of the Leipzig School. To mention only
two of these, as a student he looked to Brahms and continued to admire his
music throughout his career. The two men met in Vienna in 1894 where they
discussed, among other things, a score of Nielsen’s recently completed First
Symphony. He also drew influence from Niels Gade, another Leipzig graduate
who later became director of the Copenhagen Conservatory where Nielsen
studied. Carl Nielsen’s critique of Wagner bears a striking resemblance to
the diagnosis of musical degeneracy made by Max Nordau in Entartung
(1895), exactly at the time that Nielsen was coming to maturity as a composer.
Although the two figures may seem at best unrelated and at worst at odds,
a comparison of Nodrau’s and Nielsen’s responses to Wagner is helpful in
developing our understanding of the latter’s approach to the nineteenth-cen-
tury symphonic inheritance –a tradition that Nielsen strove to continue –and
especially his development of a distinctive harmonic idiolect in the decades
around 1900.
Vitalism (the theory that life is dependent on a force or principle distinct
from purely physical or chemical phenomena) has become a key point of
reference in the last ten years (Fjeldsøe 2009, 2010; Grimley 2010) for our
understanding of Nielsen’s compositions and writings. While recent studies
have focused on Nielsen’s well-known aphorism, ‘music is life’, it is timely now
to make a reassessment of his vitalist tendencies. This chapter situates Nielsen’s
literary and musical output as a double-rejection of on the one hand a con-
servative approach to absolute music, and on the other hand the perceived
decadence and degeneration of the late nineteenth century that resulted not
least from Nietzsche’s critique of Wagner as well as the writings of reaction-
aries such as Nordau. This manifested itself in various ways, which extend to
Nielsen’s direct attacks on Wagner in his musical writings; his understanding
of the creation of artworks and life in the natural world as two sides of the
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713-5
86 Christopher Tarrant
same coin; his appeals to physical health and musical health being in close
relation; admiration of ancient Greek art and culture; closeness with nature
in his autobiographical Min Fynske Barndom (My Childhood on Funen); and
crucially his musical output, in which the vitalist aesthetic is embedded.
I am minded to be cautious in pursuing such an idea as vitalism with regard
to Nielsen’s output, especially since in doing so I open myself up to the long-
standing critical shortcoming that Anne-Marie Reynolds recently described,
namely that
Over the years, Nielsen’s style has been characterized by a number of

equivocal catchwords. For example, it is frequently posited, even by the
composer himself, that his music is ‘organic’, not in any specific sense,
but broadly and vaguely meaning that it unfolds in a manner analogous
to the growth of a living organism –a characteristic, it would seem, of
everything from rhythm to form.
(Reynolds, 2010, p. 38)
To my mind, vitalism is a useful aesthetic category for discussion of Nielsen’s

outlook and output, and my hope is that by the end of this chapter it will
have been sufficiently defined as to escape the criticism of being a mere catch-
word. The opposite side of the problem, one identified by Fjeldsøe, is the
perception that to define musical vitalism through analysis is a trap to be
avoided. This trap is partly the result of a wider problem in vitalist aesthetics,
notably in painting and sculpture, that Hvidberg-Hansen and Oelsner iden-
tified, namely that ‘Vitalist art … relates –although in very different ways –
to “life” and to nature’s immanent life-force. Vitalism cannot, like Realism,
Impressionism and Symbolism, just to mention a few examples of the many
stylistic directions of the period, be demarcated on the basis of any purely
stylistic or formal characteristics, since Vitalist works have stylistic features
from both academic-classicist art and from the formal repertoire of mod-
ernism’ (2011, p. 16). For now, let it suffice to say that my aim is not to pro-
vide a catch-all definition of musical vitalism –a task that would demand
significantly more space than is available here –but to observe Nielsen’s music
through a vitalist lens with the aim of focusing our attention on new ways of
thinking about his output, his approach to tonality, form, and syntax, and his
place as an early modernist.
It would be simplistic to understand vitalism as being in crude oppos-
ition to late-nineteenth-century ideas of decline and degeneration. It may be
tempting to point out the contrast between, for example, social degeneration
resulting from urbanization and technological advancement and the vitalist
predilection for a return to a harmonious, bucolic nature. Rather, it is benefi-
cial to see the two ideas as sides of the same coin. In both cases, the cultural
and aesthetic debates that were emerging in the 1890s were drawn initially
from medical theory that had been developed decades earlier. In the case of
degeneration theory, this was pioneered early on by Bénédict A. Morel in his
Carl Nielsen’s musical vitalism 87
Traite des dégénérescences (1857) but would only become a cultural or aes-
thetic concern three decades later. Vitalism arguably has a much more deep-
rooted pedigree. Hans Driesch, in his 1914 study The History and Theory of
Vitalism, traces it back through Schopenhauer and Kant, through the renais-
sance and all the way to antiquity with Aristotle as the historical anchor.
Delving deeper into the specifically musical ramifications of degeneration
theory, we can find yet more complications, not least the problem that, as
Nordau argued, degeneration, which was perceived to be a threat to the health
of individuals and the healthy aspects of society, would then be manifested in
music, art, and literature as a direct threat to traditional aesthetic styles and
techniques;1 however, the current of vitalism that was emerging in northern
Europe around the same time, whose practitioners were often at odds with
the kinds of works that Nordau was objecting to, thought of themselves as
modernists and can hardly be credited with defending the sorts of styles and
techniques with which Nordau was so concerned. Indeed, the idea of atavism
in society and in art, which Nordau so lamented, seems to come across very
strongly in the vitalist aesthetic –certainly in painting and sculpture, but also,
I’d propose, in music, with Nielsen’s instrumental works containing some
important examples.
Nordau’s attempt to harness the authority of science, and particularly
medical science, through the identification of so- called ‘stigmata’ –the
markers of degeneracy as observed in physical, behavioural, and later aes-
thetic characteristics –found many objects of focus including schools such as
the French symbolists and the pre-Raphaelites as well as individual artists and
writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde, Henrik Ibsen,2 Friedrich Nietzsche, and Leo
Tolstoy. Indeed, on reading Nordau’s Entartung (1892) it seems almost as if no
nineteenth-century creative mind could escape his gaze. Nordau considered
Wagner to be the degenerate par excellence, not least because of his sustained
project of bringing the different art forms together in the Gesamtkunstwerk,
thereby allowing neither music nor poetry to flourish independently. It is in
Wagner’s music-dramas that Nordau identifies two important musical stig-
mata of degeneracy, namely leitmotif (in which the classical processes of
motivic development and developing variation are replaced with the fixed
musical symbol), and unending melody (which violates the classical principles
of balance and closure). It was these markers of degeneracy that led Nordau
to brand Wagner ‘the last mushroom on the dunghill of romanticism’ (2016
[1892], p. 72). Perhaps, therefore, Nordau might have approved of the vitalist
aesthetic as it has been categorized by Michael Fjeldsøe, who has done as
much as anyone to argue for a vitalist understanding of Nielsen, namely as ‘art
dedicated to the aesthetic of vitality, health, youth and strength’ (2010, p. 27)
in contrast to ‘weakness, effeminacy, affectation, or unnaturalness’ (2010,
p. 35), all categories which Nordau attributed to Wagner. Given that there is
seemingly no expression of modernism that could escape Nordau’s attacks in
the 1890s it seems unlikely that he would have approved of the sorts of pro-
gressive compositional practices that Nielsen was engaging in, particularly to
do with tonality. Most crucially, Nielsen would have been in the firing line for
charges of atavism, which was for Nordau a key ingredient of degeneracy.3
One only has to hear the rhythmic pulses at the opening of Nielsen’s Third
Symphony (the Sinfonia Espansiva) to perceive something primal or elemental
at work. Furthermore, Nielsen was closely associated with the current of sym-
bolism, especially in the 1890s, which reacted against the realism and natur-
alism of the 1880s (Jensen, 1991), and this is one of the currents in French
literature that Nordau found particularly problematic (Nordau, 2016, Book
II, §3). It therefore comes as a surprise that Nielsen’s comments about Wagner
are scarcely distinguishable from Nordau’s.
One of the most interesting intersections between Carl Nielsen’s vitalist ten-
dencies and Max Nordau’s diagnosis of musical degeneracy can be found in
their, apparently independent, arrival at Wagner as an object of attack. In this
context, Fanning’s observation that ‘[Nielsen’s] initial enthusiasm for Wagner
soon cooled’ (1995, p. 352) would seem to be an understatement. In 1909
Nielsen complained that ‘We are experiencing a strange, impotent, abnormal
tendency to mix the arts one with another … a queer, emasculate desire to
see monsters. The general confusion of ideas which prevails on this point is
best seen from the fact that terms like music in painting, colour in music, pic-
torial effect in sculpture, and architecture in poetry are no longer just figures
of speech but are taken quite literally by artists striving, in the sweat of their
desperate brows, to express the essence of one art in the medium of another
… it is an unmistakable sign that we are at the bottom in a period of decline.
It’s time to go up!’ (Nielsen, 1968 [1909, 1925], p. 26). His objections were
later intensified in an essay entitled ‘Musical Problems’, published in 1922, in
which he wrote:
The following theme from Wagner’s Ring seems ugly and dated, the more
so since it was composed in all seriousness in the grand manner … It
is the taste, the überschwängliche and unwholesome, in Wagner’s theme
that is intolerable. The only cure for this sort of taste lies in studying the
basic intervals. The glutted must be taught to regard a melodic third as a
gift from God, a fourth as an experience, and a fifth as the supreme bliss.
Reckless gorging undermines the health. We thus see how necessary it is
to preserve contact with the simple original.
(Nielsen, 1953 [1927], p. 51, see Example 5.1)
Example 5.1 Wagner’s ‘Brünnhilde’ motif.

This sort of remark is characteristic of Nielsen’s more general concern for
ideas of musical health. He wrote in his diary entry of 12 March 1893 that ‘I’m
playing Bach every day at present. It’s almost as though one becomes stronger
and healthier from Bach; yes, both spiritually and physically’ (Fanning and
Assay, 2017, p. 101), and Fanning has also observed that ‘Nielsen’s opinions
on his contemporaries frequently hinged on whether he felt their music to
be “healthy” ’ (Fanning, 1995, p. 352). Soon after the completion of Musical
Problems he wrote to his friend William Behrend in even more emphatic terms
about the Brünnhilde motif, suggesting that his objection was not merely a
passing dislike but a more fundamental revulsion:
As you well know, I’m not so fond of Wagner. Indeed he shrinks more
and more for me, and now the worms are even beginning to feed on those
things in Die Meistersinger that I used to prize so much … I can’t dis-
guise that there are motifs in Wagner that are not only without interest
for me but which I find positively repulsive [‘widerlige’]. One such is the
Brünnhilde motif, which I cite in my article [Musikalske Problemer] as an
awful example.
(Fanning and Assay, 2017, p. 536)
Clearly the close relationship between musical, physical, and spiritual health
was something that concerned Nielsen for much, if not most, of his life.
A key aspect of vitalism is the idea of opposing forces. It is not simply a
life-affirming aesthetic, but one that assembles forces in a precarious balance.
This was something Nielsen claimed specifically about music in a 1922 inter-
view for the Danish daily newspaper Politiken. When asked by the journalist
Axel Kjerulf what title he had given to his newly composed Fifth Symphony,
he replied ‘Nothing. My First Symphony was untitled. But then came “The
Four Temperaments”, “The Espansiva” and “The Inextinguishable”, actu-
ally just different names for the same thing, the only thing that music in the
end can express: resting forces in contrast to active ones [de hvilende Kræfter
i Modsætning til de aktive]’ (Fanning, 1997, p. 97).4 Similarly in his own
writings, especially his autobiographical Min Fynske Barndom, we find a mix-
ture of peaceful, idyllic imagery evocative of an idealized, bucolic vision of
rural Funen life on one hand, and on the other a number of traumatic and
harrowing experiences observed through a child’s eyes. An example of this
appears about a third of the way into the book as Nielsen recounts his mem-
ories of a butcher visiting the family home to slaughter a pig:
The blood squirted at first on to Mother’s hands, but she at once caught
the thick jet in the pail. Mother seemed to me to change into someone
else; I was sick at heart and went into the garden. Gradually the screams
became weaker and less frequent, and I imagined that when all the blood
had run out the animal would no longer be able to squeal. Turning to go
back to the cottage, I saw that the sun had risen. It was blood-red, and my
eyes dazzled with all the red I had seen.
(Nielsen, 1968, p. 51)
This is a clear demonstration of how vitalism should not be understood sim-

plistically as a purely life-affirming aesthetic, but rather it is concerned with
the immediacy and transience of life and the locking of horns of opposing
forces. This also tallies with Anders Ehlers Dam’s ‘Essential features of the
vitalist concept of life’, that Michael Fjeldsøe has identified in relation to
Nielsen, namely ‘life-affirming and life-denying elements’ (2010, p. 33). There
are countless examples of this tendency in his music, one of the most obvious
cases being the format of the Second Symphony in which contrasting and
opposing personality types are depicted in each of the four movements. It
is perhaps most readily observed in the sharp change of mood between the
lugubrious Andante malincolico and the carefree Allegro sanguineo. This
trend, according to Jørgen Jensen, is synthesized in the Fourth Symphony in
which, he argues, the pessimistic and optimistic qualities, which are generally
treated separately in the Four Temperaments, are combined at a deeper, more
essential level (Fjeldsøe, 2010, p. 30). Fjeldsøe argues that in the last phase of
Nielsen’s vitalism, the ‘emphasis on life-affirming, positive vitalism’ becomes
less important compared with ‘a more all-encompassing and essential concept
of life as a [Nietzschean] condition beyond optimism and negativity, beyond
good and evil’ (ibid.).
While it is important not to fall into the trap, as Fjeldsøe identified, of
thinking that vitalism is something that can be easily demonstrated through
analysis, it is nevertheless important to attempt an interrogation of the music
with the vitalist aesthetic in mind.5 It is here that Nielsen’s approach to ton-
ality becomes relevant. Responding to Henrik Knudsen’s commentary on the
Sinfonia Espansiva, Nielsen wrote:
[y]‌ou talk about diatonic relationships. Isn’t there a contradiction between

this expression and ‘all the tonalities in a mortar’ (good!), don’t you think?
Doesn’t diatonic indicate precisely an established tonality or in any case
relationships derived from a diatonic scale? Hasn’t something gone a bit
awry here? Because a scale is surely usually regarded as a succession of
ascending and descending notes belonging to a particular key. No?? But
what do I know? We ought to move away from the keys for once, and yet
at the same time make a diatonically convincing effect. That’s the thing;
and here I feel in myself a striving for freedom.
(Fanning and Assay, 2017, pp. 337–338)
We also have evidence from a letter Nielsen wrote to Julius Rabe on 18

September 1922 that he was consciously thinking of the harmonic series in
his compositional process, and he included such a diagram (Example 5.2) in
the correspondence.6 The fact that he stops at the B flat is important because
it provides another piece of evidence that he considered the flattened 7th
scale degree to be an object of interest, and we can add this to its widespread
motivic use throughout his output.
Example 5.2 Diagram of the harmonic series included in Nielsen’s letter, dated 18

September 1922, to Julius Rabe.
Grimley has written about the flattened seventh in terms of a Danish musical
style and has paired the use of the interval with a topical and timbral element,
the horn call (2001). His critique of Dahlhaus’s reduction of musical nation-
alism to ‘a collection of historical ideas or “facts” ’ is welcome, especially in
his rejection of the contentious suggestion that a work’s value as a contributor
to modernism should be inversely proportionate to its sense of locality. The
risk, though, is that any sense of Danishness we might hear in Nielsen’s music
is founded on a circular argument: we hear it as representing something
Danish because it was written by the most important Danish composer, and
not because of anything inherent in the text. Rather than attempting to pro-
vide definitive examples of Danish vitalism, the following discussion attempts
to bring theory and analysis to bear on some examples from Nielsen’s output
and to read the results through a vitalist lens.
There is a tantalizing and as yet underexplored area of research in directing
the theory that has emerged from North America in the last 25 years toward
Nielsen’s large-scale works. This has the potential to benefit both the theoret-
ical apparatus that we currently have available, as well as our understanding
of Nielsen’s music. Daniel Grimley has made considerable inroads through
his use of Sonata Theory, most notably in his landmark work Carl Nielsen
and the Idea of Modernism (2010), but there is still much more to be done.
What, for example, would a reading of Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony (‘The
Inextinguishable’) look like through the lens of Steven Vande Moortele’s (2009)
‘double-function’ model of sonata form? How would our understanding of
the processes apparent in the Third Symphony (Sinfonia Espansiva) change
when understood as being ‘in the process of becoming’, as Janet Schmalfeldt
(2011) invites us to do? How might a modified Schenkerian approach help
us to understand directional tonality in Nielsen’s music? And what would a
Caplinian (1998) reading of syntax in the First Symphony look like? Nielsen’s
precarious position in relation to theoretical writing may also be a symptom
of his reception in the post-war era, particularly in the UK and North
America. Given, as Grimley argues, that the conditions for Nielsen reception
in Britain were largely already set by the time Robert Simpson had published
Carl Nielsen: Symphonist in 1952, it is unsurprising, but to my mind contro-
versial, that Sibelius, Strauss, and Mahler have enjoyed continued centrality
in the theoretical literature to the exclusion of other important figures of the
‘1865 generation’ (Dahlhaus, 1989). In the remainder of this chapter, there-
fore, I will offer some clues which point towards Nielsen’s potential status as
a modernist with the vitalist aesthetic in mind.
It is important to avoid discussion of music as being somehow mimetic
in the context of vitalism. ‘Music is life’ is the epigraph, and not ‘music is
mimetic of life’. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the music directly as
music and not as somehow a metaphor or a reflection of some other human
activity. One way of approaching Nielsen’s music with the vitalist aesthetic in
mind is to think of opposing keys as the protagonists in a sometimes delicate
and sometimes rather more barbaric interplay. In the early part of Nielsen’s
career we often find him writing in an abrasive contrapuntal style in which
the succession of key areas that are visited in the music rarely come to rest
for any length of time. The ‘Intonation’ from his Symphonic Suite for piano,
Op. 8, is a good example of this, in which the thoroughgoing two-part tex-
ture restlessly scours the tonal map, seemingly able to visit, however fleet-
ingly, any tonal destination it likes. As his style developed in the first decade
of the twentieth century, Nielsen began to take an ever more fluid approach
to syntax. The idea of ‘all tonalities in a mortar’ while continuing to make a
‘diatonically convincing effect’ serves to summarize this attitude, which can be
seen especially well in the Third and Fourth Symphonies as tonalities begin
not only to succeed each other quickly, but to struggle with each other over
ever greater spans of time. The significant change comes towards the end of
the First World War, by which time we begin to find tonalities in parallel,
either sitting calmly side by side or arranged in antagonistic superimposition.
The picture that I aim to build of musical vitalism as we find it in Nielsen’s
output is based on the foundational idea of a creative antagonism caused by
the intrusion of external musical forces which disturb the normal functioning
of a system (tonal, formal, or syntactical). Such forces are rarely strong enough
to completely destroy the system on which they intrude, but are enough to
generate a delicate balance between classical order and modernist disruption.
Nielsen expresses this in a number of different ways. In terms of form, for
instance, the ‘breakthrough’ that occurs in the first and last movements of
the Sixth Symphony is a clear example.7 For the present discussion, however,
I will focus on the tonal antagonism that seems to pervade Nielsen’s music
throughout his development and maturity as a composer. Such antagonism
is most frequently registered through the chromatically altered flattened 7th
sonority, which is present in his output right from the beginning. Robert
Simpson was the first to remark on this in English, noting in 1952 that in the
First Symphony
Nielsen’s decision to connect the keys of G minor and C major could not,
for him, to have been a difficult one to make. His long and close proximity
with folk-music made the major scale with a flat seventh (the so-called
Mixolydian mode) quite familiar to him, and it is also typical of his sunny
disposition that when he composes in a minor key, the minor third may
behave without warning as if it were a flat seventh in a major key.
(Simpson, 1979 [1952], p. 24)
This is an example of the antagonistic tonal agent –the flattened 7th of

C –exerting an influence on the tonal design of the symphony as a whole: the
symphony is billed as being in G minor, but it appears to open and (remark-
ably) close in C major. More recently, though, a more abstract and conceptual
understanding has been developed –one that does not rely solely on the influ-
ence of the folk tradition Nielsen was inducted into as a child.
Grimley has identified a way of understanding the inherent tension in the
diatonic system which Nielsen carefully exaggerated and exploited. Drawing
on the theoretical work of August Halm, a contemporary of Heinrich
Schenker, he states that ‘even the tonic triad itself, in Halm’s model, is inher-
ently unstable. Just as the dominant chord moves toward the tonic via the
upward motion of its third degree (the leading note), so the third degree
becomes dissonant again in the chord of resolution, pulling the music for-
ward once more in an endless cycle of tension, relaxation, and intensifica-
tion’ (Grimley 2010, p.112). This is important for the present chapter since the
flattened seventh in the context of a V7 harmony (i.e., scale degree 4) occurs
in the complementary voice to Grimley’s major third and, in such a cadential
motion, actually becomes the major third in the next chord of the sequence.8
The tonal energy that is bound up in this flattened seventh is, potentially, even
stronger and more irresistible than the rising leading note since it is not only
dissonant, but acts as the dissonance that provides tonal clarity to cadential
motion. The caveat here –which also generates the sense of modernist edginess
that is palpable in nearly all of Nielsen’s music –is that there is no guarantee
that the dissonance will resolve. This is not to say that it never resolves –that
would produce a mundanely predictable effect –but that Nielsen reserves the
right to observe or flout the convention of resolution. This is the properly
metatonal kernel at the heart of Nielsen’s idiolect.
The Quasi allegretto from the Symphonisk Suite, Op. 8–ii, is a representa-
tive example of the motivic use of the flattened seventh. The rising third from
5 ̂ to flat 7 ̂ is worked out in a classical fashion: it is set up as a proposition
at the beginning (boxed in Example 5.3a) and then becomes contrapuntally
saturated in the closing bars (Example 5.3b). In this example, the motif is
constantly stretched out by sharpening the seventh. By doing this, the nat-
ural flatward tug of the seventh is denied, with the effect of charging up tonal
energy throughout the movement. It is only in the final bars that the flatward
tug of the seventh is finally allowed to discharge, at the same time opening
up a four-part counterpoint in which each of the upper voices is allowed to
express the motif in its own time. Fjeldsøe has identified Nielsen’s vitalist ten-
dencies to operate in different ways throughout his life and around 1900 this
was expressed as an optimistic, life-affirming vitalism in works such as the
Helios Overture and the Sinfonia Espansiva. More generally, I would like to
suggest that Nielsen’s attitude to tonality around this time, especially his rest-
lessly chromatic counterpoint, which occasionally crystallizes into vivid tri-
adic diatonicism, could be a useful musical analogue to the vitalist idea of a
restless Nature that is constantly producing new life and never settling, and
the first movement of the same suite is a useful example of this.
Example 5.3a Nielsen, Symphonic Suite, Op. 8–ii, bars 1–4.
Example 5.3b Nielsen, Symphonic Suite, Op. 8–ii, closing bars.
A more mature representative example of this seventh can be found in the finale
of Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony, Det Uudslukkelige (‘The Inextinguishable’
1916), which is set in a sonata form subject to some particularly intriguing
deformations. This example is at the other end of the rhetorical scale from
the Helios overture; the Fourth Symphony exhibits the energetic vitalist
tendencies that have been identified in Nielsen’s music by Fjeldsøe. Robert
Simpson identified a particular movement ‘type’ in Nielsen’s symphonies,
the fast-tempo, triple-metre, energetic movement whose main exemplars are
the first movement of the Third Symphony and the finales of the Fourth
and Fifth Symphonies. The important rhetorical and structural observation
here is that this kind of energetic burst is the starting point of the Third
Symphony, but with a change in style after the outbreak of the First World
War, the result of the Fourth and Fifth. The flattened seventh is a feature of
the first theme (Example 5.4) and returns throughout, but the main struc-
tural moment is the perfect authentic cadence (PAC) secured toward the end
of the exposition, functioning as the essential expositional closure (EEC).9
This is the only passage containing an authentic cadence in the movement,
and that should be reason enough to attract further analytical attention.
With this flattened seventh in mind, however, I would like to investigate what
might be going on either side of this moment of structural punctuation.
Example 5.4 Nielsen, Fourth Symphony (‘The Inextinguishable’), Op. 29, Finale,

bars 1–7.
Before the cadence is reached, the seventh presents itself as an energy-gen-

erating element in the counterpoint –it is something to be wrestled with and
which continuously escapes resolution. This can be seen in bar 133 where the
A flat is sounded over a B flat in the bass, but which does not resolve con-
ventionally and is instead redeployed enharmonically as the leading note of
A minor (Example 5.5a), producing an imperfect authentic cadence (IAC).
This is followed by a passage that finally produces tonal closure with a per-
fect authentic cadence in A major (Example 5.5b), elided with the section
marked Glorioso at bar 147 which functions as the closing zone of the expos-
ition (Example 5.5c). After this crucial moment securing the tonality, the
seventh takes on a completely different character. Rather than being a dis-
ruptive influence that somehow needs to be opposed or brought under con-
trol, it is now as if this powerful, energetic force has been harnessed, and can
finally express its true tonal pull in the direction of the subdominant. This
passage produces a complete middleground structure (Example 5.5d) which
is decorated by a circle of fifths moving firstly to the subdominant (D), and
then to the secondary subdominant (G natural, the original dissonant sev-
enth) with the effect of discharging the tonal energy that had been dammed
up prior to the critical moment of tonal closure at bar 179 where A major is
finally confirmed with a PAC.
Example 5.5a Schenkerian reduction of Nielsen, Fourth Symphony (‘The

Inextinguishable’), Op. 29, Finale, bars 130–139.
Example 5.5b Schenkerian reduction of Nielsen, Fourth Symphony (‘The

Example 5.5c Schenkerian foreground reduction of Nielsen, Fourth Symphony (‘The

Example 5.5c Shows three harmonic stations in the closing zone, each with
a reference to its own dominant. With surface decorations removed in
Example 5.5d, we can see that there is a complete middleground structure
which is decorated by a circle of fifths moving firstly to the subdominant, and
then to the secondary subdominant with the effect of discharging the tonal
energy. At the point of this secondary subdominant, which is embedded within
a prolongation of the subdominant itself, the music arrives at a harmonic
station which acts as the antidote to the energetic and precarious seventh that
has dominated the movement so far: a completely static harmony built on
a series of stacked fifths. How does this contribute to our understanding of
Nielsen’s musical style? It seems to me that there are at least two components
that combine to produce something identifiably Nielsenesque. The first is the
modernist edginess which has regularly been attributed to much of his music.
The other is an identifiable and contrasting classicizing tendency in which
Nielsen is reliant on a relatively traditional model of structural cadences which
result in the concise and pithy forms that we find throughout his output. We
might say, then, that Nielsen uses classical means to achieve vitalist ends. This
case study concerns the attainment of expositional closure in a symphony,
and the elements surrounding this structural moment in many respects are
no different from what one might expect to find in a sonata by Haydn or
Mozart: before the cadence emerges the music tantalizingly evades closure,
and after the cadence there is a closing zone which references the subdom-
inant. These are classical ideas that Nielsen reimagined in a modernist way.
This is supported in Nielsen’s own writings in which he claimed that the music
of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries were the ‘summits of achievement’
in music (Nielsen 1968, p. 66). Does the conspicuous flattened seventh make
a work ‘vitalist’? The answer must be an emphatic ‘no’, at least no more than,
as Fjeldsøe put it, ‘a bunch of children swim[ming] at the beach’ makes a
painting vitalist (Fjeldsøe 2009).11 But I will for now risk saying that this com-
positional element is essential to Nielsen’s status as a vitalist composer, and
that Sonata Theory provides a useful apparatus for discussing this.
Example 5.5d Schenkerian middleground reduction of Nielsen, Fourth Symphony

(‘The Inextinguishable’), Op. 29, Finale, bars 147–179.
Fjeldsøe identifies a change of style around the time of the First World War,
arguing that in the Fourth Symphony the life-affirming and death-affirming
aspects of vitalism are synthesized; but I would like, for the sake of the dis-
cussion of tonality, to look at the opening of the Fifth Symphony. Fanning
has noted that ‘In the first movement in particular [Nielsen] seems to crawl
through the gaps between traditional harmonic functions and discover a
strange new world of wandering, hovering, and superimposed tonalities and
modalities, all subtly animated and inter-related’ (Fanning, 1995, p. 360).
There is an important change here from Nielsen’s earlier style, in which he
opens his first four symphonies with explosive outbursts, to an interwar mode
of opening with a quiet yet elemental presentation of the musical materials.
Here we see the combination, once again, of the flattened seventh sonority
and the horn-call topic (see Grimley, 2001). Unlike the Helios, however, rather
than meditating on a single Klang, the horn calls revolve around a central
viola ostinato which creates a fixed point of reference. The problem here, as
far as any reading reliant on conventional tonality is concerned, is that the
violas outline the A–C dyad which has no obvious relation to the eventual
tonal goal of the symphony –E flat –nor to the surrounding horn calls, nor
even to any fixed tonal centre in its own terms since the dyad is ambiguous: it
can be heard as scale degrees 1 and 3 of A minor; degrees 3 and 5 of F major;
or even as degrees 5 and flat 7 of a D7 sonority.
Example 5.6 Nielsen, Symphony No. 5, Op. 50, bars 1–40.

The opening bars of the symphony, shown in Example 5.6, cement this dyad
beyond any doubt, with four long bars of inactivity. The first point of ref-
erence is given by the bassoons, whose call outlines D minor, albeit with a
modally inflected E flat, planting the tonal seed that will eventually flourish
at the end of the symphony. They then move through E flat major before
settling on B flat major, the A–C dyad being ever present in the violas. The
horns then outline D major in bars 22–34 while alternating with the flutes
whose call centres on C major. The uncanny effect of this opening passage
is generated by the tension between the ostensibly fixed point of tonal refer-
ence in the middle of the texture and the continuous reorientation Nielsen
generates by casting it in different contexts. Here we witness the slippage of
the functions of pitch-class and scale degree, shown in the table below. In
this case we can propose the formula that tonal energy that had in previous
works been exerted over time, with the disposition of forces in opposition
being enacted in succession, is now presented in a kind of charged stasis, with
discrete triadic harmonies being superimposed on each other.
Bar Horn call Relative scale degrees of ostinato
1–4 – N/A
5–8 Bassoons in D minor 5 and flat 7
8–11 Bassoons in E flat major Sharp 4 and 6
11–16 Bassoons in B flat major 7 and 2
22–34 Horns in D major 5 and flat 7
Flutes in C major 6 and 1
35–39 Flutes and Clarinets in G Dorian 2 and 4
The opening sonata-form movement of Nielsen’s last symphony reproduces

the idea of tonalities occurring simultaneously. In this case, however, the
superimposition of harmonies does not give the impression of their passively
resting side-by-side, but rather the effect of a climax in which the two keys
are slammed together, bringing the narrative antagonism of the movement
to a head. The symphony begins in G major with a lyrical theme followed
by a march topic. The ‘new theme’ which emerges near the beginning of the
development section presents one of the few relatively uncomplicated musical
statements in the movement –a period of respite E major. This, in my view,
is an example of the ‘hypothetical music’ that Seth Monahan has referred to
in Mahler’s symphonies (Monahan, 2015, p. 26). It proposes a situation in
the sonata process where such an ideal state might be presented in the tonic.
When this new theme reemerges later in the movement at bar 171, however, its
role is reversed as it shatters the thematic framework of the movement, and is
presented in B flat, a tritone away from its original appearance, and mirroring
E major from the other side of the original tonic of the piece, G.
In this work the breakthrough is enacted in a radically different way from
what we have come to expect in classic examples from Mahler and Sibelius.
In terms of narrative trajectories, the first movement of Sibelius’s Fifth
Symphony charts a path from the difficult, dark, cadenceless opening to the
energetic, directionalized Scherzo. In the case of Nielsen’s Sixth, the opposite
is the case as the movement seems to have been barred from reattaining either
the uncomplicated G major tonality or the child-like march with which it
began, and in its final stages the narrative is left marooned on A flat. This
invites some speculation as to whether the breakthrough itself, in its original,
positive sense as it has been directed at the music of Mahler and Sibelius, may
not be the focus here. Rather, it may be advantageous to consider Adorno’s
lesser-known category of ‘collapse’, since this is what the music does after its
bungled breakthrough attempt, and which can be traced to a particular har-
mony on which the music comes to rest (bar 185) –a harmony which contains
all the notes of E major, looking back to the innocence of the premonition,
and all the notes of the enharmonic equivalent of A flat major, the remote
destination of the movement (Example 5.7). Adorno writes that
[t]‌he collapsing passages in Mahler … no longer merely mediate between

others or conclude elaborations, but speak for themselves. While they are
embedded in the progression of the form, at the same time they extend
through it as something in their own right: negative fulfillment
(1992, pp. 44–45)
Rather than breaking out into a new, more fulfilling and emancipatory musical
form, the collapse disables the movement from attaining its proper tonal goal.
This is clearly audible on the surface of the music in the first movement of
Nielsen’s Sixth as the ‘new theme’, now presented as a brass bombardment,
tumbles into a complex harmony which, when thinned out, comes to rest on
a bare semitone. The combination of E major and A flat major is a collision
of two tonal stations which are then forcibly torn apart, leading to the aban-
donment of the childlike innocence of E, and the eventual acceptance of the
rather more experienced A flat.
Example 5.7 The ‘collapse chord’ in Nielsen’s Sixth Symphony (Sinfonia Semplice),

first movement, bar 185.
It is possible here to identify an ironic response to the nineteenth-century

symphonic inheritance, and to Nielsen’s own earlier work. The trend in his
pre-war symphonies is to set a ‘problem’ in the exposition which inevitably is
solved. The Sixth Symphony is different because of the collapse which per-
manently shatters the movement’s form, as well as the tonal symmetry of the
symphony as a whole. Although directional tonality, as Harald Krebs (1994)
and others have pointed out, is a commonplace in Nielsen’s music, it is typ-
ically treated as a positive musical narrative, often outlining the interval of
a fifth. This is the case, for example, in the outer movements of the Sinfonia
Espansiva, which trace a path from D to A –an aspirational gesture in line
with much of Nielsen’s early and mature music. The first movement of the
Sinfonia Semplice, which rises by a semitone between beginning and end, is a
different beast entirely.10 Although A flat minor is converted to A flat major
at the very end, there is a particular sense of irony in its conclusion as the two
contrapuntal bassoon parts finally come to rest on the desolate Neapolitan.
As if to drive home the message that the optimism of E major has been com-
pletely destroyed, in the movement’s closing bars the note E is expunged from
the score as Nielsen prefers to spell the penultimate harmony not with an E
natural, but rather with an F flat in the 2nd bassoon. This music is therefore
metatonal in the literal sense, that is to say, the narrative of the sonata form
hinges on its own problematic relationship with the tonal system as Nielsen
inherited it.
Hvidberg-Hansen and Olsner (2011) have described the vitalist aesthetic
as a transition from romanticism and nineteenth-century realism to some-
thing more properly belonging to modernism. I would like to add a further
layer of nuance to this reading, which seems rather overburdened with value-
judgements concerning what modernism comprises. Nielsen had never been
a romantic and had not digested the late-nineteenth-century Wagnerian and
Brucknerian mode in the way that Mahler and Schoenberg had. Nielsen had
been a modernist from the outset while drawing influence from a more neo-
classic mentality. J. P. E. Harper-Scott’s (2011) Badiouvian model of musical
modernism is helpful here. While it is difficult to claim that Nielsen’s response
to the emancipation of dissonance was an uncomplicatedly faithful one, we
might consider his approach as an important example of a third-practice
tonality that synthesizes elements of first-practice functionality and second-
practice chromaticism. In much of Nielsen’s earlier output the fluidity of his
harmonic and contrapuntal work seems to supersede much of what we find in
Wagner, for instance, while at the same time harking back to the last healthy
high point in musical style (as Nielsen saw it), the eighteenth century (Grimley
2005). In much of his later practice, from the time of the First World War
onward, we find that harmonies regularly crystallize into recognizable triads,
but sit in delicate tension or antagonism with each other –an idea that cor-
responds with the vitalist duality discussed above. This continued into the
1920s, but during the interwar period such tonal duality and tension began
to operate not as a succession of keys through time, but as an amalgam oper-
ating simultaneously. In this sense, Nielsen sets himself clearly apart from a
figure such as Nordau, who flamboyantly and often abrasively set out what he
considered to be the problems with music, literature, painting, and sculpture,
but who offered few solutions. Nielsen, by contrast, is positively overflowing
with solutions, which seem often enough to coalesce around a return to the
healthy styles and modes of the past –the intervals, tight counterpoint, and
pithy forms –while shaping and responding to the dynamics of the present he
found himself in.
Notes
1 See especially Book I, §3 and Book II, §5.
2 Like Nielsen, Ibsen was an important contributor to the ‘Nordic breakthrough’ –
an intense period of literary, musical, and artistic productivity beginning in the
1890s in the broader Nordic region. Other important figures in this Nordic wave
of early modernists include the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, the Swedish
author Selma Lagerlöf, the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, the Finnish archi-
tect Eliel Saarinen, the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, the Norwegian author and
feminist Amalie Skram, the Swedish writer and painter August Strindberg, and
the Russian painter Ilya Repin.
3 ‘All the characteristics of [Wagner’s] talent point not forward, but far behind us.
His leit-motif, abasing music to a conventional phonetic symbol, is atavism; his
unending melody is atavism, leading back the fixed form to the vague recitative of
savages; atavism, his subordination of highly differentiated instrumental music to
music-drama, which mixes music and poetry, and allows neither of the two art-
forms to attain to independence; even his peculiarity of almost never permitting
more than one person on the stage to sing and of avoiding vocal polyphony is
atavism’ (Nordau, 2016 [1892], p. 76).
4 The quotation comes from an interview printed in Politiken (24 January
1922) conducted by Axel Kjerulf. Nielsen’s description was of the title not only of
Symphony No. 3, but also of Symphonies Nos 2 and 4.
5 See Fjeldsøe (2010, p. 33): ‘For det første må man undgå at falde i den grøft, hvor
man foregiver, at Vitalisme er noget håndfast, man konkret kan påvise analytisk.’
6 Letter to Julius Rabe, 18 September 1922: ‘Any conical object (even a water jug)
produces a fundamental, its octave, then its fifth, and so on. What do people who
think that the triad is a convention to have say to this? Probably there is some (small)
justification in the urge for quarter-tones, but not in the context of music-making
today; as a harmonic novelty I don’t think there’s any potential in them. On the
other hand, maybe there is in the melodic dimension’ (Fanning and Assay, 2017).
7 I have written on this elsewhere. See Tarrant (2017).
8 Grimley has produced chord maps of the exposition, development, and reprise of
the first movement of Nielsen’s Third Symphony which help to demonstrate this
point (2010, pp. 107, 122, 124–125).
9 For the purposes of this analysis I am using the terminology of Hepokoski’s and
Darcy’s Elements of Sonata Theory (2006).
10 Krebs writes that ‘The last two symphonies … move beyond late nineteenth-cen-
tury tonal practice … the Sixth in particular, might well repay investigation from
analytical vantage points other than those employed in Simpson’s book and in this
[Krebs’s] chapter’ (1994, p. 247).
11 Fjeldsøe refers to Jens Ferdinand Willumsen’s Sol og Ungdom (Sun and Youth),
painted in 1909, in order to contextualize his argument.
References
Adorno, T. W. (1992). Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy, Edmund Jephcott (trans.).
University of Chicago Press.
Caplin, W. E. (1998). Classical Form. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dahlhaus, C. (1989). Nineteenth-Century Music. University of California Press.
Dam, A. E. (2011). ‘Music is life’: Carl Nielsen’s vitalist musical philosophy.
In: Hvidberg-Hansen and Oelsner (eds), The Spirit of Vitalism: Health, Beauty and
Strength in Danish Art, 1890–1940. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, pp.
276–305.
Driesch, H. (1914). The History and Theory of Vitalism, C. K. Ogden (trans.). London:
Macmillan Press.
Fanning, D. (1997). Nielsen: Symphony No. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fanning, D. (1993 [Rev. 1995]). Nielsen. In: Robert Layton (ed.) A Guide to the
Symphony. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 351–362.
Fanning, D. and Assay, M. (2017). Carl Nielsen: Selected Letters and Diaries.
Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
Fjeldsøe, M. (2009). Carl Nielsen and the current of vitalism in art. Carl Nielsen
Studies, 4: 27–42.
Fjeldsøe, M. (2010). Vitalisme i Carl Nielsens musik. Danish Musicology Online,
1: 33–55.
Grimley, D. M. (2001). Horn calls and flattened sevenths: Nielsen and Danish musical
style. In: Harry White and Michael Murphy (eds), Musical Constructions of
Nationalism. Cork University Press, pp. 123–141.
Grimley, D. M. (2005). ‘Tonality, clarity, strength’: gesture, form, and Nordic identity
in Carl Nielsen’s piano music. Music & Letters, 86: 2, 202–233.
Grimley, D. M. (2010). Carl Nielsen and the Idea of Modernism. Woodbridge: The
Boydell Press, 2010.
Harper-Scott, J. P. E. (2011). The Quilting Points of Musical Modernism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hepokoski, J., & Darcy, W. (2006- 08-
31). Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms,
Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Hvidberg-Hansen, G. and Oelsner, G. (2011). The Spirit of Vitalism: Health, Beauty
and Strength in Danish Art, 1890–1940. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
Jensen, Jørgen I. (1991). Carl Nielsen: Danskeren. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
Krebs, H. (1994). Tonal structure in Nielsen’s symphonies: some addenda to Robert
Simpson’s analyses. In: Mina Miller (ed.), The Nielsen Companion. London: Faber,
pp. 208–249.
Monahan, S. (2015). Mahler’s Symphonic Sonatas. New York: Oxford University Press.
Morel, Bénédict A. (1857). Traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles, et
morales de l’espèce humaine. Paris: G. Baillière.
Nielsen, C. (1953 [1927]), My Childhood on Funen Trans. Reginald Spink, Hutchinson:
University of California.
Nielsen, C. (1968). Living Music. Reginald Spink (trans.). Copenhagen: Edition
Wilhelm Hansen.
Nordau, M. S. (2016 [1892]). Degeneration. London: William Heinemann.
Reynolds, A. (2010). Carl Nielsen’s Voice. Copenhagen: Tusculanum Press.
Schmalfeldt, J. (2011). In the Process of Becoming. New York: Oxford University Press.
Simpson, R. (1952 [Rev. 1979]). Carl Nielsen: Symphonist. London: The Temple Press.
Tarrant, C. (2017). Breakthrough and collapse in Carl Nielsen’s Sinfonia Semplice.
Danish Yearbook of Musicology, 41, 32–49.
Vande Moortele, S. (2009). Two-Dimensional Sonata Form. Leuven: Leuven University
Press.
6
The cautious experiments of
M. K. Čiurlionis (1875–1911)
Tonalities and realisms in his art
and music
George Kennaway
Although the art and music of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis are

well-known in Eastern Europe –indeed, his art was internationally recognized
rather earlier than his music –his overall creative output is still unfamiliar
in the West, notwithstanding recent recordings and the publication of high-
quality facsimiles. This chapter explores aspects of both his art and music
which have received relatively little attention in English.
Biographical information
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was born in 1875 in Varena, northern
Lithuania. Lithuania was then part of the Russian (Tsarist) Empire, but
Polish was the language of the educated classes, reflecting a centuries-old
connection between those two countries. From the age of two his family
lived in Druskininkai in south Lithuania, now the venue for an annual
Čiurlionis conference. His father taught him the organ, and he could
read music by the age of seven. In 1889 Čiurlionis joined the orchestral
school run by Prince Michael Oginski at his estate in Plungė, in western
Lithuania. He graduated from Oginski’s school in 1893 and studied at
the Warsaw conservatoire until 1899, his expenses being paid by Oginski.
After a period in Warsaw as a piano teacher, in 1901 Čiurlionis went to
the Leipzig Conservatorium, again supported by Oginski. He had many
difficulties in Leipzig, including poverty, homesickness, social isolation, a
degree of anti-Lithuanian prejudice, frustration with Carl Reinecke’s con-
servative teaching, and the death of Oginski in March 1902. Nonetheless,
he graduated in June 1902. That autumn he returned to Warsaw and began
to develop his interest in painting, enrolling at the new Academy of Fine
Arts in Warsaw in March 1904. In 1905, nationalist uprisings disrupted
life in Warsaw, and at this time the emerging Lithuanian nationalist
movement started to influence him. In 1906 the Warsaw Art Academy
exhibited its students’ work in St Petersburg, with Čiurlionis singled out
for attention. He took part in the First Lithuanian Art Show in Vilnius in
December 1906. Here he met his future wife, the playwright and translator
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713-6
The cautious experiments of Čiurlionis 107
Sofija Kymantaitė (1886–1958). They prepared the Second Lithuanian Art
Show in March 1908, and became engaged soon after. In 1908 Čiurlionis
visited St Petersburg in search of new audiences, having had little success
in Vilnius. In St Petersburg the painter Mstislav Dobuzhinskii (1875–1957)
befriended him, and introduced him to other artists, including Alexandre
Benois, Konstantin Somov, Léon Bakst, and Konstantin Makovsky
(editor of Apollon, the house journal of the Mir isskustva group [World
of Art]).The Union of Russian Artists accepted him, and Mir isskusstva
elected him as a member. He married Sofija Kymantaitė on 1 January
1909 [new style] in Lithuania, and then returned to St Petersburg for two
months. However, Čiurlionis’s paintings did not sell and he had no success
as a performer either. They returned to Lithuania, but Čiurlionis went
back to St Petersburg yet again in the hope of something better –but
this visit also was not a success. He became mentally ill and in February
1910 was admitted to a nursing home near Warsaw. While there, his work
was exhibited in Lithuania, Russia, Latvia, and France, but he knew little
of this. That winter he contracted pneumonia, and he died on 10 April
1911. His paintings were housed in a dedicated gallery in Lithuania, where
they remain today. Only in recent years have they been exhibited abroad
due to their extreme fragility. Until the 1997 publication of the superb
catalogue raisonnée (Verkelytė-Federavičienė, 1997) they were badly
reproduced –partly a consequence of his chosen medium, tempera on
cardboard, and his somewhat muted palette. There was considerable com-
mentary on his art from around the time of his death onwards in Russia,
and he was mentioned in passing in several English-language art histories
of the period. Awareness of his music outside Lithuania spread rather
slower. Čiurlionis’s piano music did not begin to be published until 1925,
in an unreliable edition (Šimkus, 1925), followed by an edition prepared
by his sister Jagdvyga (Čiurlionytė, 1957, 1975), and his orchestral works
were performed from manuscripts as late as the 1960s. Textually reliable
editions have only been available in recent years, and the systematic study
of his MSS has only begun in the twenty-first century.
There is relatively little published in English outside Lithuania in modern
times concerning Čiurlionis. This chapter draws on my own earlier work
on his octatonic compositions (Kennaway, 2013 –I am grateful to Gražina
Daunoravičienė and Rima Povilionienė for permission to use some of this
material here), and also on Dr Darius Kučinskas’s work on Čiurlionis’s
MSS (Kučinskas, 2003, 2004, 2005a, 2007), Rokas Zubovas’s recordings
and commentary on Čiurlionis’s early piano works (Zubovas, 2012), the
analytical study of Čiurlionis’s cryptograms by Gražina Daunoravičienė
(Daunoravičienė, 2011), and Vytautas Landsbergis’s several books and his
edition of Čiurlionis’s piano music (Landsbergis, 1992, 2004).1 Analytical
relationships between his music and painting have been explored by Holm-
Hudson and Kučinskas (2006).
108 George Kennaway
Art
The great majority of Čiurlionis’s paintings, which total around 300, are
in tempera on cardboard; there are also some drawings in India ink, and
etchings on glass. He depicts fantastic cosmological landscapes, figures from
Lithuanian folk tales, and architectural fantasies; human beings are almost
entirely absent. Many of his paintings were grouped in cycles, using musical
forms, with individual paintings given musical titles, such as the Sonata of the
Summer (BVF 187–190, 1908), consisting of four paintings entitled Allegro,
Andante, Scherzo, and Finale, or the Fugue (BVF 130, 1908); many paintings,
like his piano works, were simply entitled ‘prelude’. The musical element in
his art inclined earlier commentators to relate his work to abstraction, to the
extent that in the 1940s the Estonian poet Alexis Rannit claimed him as an
abstract painter pre-Kandinsky. Although he had come to the attention of
Kandinsky, Kandinsky’s widow Nina strongly contested Rannit’s view, and
later commentators do not make this claim. The papers in connection with
this controversy are reprinted in Gostautas (1994). These are Rannit (1949,
1950), Kandisky and Grohmann (1953), and Plioplys (1994). An earlier art-
icle by Rannit (1946–47) mentioned contrapuntal elements in Čiurlionis’s art
but not (pace Gostautas) abstraction. The realistic basis of his art was identi-
fied very early by Valerian Chudovsky in 1914, in an issue of Apollon entirely
devoted to Čiurlionis: ‘Čiurlionis is a realist. […] Čiurlionis looked at reality
with a painter’s sharp and true eye and spoke of that and it which he saw’
(Chudovsky, 1914, p. 25). However, his realism is part of a wider, symbolic
vision. Some elements in his paintings are connected with Polish fin-de-siècle
nationalism, which Čiurlionis encountered in his time in Warsaw through
the Młoda Polska [Young Poland] movement and the Sztuka [art] group.
Many nineteenth-century nationalist movements were designated ‘Young’
(Hobsbawm, 1962, pp. 132– 133); the Lithuanian nationalist poet Jonas
Mačiulis- Maironis (1862– 1932) published an epic poem entitled ‘Jaunoji
Lietuva’ [Young Lithuania] in 1907. The figure of Rex (BVF, 213, 1909)2
owes much to the concept of the ‘King-spirit’, and elements of his landscape
painting can also be found in contemporaneous Polish art (Okulicz-Kosaryn,
2007). While in Warsaw, Čiurlionis was influenced by the Lithuanian-born
Kazimierz Stabrowski (1869–1929), Ferdynand Ruszczyc (1870–1936) who
made a speech at Čiurlionis’s funeral, Konrad Krzyzanowski (1872–1922), and
Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907). A founder member of Sztuka, Wyspiański
was ‘the intellectual embodiment of Sztuka aesthetics’ (Mansbach, 1999,
p. 92). Sztuka, officially formed in Kraków in 1898, dominated the teaching
at the Warsaw Art School. The group became a more formalized organiza-
tion with the aim of affirming national culture ‘through the improvement of
artistic life in Poland and through participating in international exhibitions’
(Mansbach, 1999, p. 67). Their subject matter avoided contemporary refer-
ence, concentrating instead on timeless landscapes sometimes combined with
subtle symbolic allusion to national history. Sztuka exhibited in Warsaw,
Kraków and Vilnius in 1903, and remained prominent in Polish art until
around 1908 (Cavanaugh, 2000, p. 244; Mansbach, 1999, p. 237).
A particularly good example of this subtle symbolic allusion is Wyspiański’s
Chochoły –Planty nocą [‘Capsheaves’, or ‘Straw Men’ –‘the Planty by night’],
in pastels on paper, from 1898–1899. A night scene shows rose bushes covered
by straw hoods to protect them from frost, standing in the Planty Park in
Kraków, with Wawel Castle just visible in the upper right corner. It has been
interpreted as representing the dormant spirit of Polish nationalism waiting
to blossom in the spring (Gibson, 1999, p. 175; Cavanaugh, 2000, p. 270, n. 9).
However, Wyspiański’s hooded bushes are also half-human figures engaged in
a mysterious rite (a dance? a conversation?) beneath the trees. Two street lamps
are picked out as bright points of light casting rays across the road, but the
scene is lit more powerfully by a bright moon just outside the frame. Patches
of bare paper provide the earth tones (a technique also used by Čiurlionis).
While the painting represents a specific time and place, the combination of the
primeval bush-figures amid the tangled trees with the modern lighting tech-
nology on the diagonally composed street (itself conflicting with the opposing
diagonals in the wood) is disquietingly suggestive in a characteristically sym-
bolist way. A strong diagonal composition is also used in Wyspiański’s three
pastel landscapes from 1905 entitled Widok z okna pracowni artysty [view
from the window of the artist’s studio] (two in Krakow’s National Museum,
one in Warsaw).
Čiurlionis’s landscape paintings, such as Seascape (BVF 2, 1901?),
Landscape (BVF 89, 1906), or the triptych Raigardas (BVF 139–141, 1907),
lack specific ‘added’ national symbols of the more overt sort found in
landscapes by Malczewski or Weiss, but they are nonetheless recognized as
Lithuanian by Lithuanians themselves. They depict the sea and the forest,
which have the same symbolic status in Lithuania as do, mutatis mutandis,
the mountains of the Scottish Highlands or the white cliffs of Dover. More
specific symbolic allusion is found in The Knight Prelude (BVF 212, 1909).
The knight is the national symbol of Lithuania, also used in Čiurlionis’s
poster design for the second exhibition of Lithuanian art in 1908 (BVF 169);
the city in the background evokes Vilnius. Fairy Tale (BVF 209, 1909) shows
two magical kings in a dark wood watching over a typical Lithuanian
village glowing with inner light. The branches of the trees carry more little
villages and a tiny man looks down on the scene (an untypically humorous
gesture). The composition alludes to conventional representations of the
Holy Family, with the village itself occupying the place of the Christ-child.
Čiurlionis appears to have suggested that it represents ‘the elevation of folk
culture by the national liberation movement’ (Landsbergis, 1992, p. 108,
n. 102). This understated national symbolism has clear affinities with Młoda
Polska. However, Rasa Andriušytė (2000) has examined Čiurlionis in rela-
tion to Młoda Polska, finding that Čiurlionis was using a different artistic
language, closer to modernism. In England, Čiurlionis was received as a
Russian post-impressionist (Kennaway, 2005), and there are recurring motifs
110 George Kennaway
in his paintings which appear connected to Čiurlionis’s psychological fears
(Kennaway, 2006).
While Čiurlionis’s art is representational in terms of technique, it attempts
to reach towards mystical higher truths that lie beyond surface appearances.
In the process, individual elements can appear to be treated as abstract shapes.
Examples include the cycle Creation of the World (BVF 21–33, 1905–06),
Sparks (BVF 39, 1906), the two paintings entitled Sorrow (BVF 44–45, 1906–
07), the Allegro from the Sonata of the Sun cycle (BVF 66, 1907), and the
final three of the eight paintings in the Winter (BVF 99–106, 1907). Typically,
the abstractionist tendencies of Sparks obscure the more obvious debt to
the treatment of highlights in, for example Pankiewicz’s Nocturne: Warsaw
Droshky on a Rainy Night (1893). But there is also a strong anthropomorphic
element: walls have eyes, an island can resemble a half-submerged creature,
trees become fingers, and the crest of a wave can resemble a hand. Čiurlionis
himself is sometimes present in the form of his initials, as in the Finale of
the Sonata of the Sea (BVF 142, 1908); the sea bird that appears in the first
Allegro of that cycle is a version of his first initial M (Allegro, Sonata of the
Sea, BVF 140, 1908).
Thus, while Čiurlionis’s art represents real objects, it nonetheless attempts
to reach beyond naturalism to evoke a higher reality. It may lean towards the
abstract, in that some of his paintings seem to represent objects more as geo-
metrical shapes, but the general context is one of representation. This idiosyn-
cratic mixture of elements –mysticism, naturalism, fantasy –distinguishes his
work as a whole from that of his contemporaries, although individual traits
can be found there. Considered as a new direction in art, it only goes part way.
When considered in relation to the various avangardisti movements in Russia,
the semi-abstraction of Kupka, or even lesser-known artists a little closer
to home, Čiurlionis’s experimental art ultimately appears rather provincial.
His Estonian modernist contemporary Nikolai Triik (1884–1940) benefited
from a more cosmopolitan experience of European art (Mansbach, 1999,
pp. 182–185); the Latvian Rūdolfs Pērle (1875–1917), who claimed Čiurlionis
as his spiritual teacher and was one of a small group of ‘rather odd St
Petersburg artists who adored Čiurlionis’ (Andriusytė-Žukienė, 2009, p. 159),
also depicted imaginary landscapes and fantasies, but had a wider range of
techniques and subject matter (Bužinska, 2005, pp. 15, 23, 95).
Music
Although Čiurlionis died at the age of 36, his musical output, consisting of
some 300 works, was nonetheless seen by Danutė Staškevičius (1986, pp. 87–
92) in terms of the standard nineteenth-century model of three ‘periods’, with
early works up to 1901, a ‘plateau’ 1901–1903, and a final period 1903–1909.
These periods are difficult to separate, especially in his last decade, and the
application of Beethovenian periodization is in any case questionable with its
implied canonic claims. It is more helpful to think in terms of four types of
composition:
• A large number of short piano and choral works characterized by simple

lyricism and uncomplicated textures or forms. Piano pieces of this type
owe much to Chopinesque models. The choral works are arrangements of
folk songs typical of southern Lithuania.
• More intricate, technically demanding, works. Those for piano are
almost all entitled ‘Prelude’. Generally short, often using two-or three-
part contrapuntal textures (some are fugal), and often using ostinati.
Čiurlionis’s string quartets fall into both these categories.
• Exploratory/experimental works. These employ a range of compositional
techniques including the use of partial or full octatonic pitch collections,
musical cryptograms, ostinati, wide textures, and unconventional tonal-
ities (rarely approaching atonality and never using serialism).
• Larger-scale works orchestral and choral works. These include his two
completed symphonic poems Jūra [The sea] and Miške [In the forest], a
De Profundis for choir and orchestra, and a group of a capella settings of
liturgical texts.
Just as claims were made for Čiurlionis as an abstract painter avant la lettre,
so it used to be asserted that Čiurlionis was at least a proto-serialist. This
was on the basis of a few works which, although not employing all 12 tones,
seemed to employ typical note-row procedures, such as inversion or retro-
grade. A good example is his ‘Besacas’ Variations VL265 (1904-05?). The
theme (Example 6.1) consists of the musical note- names present in the
name Boleslaw Czarkowski (BolESlAw CzArkowSki) (using German nota-
tion: B =B flat, S =Es =E flat). In one variation (Example 6.2) the theme is
presented in retrograde diminution, and in another (Example 6.3) the theme
is transposed successively to each pitch of the theme in turn.
Example 6.1 ‘Besacas’ Variations VL 265: theme.
Example 6.2 ‘Besacas’ Variations VL 265: variation 5, theme in bass in retrograde

diminution (note that for clarity, music examples in this chapter are given
without dynamics or phrase markings).
112 George Kennaway
Example 6.3 ‘Besacas’ Variations VL 265: successive transpositions of the theme for

each variation.
Several other works use musical cryptograms of this type (note that Čiurlionis
only uses letter-names that translate directly into musical note-names, unlike,
for example, Fauré’s Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn or Ravel’s Berceuse sur le
nom de Gabriel Fauré). The set of variations on the theme ‘Sefaa Esec’ VL
258 (1904) takes its notes from the name of Stefania Leskiewicz (StEFAniA
LESkiEwicz), Čiurlionis’s friend whom he met in the summer of 1904
(Example 6.4). (The most thorough recent exploration of Čiurlionis’s use of
cryptograms and other devices is Kučinskas (2005b).)
Example 6.4 ‘Sefaa Esec’ Variations VL 258 (1904) –theme.
Much of Čiurlionis’s work is tonal, although often highly chromatic on the

surface. Apparently adventurous harmonies, such as augmented fifths, are
rare, and seem to be used ornamentally. Occasionally he uses the French
augmented sixth chord, or at least hits upon it almost by accident –given that
it is almost never conventionally resolved, he appears to be using it purely
for its own sonority. Typical examples (Examples 6.5–6.9) include the second
of three movements comprising the piano work The Sea (VL 317(b), 1908),
the prelude VL 325 (1908), the fourth of the Sefaa Esec variations VL 258
(in Landsbergis’s version), and the fourth of the Besacas variations VL 265
(1905).
Example 6.5 The Sea VL 317(b) (1908), bb. 11–12.
Example 6.6 VL 325, bars 4–6.
Example 6.7 VL 325, bar 12.
Example 6.8 ‘Sefaa Esec’ Variations VL 258, variation 4 (ed. Landsbergis), bar 1
Example 6.9 ‘Besacas Variations’ VL 265, bars 14–15.

114 George Kennaway
The prelude VL 256 (1904) also uses a repeated tone-row, but one without
any concealed cryptogram. It is based on 6-note row [A-d-f-B flat-e flat-g flat]
consisting of D minor and E flat minor second inversion triads. The row goes
through several cycles, interspersed by short interludes featuring chromatic
descents which pass through augmented sixths and diminished and dominant
sevenths en route. The final bars exemplify this –note the D major resolution
(see Example 6.10).
Example 6.10 Prelude VL 256, concluding bars 25–31.
Several of Čiurlionis’s piano works employ a highly chromatic melodic lan-

guage, while retaining a simpler underlying harmonic movement. Pater Noster
VL 260 (1904) is one of his most chromatic piano works, characterized by
minor ninth appoggiaturas and phrases often ending on a French augmented
sixth. Nonetheless the underlying harmonic movement is clear (with a perfect
cadence in C minor at the mid-point), moving largely by fourths or fifths when
not chromatic (see Example 6.11).
Example 6.11 ‘Pater Noster’ VL 260 (1904), bars 1–8.
The Fugue in B flat minor VL 345 (1909) is Čiurlionis’s most strenuously neo-
classical work. Conventional fugal techniques are applied to a theme com-
prising 11 tones (see Example 6.12).
Example 6.12 Fugue in B flat minor VL 345: theme, bars 1–4.

As the fugue unfolds, rhythmic patterns and keyboard textures show the extent
of the influence of the conservative teaching of Carl Reinecke at Leipzig –
teaching which Čiurlionis strongly resisted at the time. Successive fugal entries
appear on E, B flat, E, D, E, B flat, C sharp, A flat, C (major), F, and B flat.
The C major episode marks a change of character with almost Prokofievan
‘wrong-note’ harmonies –a similar effect occurs in the prelude VL 327 (1909)
(see Example 6.13).
Example 6.13 Fugue in B flat minor VL 345, bars 39–42: C major episode.
The conclusion clearly evokes Bach, with a V-I cadence, a major mode tierce
de Picardie and an ornamented tonic chord (see Example 6.14).
Example 6.14 Fugue in B flat minor VL345, bars 51–53: conclusion.
The Prelude VL319 (1909) is another example of this aspect of Čiurlionis’s

cautious experimentation. Vytautas Landsbergis suggests that the group of
piano pieces composed in 1908–09 while Čiurlionis was on holiday at the
Baltic coast relate to his work on a projected opera, Juratė (a sea-goddess in
Lithuanian folklore), and hence calls them ‘Sea Preludes’, while conceding
that Čiurlionis himself gave them no titles of any kind (Landsbergis, 2004,
p. 426). VL319 is the second of this group. Its improvisatory character reflects
the way Čiurlionis was working at the time –spending hours at the keyboard,
but writing little down. This prelude combines stormy chromaticism with
occasional moments of tonal repose, with a theme in bars 1–2 which recurs
several times. This theme itself comprises several distinct motifs, each in a
different tonality. Thus, at the outset, G minor is followed by B major, G
major, and A minor/major before dissolving into chromatic material for a bar,
after which the opening material reappears starting in B flat minor. As in his
116 George Kennaway
octatonic compositions, Čiurlionis uses chromatic material horizontally, while
adding chords which are entirely tonal (see Examples 6.15 and 6.16).
Example 6.15 Prelude VL 319, bars 1–4.
Example 6.16 Prelude VL319, conclusion.
The Prelude VL 331 (1909), another of the so-called ‘Sea Preludes’, is one of
Čiurlionis’s more subtle and charming works. Each bar begins on a simple
root position chord, linked to the next by mildly chromatic passing-notes.
A regular rhythmic pattern, and an unobtrusively repeated figure in the bass,
give coherence, while the harmonic shifts themselves move easily to the flat
side of C major –A flat in particular (see Example 6.17).
Example 6.17 Prelude VL 331, opening bars.

One other type of composition merits examination. While the pieces based
on musical cryptograms have attracted some attention, because more clearly
potentially avant-garde, this has been at the expense of other aspects of his
music, in particular his experiments with octatonicism. Landsbergis (1992,
p. 81), describing the tone-semitone scale as ‘one of [Čiurlionis’s] favourite
modes’, notes the octatonic character of the subject of the short Fughetta
VL 316 (1908) but he does not pursue the topic. Here, the octatonicism is
simply a by-product of the theme’s being structured around a diminished
seventh (the final B flat is of course non-octatonic), so, rather like aspects
of Čiurlionis’s harmonic language, it arises almost as an unintended conse-
quence (see Example 6.18).
Example 6.18 Fughetta VL 316, bars 1–4: ‘octatonic’ subject.6
Landsbergis (2004, p. 425) returns to this in his discussion of three preludes

classified as being in ‘New Modes’:
They are neither major, nor minor. They are simply invented or formed
in a new way. Many innovative composers (even N. Rimsky-Korsakov)
used them. […] Čiurlionis gets progressively more interested in [… the]
diminished mode and its modifications. The tonality […] can not be
defined by the criteria of major and minor. […] It is not easy to determine
the tonalities of these compositions […].
Landsbergis prefers to talk of ‘artificial’ or ‘diminished’ modes, and he does

not examine their structure. ‘Diminished mode’ is a term originating with
Yavorsky (1911, cited in Taruskin 1985, p. 113). His approach has the effect,
intended or not, of stressing Čiurlionis’s originality and mystery. In one of the
earliest discussions of Čiurlionis’s music in English, Staškevičius (1986, p. 94)
drew attention to octatonicism only once, referring to the prelude VL300,
discussed below, but gave no analysis, grouping octatonicism alongside modal
scales, folk-derived melodies and ‘tonally unstable patterns’. These simply
support her general claim that with these techniques, ‘Čiurlionis started to
break away from the traditions of the Classic-Romantic era.’
Writers on octatonicism use a variety of subtly differing methodologies
and taxonomies. There are three pitch-specific octatonic scales, beginning
[0, 1, 3, 4…], [0, 2, 3, 5…] and [1, 2, 4, 5…]. Strictly speaking, all octatonic
pitch collections resolve into one (Forte 7–28). Perle’s analysis (1984) of the
octatonicism in Skryabin’s op. 74 preludes distinguishes the three octatonic
pitch-collections according to the diminished sevenths which generate them.
Here I identify specific octatonic collections by means of the first two terms
in the scale: [0, 1], [0, 2], or [1, 2]. In particular, [0, 2] consists of two minor
118 George Kennaway
tetrachords, tone-semitone-tone [0, 2, 3, 5 /6, 8, 10, 11]. Taruskin (1997,
p. 423) has shown how Rimsky-Korsakov sketched these two scales, treating
[0, 1] as harmonically useful and using [0, 2] as a melodic scale –I will return
to this distinction in Čiurlionis later. Although the standard octatonic scale
is produced by the simple alternation of tone and semitone, it can also be
constructed by combining transpositions of four- note chords –any two
diminished seventh or French sixth chords can combine to produce an
octatonic scale. Given the whole-tone potential of the French sixth chord,
and the obvious fact that both chords are rich in tritones, the potential for
tonal instability is clear. But the octatonic collection can also include triads
and dominant sevenths, with roots at the nodal points (the odd-numbered
notes of the scale) and inversions on non-nodal points. Other chords, even
the ‘Tristan chord’, are also possible. In an octatonic context a seventh chord
cannot be conventionally resolved, so ‘dominant’ harmony can either imply a
tonic which never arrives, or it can be entirely non-functional. The potential
in either direction –towards, or away from, conventional tonality –is consid-
erable. Rimsky-Korsakov uses octatonic scales in an entirely tonal context,
to signify the magical or fantastic (as for instance in Sadko), but Skryabin’s
Op. 74 preludes can remain strictly octatonic for long periods, verging on
atonality. Čiurlionis never exploits the harmonic possibilities of the octatonic
collection in this way (see Example 6.19).
Example 6.19 Skryabin, Prelude Op. 74, No. 3, opening bars.
He experiments seriously with octatonicism in four piano preludes: VL300

(1906), VL302 (1906), VL 337 (1909), and VL343 (1909).
Prelude VL300 (1906)

While diminished seventh harmony is uncommon in Čiurlionis, his treatment
of the octatonic scale in the bass here shows that he is aware of its diminished
seventh construction, but expressed in horizontal terms. In bars 1–4 the
scales in the bass begin in successive bars on the four nodal points (G, E,
C sharp, B flat) and similar nodal marking occurs in bars 11–12 and bars
25–28 (a transposition of bars 1–4). These nodes also occur in the treble in
bar 5. Throughout the piece he uses only the minor tetrachord form [0, 2, 3]
of the octatonic scale. Čiurlionis always harmonizes these scales according
to the opening notes of this tetrachord –G minor in bar 1, E minor in bar 2,
and so on. Bars 1–6 are almost entirely octatonic, with the addition of just
two non-octatonic passing-notes (D, G sharp) in the treble at bar 7, which
enable a modulation to D minor –note that the seventh chord in the treble
is still within the octatonic collection. Bars 7–12 are not octatonic but the
sequential repetition in the bass in bars 11–12 marks the same nodal points
as the bass scales in bars 1–4. After the chromaticism of bars 13–15, B minor
appears in bar 16 and in bar 17 the bass line returns to octatonicism for two
bars, with bar 19 containing a modified octatonic scale. At bar 23 the bass is
also octatonic (each group of six notes is from a different transposition of
the scale). Bar 24 is chromatic but strongly based on tritones. Bar 25 is the
start of the recapitulation, transposed down a fifth, with the equivalent add-
itional chromatic passing-notes in bar 30. From bar 31, in a rather surprising
G major, there is no octatonicism, only an ambiguous tonality. Čiurlionis
appears to experiment with polytonal effects here, especially in the final bars
where F minor and C major are superimposed over G major, before the E
minor close. The chordal element in the prelude only becomes prominent in
the final eight bars –until bar 31 the texture is almost entirely that of a two-
part invention. In this prelude, octatonicism occurs wholly within a tonal con-
text, as an alternative chromaticism, and not at all as a chordal resource.
Prelude VL 302 (1906)

A monothematic prelude in ternary form, the material in bars 1– 10 is
transposed up a third and slightly shortened in bars 11–18, returning slightly
extended in the tonic with a few textural additions. Using the non-standard
key-signature A flat-B flat-C flat, Čiurlionis restricts himself almost entirely to
the pitch-class set [2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11], making this prelude his most rigorous
composition.3 This particular pitch-class collection comprises a heptatonic
subset of an octatonic scale. In terms of its prime form, there is only one
heptatonic subset of pitch collection 8–28, that is, 7–31. Friedman (1990,
p. 106) refers to this as a ‘‘nearly octatonic’ septad’. Skryabin used heptatonic
subsets in his seventh piano sonata (sometimes modified further according
to the requirements of voice-leading), but sharpening the seventh note to
produce a five-note whole-tone scale [3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 0, 3, 5]. Debussy uses
a heptatonic subset in ‘L’ombre des arbres’ (1885–7) and the piano prelude
‘Brouillards’ (Book 2, 1913). It also occurs in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique
(1830) and the Stabat Mater from Verdi’s Quattro Pezzi Sacri (1898).4 E flat
minor is often implied, largely because the C flat-B flat semitone is heard as
a 6-5 appoggiatura and the A flat as a dominant seventh. B flat becomes an
implied dominant while at the same time functioning as a pitch centre. This
is particularly so at the end of the piece which clearly implies the dominant
seventh of E flat minor. There is a similarity between the bass lines of this
prelude and of VL 300. Both, perhaps fortuitously, use scales grouped in six-
note units. This means that, as in the previous example, nodal points tend to
occur at the start of each group of six. However, at the start of this prelude,
these should be B flat, D flat, E, and G. Since D flat is excluded from the
pitch-collection, D natural takes its place. This irregularity disappears in bars.
120 George Kennaway
11–18 with the transposition up a major third. Here the scale reads [2, 4, 5,
7, 8, 10, 11] and the nodal points [2, 5, 8, 11] are highlighted correctly. This
prelude uses two octatonic scales, [0, 1] and [0, 2]. The prelude opens with
[0, 1], switching to [0, 2] at bar 12 (VL 300 used [0, 2] throughout). The nodal
points of the [0, 2] scale are quite clear, but those of the [0, 1] scale are not
quite consistent. The more unorthodox the key-signature, the more firmly
does Čiurlionis cling to contrapuntal rigour.
Fugue VL337 (1909)

Structurally, this is an entirely conventional fugue –the only unconventional
aspect is the fact that it is octatonic. Using the [1,2] collection, the subject
strongly implies D minor. The second fugal entry is on the ‘dominant’ (bar
5); the third entry is on the ‘tonic’. At bar 14 the scale is transposed to the
‘subdominant’ (‘G minor’). As so often, Čiurlionis left this work unfinished
creating the most common editorial problem, as the implied da capo is not
always clear. Landsbergis’s completion resolves the tonic to D major in the
last few bars, and there are many examples of Čiurlionis closing with a tierce
de Picardie. Nonetheless, Kučinskas (2011) suggests that Čiurlionis may have
simply intended a reprise of the fugue subject and a close in D minor.
Prelude VL343 (1909)

This prelude uses other octatonic subsets. Bars 1–11 use six notes [1, 3, 6, 7,
9, 10] from [0, 1]. In bars 12–14 the bass ostinato moves up a tone, and a new
theme appears. These bars use six notes [0, 2, 5, 8, 9, 11] from [0, 2]. Yet a
further transposition of the bass up a tone in bars 15–16 moves to collection
[1, 2], although here only five notes are used [1, 2, 7, 10, 11]. Bar 17, with the
bass raised a further tone, uses only four notes from collection [0, 1]. This
would normally not be enough to imply an octatonic collection, but in con-
text it seems clear enough. All the melodic material in bars 12–17 is related
in character and contrasts clearly with the opening theme. This theme now
returns at bar 18, with the ostinato a fifth higher than at the beginning. With
two exceptions, the A in bar 22 and the F sharp in bar 33, bars 18–33 use a
heptatonic subset [1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10] of collection [1, 2]. The non-octatonic
A simply maintains the parallel motion of the chords. The non-octatonic
F sharp has a more modulatory function, creating tension through the sequen-
tial repetition of the semitone figure from bar 32 and moving towards [0, 1]
in bar 34–36 [6-note subset, 0, 1, 3, 4, 6, 9]. From bar 37 to the end the only
‘octatonic’ element is the bass ostinato consisting of a semitone and a tritone.
Over this Čiurlionis brings back the opening theme but this time harmonized
conventionally in G minor. The effect is to stress the tonal character of the
theme, which was less apparent when heard at the start in plain octaves over
the ambiguous ostinato. An unresolved element remains –even though the
last 17 bars are entirely in a diatonic G minor, the ostinato is left to end the
prelude alone for the last two bars. There is a change at its final repetition
which ends the piece on D rather than A, implying G minor or possibly E flat.
These examples are the most substantial, but there is occasional
octatonicism in shorter passages elsewhere which are either incidental to the
structure or are clearly contained within the minor mode. While one might
reasonably look for octatonicism in Čiurlionis’s less clearly tonal works, or
where there are many tritones, or even where there are simply many accidentals,
well-defined examples are rather fewer than appearances might suggest. For
example, the five pitches of the Besacas theme [0, 3, 4, 9, 10] happen to be
a subset of the octatonic collection [0, 1, 3, 4…] but they are never treated
in this way.
It is sometimes suggested that Čiurlionis’s music occupies a transitional
position, poised midway between romanticism and modernism, and his art
similarly can be seen as midway between realism and abstraction. More recent
commentary, especially from Lithuania itself, stresses his individuality, with
both his art and his music as sui generis. The ‘transitional’ Čiurlionis may
be a manifestation of a trope about Lithuania’s own ambiguous liminality,
poised between East and West, ‘entre deux mondes’ as the philosopher Stasys
Šalkauskis (1886–1941) put it (1919, p. 27):
Et ce people, qui s’était autrefois organisé soudain en un puissant état,

retrouve une nouvelle vigueur pour achever la tâche que le destin lui a
réservé: synthétiser, dans la civilisation nationale, les éléments divers de
l’Orient et de l’Occident.
[And this people, which in former times was suddenly organized into a
powerful state, rediscovers new strength to complete the task reserved to
it by destiny: to synthesize in its national civilization, the diverse elements
of the East and the West].
The teacher and theosophist Vydūnas (1868–1953) located Lithuania between

‘le passé et le présent’ (Vydūnas, 1918, pp. 75–76). The symbolist poet and
critic Vyacheslav Ivanov (1915) suggested a linguistic cause, stressing the
close links between the Lithuanian and Sanskrit languages, which, he argued,
predisposed Lithuanians in general and Čiurlionis in particular to see the
natural world as an illusion. In this loose sense, Čiurlionis’s graphic output
certainly combines ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ elements, the latter including
Japanese, Chinese, and Egyptian allusions as well as Indian. Čiurlionis would
have encountered Japanese art while in Warsaw (Cavanaugh, 2000, p. 258,
n. 43). John Bowlt suggests that he may have also seen Chinese art during
his 1906 European tour (Senn et al., 1986, p. 59). An Oriental element was
noted in his art by Vorobyov in 1943 (Vorobyov, repr. in Gostautas, 1994,
p. 207), and the influence of Japan was explored in Yuniko Nunokawa’s doc-
toral thesis (Nunokawa, 2017). But to speak specifically of Čiurlionis’s musical
style as ‘transitional’ is to over-emphasize the significance of the experimental
techniques he used at times in the period 1906–1909, and also carries an
122 George Kennaway
implied teleology. It is tempting to argue that octatonicism itself is transitional
between tonality and atonality, but while that may be true, it is not supported
by Čiurlionis’s practice. It appears that in matters octatonic, Čiurlionis was
largely self-taught, but the initial stimulus for this line of experiment is still
unclear. The predominantly tonal context and his lack of interest in the ver-
tical possibilities of the octatonic collection means that, while he was more
experimental than Rimsky- Korsakov, he had already been overtaken by
Debussy and Ravel (whose work was not known to him), and Skryabin and
Stravinsky were about to do so –to say nothing of Busoni’s experimental
scales (see Erinn Knyt’s discussion of these in the following chapter) or the
works of Russian avangardisti such as Lourié or Roslavets. Rimsky-Korsakov
seems not to have been part of his experience in Warsaw or Leipzig, and
Młoda Polska composers such as Fitelberg, Szeluto, Różycki, or Symanowski
do not appear to have experimented in this way. Had he been more established
in St Petersburg, which, with Paris, was at least from 1900 a major centre
of octatonic composition, these experiments might have produced a more
substantial synthesis of octatonicism with dissonant neoclassicism. But,
given the conservatism of his musical training, his sometimes difficult per-
sonality, his almost constant lack of money, his social and geographical mar-
ginalization and his relatively short creative life, it is more surprising that he
experimented in this direction at all.
The historian Leah Greenfeld (1992, p. 15) has very usefully identi-
fied a nationalist trope of ressentiment using Nietzsche’s term: a nation-
alist movement will adopt a system of core values which are the opposite
of those of the dominant power and not necessarily ‘innate’ or ‘essential’.5
Nationalism in art music is often discussed within a Herderian model. It is
signified by the presence of some or all of such elements as folk music and
dance, a rehabilitated indigenous language, or a rewritten mythical heroic past.
But national identity can also be expressed by what is not present. From this
perspective, Čiurlionis’s experiments with musical languages can be seen as
engaging with a nationalist agenda just as much as his epiphanic declaration
of his pro-Lithuanian stance to his brother Povilas: ‘Aš esu pasiryžes visus
savo buvusius ir būsimus darbus skirti Lietuvai’ [I have decided to dedicate all
my past and future works to Lithuania] (Ciurlionytė-Karuzienė, 1960, p. 192).
He is writing neither Russian nor German nor Polish music. Something very
similar can be said of his Baltic contemporaries such as the Latvians Andrejs
Jurjāns (1856–1922) and Jāzeps Vītols (1863–1948), or the Estonians Rudolf
Tobias (1873–1918), Heino Eller (1887–1970), or Cyrillus Kreek (1889–1962).
A musical language which seems forever poised to leave fin-de-siècle romanti-
cism and (only in retrospect) to move towards modernism, and an artistic lan-
guage which uses realism while trying to transcend it, seems consistent with
Čiurlionis’s self-presentation and also with his position vis-à-vis Lithuanian
identity. Mtislav Dobuzhinskii’s charming evocation of Čiurlionis at the Mir
Iskusstva salon, ‘sitting quietly in a corner, poring over numerous collections
of engravings and drawings, and listening to some often very interesting
conversations’ (Dobuzhinskii, 1938), perfectly captures his shyness, and his
tendency to sit, literally and metaphorically, on the margins.
Notes
1 I examine aspects of Čiurlionis in the context of ‘northern-ness’ in the forthcoming
‘Northern-ness, marginalisation, and identity: the case of M. K. Čiurlionis, the
reluctant Lithuanian avant- gardist’, in Rachel Cowgill and Derek Scott (eds),
Music and the Idea of the North (in press, Ashgate/Routledge).
2 BVF is the catalogue reference for Čiurlionis’s art.
3 Landsbergis’s edition gives this key-signature in parentheses, implying that it is edi-
torial, but Kučinskas’s Urtext (2011, pp. 76–77) confirms that it is fact by Čiurlionis.
4 See Baur (1999), Forte (1991), Parks (1980, 1990).
5 Nietzsche uses this term in connection with the relations between the powerful pol-
itically superior Romans and the subject Palestinians, who believed themselves cul-
turally superior. To maintain their own pride in the face of Roman domination,
they had to evolve a system of values which contradicted those of Rome: empha-
sizing the spiritual and down-valuing might, worldly riches and political power.
For Nietzsche, the culmination of this process, driven by ressentiment, was nothing
less than Christianity, which in these terms becomes ‘an act of spiritual revenge’
(Nietzsche, 1969, p. 34).
6 Landsbergis’s edition gives F♭ at b.3 n. 3, but all other iterations of the theme have
F♮ (or its equivalent if transposed). (Landsbergis, 2004, p. 425).
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7
J. S. Bach and metatonality in the early
piano pieces of Ferruccio Busoni1
Erinn Knyt
Since composing piano works based on J.S. Bach’s music in the early 1900s
(i.e. Fantasia nach Bach, BV 253/Fantasia contrappuntistica, BV 256) Busoni
has been as inextricably linked to Bach as to tonal experimentation. Busoni’s
use of Bachian counterpoint as a foundation for experimentation with tonal
codes and conventions, however, extends even farther back. Many of his
youthful piano works, including those composed between 1877 and 1881,
when Busoni was a student in Trieste, Vienna, and Graz, display indebtedness
to Bach’s influence and exhibit early metatonal tendencies.
The importance of Bach’s music for Busoni’s mature compositions has
already been discussed by numerous scholars (Riethmüller, 1988; Beaumont,
1985; Sitsky, 1986; Berio, 1987). However, its influence on Busoni’s early
compositions –especially in relation to his developing metatonal approach
(as described by Paul Fleet, 2009) –has been largely overlooked. For more
information on this please see Scott’s discussion in the following chapter.
Through analyses of letters, essays, unpublished student exercise books, and
scores, this chapter reveals the extent of Busoni’s youthful knowledge of
Bach’s music and how he appropriated it in his early piano pieces to develop
an idiosyncratic approach toward tonality. In the process, it not only conveys
new knowledge about Busoni’s education and youthful compositions, but also
about the evolution of his compositional style. In particular, it reveals how
Busoni began to develop his own metatonal approach through an expansion
of Bachian sequences, counterpoint, and chromaticism. In the process, the
chapter shows how Busoni’s Janus-faced music contributed to a burgeoning
historicist modernism in which contemporary composers embraced historical
music and tonality while challenging its codes and conventions.
Busoni’s early exposure to the music of Bach

Busoni’s youthful exposure to the music of Bach was unusual, and it was
through an expansion of Bachian compositional procedures that Busoni
discovered a way to subvert tonal conventions.2 At the time of Busoni’s birth,
Bach was not well known throughout much of Italy, and his music was not yet
central to Italian music education.3 It was the vocal music of Italian masters
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713-7
Bach and metatonality in Busoni 127
that served as core material for instruction.4 Composition classes typically
included realizing unfigured bass lines, writing fugues and melodies, and
singing solfeggio. The main composition models were Italian, and Giovanni
Pierluigi da Palestrina was especially revered.5 There was an assumption that
nearly all of the great Italian music was vocal. In Italy, as opposed to Germany,
music was taught primarily as an instinctive art. Theory was integrally linked
to practice, even if exercises increasingly were written down as the nineteenth
century progressed. Counterpoint, sometimes taught by voice professors, was
learned primarily through singing, and harmony was taught at the keyboard.6
Piano instruction focused on the music of composers like Jan Ladislov
Dussek, Johann Baptist Cramer, Fedele Fenaroli, and Muzio Clementi.
Giuseppe Verdi, for instance, relied primarily on treatises by Fenaroli and
Stanislao Mattei, and concentrated on the music of Italian composers (e.g.
Arcangelo Corelli, Giacomo Rossini, Giuseppe Tartini, Francesco Vallotti,
and Giovanni Battista Martini) with his composition students. Although the
music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Franz
Joseph Haydn was also included in Verdi’s course of study, Bach was not
part of the curriculum (Marvin, 2010, 32–37.) Lessons covered counter-
point, harmonic theory, concert attendance, score analysis, partimenti over
bass lines, and writing canons and fugues as the final lesson. Although Verdi
emphasized historical awareness, his main model of the past was the music
of Palestrina (Marvin, 2010.) Verdi was decidedly against relying too heavily
on the music of Bach, as he considered it to be a tainting foreign influence: ‘If
German composers, departing from Bach, have arrived at Wagner, they have
done the work of [a]‌good German, and that is fine. But we descendants of
Palestrina, by imitating Wagner, commit a musical crime, and do useless,
or even damaging work’ (Verdi, letter of 14 July 1889 to Franco Faccio, in
Marvin, 2010, 82.)
Studying the music of older German masters in Italy in the later nineteenth
century was not only looked down upon as anti-nationalistic, it was also diffi-
cult due to a lack of access to scores (Bertoglio, 2012). The importing of scores
was not done in many places, and there were few Italian publishers interested
in producing the music. Complete works by Bach only began appearing in the
mid-1800s. According to Chiara Bertoglio, only in 1843 was a work by Bach
printed in its entirety by an Italian publisher, the Capriccio in B flat Major,
BWV 992, as part of the monthly musical supplement to the Gazzetta musi-
cale di Milano (Bertoglio, 2012, p. 197). In 1863–4, Lucca of Milan issued
an edition of The Well Tempered Clavier and sections of The Well Tempered
Clavier were included in an anthology of music published by Ricordi in 1864,
L’arte antica e moderna [Ancient and Modern Art]. An edition of selections
from the Well Tempered Clavier edited by Eduoard Bix appeared in 1873-4,
and the Hans von Bülow edition appeared in 1881, while Beniamino Cesi’s
Bach edition came out around 1900 (Antolini, 2012, p. 191.)
Knowledge of Bach’s music in Italy during Busoni’s youth was therefore
mainly communicated to students one-on-one by teachers that had studied
128 Erinn Knyt
outside of Italy, rather than through concert attendance, mandated conser-
vatory repertoire, composition or theoretical training, or personal discovery.
Few Italians performed his pieces, and interpretations by visiting artists were
exceptions. According to Bertoglio, Bach was only played in Bologna on
about ten occasions between 1874 and 1899 –two of these performances were
by Busoni. Those especially remembered for transmitting Bach’s music in
Italy include Padre Martini in Bologna, Giovanni Simone Mayr in Bergamo,
Antonio Angeleri in Milan, Beniamino Cesi in Naples, and Ludwig Landsberg
in Rome.7
While there was interest in Bach in Italy in certain locales in the mid to
late nineteenth century, knowledge about his music was not yet widespread.
Busoni’s early exposure to the music of Bach is striking, because of his provin-
cial roots, and because he never studied with one of the main Bach supporters
at the time. Yet Bach’s music became an important catalyst for his experimen-
tation with metatonality. His parents were his main piano and composition
instructors, and his father, a clarinetist, was, like Busoni, born near Florence,
in Empoli. His mother, although born in Trieste –at that time part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, and now part of northeastern Italy –received a
predominantly Italian education. According to Busoni, his mother, a pianist,
was the first to give him lessons. Anna Busoni taught him for about one
hour per day, focusing on the music of Czerny, Clementi, and other Italians
(Busoni, letter of 22 January 1872 to Ferdinando Busoni, quoted in Dent,
1933, p. 13). Surprisingly, it was his father who first exposed him to the music
of Bach around 1873, when he took over his education (Dent, 1930, pp. 44–
53).8 Busoni expressed amazement that his father would have done this even
despite the anti-nationalistic implications of such an education:
I have to thank my father for the good fortune that he kept me strictly to
the study of Bach in my childhood, and that in a time and in a country
in which the master was rated little higher than a Carl Czerny. My father
was a simple virtuoso on the clarinet, who liked to play fantasias on Il
Trovatore and the Carnival of Venice; he was a man of incomplete musical
education, an Italian and cultivator of the bel canto. How did such a man
in his ambition for his son’s career come to hit upon the one very thing
that was right?
(Busoni, in Dent, 1933, pp. 17–18)9
Although it is unclear why Ferdinando Busoni would have chosen to teach

his son Bach, Busoni’s earliest exposure must have been enabled by a move
from Empoli to Trieste, which was in a geographic crossroads between the
Austro- Hungarian Empire and Italy. The 1874 publication of Eduoard
Bix’s four-volume collection of works by Bach ordered according to dif-
ficulty level facilitated the exposure.10 Although the volumes contain many
pieces, including two-and three-part inventions, a French Suite, partitas, and
the Italian Concerto, it is uncertain what Busoni studied other than a few
preludes and fugues, some of which he performed in Trieste (Bertoglio, 2012,
p. 168).11 Although Hungarian born, Bix studied piano in Vienna with Josef
Fischhof, a collector of Bach manuscripts. In 1866, he settled in Trieste, where
he was a music teacher at the Liceo musicale G. Tartini and a reviewer for the
Triester Zeitung. Some scholars have speculated that Bix might have taught
Busoni, but if he did, Busoni never mentioned it, and no record of corres-
pondence exists.12 It is more likely that Ferdinando consulted Bix about rep-
ertoire for his son.13 That Bix and the Busonis crossed paths is no more than
mere speculation. But what we do know for sure is that as a music reviewer,
Bix heard Busoni and his parents perform in Trieste; Busoni performed Bach
(an unspecified Prelude and Fugue) for the first time on 8 January 1875 (Dent,
1933, p. 19), and a performance of the Prelude in F Major and a Fugue in
C Minor followed quickly thereafter in Venice.
Busoni’s metatonality
If Bach’s music was central to Busoni’s education and served as a model for
his early compositions, it did not lead to conservative or retrogressive com-
positional styles –quite the opposite. It became a model for ways to expand
tonality in instrumental music, an area that had been overshadowed in Italy
by innovations in opera. Bach’s play with chromaticism, his sequential cyc-
ling through keys, and the uncommon harmonic occurrences caused by the
contrapuntal colliding of voices all ultimately helped Busoni break away from
traditional tonality.
Without rejecting tonality, Busoni learned from Bach to expand its possi-
bilities. In the process, he joined several other composers (including Beach,
Bridge, Čiurlionis, Clarke, Foulds, Grainger, Howe, Nielsen, Ornstein,
Schreker, Scriabin, or Sorabji, many of whom are discussed in this book),
in exploring new means of writing music in which tonal centres can be iden-
tified, but not established and developed in a traditional or Classical sense.
Fleet has aptly called this phenomenon ‘metatonality’, a term referring to the
expansion of tonality through such techniques as the simultaneous evocation
of major and minor regions, or the combinations of new scales in a piece
that retains a tonal centre, or the formation of harmonies through intervals
of seconds or thirds (Fleet, 2009). In short, metatonal compositions expand
tonal possibilities while subverting traditional expectations of tonal functions
(Fleet, 2009, p. 109).
Bach and metatonality in Busoni’s early composition

As Fleet has already demonstrated, Busoni was actively exploring metatonal
possibilities in his compositions of the early 1900s, shortly after he penned his
Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music in 1906.14 However, the foundations for
his metatonal approach were already laid in his childhood and were rooted in
his study of the music of Bach. As Fleet has noted, Busoni’s metatonal
130 Erinn Knyt
harmonic approach came from the layering of melodic lines that ‘resist
a tonal reading’ (Fleet, 2009, p. 112). This new kind of polyphony, which
Busoni wrote about and fully developed in the second decade of the twen-
tieth century, nevertheless had its roots in the polyphonic practice of Bach
that he studied in his youth. In addition, the practice of musical sequencing
so common in the Baroque era provided him a model for moving between key
areas, a model that he took to a level beyond Bach.
While Ferdinando Busoni taught his son piano for four hours per day
his early composition instruction was not similarly structured. Busoni ini-
tially learned by composing imitative pieces in the style of the composers
he performed. His parents (primarily his father) then critiqued his work.
Busoni’s first pieces were largely short and unadventurous tonal Italianate
character sketches, but at the end of his first composition notebook, Busoni
completed a Bachian fugue in two voices in what he described as a free style
(see Example 7.1).
Example 7.1 Busoni, Fuga a 2 voci in stile libero, bars 1–20.

Source: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung mit
Mendelssohn Archiv, N. Mus. Nachl. 23.
Like many of his unpublished student compositions, the fugue has ‘C’ as
its main tonal centre. Yet Busoni uses a traditional Baroque compositional
procedure –the sequence –to expand upon tonal possibilities. He starts in
C and eventually moves toward the dominant in bar 12, but it would be dif-
ficult to call the piece traditional. The opening subject (bars one to two) is
repeated in bars three to four, but is varied chromatically in bar four. The
132 Erinn Knyt
added F sharp on the downbeat through slight chromatic inflection starts the
movement towards G major. The subject thus takes on episodic functions,
a technique that was used at times by Bach as well. While this blurring of
functions in itself might not be too unusual, the technique of linking together
figurations belonging to different scale collections in bar four is notable,
because Busoni frequently employs this technique in his later compositions
to subvert traditional tonal functions. There are plenty of other idiosyncra-
sies in the piece, including the inclusion of sequential episodic material based
on the subject in bars 5–11 before the appearance of the answer –thereby
making the answer’s appearance in bar 12 a major moment of arrival. At
the same time, the opening subject material is continuously varied freely
throughout the piece, which is largely developmental, as fragments of the sub-
ject cycle through suggestions of harmonies as remote as G minor, E major,
D major, A minor, B flat major, A flat major, E flat major, and D flat major,
before a sudden four-bar cadence in C major at the conclusion of the fugue
(Busoni, SBPK, N. Mus. Nachl. 23). While not necessarily metatonal, this
treatment of tonality marks a point of departure for Busoni. Tonal mutability
and an avoidance of expected harmonic movement mark the piece as experi-
mental. Bach’s influence thus served as a basis for tonal experimentation.
Busoni described Bach’s influence as pervasive and long lasting: ‘Since
early childhood I have played Bach and practised counterpoint. At that time
it was a mania with me and at least one Fugato actually comes into every one
of my youthful works’ (Busoni, 1912, p. 48). Pieces imitating and building
upon Bach’s compositional techniques and forms became frequent in Busoni’s
output in fall 1875, when Busoni began studying piano with Julius Epstein
(1832–1926) in Vienna at the Conservatory (see Example 7.2).
Preludio Oct. 1874

Preludio Mar. 1875
Fuga a 2 voci in stile libero 23 Aug. 1875
Fuga a 3 voci 2 Sep. 1875
Invenzone 2 Dec. 1875
Fuga per Harmonium-Organo a tre voci 5 Jan. 1876
Fughetta 9 Sep. 1876
Invention 31 Dec. 1876
Fuga in Sol Magg 23 Jan. 1877
Invenzione 20 June 1877
Preludio 4 Sep. 1877
Allegro fugato 30 Sep. 1877
Preludio e Fuga in Do Magg per la 27 Feb. 1878
mano sinistra sola
Fuga in stile libero 5 Mar. 1878
Preludio 5 May 1878
Preludium e Fuga for 2 pianos 5 Dec. 1878
Fuga n.d.
Preludium and Fuge Feb. 1880
Preludio e Fuge May 1880
Invention 14 May 1880

Preludium and Fuge Oct. 1880
Preludium and Fuge 1 Apr. 1881
Example 7.2 Childhood works by Busoni in imitation of Bach

Source: Author.
This increasing allusion to Bach can, perhaps, be attributed to greater acces-

sibility to scores and hearing more performances of Bach’s music in Vienna.
At the same time, a study of Bach’s music was teaching him to become more
adventurous with the musical language.
It seems that this experimentation was his own, as he was still not receiving
any additional composition instruction beyond his father’s. It was expected
that he would stay at the conservatory for five years to finish the piano course,
but he quit less than two years later due to frustration with the bureaucracy
and standardized teaching methods. In a letter to his mother dated 25 October
1875, he wrote about being forced to learn Cramer études and Clementi
sonatas. At the same time, the letter provides a rare glimpse into Busoni’s
composition lessons, for he discusses corrections to a fugue in response to
his mother’s suggestions: ‘Ricevei l’altro giorno la tua lettera dove dicevi di
correggiere la fuga, la quale corrrezione la trovo giustissima ed eccola.’ [The
other day I received your letter where you said to correct the fugue. That
correction was most just, and here it is.] (Busoni, letter of 25 October 1875 to
Anna Busoni, in Busoni, 2004, p. 35). In the letter, Busoni included a three-
bar example illustrating his corrections. It consisted of a descending broken
minor triad (E, C, A) in quarter notes, followed by ascending stepwise motion
in eight notes (B-C) in bar one. This was followed by a sustained pitch, D, held
for eight counts (or two bars).
By November, he had begun studying some Bach inventions at the
Conservatory, and this seems to have made an immediate impact on his devel-
opment, even if he was still dissatisfied with the instruction overall.15 Busoni
composed his first invention on 2 December 1875, dedicating it to his mother,
and he must have been especially proud of this piece, as he etched it out care-
fully on decorative manuscript paper and wrote out a dedication page in fine
calligraphy, creating three copies. The invention alludes to Bach’s Invention
in D Minor with ascending and descending 16th-note scalar passages placed
against triadic eighth notes. Busoni’s work, however, displays its youthful-
ness in a lack of variety in the articulations, textures, and rhythms. His own
touch can be observed in the expansion of tonality through chromaticism
and a late return to the tonic just before the end of the piece (Busoni, SBPK,
N. Mus. Nachl. 31, 44, 46.) Although there are many conventional aspects
of this invention, early tendencies toward non-traditional treatments of ton-
ality can be observed –especially with respect to stacking scale fragments
together to move to new keys. As in his fugue in liberal style, the invention
134 Erinn Knyt
uses sequences to arrive at unexpected key areas, such as the minor dominant
(from C major to F major, to G minor, to D minor to G, to A minor). Busoni
modulates primarily through sequences, which was a common Bachian com-
positional device, and by stacking scalar fragments together. For instance, in
bars 5–6, the treble features six-note scale fragments starting on the median
(the tonic appears in the bass). Busoni repeats the scale fragment in trans-
position in bar six, starting on D –thereby introducing a chromatic element
(B flat). Although the scale stops on the tonic on the downbeat of bar seven,
it has lost its function as the tonic. The descending scalar fragments in bars
seven and eight end on the mediant, which is reinterpreted as a leading tone
in F (see Example 7.3).
Example 7.3 Busoni, Invenzione in C Major, bars 1–20.
Source: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung mit

Mendelssohn Archiv, N. Mus. Nachl. 44.
By the time Busoni returned to Trieste in early 1876, he began regularly com-
posing music in the manner of Bach, but with his own developing metatonal
musical vocabulary. It became his practice to start each day by working on
a fugue:
Having finished the tea, I ask Mamma for manuscript paper and a pencil
so as to compose. I try to write a fugue with my left hand; it is successful
and well inspired; but, after a page, inspiration leaves me. So I set aside
paper and pencil and begin to get dressed. Meanwhile 3 hours have passed
and now the cathedral clock strikes eleven
(Busoni, fragment of a diary, Wednesday, 8 March
1876, in Beaumont, ed. 1987, p. 6)
Busoni’s knowledge of Bach was augmented by time the family spent in the
summer in Gmunden in 1876 and1877, when he studied harmony, theory, and
counterpoint with Johannes Evangelist Habert (1833–1896).16 He continued
his studies by correspondence in Vienna in 1877 and (January) 1878, although
Busoni apologized frequently for his delay in returning assignments due to
his poor health at the time. In his letters to Habert, Busoni indicated that he
completed Habert’s complete course on harmony: ‘I have copied out every-
thing –from the beginning to the end –everything that you sent me, and
wish also to do that each time so that I have the harmony book in order.
That was, however, a task! I doubt that the general-bass assignment will
be right because it was rather difficult’ (Busoni, letter of 6 November 1877
to Habert (Wessely, 1969, p. 380)). Busoni must have been referencing and
working through material that was later included in Habert’s posthumously
published four-volume composition treatise, which covers harmony, simple
counterpoint, theory, and double counterpoint (Habert, 1899.) Dedicated to
Palestrina, Habert’s treatise emphasizes Italian vocal counterpoint. Yet the
text also references the music of Bach on numerous occasions, calling him one
of the greatest composers along with Palestrina (Habert, 1899, vol. 2, p. 166).
Habert’s text specifically references Bach’s Inventions and the Well Tempered
Clavier when discussing contrapuntal technique. As a strong supporter of the
instrumental tradition in Germany and Austria, his interest in Bach is hardly
surprising.17
This is potentially the first time he received composition instruction from
anyone apart from his parents, and it led to an explosion of creativity, including
some of his first publications. Busoni composed several student works in imita-
tion of Bach during these years, including a Fughetta in C Major (September
1876), a Fugue in G Major (January 1877), and an Invention in D Major (20
June 1877) (Busoni, SBPK, N. Mus. Nachl. 54/61/65).
Works from this period display more rhythmic variety and increasing
maturity in the treatment of middle entry subjects and the recapitulations
of material. Also evident is the more adventurous expansion of tonality.
The Invention in D Major bears similarity to Bach’s Invention in E flat
Major –with motivic material transposed and presented in new rhythms and
articulations. It was quite possibly also informed by his new knowledge of
Bach’s chromatic fantasy and fugue, which he performed in Vienna in 1877.
Most significantly, Bachian counterpoint and metatonality became insepar-
able parts of his vocabulary in his original compositions at this time –pri-
marily in contrapuntal movements. In the Cinq Pièces pour Piano, BV 71,
for instance, the final movement (which is a gigue in 9/16) is very Bachian
texturally, but chromatically extended. It is reminiscent of the final gigue in
Bach’s French suite in G, although, shorter –and has the climax near the end.
However, the treatment of the musical language contains metatonal moments.
Although starting and ending with D as a tonal centre, the tonality is not
established traditionally and is not stable. Busoni quickly moves from one
harmonic area to the next, including to remote keys, such as to A minor,
G minor, C major, C minor, A flat major, A flat minor, B major, and more.
136 Erinn Knyt
In some cases he uses enharmonic equivalents to move through keys, such
as from A flat minor to B major in bars 16–18, when C flat is reinterpreted
as B and G flat is reinterpreted as F sharp for instance. This could be viewed
as extended chromaticism of the late Romantic era. However, Busoni also
moves to these key areas using non-traditional means –usually by stepwise
motion as unrelated scales or unrelated tetrachords are joined or combined
through polyphonic motion in separate voices. For instance, in bar five,
the treble features the pitches of an E tetrachord (E, F sharp, G sharp, A)
while the bass has an A minor tetrachord (A-B-C-D), suggesting two separate
scales simultaneously –the tonic and the dominant. A similar approach is
taken in the first movement, Duello, of the Racconti Fantastici, BV 100 (1878).
It is an abstract fugato, while the second and third are descriptive character
sketches. Although contrapuntal, Duello is clearly a product of Busoni’s time
due to the descriptive play with register and texture as well as the periodic
cadences and ternary structure. Metatonality can be observed in the inde-
pendence of the lines when the treble and bass sometimes suggest different
scales simultaneously. For instance, although the bass outlines a C minor
scale, the tenor voice initially suggests G major beginning in bar 6. The piece
also simultaneously suggests major and minor keys in different voices, such as
F minor and D flat major in bars 31–34 (see Example 7.4).
Example 7.4 Busoni, Racconti Fantastici, BV 100, ‘Duello,’ bars 1–35.

Source: Public Domain, typset by Benjamin Ayotte, edited by Author.
By the time Busoni received any systematic composition training at the age of
14 when he studied for 15 months from November 1879 to April 1881 in Graz
with Wilhelm Mayer (1831–1898), Bach’s contrapuntal style had become as
fundamental as his subversion of traditional tonal expectations. Mayer only
reinforced Busoni’s fascination with Bach and showed him how to blend
138 Erinn Knyt
Classical clarity with Baroque counterpoint, for Mayer adored Bach and
Mozart. The experiments with metatonality appear to have been of Busoni’s
own imagining. Busoni wrote a homage upon Mayer’s death in 1898 in which
he expressed his indebtedness to his teacher not only for exposure to the music
of Bach and Mozart, but even more so for the detailed analytical insight he
shared about Bach’s compositions:
After Mozart, Bach took the highest place in his heart, and he was
untiring in the analysis, elaboration, and the poetic interpretation of the
Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier. He described the
first four preludes as the four elements water, fire, earth, air; the theme of
the C sharp major fugue he called the butterfly which rests on the flower.
(Busoni, 1898, 118–119)
Busoni composed many pieces in the manner of Bach, including a ‘Fugue in F

major on a theme of W. A. Rémy’ (BV 154), and he dedicated his Praeludium
(Basso ostinato) und Fuge (Doppelfuge zum Choral) Op. 7 (Op. 76), for
organ (BV 157) to his teacher.18 The fugue, which features dotted rhythms
in French overture style, demonstrates his mastery of Bachian contrapuntal
technique, and features a chorale melody presented in the pedals under which
a sophisticated double fugue takes place. The prelude is filled with sequences
and virtuosic writing, which is in many ways more conservative than what
he had been composing. Yet, the time with Mayer exposed Busoni to even
more Bachian counterpoint. Busoni created a canon with three voices of
various characters and a canon with the main theme transferred between
the top, middle, and bottom voices. He also composed a fugue over a sub-
ject written by Mayer with classic four-voice entries. Mayer instructed him
in the qualities of good fugal subjects and answers. In addition, the sketch-
book contains exercises in three-and four-voice counterpoint –subject, coun-
tersubject, countersubject two, three-part counterpoint singly and then with
parallel thirds. In total, Busoni takes eight different approaches to three-part
counterpoint (placed in top, middle, bottom voice), plus double counter-
point for piano. Under a two-part invention in B minor, finished in 1880, his
teacher wrote that this was the best among all the works he had yet written
(Busoni, SBPK, N. Mus. Nachl., 360). Busoni also practised writing simple
imitation in four voices. Besides contrapuntal exercises, Busoni composed a
waltz, gavotte, sonatine, rondo, quartet, march, minuet, and lied. The two
also discussed orchestration briefly, and Busoni learned to compose using the
church modes. A single choral example has Busoni practising harmonizations
with the cantus firmus in the different voices. He also studied traditional
modulation techniques (Busoni, SPBK, N. Mus. Nachl., 360).
After studies with Mayer, Busoni began exhibiting his mature style
characterized by a synthesis of Bachian counterpoint and metatonality.
Again, it is the polyphony that serves as the main basis for a Busoni’s tonal
experimentation in a prelude and fugue completed on his birthday in 1881.
It represents a blending of Bachian counterpoint, rhythmic variety, and
drive, with Lisztian flair replete with octave doublings and a gradual expan-
sion of range (Busoni, SBPK, N. Mus. Nachl., 360). The opening bars sim-
ultaneously reveal Busoni’s metatonal approach with ambiguity between
C major and A minor in the treble as an arpeggiation reaches upward (C-E-
A-B-C) even as the inner voices move from B major to E major harmonies.
Taken together, the overall key could be read as A minor, but the key is not
established traditionally. Instead, Busoni treats the voices independently. His
24 Preludes, Op. 37 (1881), although bearing homage to Chopin, doubtless
also take into account Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier. The same key scheme of
Chopin’s preludes is used, and some are fragments, while No. 6 is a chromatic
chorale, No. 7 is a Bachian gigue, and No. 22 is a fugato. The fugato, however,
does not follow traditional tonal expectations. Although the key signature
suggests B flat major or G minor, any sense of tonal centre is obscured by
intervallicaly varied motivic material. For instance, Busoni uses a motif of
a rising third (C-D-E flat) in bar 2, initially suggesting C minor, to which he
adds additional thirds in bars 2–3 (e.g. A-B flat-C), suggesting several add-
itional harmonic possibilities. This is followed by the reverse and a varied
retrograde motif (F-F sharp E-D) in bar 4. Busoni keeps adding to the motif
to create unconventional scales that are tonally ambiguous and that allow
the piece to suggest key centres without establishing them. In bar five, for
instance, the descending scale in the bass clef extends from E flat to E natural
(E flat, D, C, B flat, A, G, F, E). This is an intriguing scale that represents a
mixture of major and minor modalities. In the Macchietta medioevali, BV 194
(c. 1883), a collection of programmatic movements associated with medieval
themes, the astrologo movement is fugal and mysterious, and represents the
hybrid style Busoni was after. The movement displays a liberal use of canonic
and fugal techniques to achieve programmatic ends in a newer treatment of
the tonal language. It begins with a plaintive and chant-like solo line in the
bass that that foreshadows the complex metatonal treatment that is to follow.
It vacillates between F minor and D flat major. When the tenor voice joins
in bar 6 with a sinuous descending chromatic line, the interval of the second
becomes central, and further obscures the harmonic regions and progressions.
The lines themselves suggest diverse key areas linearly, such as C minor and
F minor, even if their intersections create different vertical harmonies (see
Example 7.5).
140 Erinn Knyt
Example 7.5 Busoni, Macchietta medioevali, BV 194, ‘Astrologo,’ mm. 1–16.

Contrapuntal techniques and metatonal approaches were interwoven into

the fibre of most of his subsequent compositions. Consider, for instance, his
Variations and Fugue on Frédéric Chopin’s Prelude in C Minor, Op. 28, No.
20 in 1884. Busoni turns a homorhythmic piece by Chopin into a contra-
puntal playground, and uses the counterpoint to evoke non-traditional tonal
relationships. Busoni lets each voice function independently from a harmonic
perspective in certain sections –leading to unconventional approaches toward
tonality. Fugal entrances in the opening exposition are followed by counter-
subject material four-bars long that act as a musical interlude and which is
varied each time, thereby creating a sense of fantasia-like freedom within the
stricter fugal form. A final (third) appearance of the subject, seemingly out
of place, turns out to be the beginning of the expected episode. During this
third entrance (of the tenor voice), the subject is presented in the tonic in
bar 13, as expected. Yet there is a slight chromatic inflection in bar 14 –the
addition of a D flat –that starts movement towards new key areas. At the
same time, the soprano and alto voices simultaneously occur in an unrelated
key –not in the tonic, but in D flat –a half step above (n.b. the soprano
features enharmonic spellings.) The alto voice simultaneously appears in
D flat major with chromatic decoration. The soprano voice starts in D flat on
beat three (see Example 7.6).
Example 7.6 Busoni, Variationen und Fuge in freier Form über Fr. Chopin’s C moll
Präludium (Op. 28, No. 20), Fuge, mm., 1–19.
142 Erinn Knyt
These music examples thus demonstrate ways Busoni’s early compositions
used Bachian compositional devices to expand tonal possibilities.
Coda
Busoni’s training in Bach’s music illustrates a broadening of the geographic
areas touched by Bach. Living in the crossroads between Italy and the Austro-
Hungarian Empire contributed to Busoni’s exposure to the music of Bach. This
exposure, in turn, transformed his compositional approach. Busoni joined just
a few other contemporary Italian composers for whom Bach’s music became
a stimulus for creativity. Marco Enrico Bossi, for instance, composed instru-
mental suites that display a mixture of styles and used Bachian compositional
techniques.19 Many of his organ works expressly allude to Bach, including
his Fuga sul tema Feda a Bach, Op. 62. In addition, in 1892 he published the
Metodo teorico-pratico per lo studio dell’organo, which promoted the music of
J. S. Bach in Italy and in which he included a newly composed preludiando
‘alla Bach,’ in a fantasia style with scalar passages and virtuoso figurations.
Giuseppe Martucci also helped revive interest in Italian instrumental music
based on the music of Bach with his arrangements for orchestra. Although
his earliest compositions are mainly showpieces based on Italian operas (e.g.
the Fantasia sull’opera ‘La forza del destino,’ op. 1 [1871]) or polkas and Italian
dances, Martucci also experimented with Bachian styles as well. In 1874, for
instance, he composed a Fugue in F Minor, Op. 14 that imitates Bachian traits,
including rhythmic variety in the fugal subjects, experimentation with chro-
maticism, dissonance resolution, and the use of leaps for expressive devise.
A more lyrical approach to the individual lines and more frequent use of
parallel motion (i.e. parallel sixths) belies, however, its Italianate origins. In
the inner sections, fragmentation of the fugal theme and its rapid movement
through different keys also suggests a more modern developmental approach
as does the division of the piece by major cadential moments.
However Busoni was more adventurous than Martucci in his expansion
of Bach’s compositional devices. Although Busoni initially mainly imitated
Bach, what he learned eventually became integral to his hybrid compositional
style, which combined Lisztian virtuosity, Bachian counterpoint, Mozartian
clarity, and Latin melodiousness with tonal experimentation. This hybridity
persisted to the end of his career, and well beyond short piano suites –from
the Violin Sonata No. 2, BV 244, to the Fantasia contrappuntistica, BV 256b
to Arlecchino, BV 270 and Doktor Faust, BV 303. Busoni envisioned a new
future of music in which polyphony would be a central technique. He hoped
for a melodic art that was with and after tonality and in which the combining
of independent lines would result in new harmonies. He idealized ‘the def-
inite departure from what is thematic and the return to melody again as the
ruler of all voices and all emotions (not in the sense of a pleasing motive)
and as the bearer of the idea and the begetter of harmony, in short, the most
highly developed (not the most complicated) polyphony’ (Busoni, letter to
Paul Bekker of January 1920, in Busoni, 1956, p. 21). This new polyphony
could result from non-traditional scales colliding. In 1906, Busoni stated that
composers had only explored a small fraction of the possibilities: ‘What we
now call our Tonal System is nothing more than a set of “signs”; an ingenious
device to grasp somewhat of that eternal harmony; a meagre pocket-edition
of that encyclopedic work; artificial light instead of the sun’ (Busoni, 1911,
p. 23). He hoped to expand upon the through tripartite divisions of the octave,
and other scalar possibilities beyond major and minor. He wrote out 113 other
scalar possibilities within the octave C-C’, and he saw this new approach as
the way forward:
With this presentation, the unity of all keys may be considered as finally
pronounced and justified. A kaleidoscopic blending and interchanging
of twelve semitones within the three-mirror tube of Taste, Emotion, and
Intention –the essential feature of the harmony of today.
(Busoni, 1911, 30)
Although a deep encounter with Bach was uncommon for Italians in the
nineteenth century, it became more common with the passage of time, due in
part, to an increasing accessibility of scores and more frequent transnational
encounters, like Busoni’s encounter with Bix’s Bach edition. A consideration
of past music as a means to a new musical future was, in fact, becoming foun-
dational for an emerging modernist spirit in music around Europe, which
Walter Frisch sees as starting around 1880, and which Joseph Straus sees as
unequivocally involving the incorporation and interpretation of earlier music
(Straus, 1990; Frisch, 2005). Axel Körner, writing mainly about the Bolognese
musical scene, maintains that ‘modernism emerges out of the relationship
between past and future’, even if the manifestations are quite varied from the
decorative art of the French, such as in Claude Debussy’s Deaux Arabesques,
patterned after Bach’s long ornamented lines, to the austere contrapuntal art
of Max Reger (Körner, 2009, p. 268).20 A rediscovery of music of the past was
becoming part of the emerging sound world as composers responded to an
idealization of progress as much as to music from the past.21 Just as Beethoven
had stood over the spirit of romanticism, leading to a blending of the arts and
the dissolution of form, so Bach was central to the burgeoning modernist
spirit in its many manifestations in that his music provided forms, textures,
emotional depth without excess, and compositional methods that could be
melded with newer styles and treatments of the musical language. Bach was
viewed as healing for a culture that was seen as degenerating into decadence
and extravagance, as Frisch notes. He claims Busoni both participated in
what he calls historicist modernism (Frisch, 2005). His Bach allusions differed
from those of German contemporaries like Johannes Brahms and Gustav
Mahler in that he used Bach as a means to consciously distance himself from
romanticism, and without a retrogressive attitude.22 The contrapuntal art of
Bach, in particular, was seen as an antidote to romantic excess in its lending
144 Erinn Knyt
of objectivity, that when coupled with chromatically extended scales, freer
forms, and new timbres, helped usher in the strand of musical modernism in
which older compositional methods and forms were seen as enabling musical
progress by providing a framework for new sonorities and treatments of the
musical language.
Busoni’s youthful attempts to assimilate Bach’s music while developing a
personal identity, however immature, were part of this developing historicist
modernist spirit, and they laid the foundation for his later and more experi-
mental style characterized by a metatonal treatment of the musical language.
Threaded throughout his works is emotional objectivity and stylistic hetero-
geneity, based in part, on Bachian ideals: counterpoint, tonal experimentation,
and hybrid musical forms. Bach became Busoni’s muse as he contemplated
a future of simple, clear, and well-formed music moving away from excess,
extravagance, and the bloated instrumentation and textures as well as the emo-
tional excess of Wagner and romanticism. He talked in his maturity of music
that was eternally young and inventive, yet based on timeless compositional
techniques that he discovered in his youth in the music of Bach: ‘Everything
is multiform and vigorous here, and what is technical is placed without effort
at the service of the chosen thoughts, foreshadowing much that is still in the
future today, and setting a seal on its own epoch’ (Busoni, 1915, p. 96).
Notes
1 I presented an earlier version of this article at the following conference: ‘Bach in
the Age of Modernism, Postmodernism, and Globalization’ on 22 April 2017.
I am grateful to audience members for their feedback and to Matthew Mugmon
and Louis Epstein for their ideas about resources related to the concept of
Modernism. I am also grateful to Paul Fleet for his editorial comments, to Fred
Scott for recording sound files to accompany this paper, and to Benjamin Ayotte
for typesetting the score examples.
2 For more information about music education in Italy, see: Badolato and Scalfaro
(2014).
3 For a description of composition lessons in late nineteenth-century Italy, con-
sult: (Baragwanath, 2011).
4 Students often enrolled in conservatories around the age of 12, studying with a
single master teacher/performer for 8–10 years. There were few clearly established
expectations about what needed to be taught, and so individual professors created
distinctive musical lineages.
5 For more information about composition instruction in Italy in the nineteenth
century, see: (Stella, 2007) and (Marvin, 2010). Italian composition instruction
stressed Italian partimenti. Treatment of the partimenti became more contra-
puntal in the nineteenth century, as Stella has revealed. However, they remained
fundamentally based on seventeenth-eighteenth century compositional practice.
Raimondo Boucheron also wrote a text that melded the older partimenti style with
updated harmonic practices: Esercizi d’armonia in 42 partimenti numerate [Harmony
Exercises with Forty-Two Figured Partimenti, 1867.] Stella argues that one of the
biggest changes in the nineteenth century was the gradual change from keyboard
improvisation to written practice as the basis for composition instruction.
6 For information about standards at Italian conservatories in the nineteenth cen-
tury (esp. Milan and Naples); see: (Caroccia, 2012); Francesco Passadore has also
written about music instruction in Venice (Passadore, 2012).
7 Martini was an avid collector of scores, Mayr was a German composer who stayed
in Italy after commencing studies there in 1787. Landsberg was a German tenor
who settled in Rome after working at the Chorus of the Royal Opera House in
Berlin. Cesi studied with Sigismond Thalberg. Martini’s library contained copies
of several of Bach’s works, including the Well Tempered Clavier and music for
organ. Mayr collected scores by Bach and made the study of his works compul-
sory for piano students. Cesi was a famed Bach interpreter. Preludes and fugues
became accepted repertoire for keyboardists in Bologna and Venice around 1880.
Cesi also created his own method for the piano that includes many pieces by Bach.
Cesi placed the pieces in level of difficulty and added fingerings and dynamic
markings. He extracted movements from larger works, such as suite movements
to create an incremental method based on Bach. He concludes with the six French
Suites (complete).
8 His father, Ferdinando Busoni was born and raised in Empoli Italy. His family
was comprised of tradespeople, so his early education in music was sporadic, at
best. His main teacher was Gaetano Fabiani, the town band director. Although
a clarinet professor for five months in Novare at the Istituto musicale in 1862, he
spent the rest of his life as a travelling virtuoso. During his travels, he stopped
in Trieste, where he met Anna Weiss, a pianist. Although of Bavarian descent,
Anna and her parents had become thoroughly Italian. Her main piano instructor
was Ägidius Ferdinand Carl Lickl and she studied counterpoint with Giuseppe
Alessandro Scaramelli and composition with Luigi Ricci. Lickl became a music
instructor and orchestra director in Trieste in 1831. Dent, 1933, pp. 4–6. Busoni
claims that his mother’s technical approach aligned with the Thalberg school (‘very
fluent, somewhat in the salon style, and pianistic in the purest sense’) (Busoni, 1956,
p. 54).
9 Busoni also studied violin.
10 For more information about Bix, see: Radole, 1988. His students included Ernesto
Luzzatto and Caterina Fröhlich.
11 See also: Dent, 1930, pp. 44–53.
12 See, for instance, Elena Clescovich, n.d. Clescovich has suggested that Busoni
studied at the Scuola di musica ‘Eckhardt,’ in which Bix taught, but does not offer
supporting documentation.
13 Students under seven years of age were not admitted.
14 For an analysis of one of the elegies ‘Nach der Wendung,’ see: Fleet, 2009,
pp. 129–143.
15 In the same letter he also wrote about composing an overture and a violin sonata
along with an invention in C major.
16 Habert was a parish choirmaster and organist who composed predominantly
sacred works. He was against the Caecilian movement and he hoped to keep instru-
mental accompaniment for sacred Catholic music. Habert also wrote that Busoni
had taken 12 harmony lessons with Martin Nottebohm in Vienna. J. E. Habert,
letter of 12 December 1877 to P. Sigismund Keller, in Moser, 1976, p. 69). For
146 Erinn Knyt
a copy of Busoni’s letters to Habert, see: Wessely, 1969). Goldmark was a com-
poser and music journalist who was influenced by Richard Wagner and Viennese
Classical composers.
17 For more information about Habert’s support of instrumental music and con-
flict with the Caecilian movement consult the following source: Ruff, 2007. See
also: Moser, 1976. Habert was also known to have used Simon Sechter’s methods as
well (Wessely, 1969, p. 382). Karl Goldmark (1830–1915), who especially admired
the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Wagner, and Schumann, also coun-
selled him about composing. For more information about Goldmark, see: Maitland,
1894 and Goldmark, 1922. Busoni helped prepare Goldmark’s vocal score for
Merlin.
18 For more about Busoni’s time with Mayer, see: Prelinger, 1927, pp. 6–10, 37–
40, 57–61.
19 Bossi also studied at the Milan Conservatory. He earned diplomas in piano
(1879) and composition (1881) before touring Europe as an organist. He later
directed Conservatories in Venice (1895–1901,) Bologna (1902–1911), and Rome
(1916–1923). He composed more than 150 works for orchestra, piano, organ, and
chamber ensembles. In addition, he wrote several operas, oratorios, and choral
works. For more information about Bossi, see: Picchi, 1966; Bossi, 1966; Paribeni,
1934). For more information about Martucci see: Perrino, 1992.
20 See also: Walkowitz, 2012; Oja, 200; Calinescu, 1987; Albright, 2000; Habermas,
2000; Taruskin 2008.)
21 Anthony D. Smith argues that modernism and modernity went hand-in-hand with
the development of senses of nationalism (Smith, 2013). David Roberts argues
that the idea of a complete work of art was part and parcel of the modernist mind
set (Roberts, 2011).
22 Messing, 1988.
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für Musik, 380–387 .
8
Ferruccio Busoni –mirror and enigma
Transcendence and the later
piano works
Fred Scott
It is essential to an understanding of Ferruccio Busoni that this chapter be

prefaced with two explanatory and context-setting quotations. Busoni’s friend
and first biographer, Edward J. Dent, records that ‘Busoni was resolved to
put everything into Doctor Faust. It is the summing-up of his life’s work and
experience’ (1975, p. 305). Busoni’s opera, his magnum opus, was to remain
incomplete at his death. In his own short book, Sketch of a New Aesthetic of
Music, Busoni wrote: ‘I would go beyond the end’ (1962, p. 75). A synthesis
of these two statements provides the hinterland necessary to grasp Busoni’s
meaning and purpose as an artist.
The range of activities that Busoni (1866–1924) crammed into his 58 years
of life have sometimes created doubt about the validity, depth, and scope
of his achievement. It has been hard for critical opinion to define this sui
generis character considering that he enjoyed a global reputation as com-
poser, pianist, conductor, transcriber, writer, aesthetician, philosopher, libret-
tist, editor, teacher, mentor, and visionary all at the same time. Waterhouse
(1965–6, p. 79) pointed out that: ‘The reputation of Ferruccio Busoni has
always been a rather confused and unformulated thing, usually based on
the sketchiest knowledge.’ In the present age of specialism this fact attracts
suspicion and cynicism rather than engendering a broadening of artistic ambi-
tion and the inspiration to engage in a like catholicity of mastery. Busoni’s
friend, and fellow composer Bernard van Dieren wrote in his essay Busoni,
‘(He) had a terrifying struggle all the time. When in Berlin he had already
become what to his circle there seemed a world-figure, he was still regarded
by the wider musical public with “armed indifference” ’ (1935, p. 83). Russian
pianist and pedagogue Grigory Kogan wrote, ‘Even more than his playing
Busoni’s literary and compositional efforts encountered bitterly divergent
opinions’ (2010, p. 4).
Music was born free

Concessions once made to admit certain composers into the Pantheon of
‘greatness’ have been removed in our new Spirit of Enlightenment as the
Canons are reviewed, revised, or reviled by the prevailing political currents of
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713-8
Busoni’s piano works: mirror and enigma 151
progress. Orthodoxy is always ripe for challenge but it must be acknowledged
that Music, itself the very youngest of art forms, may be too young for the
application of such a concept to have any real meaning as it still seeks to win
its destined freedom.
Ferruccio Busoni remains a divisive figure even today, having an abun-
dance of both devotees and detractors. A clear line of influence upon artists
reaching to this present day must lead to the assumption that he still offers
promise to ‘those unborn’ (1987, p. 76). It is therefore essential to confront
our own notions of whom we might think Busoni was, is or should be and
to reconsider his enduring place in the forward progress of the young art of
music. Arnold Schoenberg (1975, p. 446) writing on Franz Liszt said;
Great men’s effect, if any, on life is infinitely slight. If one observes what
Plato, Christ, Kant, Swedenborg, Schopenhauer, Balzac and others
thought, and compares it with what people now believe and the way
people now conduct their lives; when one sees that only a very small
number of people think that way, whereas the others behave as if those
ideas had never existed -then one doubts whether progress exists. And
the works of the great climb higher, into the very sphere of pointlessness.
One realizes that their importance lies, at most, in the model they provide
for those who would have come to the truth even without any model. In
this sense evolution does perhaps take place after all; progress can never
prevent the emergence of new men who think upon the truth. So we are
approaching the goal!
Although possibly positioning himself by association in the list of the ‘Great’,

there must have seemed to Schoenberg a certain consolation that one of the
most easily observable signs of greatness is the lack of later mass impact. In
truth, it would perhaps have surprised Schoenberg, had he lived beyond 1951,
to see that the two Titanic figures of music history from his time onwards
would be Schoenberg himself and Busoni. The vicissitudes of their relation-
ship are well documented by Beaumont (1987, pp. 379–423). It is clear to
see that this deteriorated after 1909 when Busoni, well-meaningly but ultim-
ately ill-advisedly, suggested the simultaneous publication in the same volume
of Schoenberg’s Op. 11, No 2. Klavierstuck alongside Busoni’s transcription
of the same. This gesture of good will intended to promote the work of the
younger colleague must have been a humiliation too far for Schoenberg who
was not known for the quality of deference. As demonstrated by Knyt (2017,
p. 118) Busoni’s support was genuine, after all he had organized a private
performance of Pierrot Lunaire in his Berlin home at which Edgard Varèse
was also present along with other such luminaries as conductor Willem
Mengelberg and pianist Artur Schnabel.
Busoni had routinely employed the ossia in his editions of the work of
others, not being averse either to wholesale re-writing or creative transcription,
facilitation or, at times, simplification. His edition of Bach’s Wohltemperierte
152 Fred Scott
Klavier in particular is instructive in this regard, not to mention the Liszt–
Paganini Études, which are essentially transcriptions of transcriptions. It was
from this practice that Busoni shaped modern pianism. A revival of such
techniques and modes of study is overdue. It will be easily noticed after a little
research that the so-called disciples of Busoni were as eclectic and diverse a
group as the Nazarene’s Twelve. Busoni’s support of and work with young
contemporaneous composers helped Varèse, Sibelius, Weill and others to gain
sufficient validation of their novel ideas to persist in their work developing
the stature we now acknowledge them to have whilst consigning the fact of
Busoni’s championing of them to the ‘memory-hole’; the legacy of a true
Great, by Schoenberg’s definition.
If Schoenberg could be adversarial in his relationships, then Busoni’s streak
of the Elitist was a divisive characteristic of his personality. It is impossible to
conceive that two such strong personalities would have only positive impact
on people in their respective orbits. On 23 December 1910 Busoni recorded
that he was ‘anchored off the magical south coast of Ireland’ (1987, p. 181).
In an article he wrote at the time, later to appear in a Berlin music magazine
Signale fur die Musikalische Welt, we are offered the following insight into
Busoni’s reverence for music which he says is;
[Music is] the most mysterious of the arts. Around it should float some-
thing solemn and festival-like. The entrance to it should be through cere-
mony and mystery as to a Freemason’s Lodge. It is artistically indecent
that anyone from the street, railway train or restaurant, is free to clatter in
during the second movement of the Ninth Symphony…The entrance to
a concert hall should give promise of something unusual and should lead
us gradually from secular life to the life that is innermost…into what is
exceptional.
(1987, p. 182)
Busoni could hardly have anticipated that his next sentence would eerily find
fulfilment in April 2020 during a global pandemic when the world’s population
was required to practice ‘social distancing’. The article goes on: ‘In order to
achieve this and before everything else, the number of musical performances
should be cut down. Then every one of them would rise in value, be chosen
and prepared more carefully, be anticipated differently, and enjoyed differ-
ently’ (1987, p. 182). Known also for a certain sardonic humour Busoni gave
free rein to a sense of the sarcastic/polemic much out of step with twenty-first-
century sentiments. Consider his opera Die Brautwahl (1905–11). Based on a
story of E. T. A. Hoffman the opera contains elements of satire, romance, and
mysticism together with musical allusions to other composers. Couling (2005,
p. 251) writes that the work might be ‘too erudite for its own good’. Among
these is what appears to be a satirical reference to an immensely popular work
of the time by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912), his Song of Hiawatha,
Op. 30. During the opening scene of Die Brautwahl the character Voswinkel
concludes his song in praise of cigars with a pentatonic melody evoking
Hiawatha and Mannahatta (sic), the central characters of Coleridge-Taylor’s
work (1914, p. 18). Busoni seemed at the very least not averse to the humorous.
Widening the gap

In broad terms, early-twentieth-century music, after the undermining of ton-
ality as a basis for formal structures, seemed readily to divide into successors
of the 2nd Vienna School (Post/ Neo serialists) and Tonalists, those still
persisting in the perceived ‘old’ ways. The shibboleth of so called Serialism
and the associated dogma developed a pernicious and near fatal stranglehold
on the imagination of musicians, implicitly denigrating those not obedient
to the historical march of progress toward a totalitarian, entirely rigorous
organizing principle. Jorge Luis Borges (1970, p. 42.) wrote ‘any symmetry
with a semblance of order…was sufficient to entrance the minds of men’
which, in explaining the irruption of the artificial world of Orbis Tertius into
reality, shows the appeal of arbitrary structures to the human mind. Busoni
(1962, p. 77) wrote that ‘Music was born free and to win freedom is its destiny.’
This dictum would appear to express the aforementioned polarity between
highly organized pitch structures (the series) and free atonality. What Busoni
asserted here as music’s destiny found a stark contradiction in a statement,
recorded by Reich (1963, p. 51), as made by Schoenberg’s disciple Anton
Webern in a 1932 lecture: ‘About 1911 I wrote the Bagatelles for String
Quartet, op. 9, all very short pieces, lasting a couple of minutes -perhaps the
shortest music so far. Here I had the feeling, “When all twelve notes have gone
by, the piece is over.” ’ (It is interesting to note that the emancipation of the
dissonance was in reality thwarted by an absolute regimentation of pitches
articulated through archaic forms, for example, Suite, Canon, Sonata, Rondo).
The sought after freedom from the tonal hierarchy of tonic, dominant-based
harmony and associated forms turns into a grotesque distortion of those very
forms. Though an organic inevitability when seen as the logical consequence
of the functioning of the harmonic series, such presumably un-ironic usage
serves only to enhance the error of recycling Baroque and Classical structures
to accommodate irrational pitch relationships.
Busoni’s idea of freedom for music had to wait for Iannis Xenakis to
articulate this dilemma (1971, pp. 8–9), postulating an indivisible link between
natural phenomena and musical form, and creating an entirely new music in
which individual sounds, and their four-fold properties of pitch, duration,
rugosity, and intensity, are organized according to structures inherent in
nature. Furthermore, both Busoni and Xenakis exemplified the kind of curi-
osity and striving to comprehend that is characterized by Hawking (Bantam,
2016, pp. 15–16):
But ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content
to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an
154 Fred Scott
understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn
to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity’s deepest
desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest.
And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe
we live in.
The too simplistic polarity of tonal and atonal/serial composition does not
admit the actual breadth of the landscape. After having been consigned to the
margins of history the time has already come for reconsideration of the some-
what more benign influences contemporaneous with the Schoenberg school.
Pace (2014) gives important insight into this period.
From this vertiginous maelstrom must emerge a figure we may recognize as
Busoni, if only we have taken on the personal responsibility to exercise dili-
gence in honest research. The fact that Busoni is more alluded to than under-
stood is testimony to an enduring fascination. However, to know about the
man is not actually to know the mind of the man who bequeathed such a rich
and challenging legacy. This study will examine certain of Busoni’s mature
piano works which were intended as sketches for scenes in Doktor Faust and
later became, in that destined environment, key parts of the drama itself, and
therefore revelatory of the composer himself.
‘The pianoforte must be esteemed’ (Busoni, 1987, p. 79)

The piano is central to any serious consideration of the life and work of
Busoni. He began his piano lessons aged four, at first under his Mother’s
tutelage, and the piano continued to an important part of Busoni’s musical
development defining various stages throughout his life as an aesthetician,
teacher, composer, and performer, and for the purposes of this chapter it
provides us with a useful narrative in which to understand his artistic devel-
opment and creative philosophy. By the end of the first decade of twentieth
century Busoni’s prestige as a pianist was being reflected in contemporary
accounts. Kogan (2010, p. 17) records that ‘the musical press promoted the
Italian virtuoso from a “star” to the “sun” of contemporary pianism’, and
yet, as H. H. Stuckenschmidt (1970, pp. 67–8) pointed out, ‘Busoni hated his
fame as a pianist’, at least in part due to the attention it inevitably drew away
from serious consideration of his other activities.
As a composer, and from extremely conventional, even prosaic beginnings
Busoni honed his technique, learning the craft and forming his technical
executive gesturing from Brahms, Reger, and earlier classical composers.
The first departure from convention sees Busoni’s embracing of the idea of
re-casting Bach’s great organ and violin works as epic, quasi-symphonic
solo-piano transcriptions. Taking the Chaconne (1891) as the prime example,
we see the emergence of a pragmatic yet boldly imaginative style of piano
writing, derived perhaps from Lisztian models of transcription but suffused
with elements of technical originality. Busoni (1894, Preface) characterizes
the Chaconne transcription as a kind of graduation or concluding work of a
new school of higher piano playing.
The Piano Concerto, Op. 39 represents the first true piano masterpiece of
Busoni’s in terms of conception and execution. Here Busoni has so elevated
the piano that the work itself is more like a ‘soloist-orchestra’ being accom-
panied by the pianist in an unprecedented role-reversal (see Example 8.1).
156 Fred Scott
Example 8.1 Piano Concerto, Op. 39, BV 247, pp. 12–14.

Source: Leipzig: Breitkopf and Haertel EB 2861.
The pianist is not engaged in the traditionally competitive heroic posturing

to overcome the orchestra in a display of technical brilliance. Indeed, many
of the admittedly fearsome problems of execution are understated. It is here
158 Fred Scott
we find that Busoni is assuming in the would-be performer a complete phys-
ical mastery over the instrument itself and here also that we see the genesis
of a mature style as he begins to move away from convention and into an
altogether more rarified domain of creation in terms of the piano. The true
and transcendent nature of Busoni’s intentions and expressive language that
culminate in the final opera, Doktor Faust, begin to find primary revelation in
the piano works as early as Fantasia Contrappuntistica, the six Sonatinas, the
ten volumes of the Klavierübung and ultimately the Toccata. In a consider-
ation of the piano works from a technical, executive viewpoint there is much
in the music revealing the way that Busoni uses and develops conventional
tonally reliant pianistic writing set against how he expands this via the use of
relatively novel configurations to suit purely expressive functions; technique
becoming the servant of expression, rather than expression being limited by
technique (see Example 8.2).
160 Fred Scott
Example 8.2 Piano Concerto, Op. 39, BV 247, pp. 32–33.

Source:Leipzig: Breitkopf and Haertel EB 2861.
Busoni’s harmonic language and mode of pianistic execution evolve also from
the essentially traditional and diatonic in the Concerto to the metatonality and
technical innovation of Sonatina seconda. Van Dieren (1935, p. 42) observed
that ‘He (Busoni) would call an ambitious work of whose value he was well
aware “Sonatina”, inferring [sic] with esoteric pride that he might compose a
“Sonata”, and till then left to others the use of a title which Beethoven’s prac-
tice links in our minds with the most monumental manifestations of genius.’
The later Toccata appears to revert to a more conventionally diatonic lan-
guage; however, it is important to be sensitive to the fact that works later to
be adopted into Doktor Faust necessarily reflect that work’s wide embrace
of form, style, gesture, and harmony. The Toccata and Sonatina seconda
taken as a pair synthesize elements of Doktor Faust and the earlier opera Die
Brautwahl, both of the operas feature the trope of the Mystical Book, a rele-
vant common thread hinting at a personal gnosis, an interior journey begun
in Elegy No 1 ‘Nach der Wendung’ and to have been brought to extraordinary
fruition in the intended final moments of Doktor Faust. We will see that lex-
icographic time is less important to Busoni than expressive need as his music
described an inexorable trajectory towards the completion of Doktor Faust
and the end of his own physical life.
We see the composer attempting to transcend the constraints of harmony,
form, musical expression, and perhaps even mortality itself in the fulfilment
of his spiritual and artistic vision. The enduring and growing impact of the
Busoni legacy continues to pervade the evolution of music to this day. A true
understanding of these phenomena in Busoni depends upon the recogni-
tion that time, for Busoni, was omnipresent and that divisions into historical
periods should be of no great significance. It can be argued with some justi-
fication, pre-figured by Ben Johnson’s Eulogy (Shakespeare, 1623, Preface),
that Busoni, like Shakespeare to Johnson was ‘…not of an age but for all
time’ and not to be defined by a more or less arbitrary position in music his-
tory. That Busoni’s present resided also in the past and future alike ought
to make us recall the archetypal Alchemist; Yates (1964, p. 1) has written
‘The great forward movements of the Renaissance all derive their vigour, their
emotional impulse, from looking backwards.’ Busoni’s epigrammatic obser-
vation (Goebels, 1968, p. 69) that ‘Bach is the fundament of piano playing,
Liszt the summit. The study of both make the playing of Beethoven possible’
shows how Busoni (1987, p. 194) perhaps saw music history as a manifestation
in-time of a process occurring outside-time and not as a series of causal events
unfolding in a linear procession.
There is, however, an important sense where the arrow of time moved
resolutely forwards –a substantial number of works that pre-dated Doktor
Faust seem actually to be preliminary studies, later becoming integral to the
magnum opus. We must suppose that the conception of this ultimate pro-
duction had existed in the mind of Busoni since early years and, having
become an idée fixe, needed to find consummation. The fact that the opera
remained incomplete, at least outside the mind of the creator, deprives us of
anything definitive. Herein lies the central enigma of Busoni, a life’s work of
engaging in philosophical speculation centred on a form of art, immaterial in
nature, which he described (1962, p. 77) as ‘sonorous air’, and disappearing
162 Fred Scott
like vapour, all the while holding up the mirror to our physical and spiritual
natures.
Towards Doktor Faust

Doktor Faust was Busoni’s valedictory testament and so its intended message
must be of primary importance provided that we subscribe to the notion that
the work itself is symbolic in nature. The spoken Epilogue at the very end
of the opera (1987, p. 76) contains the tantalizing phrase: ‘Still unexhausted
all the symbols wait that in this work are hidden and conceal’d.’ The word
‘unexhausted’ presupposes that the work itself is somewhat enigmatic, that
seeking is required or at the very least, a depth of apprehension that might
reveal what is not immediately apparent. We may well be, as suggested by
Borges (1970, p. 247) ‘looking in an enigma by means of a mirror’. Busoni’s
Epilogue hints that the work of seeking is required to mine the symbolic nature
of his opera for meaning. It will be helpful to establish parameters for an
investigation into the ways in which the idea of transcendence was important
to Busoni. Wilson (2013, p. 1) has observed that ‘the period encompassing
the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century
experienced an occult revival is now well established’. Busoni’s time was one
of spiritual exploration, and given his well documented sensibilities there was
an inevitability that Busoni would engage with contemporaneous philosoph-
ical and spiritual issues. In her unprecedented study of Busoni and Sitsky,
Crispin (2007, pp. 10–12) writes: ‘It is undeniable that Busoni was fascinated
by mysticism and occult philosophy in all its forms.’ The contents of Busoni’s
library further endorse this observation, but as Fleet (2009) has pointed out
in reference towards Busoni’s philosophic leanings, Busoni’s wide reading
did not necessarily imply membership of or subscription to any particular
school of philosophy or the occult. Busoni (Dent, 1974, p. 310) is recorded
as having expressed the unequivocal view that, ‘Wagnerism and Christianity
as well are nothing to me, and my feeling is that it is time to sweep away these
two beliefs altogether or at least leave them in peace and not to poke about in
them any more.’
If Busoni had anything approaching a personal credo I would assert that it
can be inferred from the content of Doktor Faust. However, the version that
was first performed in Dresden on 21 May 1925, as completed by Busoni’s stu-
dent Philipp Jarnach, crucially excluded some of the most significant passages
in the intended text as indicated by detailed sketches Busoni had made. These
passages afford a radically different interpretation of the fate of Faust and
also represent a version of the opera’s ending wholly consistent with Busoni’s
manifest commitment to notions of transcendence and survival beyond phys-
ical death. Rather than the unfortunate protagonist being dragged off to hell,
as described in Marlowe (1993, p. 197) ‘[The Devils] exeunt with him’, Busoni’s
Faust enjoys the ultimate freedom gained by a repudiation of conventionally
religious modes of thought. Beaumont (1985, p. 325) draws attention to an
article by Dent (1920, p. 844) which incorporates important text of Busoni’s
missing from Jarnach’s completion of Doktor Faust;
[So let the Work be finished,] in defiance of you, of you all, who hold
yourselves for good, whom we call evil, who, for the sake of old quarrels
take Mankind as a pretext and pile upon him the consequence of your dis-
cord. Upon this highest insight of my wisdom is your malice now broken
to pieces and in my self-won freedom expire both God and Devil at once.
The intended final scene involves the bequeathing of Faust’s Eternal Will into
the body of his child, which reanimates and moves off into new life, a sym-
bolic act rich in resonances. The model of death and resurrection is as old
as the many forms of religion itself. A clear atavistic reference to our shared
agrarian past, as the dying and rising observed in nature became attributable
to the characteristics of the deities that governed the cycles of life and death,
reproduction and the progression of the seasons. For an exhaustive examin-
ation of the many representations of this, see Mettinger (2001).
In his survey of Busoni’s piano music Sitsky (1986, p. 6) observes that
‘Busoni’s music can be legitimately described as a record of a mystic journey,
and as the journey comes to fruition, the message to be deciphered in the
record demands an understanding of the mystic vision from the listener.’
Sitsky (1986, pp. 318–19) goes on to describe Busoni’s interest in the ‘mystical
or occult state’ in terms of a lifelong fascination with the supernatural attested
to by the earliest piano pieces right up to the ‘profound philosophy culmin-
ating in Doktor Faust’. Indeed, it is possible to trace significant milestones in
Busoni’s compositional output where this engagement with themes of death,
the supernatural and the occult is of primary importance in following the tra-
jectory towards Doktor Faust.
Two early works of Busoni from 1881–2 are perhaps the first indicators
of this. The third piece in the suite Racconti Fantistici, was inspired by Hauff
(1882, p. 229). The Cavern of Stellenfoll relates the story of a fisherman
pledging his soul to the devil in exchange for sunken treasure. The spiritual tur-
bulence experienced by the protagonist, William Falcon, and his companion
Kaspar Stumpf, is reflected in the adolescent Busoni’s music. A restless, ener-
getic perpetuum mobile, the figuration and atmosphere of which are not unlike
that of the final movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Op. 57. Both are also
in the ‘stormy’ key of F minor.
The early Prelude in B minor, Op. 37, No. 6, dates from 1881. Stevenson
(1974, 4:59–6:40 mins) describes the piece as ‘the inception of the Faustian
element in (Busoni’s) music’. Elements of Busoni’s mature style in terms of
the treatment of harmonic progression can be heard here. The atmosphere
created by the metatonality is suggestive of Busoni’s later work usually given
the descriptor Occulto, particularly passages in Fantasia Contrappuntistica
and Sonatina seconda indicating a veiled, somewhat indistinct character.
In 1893 Busoni gave the first performance in Boston, USA of his piano
164 Fred Scott
transcription of J. S. Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor, the fifth and final movement
of the Second Violin Partita. Although neither the first or last of Busoni’s
transcriptions of Bach’s works the Chaconne has a particular significance in
the present context. Thoene (2001) suggests that the Chaconne was conceived
by Bach as a tribute or Tombeau to his recently deceased wife, Maria Barbara,
demonstrating certain thematic references and encodings within the fabric of
the music itself. For example, the Chaconne’s underlying structure is further
articulated by allusions to Chorales whose texts reflect aspects of Christian
theology. For example, the familiar Chorale Christ Lag in Todesbanden (BWV
4), the words of which were written by Martin Luther, is an Easter hymn
specifically concerned with the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ for the sins of
mankind and His subsequent resurrection. A true believer in Protestant the-
ology, Bach would be confident that any separation grief caused by death in
this physical life would be later subsumed under the joy of resurrection to
eternal life. Thoene therefore asserts that the tripartite nature of the piece
represents death, the hope of resurrection and ultimate resignation. These
concepts are underwritten by quotations from Christ Lag in Todesbanden,
Dein Will gescheh’ (BWV 245), Befiehl Du Deine Wege (BWV 272) and others.
Given Busoni’s deep absorption of Bach in all his aspects it seems likely that
the level of intellectual insight and understanding needed to penetrate an
underlying referential architecture would not be lost on Busoni. If true, this
would point to another incidence of Busoni’s acute focus on circumstances
around death and its aftermath.
In 1909 both of Busoni’s parents died within months of each other. This
very great loss became the catalyst for two more important piano pieces.
Fantasia Nach Bach bears a dedication to Busoni’s father Ferdinando. As an
In Memoriam to the man who was largely responsible for Busoni’s relentless
early focus on Bach’s music it is not surprising that the fundamentally elegiac
Fantasia makes great use of Bachian themes and contrapuntal textures. Later
in the same year Busoni composed the Berceuse Elegiaque, an orchestration
of the earlier seventh piece in the piano Elegies of 1907. Profoundly impres-
sionistic and metatonal, Busoni casts the piece as ‘A Man’s Contemplation at
his Mother’s Funeral Bier’. Evoking the sound world of the opening bars of
fifth movement of his own Piano Concerto Busoni produces here a contempla-
tion of grief in an atmosphere of filial love that transcends death itself.
The following year, 1910, saw the production of an early version of
Fantasia Contrappuntistica, a truly monolithic, austere piece inspired by
Bach’s final, incomplete valedictory work, The Art of Fugue. The particularly
complex Contrapunctus XIV seems arbitrarily to finish soon after the point
where Bach’s name (B flat -A -C -B natural) appears as the third fugal sub-
ject. An early manuscript of this piece contains a note by Bach’s son Carl
Phillip Emmanuel asserting that the fugue could not be finished due to the
death of the composer. Woolf (2001, p. 1385) writes that there must have
been a lost draft of the combinatorial possibilities of Contrapunctus XIV.
Later completions were indeed made of Contrapunctus XIV, notably by the
editors Tovey (1931), Moroney (1989), Goncz (1992) and others; however,
it was Busoni who, in the manner of other of his transcriptions, inhabits
totally the Bach original and by complete immersion in and identification
with Bach’s contrapuntal language extends the remnant to a powerfully com-
pelling and metatonal conclusion, albeit far removed from the language and
instrumental capabilities available to Bach in his time. Thus, Bach, or rather
the essential part of Bach’s creative spirit, persists in co-creative symbiosis
with Busoni. The two musical wills unite to produce something rather more
than a conjectural conclusion to an unfinished and problematic piece. Sitsky
(1986, pp. 155–157) points out that Busoni had further plans for the 1922
two-piano version of the Fantasia Contrappuntistica: ‘(Egon) Petri told me
that after writing the two-piano version, Busoni wanted to re-write the solo
version in the light of what he had in the meantime discovered and score the
work for orchestra.’ Busoni never achieved this. However Sitsky, incorpor-
ating the additional material provided by Petri, completed the work under the
title Concerto for Orchestra: Completion and Realisation of Busoni’s ‘Fantasia
Contrappuntistica’ (1984). In this version of the Contrappuntistica then, we
see how Sitsky, calling on his close association with Busoni’s disciple Petri,
enabled the two-piano version to be re-cast in orchestral form under the
guidance of authentic transmission of the original intention from the most
authoritative source available to him. Sitsky’s immersion in the Busoni ver-
nacular qualified him in this regard to have attempted a feat not dissimilar to
the Busoni completion of Contrapunctus XIV.
Busoni’s fascination with the supernatural and occult began to focus more
specifically on ideas of a large-scale work based on Faust. In 1910 he sketched
about half of the material that formed the basis for the libretto of Doktor
Faust. Beaumont (1985, p. 315, n. 5) shows how two years later Busoni was
expressing serious doubts about his opera: ‘The subject is too mighty, I shall
have to develop still further’, and that it was four years later when, on 26
December 1914, Busoni read the completed libretto to his family.
Three months later, writing to his wife, Busoni (1938, pp. 252–253) reveal-
ingly describes the somewhat ‘automatic’ nature in which parts of the Faust
story were emerging: ‘Faust himself says, “If life is only an illusion, What else
can death be?” So that a doubt is raised as to the reality of the idea of the
devil, which therefore lessens its importance. What has the last act got to do
with the devil? A man, ill, disappointed, tormented by his conscience, dies of
heart failure and is found by the nightwatchman. The last word, too, is “a
victim” (and not “condemned,” or anything like it). What brought me to this
conclusion was that I cannot feel it in any other way, and I was led straight
to this point in the same strange state of somnambulism in which the whole
seems to have been dictated to me.’
From this point on it becomes easier to see a direct line of progress towards
Doktor Faust through what Beaumont (1985, p. 252) describes as ‘twenty-three
published satellite works’. Among these satellites, this study will focus on the
mature piano music and how to approach it from a technical, performative
166 Fred Scott
viewpoint. It is by playing Busoni’s music or by informed listening to it that
progress towards understanding might be facilitated.
The specific piano works that served as sketches and studies for, or
transcriptions containing, material later included in Doktor Faust are Sonatina
seconda (1912), Sonatina in Diem Nativitatis Christi MCMXVII (1917),
Drei Albumblätter (1921), Toccata (1921–22), Prélude et Étude en Aprèges
(1923), and Klavierübung (1917–24). Beaumont (1985, p.184) states ‘Busoni
confirmed that the Sonatina seconda had been expressly conceived as a study
for Doktor Faust.’ Indeed, the piano work has so much important material
in common with the opera that it stands in a relationship with it not unlike
that of Busoni’s Sonatina Super Carmen (1920) to Bizet’s eponymous opera.
Perhaps more overtly framed as a Lisztian paraphrase, this sixth Sonatina
displays a disquieting level of psychological penetration and re-interpret-
ation, distilling into a very few minutes the essentially tragic nature of Bizet’s
narrative. Sorabji (1947, p. 215) wrote;
The gay and occasionally rather trivial Bizet tunes become indescribably
‘charged’ and even sinister, undergoing a sort of dissolution and trans-
formation in a manner that is…fascinating and haunting to the mind
of the suitably ‘attuned’ listener, so that at the end of the process…such
is the impression of the ineluctable and immense power behind the whole
business -this is a psychical invasion in musical terms.
However, it is not exclusively Sonatina seconda that contains crucially

important references to Doktor Faust. The previously mentioned works could
all, it can be argued, be perceived as trials of Busoni’s ideas for later use.
This is very revealing of the way in which musical ideas marinated in the
mind of Busoni over years before finding fulfilment. The sheer number of
piano transcriptions Busoni made of a great diversity of composers’ works
demonstrates his propensity to penetrate into the mind of these creators,
inhabit and absorb their style and produce what can only really be described
as hybrids –active recompositions, not mere arrangements. That much of the
final content for Doktor Faust was made available from earlier works shows
this process of transcription of his own material in action.
Sonatina seconda
Franz Liszt had composed his Bagatelle Without Tonality as early as 1885.
It has no strong tonal centre and seems to move through combinations of
chords including major, augmented and diminished formations free of con-
ventional relationships. A rather prosaic triple-time dance metre anchors
the piece to tradition and connects it to Liszt’s other Mephisto Waltzes.
Nonetheless, the radical atonality of the piece helped set in motion the inev-
itable progress towards the ultimate dissolution of tonality. As Perle (1977,
p. 1) observes: ‘Atonality originates in an attempt to liberate the twelve notes
of the chromatic scale from the diatonic functional associations they still
retain in “chromatic” music.’ Busoni was very familiar with Schoenberg’s Drei
Klavierstücke, Op. 11 (1909). Schoenberg, however, did not react particularly
well to Busoni’s well intentioned suggestion of publishing his own transcrip-
tion of the second piece along with Schoenberg’s original version, in which
Busoni fundamentally re-conceives the piano writing to clarify textures.
It is tempting to speculate upon Busoni’s reaction to and opinion of the
third piece of Op. 11 for it was in this piece that Schoenberg reached a pin-
nacle of unfettered creative boldness unmatched in his subsequent works for
solo piano. The ambience of the piece is provided by piano textures unavail-
able after the application of certain of the restrictive regulations of ‘serial’
composing, for example, the prohibition of use of the traditional octave.
Consider the potency of the introductory bars; the dramatic, powerful ges-
turing provides a link to an earlier tradition of writing for the instrument
more rooted nineteenth-century compositional practice, a clear reference to
the legacy of Liszt, Brahms, Chopin, and others where textures were routinely
thickened using octaves.
Sonatina seconda comes from the most overtly experimental period of
Busoni’s creativity. Stuckenschmidt observes (1970, p.117) ‘The principle of
tonality is exploded more convincingly in this piece that in any other work
by Busoni’.
One of its most interesting, perhaps anomalous aspects, is the use of vastly
different languages dependent on expressive need and in this way inhabits the
gap between Late-Romantic, essentially tonally based chromaticism, and fully
organized atonality. The rather modal gesture that begins the piece is negated
by an essentially quartal figure, marked ondeggiando (rippling), which sweeps
up and down the keyboard.There follows much use of the jarring, dissonant
interval of the major second culminating in a dramatic keyboard-wide rising
chromatic scale, the backdrop to a pre-figuring of themes later to find signifi-
cant use in Doktor Faust. The language remains in this vein until the Lento
occulto with its extensive use of second inversion major triads centred around
the key of E-flat. An ethereal Andante tranquillo, immediately following, is
canonic and utilizes intervals of the diminished fifth, diminished fourth and
semitone achieving full atonality. As mentioned previously the designation
Sonatina is ironic (perhaps in the same way as Liszt’s earlier use of Bagatelle),
for such a revolutionary piece. The absence of time or key signatures, regular
bar-lines, and also a novel use of accidentals (Busoni (1996), p. 181) convey
visually that this is indeed an extraordinary work. From the piece’s first
moments the ascending, modal parlando theme implores our attention drawing
us into a turbulent hallucinatory intensity vehemently driving the disquieting
discourse. The boundaries of matter and the certainties of the physical world
were being challenged by Busoni’s great contemporary, Nikola Tesla (1856–
1943), and together with Busoni’s awareness of the Occult, the existence of
a world beyond our physical perceptions lent his music an ethereal and con-
tingent quality setting it apart from both the formally rigorous dodecaphonic
168 Fred Scott
atonality of the Schoenberg School and the sensuous exoticism of the French
impressionists. There is also surprisingly little common ground with the
music of Scriabin, in which occultism was couched in more obviously hyper-
romantic and harmonically consistent terms, who nevertheless commanded
Busoni’s respect (Busoni, 1938, p. 215): ‘It is not in Scriabin’s nature to com-
pose big scores, but he tries to do it. I don’t consider that they will live, but
I respect Scriabin for striving for such a high ideal.’
The Sonatina’s Lento section is characterized by an unprecedented but
inherently logical flow of motifs leading to a bold restatement of the opening
parlando theme marked quasi Violoncello. This recapitulates familiar material
from earlier giving at least partial relief from the relentless flow of ideas. The
irony of a calmissimo transition is felt as we are engulfed in deeply sinister
marziale music also heard previously in the piece and ascribed in the opera
to the mysterious trio of students from Krakow. This second appearance
of the march-like sequence of grindingly dissonant chords is recast in an
atmosphere of deep dread. The work descends into the darkest sonorities
of the instrument to a final estinto in sarabande rhythm. Some horrible
finality is attained where silence is just the beginning of the inexpressible. As
Wittgenstein was to write (2001, p. 89) ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof
one must be silent.’
It was perhaps this combination of forces in the music that led to the
uproar attending Busoni’s first performance of Sonatina seconda at Milan’s
Verdi Conservatory on 12 May 1913. Couling tells us (2005, p. 255) that blows
ensued as Filippo Marinetti, founder of the literary wing of the ‘futurist’
movement took on protesters prior to a presumably convivial dinner attended
by, among others, the legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini. Whatever the
motivation was for this melee, Busoni’s performance shared with other of his
contemporaries the dubious distinction of inciting some measure of public
disorder. On 31 March earlier in same year fighting ensued at a concert of
works conducted by Schoenberg including his own music along with that of
Berg, Mahler, and Webern. A month later the Paris premiere of Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring caused riotous consternation.
Performing Sonatina seconda

Despite its relative brevity the Sonatina is a compendium of major technical
challenges. Rather than consider the work from this perspective it is much
more important to understand the sound-world Busoni is attempting to
articulate through the requisite technical mastery. My own personal experi-
ence of studying, performing and discussing Busoni’s original piano works
over many years is that the music is often met initially with caution and res-
ervation, sometimes regarded as ‘difficult’ to understand. The challenges of
coming to terms with the physical and technical demands can be somewhat
preclusive as well. It is true to say that Busoni’s music gains a form of wary
respect that presupposes the journey of discovery will be too arduous, and
best left to specialists. Suspicion is an obvious response the zeal of the initiate,
however, I would argue that Busoni is too important a figure in music history
not to be explored and that such exploration will always bear good fruit.
Consider the following passage (see Example 8.3).
Example 8.3 Sonatina seconda, BV 259.

Source: Author
A distinctly novel and uncomfortable metatonal language serves the expres-

sive purpose explicitly. Beaumont points out (1985, p. 325) that Goethe, in
a letter of 1829 to Eckerman, expected music produced for his Faust would
need to have ‘repulsive, unpleasant and terrifying qualities…out of tune with
our age’. In Sonatina seconda we find Busoni’s discovery of this necessary lan-
guage. Key words here would be finesse, subtlety, restraint, polyphonic con-
trol. Bombast, display, and effect are to be shunned. In understated fashion
nothing in the work outstays its welcome or is repeated simply to fill time.
Indeed, how many composers may have appended an opus number or two
to works almost identical to each other with respect to content? It is undeni-
able that there is much redundancy in the tradition of classical music. Even
the issue of performing exposition repeats in classical Sonata form begs us to
consider whether we really need to hear that particular material again within
such a short period of elapsed time. After all we are not living in C19 Europe,
unlikely to hear large scale works more than a mere handful of times, if that,
in a lifetime. The ubiquity of available music in concatenations of near-iden-
tical duplicates is reminiscent of the nature of Borges’ Library of Babel (1970,
p. 83): ‘The library is so enormous that any reduction of human origin is
infinitesimal…every (book) is unique, irreplaceable, but…there are always
several hundred thousand imperfect facsimiles: works which differ only in a
letter or comma.’
We fail to seek out unfamiliar music at our own and future music’s peril. It
is especially disheartening to realize the depth of ignorance of the wider reper-
toire that prevails even though we have greater access than ever before to texts,
scores and recordings. That this astounding abundance should not be used
more in the cause of self-education is incomprehensible, the lack of curiosity
disturbing. Dent (1974, p. 109) says of the relatively young Busoni (28 years
old at the time and in the context of recital information and press criticism
from 1894) that: ‘His recitals, even then were only suitable for a public of
170 Fred Scott
regular habitués; he seemed to assume that his audience knew the classics as
thoroughly as he did himself and had no need for them to be explained in the
conventional manner.’
Later, in 1902, responding to the critic Marcel Remy, Busoni’s defence was
telling (Dent, 1974, p. 110): ‘You start from false premises in thinking that it
is my intention to “modernize” the works. On the contrary, by cleaning them
of the dust of tradition, I try to restore their youth, to present them as they
sounded to people at the moment when they first sprang from the head and
pen of the composer.’ It is clear that Busoni’s attitude was uncompromising
and unapologetic in having high expectations of his audience.
Toccata
In 1911 Busoni completed the five-year span of work on his comic opera
Die Brautwahl. In common with the Piano Concerto it is a work of prodigal
fecundity that fully rewards the effort of seeking it out. In the middle of com-
posing the opera Busoni (1938, p. 111) wrote to his wife, Gerda, on 13 July
1907, ‘…I am just completing one part of the Brautwahl. It was a bigger task
than I thought it would be, and I could not master it more quickly because
I have an invincible feeling that every bar must say something…’ Around a
decade later material from Act 1, part 2 of Die Brautwahl is used in both the
Klavierübung and Toccata; in the former as part of a series of studies in stac-
cato technique, and in the latter as the first section of its tri-partite structure.
In The Gruesome History of Lippold the character Leonhard relates the story
of how the discovery of a magic book allows Lippold to evade execution
by being burned alive as Satan frees him (Busoni (1914, pp. 100–103). The
rhythm of the passage ‘Man fand das Zauberbuch’ permeates the first and
second sections of Toccata like a motto (see Example 8.4).
Example 8.4 Toccata, BV 287 ‘Zauberbuch Motif’.

Source: Author.
In the works final Ciaccona a traditional Sarabande rhythm is clearly

derived from the second half of the Zauberbuch theme. The final acceler-
ando page of the piece features a descending arpeggiated theme to which
the name Meph-i-stoph-e-les could be articulated. Busoni’s references to the
recurring themes of magic books and demonic forces powerfully link the
Toccata, Sonatina seconda, and Doktor Faust. The material of the middle
and final sections of the Toccata have important commonalities with those
scenes in Doktor Faust relating to the seduction of the Duchess of Parma
and outraged reaction of the Duke, her husband. The final gesture of the
piece drives home its overall bleakness. An affirmative ascent to a cadence
in D major is a short live hiatus of positivity before an abysmal descent into
A-flat minor, a tri-tone removed from D major.The finality of the final a-flat
minor chord, pounded out in the Mephistopheles rhythm, may perhaps find
a resonance, albeit enharmonically, in the final G-sharp minor left-hand
chord of Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum and the association with the
following passage in Goethe’s Faust (Goethe (1988), p. 160, l.1338): ‘I am
the spirit that denies.’
Fitting commentary on the meaning of the Toccata’s atmosphere of
unequivocal, bleak finality (see Example 8.5).
172 Fred Scott
Example 8.5 Toccata, BV 287, final chords.

Source: Author.
Performing Toccata
Busoni inscribed a quotation attributed to Frescobaldi above the Toccata,
‘Non e senza difficolta che si arrive al fine’. The would-be performer of this
work will find the statement to be true of the execution of this demanding
music. Busoni’s Toccata has little in common with those essays in the rather
more motoric style of his contemporaries Debussy, Prokofiev, and Ravel. In
fact, Busoni reaches back beyond the influence of Liszt and Schumann to the
very inception of the form and its roots in renaissance Italy, hence the afore-
mentioned invocation of Frescobaldi. Rather than focussing on prompting
a display of muscular endurance and fortitude on the part of the performer
Busoni seems to assert an almost ironically ascetic and anti-virtuosic pos-
ition. The considerable physical difficulty involved in the execution of the
opening Prelude – Quasi Presto, arditamente (‘boldly’) is presented by con-
tinual staccatissimo arpeggio figures traversing the entire range of the key-
board at speed as the powerful chording of the Zauberbuch theme is to be
forcefully enunciated in the midst of much activity. Attention must be paid
especially to the necessary pedalling involved in sustaining this theme and
yet not blurring the arpeggiated figures. In bar 11 transition occurs via the
flattened submediant seventh to a re-statement of the Zauberbuch theme in
C major. In bar 21 we find an interesting technical solution to facilitate the
fingering of the chromatic scale (see Example 8.6).
Example 8.6 Toccata, BV287, chromatic scale fingering.

Source: Author.
This novel sequencing allows the hand to retain a more compact shape
making the staccato more bitingly emphatic. Bars 23 and following display an
elegant solution to facilitating the performance of rapid arpeggiated octaves;
note here how Busoni omits certain of the potential doublings, increasing
accuracy, reducing strain and the possibility of an interruption to the relent-
less quaver flow. This rational deployment of resources serves the sound per-
fectly. Bar 30 recapitulates the first statement of the Zauberbuch theme with
the roles of the hands exchanged. The unforgiving rapid leaps in bars 34 and
following benefit from the essential requirement of boldness (and no little
faith!) that Busoni indicates is necessary at the start of the Prelude.
Sonatina in Diem Nativitatis Christi MCMXVII (1917)

Important material used in Doktor Faust originates in this fourth Sonatina.
Bearing a dedication to Busoni’s first son, Benvenuto, and conceived perhaps
in some way to have metaphorical significance referencing in the Nativity one
of the key events of the Christian calendar, this mysterious piece is steeped in
symbol and allegory. The references to the day of Christ’s birth both reside in
the title itself and also in the rustic music of the moderato vivace on pp. 6–7 of
the score. Reminiscent of the Pastorale music in part one of Liszt’s oratorio
Christus and Busoni’s piano piece Nuit de Noel (1908) the atmosphere evoked
contributes to a sort of nostalgic emotional affect. On page 5 of the Breitkopf
Edition of the Sonatina we find the following passage (see Example 8.7).
Example 8.7 Sonatina in Diem Nativitas Christi MCMXVII, BV 274.

Source: Author.
The rather disconcerting metatonality of these chords reappears in Doktor

Faust at Easter time after Faust has signed the fateful pact with Mephistopheles.
It is important to note that in Busoni’s version of the legend Faust’s initial
summons is addressed to Lucifer (literally, ‘Light-Bringer’). After his rejec-
tion of the subsequent apparitions and exit from the protective circle Faust is
‘summoned’ by Mephistopheles. It can be argued that Faust’s desire for ‘light’
is to a certain extent inversely satisfied as he succumbs to the temptation of
Mephistopheles assurance that he is ‘as swift as the thoughts of man’. Perhaps
174 Fred Scott
the nostalgia for childhood that follows illustrates a certain credulity in Faust
and yet at the same time, given the opera’s final scene, a literal response to the
necessity of a child-like entry to the Kingdom of Heaven as spoken of in the
New Testament (Matthew 18:3). A choir is heard intoning the words of
the Credo. Faust remarks that Easter day is ‘Tag meiner Kindheit’ (‘day of
my birth’) and this is literally true of Busoni who was born on April 1st 1866.
One can only speculate on the use of this exact passage marking initially the
Incarnation of the Christian Saviour (Sonatina) and Faust’s ‘rebirth’ into his
Mephistophelian pact (Doktor Faust). It is possible that the choral setting of
the Credo here emphases the high stakes of Faust’s decision and maybe the
articulation of a certain mental scruple at the abandonment of traditional
religious alignment. It is no surprise that these great issues must have vexed
Busoni, especially in the years of global conflict during which he was living.
The Sonatina, though it is not of great technical difficulty yet stands as a
model of the deep compositional processes which engaged Busoni. The fruits
of a mind saturated in philosophy, religion, occultism, fantasy, and musical
speculation will always demand and reward deep study.
Drei Albumblätter
The Drei Albumblätter (composed 1918–21) appear as late as 1922 in first
performance by their composer in London. The second and third of these
pieces feature material later used in Doktor Faust. The second Albumblatt,
composed in Rome, 1921, features a metatonal theme. The resulting three-part
fugal treatment is conducted along wholly conventional lines with the second
(tenor) entry on the note G, analogous to the dominant in a traditional struc-
ture. The third entry, in bass octaves, returns the theme to C. A development
follows, before the soprano’s final, partial statement of the opening theme.
A typically ambiguous cadence resolves onto C major seventh. The theme
used here occurs in Doktor Faust during the protagonist’s visit to Parma
where, as part of his display of conjuring at the request of the Duchess, Faust
causes the appearance of John the Baptist and Salome (see P. 173, bar 32 of
the Breitkopf Klavierauszug).
The second Albumblatt bears a dedication to Francesco Ticciati (1893–
1949), Italian composer, pianist, and London resident. Black (2013, webpage),
writes: ‘In my opinion, apart from being a major influence in my development
into a musician whose career took me up to Executive Producer, BBC Radio
Music, (Ticciati) was in his own right a major pianist who reflected the won-
derful influence of his great teacher Busoni.’ The third Albumblatt (In der
Art eines Choralvorspiels) is a transcription of Bach’s Chorale ‘Christ Lag
in Todesbanden’ which, as previously mentioned in connection with Busoni’s
transcription of Bach’s Chaconne. On page 9 of the piano score Busoni points
out that he has isolated the tenor line of the Chorale and transposed it into
the soprano over an undulating quaver accompaniment. The character of the
resultant music is vastly different from the atmosphere of the rather sombre
treatment in the Chorale. Here, the melody assumes a more overtly sensuous
ambience. This passage is adapted for later use in Doktor Faust following
the aforementioned conjuration scene in Parma (see p. 176, bar 780 foll.).
In a passionate outburst Faust declares his romantic intentions towards the
Duchess, imploring her to follow him, and become Queen of the whole earth,
possessor of the East’s wealth and the West’s culture. The same theme is heard
once more (see p. 187, bar 926 foll.) sung by the Duchess as she has now
obviously succumbed to Faust and pledges to follow him. This intriguing
treatment of Bach’s chorale melody shows a kind of alchemical transform-
ation demonstrating how Bach’s original Easter hymn becomes the material
for the seduction scene, the consequence of which, as we discover later in the
opera, leads to the conception of a child, the dead body of which is delivered
to Faust about a year later in the midst of the rowdy tavern scene. The lively
debate involving Catholic and Lutheran students leads us tantalizingly back
to the use of Bach’s chorale as precursor to Faust’s union with the Duchess,
an example of Busoni’s enigmatic mirroring in this meeting of the archaic
with the arcane. The backdrop of the use of the Easter hymn and the birth
of a child is an irresistible reference to Busoni’s own birth and Faust’s later
re-birth in the resurrected body of his own dead progeny. This is preceded in
the final scene by one further appearance of Bach’s Chorale, a choir announ-
cing words of judgement and resurrection (p. 303, bar 380 foll.) simultan-
eously with the protagonist’s searching for the one good deed that will save
him (see Example 8.8).
176 Fred Scott
Example 8.8 A: J.S Bach, Christ Lag in Todesbanden 371 Chorale Preludes, B: Busoni,
Albumblatt No. 3, BV 289, C and D: Busoni, Doktor Faust, BV 303.
Source: Author.
The Dritte Albumblatt bears a dedication to Felice Boghen (1869–1945),
Italian pianist, composer, conductor, and musicologist, who was editor of
volumes of early keyboard music, in particular that of Frescobaldi. One such
volume (Boghen, 1918) featured Frescobaldi’s Toccata Nona, the source, if
somewhat paraphrased, of the quotation on the title page of Busoni’s own
Toccata: ‘Non e senza difficolta che si arrive al fine’. Frescobaldi’s reads: ‘Non
senza fatiga si giunge al fine’. In either case the sentiments are entirely apt for
Busoni’s uncompromising piece.
Klavierübung
Busoni had done his share of conventional, conservatoire teaching in Europe
and America early in his career. However, it was in Masterclasses that Busoni
created and cemented his legacy as the de facto heir to Franz Liszt in his roles
of performer, teacher, composer and conductor.
Sitsky (1986, p. 172) writes: ‘Busoni was not, by nature, a teacher; his
masterclasses and composition classes were group sessions and special ones at
that…but if by teaching we mean individual, painstaking tuition, with much
probing and elucidation of technique and its problems…then Busoni was not
a teacher’. It is significant that Busoni worked on the Klavierübung over the
period of seven years leading up to his death. The fact that this project and
Doktor Faust so occupied these last years is important, and I would assert non-
coincidental. Beaumont (1985, p. 296) points out that: ‘Busoni…intended to
pass on in concise form the fruits of his lifelong occupation with keyboard
technique’. This establishes that Busoni’s priorities must have related to cre-
ating a legacy of pragmatic necessity, in terms of piano playing, and spiritual
transcendence, in terms of the message of Doktor Faust.
The relationship between Klavierübung and Doktor Faust becomes explicit
if the content of Busoni’s sketches for the unfinished parts of the opera
are consulted. Of the three conjectural completions the Jarnach material
functions in the role of a prosthesis, affording a measure of utility by replacing
a lost body part. The Beaumont and Sitsky completions were able to draw
directly from Busoni’s sketches for the completion of his opera, a document
not made available to Jarnach prior to the premiere on 21 May 1925. Busoni’s
sketches make reference to several of the pieces in the Klavierübung showing
their place in the economy of his ultimate vision. Accounts of the Beaumont
and Sitsky completions are recorded extensively elsewhere (Beaumont,
1986, pp. 196–199; Crispin, 2007, p. 75). The important point to note is that
contained within these various, sometimes fragmentary pieces is a reposi-
tory not only of boldly innovative performance solutions but also of ideas
and sketch materials for the final moments of Doktor Faust. It seems wholly
characteristic of Busoni that the impulse towards the didactic, illustrating
far-reaching notions of piano technique, should accompany music of high
mysticism associated with the ultimately transcendental aspirations of the
opera’s protagonist.
178 Fred Scott
The value of the Klavierübung is the light it sheds on the pianistic secrets
of an indisputably influential artist. Sitsky (1986, p. 173) writes: ‘What we
have…is not so much a method as a record by Busoni of his approach to the
keyboard: his fingerings, tricks, shortcuts, improvisations…it often stresses
the unorthodox at the cost of the obvious…(it) can be useful in opening up
new technical horizons.’
Gnosis
Gnosis is a concept fundamental to grasping the purpose of Busoni’s work as
composer. Indeed, Busoni (1962, p. 75) prefaced the Sketch of a New Aesthetic
of Music by asserting his wish to ‘go beyond the end’, a formula redolent of
the Alchemist’s perpetual search outside of the controlling realities inherent
in nature. The appeal to Busoni of figures steeped in Mystical and Magical
traditions is a clear illustration of the perception of the role of ritual magic in
operating outside the constraints of what were generally perceived to be the
immutable laws of nature. As Crispin (2007, p. 23) has observed ‘Like his
contemporary Jean Cocteau, Busoni believed that art is not a pastime but a
priesthood’. It would not be fanciful to suggest that Busoni saw himself ful-
filling a high calling in this way, positioned vicariously between the mundane
and spiritual worlds encoding and disseminating directions along the path
toward spiritual knowledge.
The momentum of Busoni’s work leads inexorably towards revelation in
Doktor Faust. This can be clearly demonstrated by a consideration of key
works, particularly the piano music, which broadcast seeds for later germin-
ation. Seen in this way a pianist attempting a performance-based survey of
these works will be enriched far more than building a repertoire centred pri-
marily around the canonical. Like Bach, Beethoven, and Liszt before him,
Busoni catalysed seismic change in keyboard playing, spawned a massively
influential network of performer-teachers, and exerted a profound influence
over the lives and work of countless younger composers, and yet there is not
a copy of Busoni himself. If there is a Busoni-school it continues to resonate
in the waves he initiated.
The purpose of this study is to challenge the curious to approach the work
of Busoni in the manner of an interior journey, the fruits of which may, as
in the case of Busoni, result in a public communication of discoveries made
along the way. We enter the world alone and we leave alone. How and why we
arrived into life are vexatious questions without definitive answers. How and
why we die and whether or not our consciousness persists may just be perceived
in the insight granted by bold seeking. That Busoni (1938, p. 219) considered
this possibility deeply is illustrated by the following extract from a 1913 letter
to his wife: ‘If one admits that there are such things as “presentiments” and
“second sight,” and that one can look into the future (if only for the tiniest
moment and shortest distance), it is logical that one should have the same
capacity for looking backwards into time. That at least would be an explan-
ation of the so-called seeing of ghosts.’
Although nothing can be done to recover the experience of beginning
our physical existence, we have the liberty to speculate on the nature of our
ending. Life in physical or psychic form may indeed end in oblivion. Truly
to comprehend this notion has informed much earnest contemplation and
speculation and is a time limited process for all of us. Furthermore, I would
argue that, inspired by the searching restlessness of Busoni, we may be led
closer to finding the will to defy and seek out the highest insight of our own
wisdom and therein gain freedom.
Bardo Thodol (In the gap between life and rebirth)

(Baldock (2009) p. 10)
An interpretation of the life and meaning of Ferruccio Busoni is as con-
tingent and ambiguous as belief in the Supernatural; he continues to polarize
opinion, inspiring both fanatical devotion and summary condemnation,
but is certainly not to be ignored. A cursory examination of Busoni’s legacy
will show how many have been and even today are under his influence to
a great extent; it is unlikely that any aspect of contemporary music making
can honestly be detached from some connection to the extraordinary net-
work of students, pianists, composers, conductors, and visual artists Busoni
inspired. An artist whose creative output was saturated in the esoteric, occult,
and speculative presents an open invitation, even a challenge, to find the
encodings concealed within the works produced and their wider implications.
The richness and range of Busoni’s work, his wider, persistent significance
finds definition in Steiner (2010, p. 375): ‘The wingbeat of the unknown has
been at the heart of poiesis. Can there, will there be major philosophy, litera-
ture, music and art of an atheist provenance?’
That spiritual transcendence is the key to understanding the motivations
of Busoni is clearly to be seen in the final clause of the spoken epilogue of
Doktor Faust as it tantalizingly reveals a perception of ultimate possibility
(Busoni, 1987, p. 76): ‘So, rising on the shoulders of the past, the soul of man
shall reach his heaven at last.’ Is this the message out of the undiscovered
country from whose bourn no traveller returns? At least we have the capacity
to speculate on the nature of the ‘world elsewhere’… a world accessible to
the sojourner in the immateriality of dreaming and ultimately to all after the
transition out of physical life that we must all eventually undertake.
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Keegan Paul.
9
Diatonic refraction through
metatonal spaces
Kenneth Smith
Sound, space, and speed

Franz Schreker is noted for a particular type of sonority that can help us
reconceptualize some of the spaces in which composers choose to operate.
The plots of Schreker’s operas revolve around magical sounds that disrupt the
social order. In his first opera, Der Ferne Klang (1910), a composer devotes
his life to finding such a magical, distant sound; in Das Spielwerk und die
Prinzessin (1912) a magical music machine controls the entire drama; in Der
Schatzgräber (1918) a magical treasure-seeking lute is the central concern.
The list goes on. The music that becomes associated with these images, and
which always seems to act as the kernel of the operatic tonal narrative, has
been dubbed ‘Klangmusik’ by Mark Berger (2012). From Schreker’s own ref-
erence ‘Nachklang’ (echo /reverberating sound) in the score of Der Ferne
Klang, Peter Franklin employs this alternative term to describe the magical
sounds that Schreker tries to create at key dramatic moments in his works,
moments which in fact spread through the works themselves. Paul Bekker
described geheimnisvolle Klänge [mysterious, secretive sounds] (Bekker, 1922,
p. 38) in Die Gezeichneten (1915), and the ‘secretive’ nature of the sound is
part and parcel of the enigmatic, eternal atmosphere that Schreker aims for
in his Klangmusik. But a further aspect of the secret is that, although they
are clearly not conventionally tonal, they act as keys to unlock the tonal
dramas that follow. The process by which these timeless sonorities become
temporalized can also help us to focus on how diatonic tonality passes
through other spaces, new at the turn of the twentieth century, which coexist
with tonality, but which seem to lie just outside of its grasp.
What defines this Klangmusik? Bekker’s phrase (1922, p. 52),
‘schimmernden, silbrigen Glanz’ [shimmering silvery lustre] perhaps serves
as a neat example of the kind of poetic adjectives that abound in the lit-
erature surrounding Schreker. The sounds created are certainly comprised
from the ‘magical’ orchestral timbres such as celesta, piano, bells, and
harmonium; these sounds always offer a certain timeless quality through
layers of ostinati. And these ostinati always savour semitone clashes. On
one level these sonorities become referential, but in fact it is the relationship
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713-9
Diatonic refraction through metatonality 183
between the separate tonal entities that comprise these Klänge which defines
them, and this relationship is always much bigger and more far-reaching than
the world they initially habit. In concrete harmonic terms, different strat-
egies are employed for creating these strange new sounds, mostly involving
a highly blended variety of polytonality in which two or more normative
chords merge together, generally serving as meeting point for either hexatonic
relations (chords related by major thirds whose pool of pitches equates to the
hexatonic scale) or octatonic relations (chords related by minor thirds whose
pool of pitches equates to the octatonic scale). This chapter explores these
illuminating moments of Schreker’s sound-world and follows the Irrlicht –
the ‘willo’-the-wisp’ he creates –into the marshes of chromatic tonality, or in
fact ‘metatonalities,’ to examine the relations between these hexatonics and
octatonics, which may exist in the same universe but, come from Mars and
Venus (respectively).1
Although Wolfgang Rihm favoured the term ‘neo- tonality’, Yves
Knockaert, writing on Rihm, prefers to talk about ‘metatonality’ to
describe instances where consonant tonality is presented as an alien force,
or when a central pitch ‘auto-installs itself’ (2017, p. 163). Fleet’s defin-
ition was stricter: ‘ “meta” is intended to reflect the fact that the association
with tonality has not been totally lost. Rather, it encourages the idea that
compositions that are within this field have a filial relation towards ton-
ality yet are independent in their musical language and structure; they are
both “with” and “after” tonality’ (2009, p. 109). The present chapter aims
to explore the filiality of this relationship. Schreker’s Klänge are metatonal
in both senses because there are elements of tonality within them, but they
could never have happened within common-practice tonal music. However,
the process of labelling these moments as metatonal is not enough; what it
important is to see how these metatonal sonorities work through alternatives
to diatonic tonalities that could themselves be regarded as metatonalities –
hexatonic, octatonic, wholetone spaces –because they come after tonality
and yet cooperate filially with it, and as I hope to show, exist as lenses through
which it is refracted. The theory unpacked below posits that, as the elements
of these Klänge unfold, what we find is a type of chromatic tonality which
masks a fundamentally diatonic drive, which takes the V-I route through the
cycle of fifths as most direct paradigm, but refracts the tonal energy through
octatonic and hexatonic filters. These filters alter the perceived ‘speed’ of
tonal motion, like light bending as it passes through lenses that cause a change
in speed. To help us, we appeal to some of the fruits of neo-Riemannian
theory, because many of Schreker’s chord progressions are rooted in the
standard chords of chromatic tonality and their succession is often based
on the common transformations found in that branch of North American
music theory. Another aspect of music theory that we bring with us is Daniel
Harrison’s notion of ‘discharge’ in chromatic harmony (1994); that particu-
larly leading-note to tonic discharge is the lifeblood of tonality and it is even
more alive in chromatic music as it is in the common-practice era. The flow
184 Kenneth Smith
of leading-note energy is very much associated with Schreker’s libidinal post-
Wagnerian music. As Wolfgang Krebs conceives it, coming from the premise
of Ernst Kurth’s energeticist reading of Romantic music, ‘the Thing-in-itself
is a leading-note motion, a leading-note interval –an energy which from
the dark psychicical primordial ground of our existence steps into the world
of appearances as intervallic melodic phrases’ (1994, 365).2 What Schreker
helps to show is that the flow of leading-note energy is very much alive in
music that stretches beyond nineteenth-century chromaticism and into a fin
de siècle brand of metatonality. The fundamental theory is that diatonicism
is newly dispersed, refracted through a variety of metatonal landscapes, and
progresses through different spaces and at different speeds.
Factoring in this tendency to associate Schreker’s tonal energy with the
Leitton, we can see how major third hexatonics and minor third octatonics
are fundamentally different species. Indeed, the interaction of octatonic and
hexatonic relations within a broadly diatonic universe is an unresolved issue in
neo-Riemannian theory.3 Progressions of minor thirds that together amount
to octatonicism famously create a static atmosphere of tonal timelessness. To
my mind, this is mostly because any octatonic scale has the leading notes of its
four component triads missing. If we have a progression that moves between
D, F, A♭, and B triads (or even seventh chords), no succession of these will
produce any 7̂-8̂ motion in any of these chords/keys, because there are no 7̂s,
the missing pitches being c♯, e, g, and a♯. Thus, a progression like this one that
begins the overture of Schreker’s Das Spielwerk alternates F and D triads in a
way that withholds tonal energy, or perhaps stores it. Note that Schreker adds
a passing C triad on a weak beak in order to emphasize the F (with its major
seventh, e) as the primary chord via a nested V-I motion, reaching outside of
the octatonic collection to do so.
From Das Spielwerk, opening bars and §109.

Example 9.1
He does a similar thing in the opera itself, when he reaches to the third
octatonic node, A♭, articulating this now via a sequestered E♭ triad that acts
as local, passing V. This creates an immobile atmosphere of minimal per-
turbation. Certainly, the diatonic pace here is at a minimum; the only voice
we hear in this ‘slow, secretive’ sound world is the lone, nested V-I, but as it
discharges it reminds us that tonal functionality is still in force. Notice also
how when the A♭ is explored as a new pillar in Example 9.1, the g leading-note
is retained as an injection of dissonance to make sure we take note of it. Thus,
octatonics arrest tonal energy and have a very slow speed. Only when ‘alien’
leading-notes to the octatonic triadic pillars are added can the music become
mobile.
A clearer octatonic passage is the ‘Distant Sound’ of Schreker’s first
opera, where the melody forms a complete, simple, descending octatonic scale
(Example 9.2). The harmony beneath could very well have indicated the chords
of A♭, F, D, and B to offer the four nodes of the scale, but Schreker rather
gives us an arpeggiated static version of the other diminished-chord node of the
collection, outlining g♭, e♭, c, a pitches. Coming from another world, this dis-
tant sound evokes the glimpse of eternity that the composer-protagonist longs
for in the narrative. Even without the accompanying chords, this is octatonic
speed in a nutshell. This all trades on the view that octatonic chord relations are
functionally alike, a view offered in Ernö Lendvai’s controversial ‘axis system’
(1971). Without the support of a leading-note theory, Lendvai struggles to con-
vince us the minor-related chords are functional kinsmen, though he shows that
in Bartok’s architectonics, they at least replace some of the diatonic narrative
of the common-practice era. With the addition of a leading-note theory we
explore with more nuance what happens on chord to chord basis.
Example 9.2 The octatonic ‘distant sound’ of Der Ferne Klang.
Hexatonic major thirds, by contrast, are comprised of leading notes

(Example 9.3). The hexatonic scale, like the octatonic, offers us semitones
at regular intervals, but because these are dispersed with a full minor-third
between, a series of three triads (in both parallel modes) is produced, each
with its own leading notes included in the scale. Thus, F, A, and D♭ triads
offer us e–f, g♯–a, and c–d♭ pitches, with each chord’s leading note present in
at least one of the others (in fact, three out of four, because F’s leading note
e is present in A major, A minor, and, enharmonically, D♭ minor, missing
only from D♭ major). This means that progressions of major-third-related
triads can discharge tonal tension though without the directness found
in simple V-I root motion. Thus, in a progression like this one from Der
Schatzgräber (Example 9.4) the A–F–D♭ progression has a sense of forwards
tonal momentum because A’s e discharges to f as 7̂-8̂. This is palpably felt as
weaker than the real discharge that occurred on the previous metrical cadence
point a bar earlier (in near identical circumstances) from A to D as clear V-I
186 Kenneth Smith
(though the D is capped with an added sixth, b). The F chord, then, comes
as a substitution or (octatonic, minor-third) replacement for D –a deceptive
cadence, but one which still allows the sense of leading-note discharge. This
F then progresses to D♭, having again contained its leading-note (c). Thus,
the passage can be said to flow diatonically through a hexatonic filter, slowing
down the ideal circle of fifths propulsion through refraction. However, it is
worth noting that if the progression were to be reversed, we would find a
slower diatonic motion because there would be no discharge of consecutive
7̂-8̂s. Consecutive 8̂-7̂s act as a reverse progression that backpedals away from
discharge through a form of hexatonic ‘plagal’ motion.
Example 9.3 Leading-note potential within the hexatonic scale.
Example 9.4 Der Schatzgräber.
Why Schreker? Plenty of fin de siècle composers (and indeed earlier

composers), can be used to explore the diatonic speed of hexatonic and
octatonic spaces. Schreker has several characteristics that make him an espe-
cially apposite case-study. Firstly, Schreker uses no single system but fuses
various metatonal spaces (less often using whole-tone relations) into a brico-
lage of interchanging spaces and speeds within a rapid timeframe.4 While the
third-relationships that form the crux of my analysis were examined by Krebs
(1994) in relation to Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, his is an analysis of melodic
constructs rather than harmonic ones, but even so the third-relationships
so central to hexatonic and octatonic spaces are crucial to Schreker’s entire
sound-world. Secondly, the main tonal innovation of Schreker, when all
is said and done, is the fusion of these metatonalities into spatial nebulae
which occur at the inception of works, and then become differentiated tem-
porally into the associated speeds of their component parts. Confirmation
that neo-Riemannian theory is useful to Schreker comes when we consider
that so much of his tonal interactions are founded on common-tones (what
neo-Riemannians would call ‘voice-leading parsimony’ (Callender 1999). As
Berger notes:
This Klangmusik, with its complex, extended tertian sonorities, polytonal

chromaticism, and delicate orchestration, typically eschews harmonic
progression in favour of the parallel planing of intervallically consistent
vertical structures or harmonic motion via common tone between func-
tionally unrelated sonorities.
(2012, p. 62)
These Klänge are nebulae from which distinct stars are born, and Schreker
allows them to slip in and out of temporality and spatiality. Time and again
spatial becomes temporal; polytonal becomes metatonal, metatonal becomes
polytonal. The rest of this chapter will explore two entire pieces –one overture
and one symphony, both related by different types of nebulae –one hexatonic
and one octatonic –that become temporalized and dramatized through the
ensuing work. To help conceptualize this temporalization of the collision of
hexatonic and octatonic space I use the visual interface of a cousin of the
Tonnetz rather more reminiscent of François-Guillaume Vial’s ‘Genealogical
Tree of Harmony’ (turned at 90 degrees to read from left to right) which
tabulates minor thirds on the y axis, and the circle of fifths on the x axis (see
Figure 9.1). We will, however, heed Cohn’s warning (2011, p. 322) that the
space is designed to capture progressions of chords and keys rather than the
pitches that form chords (as is practiced on a neo-Riemannian Tonnetz). This
space assumes equal-temperament, but also collapses differences in chord
qualities into a single root. This can be problematic as chord quality is often
associated with different spaces (triads are germane to hexatonic space, where
seventh chords, half-diminished chords, etc., are more commonly associated
with octatonic space), but as this visualization is attempting to show the dia-
tonic force at work in these spaces, the problem is partially side-stepped. Fred
Lerdahl refers to ‘space shifting’ between octatonic space and other tonal
spaces, but we might rather propose that the space is fundamentally the same
here; we pass through the space octatonically, hexatonically, diatonically, or in
whole-tone relations. On Figure 9.1 we can see that octatonic chord relations
occur vertically and therefore arrest tonal motion (which would run from
left to right on the lattice); diatonic motion is the cleanest form of discharge
motion; whole-tone chord motions (such as, say, chord progression IV–V)
progress diatonically downwards; hexatonics progress diatonically upwards.
The examples given above as Examples 9.2 and 9.4 are plotted on Figure 9.1
to show the paths through tonal space: note the static octatonic progression
of Das Spielwerk and the mobile but refracted line of motion in the hexatonic
Der Schatzgräber.
188 Kenneth Smith
Figure 9.1 Tonal visualization of chord progressions.
Klangmusik in Die Gezeichneten: Overture (1915)

Accounts of the opening of Die Gezeichneten are as enticing as the music
itself. As Franklin tells us: ‘It opens with a soft, harmonically ambivalent
ostinato that is highly characteristic of the mature Schreker: the magic atmos-
phere of a semi-conscious state of passive anticipation that directly parallels
Scriabin’s “languido” mysticism’ (1982, p. 142). On another occasion he calls
it ‘an almost literally hypnotic and passionately engulfing presence’ (Franklin,
2006, p. 182); ‘And then there is the notorious Schrekerian ‘Klang’ –the sound
that is not distant here, as in his first staged opera, but present in the orchestra
pit, with all its shifting Rosenkavalier colours and recherché harmonies’
(Franklin, 2006, p. 186). Christopher Hailey waxes lyrical about ‘that mes-
merizing bi-tonal shimmer of violins, harps, celesta and piano hovering over
a sinuous, serpentine melody in the bass clarinet and lower strings. This is the
music of fin de siècle Vienna, a city on the precipice, teetering between breath-
taking vistas and terrifying chasms’ (Hayley, online). Die Gezeichneten begins
with a tantalizing hexatonic melody while the bitonal arpeggiations above that
blur together through their different speeds of arpeggiation (see Example 9.5).
These intone a ‘hexatonic pole’ relationship (two triads that use the comple-
mentary pitches of the hexatonic scale, such as C minor and E major) which,
for Richard Cohn, marks the Freudian ‘Uncanny’ (2006). These entrancing,
repetitious, bitonal, interlocking textures also have a strange self-fulfilling
nature, because both D and B♭ minor triads possess the leading-notes of each
other (D has B♭m’s 7̂ as well as ♭6 ̂; B♭m has D’s 7̂ and ♭6 ̂). Both textures,
with their ‘music box’ celesta and harp combinations, draw us into a mystery.
Examining the constructs of Schreker’s bitonal triads we find compressed
versions of harmonic constructions that will be unpacked across the opera,
and, in the immediate present, form spatio-temporal struggles throughout
the overture in key moments. These moments are analysed as both a single
‘Klang’ and as composite elements that have the potential to temporally
spread out. Already the temporal dimension is curiously compressed because
the bitonal chords of the Klang oscillate at different rates. Because these are
two hexatonic poles, we also have the complete hexatonic scale with three
leading notes to three full triads represented: D, F♯ and B♭. This blending may
explain the unusual enharmony that mitigates against a ‘clean’ interpretation
of two triads. Due to this, the effect is of a homogenizing interpenetration and
continual discharge between chords into each other, self-sustaining, and in the
Freudian parlance contemporary with the opera, autoerotic. Yet at the same
time, it creates a coil of wound-up energy ready to be released.
Example 9.5 The hexatonic opening of Die Gezeichneten.
This relationship becomes temporalized in bar 22 (see Example 9.6) when we

approach a climactic point that escapes the autoerotic self-sufficiency of the
initial Klang and unfurls the component hexatonic scale as triads. The incep-
tion chord of this climactic moment harbours the augmented triad that gives
us hexatonic space in utero, but the b♭ pitch soon resolves downwards to the
D’s a as clear ♭6 ̂–5̂. The D then ushers in a descending major-third progres-
sion through hexatonic space to B♭ (major this time) and G♭ major. We note
now that G♭ major, although not featured as a distinct triadic formation in
the Klang, was nonetheless present all along, all of its pitches being emergent
properties of the interaction of D and B♭ minor. Note also that each move in
this progression involves leading-note ‘discharge’ (a→b♭ in the move from D
to B♭; f→g♭ in the move from B♭ to G♭). This allows the diatonic leading-note
drive so clearly vital to the work’s libidinal energy (see Krebs, 1994) to control
the harmonic force, passing through hextatonic speed (see Figure 9.2).
190 Kenneth Smith
Example 9.6 The hexatonic unfolding of Die Gezeichneten.
Figure 9.2 A visualization of the passage above.
But we jump ahead of ourselves; Schreker’s nebulous opening passes first from
its hexatonic-pole to an octatonic-pole when in bar 4, the chords change rela-
tionship to alternating T6-related triads. The F♯ emerging from the hexatonic
interaction is the chord maintained in this new blend of F♯ and C. This creates
a six-note sub-set of 8-28, the octatonic scale, and is more static even than
the earlier self-satisfying relationship, which at least contained leading-note
to tonic resolutions. Schreker then releases this metatonal tension through
a rising whole-tone progression, resolving upwards through d in the bass to
E and F♯ triads (as shown in Table 9.1, which charts a simple plan of the
opening 17 bars of polytonal triadic interactions) bringing in a new whole-
tone-related bitonal complex (though not a whole-tone scale). Ironically, all
of the blended triads we have heard by this point –B♭, C, D, E, and F♯ –
create a whole-tone relationship. This whole-tone root motion does, how-
ever, progress to a new hexatonic-pole nebula beyond, with A and Fm triads
forming (see Table 9.1).
But things are different now compared to the hexatonic nebula of the
opening; the preceding E provides a V–I discharge in A and thereby establishes
the A as primary over Fm. This second nebula is therefore less static than the
first and moves quicker through different states. Firstly, it backtracks through
newgenrtpdf
Table 9.1 Bitonal chord combinations in the Klang Music of the opening 17 bars
b. 1 4 5 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

G♭ G♭ F♯ Fm C♯m B♭m F♯m F Gm Gm Cm Fm G7 F C♯ø7
D C E A E D A A♭ A7 F♯7 E G♯m7 A E Cm E7♭9 C♯7 Em
B♭m
Hex Oc Di Hex Oc/Di Hex Oc Oct Dia Chr Hex Hex Hex Hex→ Dia [?]‌ Hex Oct
192 Kenneth Smith
a C♯m/E (diatonic/octatonic) complex back towards the D/B♭m original oscil-
lation but stretches further ‘back in time’ to a short A and F♯m alternation,
the A of which provides a V for the original D, which can now be heard as
primary ‘tonic’ in this complex hexatonic vortex. Thus, a I–V–IV–I plagal
progression is heard in the A–E–D–A half of the bitonal blur. The latter A/
F♯m notably changes the initial A/Fm hexatonic to an octatonic–diatonic rela-
tion, thus turning a mobile progression into a static one.
At the foot of Table 9.1 are recorded the interactions of spaces that are
determined by the chord relations. One can see the frequent exchange of
relations in relatively unsettled successions, with some additional subtleties.
Note how sometimes vertical polytonal combinations become temporalized
and diatonic discharge occurs between them. Such is the case at the end of
bar 14 where the E resolves hexatonically to its H-pole of C minor (with
the E acting as a substitute G and carrier of C’s leading-tone b). The E/C
minor relationship stemmed from the previous bar, where both were mixed
together as a hexatonic-pole. Even further back, in bar 9, we heard E/C♯m –
an octatonic combination, altered by a semitone (C♯/C♮) to make a hexatonic
relation repeated in bar 17. (In fact both instances demonstrate more hexatonic
activity than recorded, because of the F –C#m hexatonic discharge relations.)
After bar 17, the dialogue settles on a more sustained octatonic E/C♯/B♭
exchange (of Example 9.7) and resolves first to A and then to D in readi-
ness for the hexatonic D–B♭–G♭ cycle. An A–D–G progression then leads
to another iteration of this in which the G♭ is substituted for a new Eø7. This
segues us into the more obviously tonal ‘B section’ (see Table 9.2), which,
rooted in E minor, uses alternations of F♯ and B as prominent elements in a
fully fledged martial theme. Note that this is an unraveling of the ‘diatonic’
IV-V combination of bar 5’s E and F♯. There are two small eruptions of
hexatonic and octatonic spaces in this section. Firstly, a polytonal combin-
ation of G and E♭ triads interjects between bars 38–40, moving in bar 41 to
B♭maj7. This B♭ then moves hexatonically to its D colleague to create a new
underlying pedal point on d. At bar 46 there is an octatonic invasion of F and
B minor from this d bedrock, arresting motion only briefly before the entire B-
section is played again verbatim. On the repeat, the F/B interruption is more
forceful through reiteration, and thus begins a short passage on F/B and D
roots, as an octatonically static pedal-point upswing to a clear E major theme
at bar 69. E minor now pertains for several bars in preparation as chord II
for the most ‘Romantic’ moment –the ‘Schwungvoll’ associated with the lib-
ertine character Tamare, whose ‘waltz-melody’ is symbolic of his ‘hedonistic
sexuality’ (Franklin, 1982–1983, p. 145). That this purely diatonic passage
becomes associated with the debauched character who always gets what he
wants is scarcely coincidence. The success of this theme is that the diatonic
climax is dependent upon a sudden surge of forwards diatonic energy, shown
on the simple I-II-V-I progression at the start of Figure 9.3a. The F that
erupted earlier is now used as a shadow of a return to D that serves to take
us not to the tritone octatonic deadlock of B minor this time, but to B♭ which
allows it to follow its discharge potential. Having reached the B♭ –the tritone
substitute for the Subdominant-functioned supertonic in D –Schreker now
progresses down a chain of static, non-discharging minor third chords –G
minor, Eø7, C♯ø7. The clarity of the D throughout the passage as tonal linchpin
means that these non-discharging octatonic exchanges occur on the subdom-
inant functioning axis that centres around E/G. Note in bars 95–110 how the
direct diatonic motions through the tonic– subdominant– dominant– tonic
progressions now begin to explore more localized octatonic partners (moving
up or down the vertical axis of the lattice). Furthermore, this same sub-
dominant axis becomes each time the centre of exploration of the complete
octatonic axis, this happening twice more. Note how this octatonicism now
becomes fully inscribed melodically, more than as an emergent property of
interchanging T3 triads (see Example 9.7). Schreker uses the melodic pitches
g, a♭, b♭, b♮, c♯, d,e, f (an exclusive and complete OCT1,2 collection) to stultify
the harmony in this octatonic region before propelling us back to D/A for the
recapitulatory gesture. The chord that serves as a bridge between these two
worlds is another D/B♭ hybrid, like the opening Klangmusik, but one which
now ‘resolves’ playfully to G re-emphasizing that the D, now as dominant, is
the potent element here.
Table 9.2 Snapshot of the overture from Die Gezeichneten’s form
A (1–31) B (32–84) C (85–100) D (101–110) E (111–143) A (144 –151)

Klangmusik Martial ‘Schwungvoll,’ ‘Development’ ‘Recapitulation’ Klangmusik
theme Tamare’s
theme
Figure 9.3a Tamare’s Theme from Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, bars 85–95.
Tamare’s Theme from Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, bars 95–110.

Figure 9.3b
194 Kenneth Smith
Example 9.7 Die Gezeichneten Overture, bars 106–107.
The novel aspect of this ‘recapitulation’ is that the polytonally blended har-
mony of before (see Table 9.1) is now purified into a monotonal series of
chords that take us through the sharp keys, centred mostly on F♯ (with strong
cadences from C♯ as V), through to D, with eruptions of B♭, these serving as
our three hexatonic pillars. At bar 144 the Klangmusik returns as a ghostly
coda and we are able once again to reflect on the interaction of the melodic
and harmonic interaction of spaces for fresh perspective on it. The cello
melody, repeated from the opening, is now heard as clearly octatonic, but with
the note b♭ acting as a ‘sticking point’ that returns at different levels (chordal,
key schematic) throughout the overture. This b♭ sticking point is encapsulated
in a nutshell as the overture closes and the mysterious Klangmusik dissolves
to a pure D triad, but a pesky b♭ keeps clashing alongside the a as a reminder
of its attempts to derail the triad into a ‘hexatonic’ augmented chord.
To summarize what we find in the overture to Die Gezeichneten, then: there
is a collision of octatonic minor- third stasis, and major- third hexatonic
slowness, both serving as filters for a fundamentally diatonic flow that breaks
through in full flood in the most ‘hedonistic’ section at the centre. Even here,
octatonics can serve to store functional momentum (or to prolong it), the
four nodes acting as non-discharging elements that together form lengthy
static pedal-points. Hexatonics serve as filters for complexifying the other-
wise diatonic sense of charge and discharge that run through the piece. Yet
fundamental to Die Gezeichneten is that both are heard in the chaotic ostinati
inherent to the Klangmusik that frames the piece. This Klangmusik, for
sure, is a metatonal phenomenon, but through time it becomes more palp-
ably tonal, as it is broken down and its constituent elements are subject to
temporal unfolding. This drama all plays on a meta-narrative that takes us
from a timeless Klang, through time-stretching hexatonics into a militaristic
B-section where diatonic motion begins to emerge, to a hedonistic deluge
of pure diatonic discharge, which is only occasionally arrested by octatonic
filters that build on the subdominant function. Once this maelstrom has swept
us away, we return to the opening nebula, ready for the opera to unravel the
same drama on a larger scale.
Kammersymphonie (1916)
Die tönenden Sphären was an abandoned opera project with a complete
libretto sketched in 1915. This opera’s plot concerns an attempt to capture
the mythical music of the spheres and is set in the imagined post-war era.
The musical ideas originally intended for the work were disseminated via the
Kammersymphonie of 1916. This work belongs to the category of nineteenth-
century multi-movement works that are subsumed by a single, over-arching
sonata form –what Steven Vande Moortele has called ‘two-dimensional form’
(2009). Though the intricacies of this form are worth a study in themselves
(and Vande Moortele indicates some of the complexities), only a brief snap-
shot is needed for the reader to be able to locate the harmonic areas that
I wish to zoom in on.5 Thus, Table 9.3 shows the interactions of formal levels,
building on readings by Neuwirth (1981) and Berger (2012).6 Naturally, I will
focus on the introduction and explore the curious harmonic spaces that
Schreker’s Klangmusik takes us through, but certain other vital passages in
which the implications of the introduction are realized will be brought into
the spotlight.
newgenrtpdf
196 Kenneth Smith
Table 9.3 ‘Two-dimensional’ form of the Kammersymphonie
INTRODUCTION EXPOSITION DEVELOPMENT INTRO RECAPITULATION CODA
‘K’ P1⇨Tr S1 ‘K’ S2 S3 S4/’K’ A B C/’K’ B A’ ‘K’ P1⇨Tr / T5→ S1 ‘K’ S2 S3 Codetta
43 80 119 128 140 156 198 280 292 311 542-584 422 430 435 438 468 507 516 529 542-584
C♯/D Dm A♭ C♯/D C♯ B-C♯ A/F♯m G♭ B♭-F F♯- C♯m B♭-C B Dm F♯/G F♯ E-F♯ D
I. Allegro II. Adagio III. Scherzo IV. Allegro V. Adagio
Introduction(s)
Regarding the opening of the symphony, Franklin describes a ‘hovering
dream-haze’ that has ‘the character of Nachklang’ (1982–1983, p. 144). This
Klangmusik surely must have been intended for the music of the spheres that
was central to the plot of Die tönenden Sphären. The intended use in oper-
atic form partly explains the symphony’s overture-like kaleidoscopic pro-
cession of melodic ideas where, from the Klang’s incipit, a series of melodic
upswings emerges that draw us gently towards the start of the sonata form first
movement proper in bar 43. This Klang returns to haunt us on six occasions
and is noted for an octatonic form of bitonality in the piano, harmonium,
and celesta. As shown in Table 9.4, the arrangement alternates and overlaps
a C♯7♭9 chord and an E7♭9 chord, both sharing the same diminished seventh as
common denominator. Note how both chords have not only a ‘double-third’
here, (the C♯, taken with the E means that it has a double third too - e/e♯) but
a ‘split root’ (the C♯7 chord, for example, has an additional d pitch). Together
these two chords form 6-27, a subset of 8-28, the octatonic scale (only g♭
and b♭ are missing). The melodic interest begins as an octatonic fragment but
becomes chromatic to lubricate the transposition of the whole Klang down-
wards by a whole tone in bar 4 to B7♭9 and D7♭9, creating a subset of OCT0,2. In
bar 5 Schreker settles us on a pure double-third D major/minor triad (like that
found by Krebs as crucial to Die Gezeichneten). Thus, we have traversed two
octatonic cycles and alighted in a diatonic (albeit modally confused) world.
However, we soon make a brief foray into hexatonicism with the subsequent
C–E move at bars 6–7. This is doubly poignant as the C itself has both a raised
and perfect fifth (g/g♯), making the horizontal connection to E all the more
seamless. The combination of these chords would produce an E(♭6) chord,
which is an alternative conception of Berger’s ‘augmented triad with major
7th’ (2012, p. 20). After two bars, this discharges into A major and kickstarts a
new phase of more diatonic orientation that edges us slowly towards a strong
sense of arrival in B minor at bar 21. This B minor section plays a forceful
alternation of B and F♯ minors like a funeral march, making us feel tempor-
arily diatonically secure, though a stasis is formed from the simple regular
oscillation. By and large, this pertains until chord IV, E, intervenes as an E7♭9
in the piano and harp, ushering in a subtle intrusion of the Klang music. This
resolves diatonically to A, recalling the similar first cadence of the piece at
bar 8. However, this then moves to F♯ø7 and on to C to close the section with
static octatonic relations. These shifts through tonal and metatonal spaces
confirm that Schreker’s practice is one of broadly diatonic discharge that is
routed through hexatonic and octatonic spaces, and that there is a temporal
unfolding through chord progression of items initially blended.
198 Kenneth Smith
Table 9.4 Tabulation of metatonal spaces traversed in the opening of Schreker’s
Kammersymphonie
1 4 5 6-7 8 21 28 29 31 34
E7♭9 C♯7♭9 D7♭9 B7♭9 Dm C–E A Bm E7♭9 A–F♯ø7–C D–B♭m–F♯ Bm
Oct Oct Dia Hex Dia Dia Oct/ Dia Oct Hex Dia
Thus far, the introductory part of the movement broadly operates as an inter-
change of spaces, and diatonic charge is only diffused through small moves,
often backwards along a discharge path (i.e. C–E, where the leading-note
motion happens in reverse). This soon changes in readiness for a primitive
instantiation of one of the more characteristically hexatonic passages which
discharge runs through; one that will feed into the material of the ‘Adagio’
slow movement (and S2 in my reading of the two-dimensional form). Bar
31 opens with a simple move from D to B♭ minor (a hexatonic pole, as in
Die Gezeichneten) and on to F♯ minor. This latter moves on to B minor and
alternates back and forth as in the previous B minor section. The chord pro-
gression registers a chain of leading-note discharges (a→b♭;f→f♯; a♯→b),
making the passage diatonically mobile, combined with a homophonic
rhythm (minim-crotchet | crotchet-minim) that marks the moment as special.
Interestingly it also recalls an earlier progression from bar 19 (not shown on
Table 9.4) which was much more rhythmically blended and the B♭m–F♯ was
interpolated with a G triad that slowed down the discharge by the G forming
an octatonic relation with B♭m and neutering the leading-note drive. This
prepares us for the full exposition and, just as an overture prepares the opera-
goer for the musical characters that follow, so this introduction prepares us for
all the spaces and speeds that we will be operating in, often for more sustained
passages.
P1⇨Tr –S1 (I: Allegro)
P1 is broadly static, focused on D minor (bar 43), changing up an octatonic

gear to F (bar 47) and back to D minor (bar 53). Here we witness a neat neo-
Riemannian ‘Slide’ transformation to D♭ back-pedalling in the direction that
registers a reverse leading-note motion, d→c♯.7 However, the D♭ discharges
to G♭ (bar 57) and B (bar 59) through a pure segment of the circle of fifths,
the most direct form of diatonic motion, which signals the beginning of the
transitional phase of high mobility. However, between bars 61 and 70, this
diatonic speed slows down and comes to rest on the octatonic equivalent of
a pedal point before the medial caesura announces the end of the P themes,
giving us the full OCT0,2 axis of G♯m–Bm–D–G♯ø7–Faug. But this passes to a
quicker alternative axis of OCT1,2 (with just two chords Eø7 and G7♭9) and then
OCT0,1 (D♯ø7–E♭7), which is responsible for the direct E♭7→A♭ into the new
tonal centre for the S-zone. That OCT0,2→OCT1,2→OCT0,1 move through the
same tonic, subdominant, and dominant functions as a D-G-A progression
means that these temporally static octatonic sections, which ‘in themselves’
arrest tonal motion, through their sequential interchange actually continue
(and accrue) tonal motion. Of course, in this view of octatonic functionality,
D and A♭ share the same collection, to which we should be alert when the
S-zone appears to begin in A♭ –an alternative octatonic ‘tonic’ and ‘tritone
substitute’ of D. We might then wonder whether the S-zone does not begin
later, at the inception of the Adagio, with C♯ (in the subdominant octatonic
region), but the transposition of the A♭ theme at T5 in the recapitulation more
forcefully suggests to me that this is intended to be the S-zone.
♭ arrives, it begins a section that has clear teleology towards a diatonic goal.
This goal arrives at bar 107 in full C major orchestral glory, moving unam-
biguously V–I–ii7–I–IV–V. But the chord I that would follow it contains a ♭6 ̂,
and this ‘spanner in the works’ begins a period of tonal entropy and chro-
matic disintegration that gives us Cm–C♯m–Cm–Bm–B♭–F7–Em (bars 110–119)
as the melody and orchestral texture wind down to almost nothing. Note that
a chromatic root descent serves some degree of tonal discharge in the same
way that a German sixth can discharge to V, sounding the same pitches as
♭VI7–V. And this gesture (particularly the F7–Em) can be conceived of as dis-
charging, though not perhaps forcefully, certainly not in comparison to the
heightened diatonic state that preceded it.
S2–S4 (II: Adagio)
Daniel Harrison discusses the opening of this S2 theme from the perspec-
tive of major and minor ‘modal mixture’ (1994, p. 20), though he does
not focus on the hexatonic means of arriving here. An A triad moves to F
minor (hexatonic pole) and on to C♯ major/minor triad (a neo-Riemannian
LP transformation)8; an f is heard as a suspension, but clearly dissonant
with the e of the chord. The C♯ chord alternates first with F♯ (the B minor
version earlier alternated with F♯) and then replaces F♯ with its hexatonic
relative B♭7 before discharging diatonically to E♭ minor. Thus, Schreker
takes a purely diatonic path out of the woods. But the E♭ minor transforms
to E♭ major (by P transformation) and then to E minor (via a Slide trans-
formation which involves the leading-tone discharge d♯→e) and back to B
minor for S3. S4 is cathartic because it gives us the Klang music texture,
but with a long, pure F♯m7 basis, much clearer than the mist that began
the piece. This prepares the way for further unravelling of the geheimnisvoll
mystery that will soon happen in the central moment of the scherzo. The
majority of the chord progressions in this section are diatonic in the region
of A or F♯ minor, the ambiguity between the two forming a relatively dia-
tonic–octatonic bond. The ‘movement’ closes in C major (a third octatonic
node), like the earlier climactic moment, closing now with a characteristic
minor tinge with the move to F minor and back to C, with F minor then
changing subtly into the pregnant Dø7.
200 Kenneth Smith
Development (III. Scherzo)

Unlike the development section of a self-contained sonata form, this ‘two-
dimensional’ scherzo movement is formally tightly knit (ABCBA) and tonally
moves from F♯ (G♭) to B with some emphasis on G♭’s hexatonic relative B♭.
It is, however, noteworthy for the singular breakthrough of the Klangmusik,
a breakthrough which is temporally more fragmented and now tonally
dispersed very differently. The ostinati that set this nebula in motion now lose
their polytonal origin, first articulating F♯ (bar 296), E (bar 298), Em–Eo (bar
299), Gm (bar 300), C♯ (bar 304), B (bar 305), D/Bm (306), B♭ (307), and
C♯m (308). Broadly speaking, the opening’s polytonal motion of C♯/E moving
to D/B is here dispersed further amongst its octatonic companions, but now
horizontalized. The string of E variants, C♯ and G minor give us the complete
OCT1,2 8-28 collection (pitches c♯, d, e, e♯, g, g♯, b♭,b), before moving to the
D and B minor complex of OCT0,2 and a small return to OCT1,2 afterwards.
This novel section recontextualizes the opening polytonal Klangmusik and
gives it a different type of stasis by linearizing and completing the octatonic
profile of the opening. This arrests the diatonic speed at the centre point of
the Kammersymphonie with octatonic speeds that, as has often happened,
stalls the forwards propulsion.
Recapitulation and coda (IV. Allegro - V. Adagio)

As noted in Table 9.3, at bar 438, the movement begins the rigorous T5 trans-
position to move the S-zone into tonic region, while variety is carried by
the many changes to orchestral colour. The S4 theme from the exposition is
replaced by a lengthy coda. The hexatonic S2 theme is perhaps the most intri-
guing as it is now presented in the tonic while relating to its earlier instanti-
ation as a hexatonic oddity in bar 31 (in the introduction). As Berger notes,
the recapitulation does not relate tonally back to the opening of the
Adagio, but rather to the theme’s first F♯ major/minor appearance in the
introduction, thereby creating a harmonic arc that spans the entire sym-
phony. In this sense, the Adagio cannot be understood as a self-contained
movement, but rather as part of a larger narrative that was initiated by
the introduction.
(2012, p. 65)
For me, and within the context of this chapter’s argument, the narrative of
the Adagio movement embeds part of the over-arching form’s S-zone, and its
hexatonic motion is elevated to a much higher level of tonal drama.
The final cadence of the work (Example 9.8) is one of the most telling
moments of the symphony’s tonal operations. Berger hears the cadence as
having a parenthetical aspect, whereby a iiø7–I (a ‘strange type of plagal
cadence’ [2012 60]) is interrupted by I–VI–iv in E♭ minor). While I can
hear it this way, I also hear an alternative, where, on a strict chord to chord
basis in terms of diatonic speed, we find a simple subdominant–dominant–
tonic progression in D major (that would normally move G-A-D) dispersed
through hexatonic and octatonic filters to discharge the tension less forcefully
diatonically. D has already been established through lengthy ostinati passages,
and so these chords serve as clear deviations from D, to which we must return.
The G minor iv, contained within the Eø7 as iiø7, first resolves to E♭ minor via
an LP-transformation (with leading-note rising d-e♭). The E♭ resolves to B by
the reverse process of a PL transformation. Because this hexatonic progression
moves downwards by major thirds, it discharges leading-notes at hexatonic
speed. But the resolution to B is then shifted to A♭ and finally D, octatonically
related chords that do not discharge any leading-tone tension and create a
kind of numbness, as if the music is searching for the ‘best fit’ resolution and
finds it on its third attempt. The very final move from A♭ to D is the tritone
which is furthest removed in the octatonic cycle of thirds (an RPRP trans-
formation) and is reminiscent of the first movement’s key relationships.9 This
final cadential conundrum exhibits in a nutshell the interchange of speeds
in the entire symphony, and perhaps in Schreker’s early operas (before his
style became starker in Der Singende Teufel [1924], Christophorus [1925], and
Der Schmied von Ghent [1929]): hexatonic relations refract diatonic tension,
octatonics store it.
Example 9.8 Kammersymphonie, closure.
Postscript
From the opening ‘Klangmusik’ of many of Schreker’s works, a sense of tem-
porality slowly emerges from the static nebulae of mysterious chord relations,
as if space is becoming time. Speed is being born. Although the idea of
different speeds is metaphorical (i.e., a hexatonic discharge from E to C lit-
erally takes the same time as a diatonic one from G to C), it is a workable
way of conceptualizing the strength of discharging progressions. The meta-
phor is really a by-product of the more deep-rooted idea of refraction. When
diatonic motion meets different types of spaces that we might categorize as
part of the metatonal world, these can act as filters that alter the course and
‘speed’ of diatonic propulsion. We might then risk speed as an apt meta-
phor. Temporality and musical form are relatively well theorized,10 but our
experience of time in harmonic terms is less well formulated. In her study
202 Kenneth Smith
of temporality in Schubert’s G major Quartet Anne Hyland describes the
hexatonic passage in the S-zone as ‘a weightless, nonteleological hexatonic
cycle’ (2016, p. 95). Certainly the passage concerned that runs F♯–D–B♭–F♯–D
has less forwards propulsion than a I–IV–V–I progression, but the discharge
of leading notes in this direction (i.e., a sequence of descending major thirds)
means that, to my hearing, the passage has more teleology and directedness
than either a hexatonic progression in the opposite direction (i.e., ascending
major thirds), or an octatonic exchange of minor third related chords would
have. The metaphor of tonal speed also helps us to conceptualize the way that
these spaces emerge from a sense of deep-seated timelessness which is created
in such works as these, spaces in which diatonicism simultaneously exists and
precedes, but nonetheless still passes through.
Notes
1 Dmitri Tymoczko remarks that triads (which are more associated with hexatonic
relations) are from Mars, whereas seventh chords (which he associate more with
octatonic cycles) are from Venus (2011, pp. 97 and 220).
2 ‘das An- sich einer leittönigen Bewegung eine Leitton- Spannung sei –eine
Energie, die aus dem dunklen pszchischen Urgrund unserer Existenz heraus als
spannungsvolle melodische Wendung in die Erscheinungswelt tritt.’
3 See for example, approaches taken in Tymoczko (2011) and Cohn (2012), and a
consideration of the topic in Smith (2014).
4 Attempts to analyse Schreker’s musical language have been unsystematic in the
main and generally relate to a single opera (see Neuwirth, 1972). For a discussion
of ‘bricolage’, see Annika Forkert’s chapter in this volume.
5 Moortele notes: ‘Although by no means modeled on Schoenberg’s Chamber
Symphony, Schreker’s eponymous composition does adopt the former’s two-
dimensionality as a generic convention. It consists of an introduction and a sonata
form, into which the interior movements of a sonata cycle are interpolated. More
specifically, the (relatively brief) development of the overarching sonata form is
preceded by a slow movement and followed by a scherzo. Surprisingly, the slow
movement reappears in its entirety between the recapitulation and the coda of the
overarching sonata form’ (2009, p. 198). Departing from Vande Moortele, I do not
regard the interior movements of the cycle as being ‘interpolated’, rather see them
as an ‘identification’.
6 My reading of the form departs slightly from that of Berger, because I locate the
Adagio as part of the S (secondary key area) space of the over-arching sonata form.
This is how I explain the fact that the entire Adagio movement is recapitulated at
T5. Note also that the recurring Klangmusik is abbreviated as ‘K’ in the diagram.
Note that I use the abbreviations found in Hepokoski and Darcy (2006): P (primary
themes, delineated by superscript numbers), S (secondary themes), Tr (transition).
7 Discussed by Lewin (2007), the ‘Slide’ transformation maintains only the third of
a triad while the outer fifths slide chromatically upwards (from a minor chord) or
downwards (from a major chord).
8 In neo-Riemannian parlance, the P (parallel) transformation takes a chord to its
modal variant (i.e., C minor to C major), the R (relative) takes a chord to its major
or minor relative, where L (Leittonwechsel) raises the fifth of a minor chord by a
semitone (E minor to C) or lowers the root of a major triad (C to E minor). The L
transformation is the only one which involves leading-note motion, which is why
it is the most mobile. R pertains to octatonic relations; L pertains to hexatonic
relations; P is common to both. These transformations can be concatenated
(hence, LP, RP, RL and so on).
9 On the topic of the ‘tritone link’, see Jeff Yunek’s chapter in the present volume.
10 See for example Benedict Taylor 2011, 2016.
References
Bekker, P. (1922). Klang und Eros. Stuttgart and Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstallt.
Berger, M. (2012). Klang and structure: Franz Schreker’s Chamber Symphony (1916),
and an original composition, Upon a Wheel of Cloud (2008). PhD Thesis, Waltham,
Massachusetts: Brandeis University.
Callender, C. (1999). Voice-leading parsimony in the music of Alexander Scriabin.
Journal of Music Theory, 42: 2, 219–233.
Cohn, R. (2006). Hexatonic poles and the uncanny in Parsifal. Opera Quarterly, 22:
2, 230–248.
Cohn, R. (2011). Tonal pitch space and the (neo-)Riemannian Tonnetz. In E. Gollin
and A. Rehding (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Riemannian Theories (322–
350). New York: Oxford University Press.
Cohn, R. (2012). Audacious Euphony: Chromaticism and the Consonant Triad’s Second
Nature. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fleet, Paul. (2009). Ferruccio Busoni: A Phenomenological Approach to the Music and
Aesthetics. Köln: Lambert Academic Publishing.
Franklin, P. (1982–1983). Style, structure and taste: three aspects of the problem of
Franz Schreker. Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 109: 134–146.
Franklin, P. (2006). ‘Wer weiss, Vater, ob das nicht Engel sind?’ Reflections on the
pre-fascist discourse of degeneracy in Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten. In N. Bacht
(ed.) Music, Theatre and Politics in Germany: 1848 to the Third Reich (173–184).
Aldershot: Ashgate.
Hailey, C. (n.d.). Franz Schreker: discovering a distant sound. Universal Edition
Musik Salon (http://musiksalon.universaledition.com/en/article/franz-schreker-
discovering-a-distant-sound) [accessed 28/01/2021].
Harrison, D. (1994). Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music: A Renewed Dualist
Theory and an Account of Its Precedents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hepokoski, J. & Darcy, W. (2006). Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types and
Deformations in the Late Eighteenth Century Sonata. Oxford & New York: Oxford
University Press.
Hyland, A. M. (2016). In search of liberated time, or Schubert’s Quartet in G
Major, D. 887: once more between sonata and variation. Music Theory Spectrum,
38: 85–108.
Knockaert, Y. (2017). Wolfgang Rihm: A Chiffre. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Krebs, W. (1994). Terzenfolgen Und Doppelterzklänge in Den ‘Gezeichneten’ Von Franz
Schreker –Versuch Einer Energetisch-Psychoanalytischen Betrachtungsweise. Die
Musikforschung, 47: 4, 365–383.
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204 Kenneth Smith
Lewin, D. (2007). Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Moortele, S. (2009). Two-Dimensional Sonata Form. Leuven, Leuven University Press.
Neuwirth, G. (1972). Die Harmonik in der Oper ‘Der Ferne Klang’ von Franz Schreker.
Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag.
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Wein: Universal Edition.
Rihm, Wolfgang (1997/1998). Neo-Tonalität? [1984/1997]. In: Ulrich Mosch (Hg.)
ausgesprochen. Schriften und Gespräche Band 1, pp. 299–233.
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Bildern) und einem Epliog. Vienna: Universal Edition.
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and Tymoczko. Music Analysis, 33: 2, 214–256.
Taylor, B. (2011). Mendelssohn, Time and Memory: The Romantic Conception of Cyclic
Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Extended Common Practice. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Movement Instrumental Works by Liszt, Strauss, Schoenberg, and Zemlinsky.
Leuven: Leuven University Press.
10
Transformed desire
Scriabin’s transition away from
functional tonality
Jeffrey Scott Yunek
Most scholars agree that Scriabin’s compositions progressed from functional

tonality to music based on pitch-class (pc) invariance. The perspectives on
pc invariance can be grouped into (1) those based on parsimonious motion
in pc space (Callendar, 1998; Bazayev, 2018; Reise, 1983) and (2) those
based on maximally invariant transposition (Baker, 1986; Dernova, 1968;
Ewell, 2005; Taruskin, 1997; Cheong, 1993; Yunek, 2017). While the former
avoids discussing Scriabin’s transition away from tonality, the latter typically
describes this transition as a progressive prolongation of extended dominant
chords via maximally invariant transposition until their continued presence
neuters their functional desire to resolve to tonic.1 Accordingly, these previ-
ously dominant-function chords are then treated as inert collections that pro-
vide the harmonic structure of the work. This diminishing dominant-function
theory infers that Scriabin’s music becomes more static as he progresses into his
late period, which Taruskin reinforces by showing how the loss of dominant
function aligns with Scriabin’s philosophical aspirations to extinguish desire
(1997, 2005). Naturally, this perspective suggests that performers should play
in a progressively more ethereal and detached manner as they dive deeper into
Scriabin’s late music to reflect their increasingly attenuated functional desire
and an ultimate philosophical goal of completely extinguishing desire.
But this image of a composer who is denying musical and philosophical
desires comes into stark contrast with the actions and statements of this
famously eccentric composer. Far from being a demure ascetic, Scriabin
divorced his wife for a paramour in heart of the Russian Orthodox Church
and claimed to be bringing about the end of life as we know it through his
music. More specifically, he explicitly references employing desire in his philo-
sophical statements and encourages performers to play with passion via the
performance indications in his late works (Bowers, 1973, p. 54; Ivanov, 1985,
p. 223; Schloezer, 1987, p. 122; Sabaneev, [1916] 2000, passim). This raises the
question: how can the existing literature on pc invariance and denied desire be
related to this willful and colourful composer?
My research into Scriabin’s philosophical influences answers this question
by revealing a two-part notion of desire, which explains the preceding conflict
between negated and fulfilled desire. The first is individual desire, a self-serving
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713-10
206 Jeffrey Scott Yunek
impulse that is best extinguished. Following Taruskin, this is represented
musically by denying the individual resolutions of tendency tones by keeping
them in stasis through pc invariance (1997, 2005). The second is universal
desire, in which one aspires to assimilate oneself into the greater whole. This
unifying type of desire is found in many of Scriabin’s most significant philo-
sophical influences, including Blavatsky, Ivanov, Schopenhauer, Solovyov,
and Nietzsche. I correlate this desire with maximally invariant transposition,
which preserves pitch classes between collections through uniform (i.e., par-
allel) motion (Yunek, 2017). This idea can then be substantiated by relating
maximally invariant transposition to the tonal concept of closely related keys,
which builds on Scriabin’s personal explanation of his late music and mirrors
Schopenhauer’s explicit association of closely related keys with the desires
of universal will (1909). The revelation of a two-part conception of desire
suggests a far more nuanced view of Scriabin’s late music. Instead of denying
desire in general, this music is focused on signifying universal desire through
pc preservation, which results in the negation of individual desire through a
lack of parsimonious tendency-tone resolution.
This brings a new understanding to Scriabin’s transition to his post-tonal
music –that is, his metatonal period. Rather than a gradual neutering of
dominant-function chords via pc invariance, these chords are increasingly
related by a key-based operation –closely related transposition –to engender
universal desire. This perspective brings a whole new dynamic to the analysis
and aesthetic interpretation of Scriabin’s transitional works. Analytically,
Scriabin is not abandoning tonality outright. Rather, he is transitioning from
chord-based functional harmony to key-based harmony. Accordingly, one
can track Scriabin’s departure from tonality based on whether his collections
are resolved parsimoniously like dominants or by maximally invariant trans-
position like keys. Speaking in metatonal terms, Scriabin’s works become pro-
gressively less with tonality and more after tonality. Aesthetically, instead of
viewing these works as having progressively impotent dominants, these pieces
are viewed as battlegrounds for the competing impulses of individual and
universal desire.
This exploration of desire in Scriabin’s music begins with a review of the
musical and philosophical theories on his late works; examines his philo-
sophical influences to reveal a complementary understanding of desire; maps
individual and universal desire onto tendency-tone resolution and maximally
invariant transposition, respectfully; and ends by tracing the increased use
of maximally invariant transposition to delay –and ultimately deny –tonal
closure through four of Scriabin’s piano miniatures.
Scriabin’s negation (and creation) of desire

One of the first Western scholars to explore Scriabin’s progression from tonality to
atonality is James Baker (1986). His theory was based on the most prevalent
Scriabin and transformed desire 207
theoretical tools of the time: Schenkerian analysis (for tonal music) and pcset
theory (for atonal music). His description of Scriabin’s progression to aton-
ality can be summarized in three steps:
1) Scriabin wrote tonal music, which conforms to relatively standard

Schenkerian graphs for late Romantic works.
2) Scriabin then wrote works that were globally tonal, but featured atonal
procedures on the foreground level.
3) Scriabin wrote works that were purely based on the atonal procedures
seen in his transitory works.
While Baker explores a wide variety of atonal procedures, he puts the most
emphasis on Scriabin’s use of pc invariance.2 Most of Baker’s examples
involve maximally invariant transposition, where the highest number of pos-
sible pitch classes are held invariant under transposition. In Scriabin transi-
tional works, Baker notes the prevalence of T2 and T4 (1986, pp. 92–93), which
keeps the majority of Scriabin’s ic2-and ic4-saturated sonorities (e.g., the
whole-tone and mystic chords) maximally invariant under transposition.3 In
addition, he notes a shift to the use of T3 in Scriabin’s later works as he began
to use ic3-and ic6-saturated collections (e.g., the octatonic and its subsets).
Taruskin’s review of Baker (1988) criticized him for overlooking extant
Russian/Soviet scholarship on Scriabin. Most importantly, Dernova’s appli-
cation of Yavorsky’s theory of lad (Taruskin, 1968).4 In Yavorsky’s system,
chords are assigned harmonic function according to their intervallic content
(McQuere, 1983, pp. 109–164). The most relevant aspect is the tritone’s asso-
ciation with dominant function, which is based on the traditional resolution
of the tritone by semitone to the tonic and mediant of major tonic chords (see
Example 10.1).5
Example 10.1 Dernova’s single symmetrical system (imploding and exploding tritones)

Source: Author
Progressing through Scriabin’s output, Dernova assigned an increasing

number of his chords dominant function due to the proliferation of tritone-
laden sonorities in his middle and late works (see Example 10.2).
Example 10.2 Expanded dominant constructions in Scriabin’s middle and late music.

Source: Author.
According to Dernova, the use of tritone-infused chords became so pro-

fuse that it resulted in endless strings of enharmonically related dominants
that never resolved to tonic (1968). Instead, tritones were held in stasis by
transpositions that preserved the original tritone (i.e., pc invariance). As a
result, Dernova’s application of this theory produced a similar account of
Scriabin’s transition to atonality as Baker:
1) Scriabin wrote tonal works where dominant-function chords consistently

resolved to tonic chords.
2) Scriabin then wrote tonal works where the resolution of dominant to
tonic is delayed through maximally invariant progressions of dominant-
function chords.
3) Scriabin wrote works without tonics, in which dominant-function chords
remain perpetually unresolved through chains of maximally invariant
transpositions.
While Dernova never explicitly refers to the concept of pc invariance, she does
mention enharmonic equivalency. Accordingly, a wide variety of authors have
associated the concept of pc invariance to her tritone link, enharmonic, and
linked progressions (Gawboy, 2010, 2017; Taruskin, 1997, 2005).
One thing that sets Dernova’s theory apart from Baker is the interpret-
ative implications of her inherently tonal theory. In Baker’s system, the max-
imally invariant transpositions operating on the foreground of Scriabin’s
transitional works eventually supplant tonality. This interpretation provides
no clear guidance on how to interpret Scriabin’s later works since there is
no standard expressive connotation attributed to pc invariance. In con-
trast, Dernova’s system suggests an evolution of the tonal system in which
dominant-function chords pervade the entire work. Her reading suggests that
Scriabin’s late works are highly passionate because they are built on an endless
series of yearning dominant chords that are never satisfied.
However, this concept of prolonged dominant function has long been
questioned by Scriabin scholars. The American translator of Dernova’s
Scriabin’s Harmony (1968), Roy Guenther (1979), notes that one can easily
come to the opposite functional reading as Dernova –that Scriabin’s late
works are a series of stable, tonic chords. He writes:
Furthermore, if such a chord [Scriabin’s tritone-infused collections] seems

to be a point of focus, both as to structure and as to root location (i.e., the
same transposition of a chord structure appearing at both the beginning
and end of a work), the term tonic would seem more appropriate than
dominant (Original emphasis).
(McQuere, 1983, p. 169)
This sentiment is examined in Ewell’s reading of Scriabin’s progression to

atonality, where these alleged dominant chords take on a consonant quality
(2006–2007). His reading is based on Scriabin himself, who contradicts the
dominant-function reading of his friend, Leonid Sabaneev. Referring to his
mystic chord, Scriabin says the following:
This is not a dominant harmony, but rather a fundamental one, and a

consonance. Isn’t it true that it sounds smooth and completely consonant?
(Sabaneev, [1916] 2000, p. 46)
Taruskin builds on these concepts by associating the negation of the tritone’s

dominant function with the philosophical concept of the ‘petty I’ from one
of Scriabin’s main philosophical influences, Viacheslav Ivanov. As Taruskin
has shown, Ivanov was a close personal friend to Scriabin who shared very
similar philosophical ideas (1997, pp. 308–320). In fact, Ivanov explicitly
laid out a three-part understanding of Scriabin’s philosophical belief system
shortly after his death, given here (Ivanov, 1985, p. 115; Taruskin, 1997,
p. 320):
The content of Scriabin’s work may be defined, it seems to me, as a three-

fold idea, a threefold emotion, a threefold vision:
1) The vision of surmounting the boundaries of the personal, individual,

petty ‘I’ –a musical transcendentalism.
2) The vision of universal, communal mingling of all humanity in a single
‘I’ –or the macrocosmic universalism of musical consciousness.
3) The vision of a violent breakthrough into the expanse of a free new plane
of being –universal transformation.
In Taruskin’s reading, the lack of tritone resolution –reflecting the individual

wills of the leading tone and chordal seventh –maps onto Ivanov’s first con-
cept, the denying of the petty ‘I.’ Accordingly, the extinguishing of desire is
a common philosophical idea throughout Scriabin’s philosophical influences.
One of Scriabin’s first philosophical influences, Vladimir Solovyov, believed
that unity with God could only be achieved through the denial of personal
desire –a sentiment that is still held in most Christian faiths of today –and
one of Scriabin’s last philosophical influences, Helena Blavatsky, believed that
reunification with the all-unity of Atma required the dissolution of the indi-
vidual body and spirit.
On one hand, it is natural to associate the philosophical notion of negated
desire with Scriabin’s music because he widely proclaimed that his music
represented his philosophical ideas:
I cannot understand how to write just music now. How boring! Music,
surely, takes on idea and significance when it is linked to a single plan
within a whole view of the world […] The purpose of music is revelation.
What a powerful way of knowing it is!
(Bowers, 1973, 108; Sabaneev, [1916] 2000, p. 139)
Examples of Scriabin’s melding of philosophy and music are well documented

in his unification of colour and key in his Prometheus (Gawboy, 2010, 2012).
The extent of this urge to unite music and philosophy is exemplified in his
attempt to bring about a cataclysmic unification of man and spirit through
his Mysterium. This famously led to his plans to build Mysterium’s venue, a
spherical temple in India, by soliciting donations from Theosophy groups in
Great Britain (Sabaneev, [1916] 2000, pp. 309 and 343).6
On the other hand, Scriabin and his associates clearly state that he aspired
to actually create desire in his late works. In his 1903–1905 notebooks, Scriabin
writes, ‘The universe represents the unconscious process of my creative
work…I have a will to live. Through the force of my desire I create myself and
my feeling for life…I know that I wish to create. I create already. The desire to
create is creation’. (Bowers, 1973, p. 54; Schloezer, 1987, 122) This creation of
desire in his music is literally imprinted on his scores through his performance
indications, which include: de plus en plus passionne, avec une joie débordante,
and avec une douceur de plus en plus caressante [with more and more passion,
with joy overflowing, and with increasingly gentle caressing].7 Even Ivanov –
the main source substantiating Scriabin’s negation of desire –states:
Scriabin desired or rather had to be a hero as an artist and an artist as a

hero. He could not reject either of these two natures, nor divide them in
his actions: his will was his knowledge, and his knowledge was his will,
but he could know and will only while creating beauty.
(1985, p. 223)
This desire was even reflected in Scriabin’s performance practice. Sabaneev

noted that Scriabin took on a different persona when he played the piano,
saying:
Now his face changed. I have always noticed this, that as he sat at the
piano he always transformed somehow…It seemed very new and wild.
I saw changing emotions on his face. Some of the most spastic sections
[of Prometheus] were highlighted by his nervous playing. Scriabin even
jumped on his chair during these sections trying to emulate the power of
the orchestra.
([1916] 2000, p. 50)
Needless to say, this is hardly the picture of a man who is trying to eliminate
desire from his music.
Two forms of desire and their harmonic analogues

Thus, there is a clear issue regarding the interpretation of desire in Scriabin’s
later music. Many sources provide clear evidence that Scriabin attempted
to negate desire in his music, while other evidence –often from the same
sources –state that Scriabin attempted to create desire in his music. This
discrepancy is resolved by examining a wider range of Scriabin’s philo-
sophical influences, which reveals a common belief in two complementary
forms of desire. The first is individual desire, a self-serving impulse that
is obliged to be negated. The second is unifying desire, a positive impulse
that reflects communal joy. This two-part understanding of desire suggests
a more nuanced understanding of Scriabin’s representation of desire in his
late music, in which both the negation of individual desire and creation of
unifying desire are simultaneously present. I correlate this dual nature of
desire with Scriabin’s shift from functional harmony –and its individual
tendency-tone resolutions –to key-based harmony (and its closely related
transpositions). This suggests a more dramatic interpretation of pitch-class
invariance. Instead of expressing a negation of desire through harmonic
stasis, I suggest that overlapping pitch-class content signifies joyful preserva-
tion between different collections.
This two-part understanding of desire can be seen by comparing Ivanov’s
two distinct manifestations of ‘I’ (see quote on currently p. 209). As Taruskin
notes, the first type of ‘I’ in Scriabin’s vision is a personal, individual, and
petty ‘I,’ whose desires should be surmounted or extinguished (1997, p. 320).
This petty ‘I’ is immediately followed by a second form of ‘I’ –the single ‘I’ –
that is never fully explored by Taruskin. Standing in stark opposition to the
individualistic nature of the petty ‘I’, the single ‘I’ involves a universal, com-
munal mingling of all humanity.
This contrast of individual (petty) and universal (single) ‘I’ is best under-
stood as a complementary relationship, in which the attainment of one
type of ‘I’ is mutually exclusive to the attainment of another.8 That is, one
cannot be individualistic and self-serving without negatively impacting their
relationship to others. It is only through abnegation that one can be fully
immersed within a greater community. This complementary relationship is
reflected in the majority of Scriabin’s other philosophical influences, such
as Schopenhauer’s contrast of representation and Will, Nietzsche’s Apollo
and Dionysus, and Ivanov’s masculine and feminine (Garcia, 1993; Gawboy,
2010; Peacock, 1976; Taruskin, 1997; Wetzel, 2009; Yunek, 2017). In addition,
it reflects the first tenet of Theosophy in Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, which
states: ‘there is an omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable reality of
which spirit and matter are complementary aspects’ (Blavatsky, 1888, pp. 14–
18; Sellon, 1987).
Two of Scriabin’s philosophical influences specifically explicate how their
philosophical ideas are represented in music: Blavatsky and Schopenhauer.
Of these two, Blavatsky is often considered the stronger influence, which can
be substantiated by the vast number of theosophical books and periodicals
Scriabin possessed. According to the listing of Scriabin’s books at the A.
N. Scriabin House Museum in Moscow, Scriabin had 52 books and journals
that focused on Theosophy, compared to the eight books that focused on
the philosophies of Kant, Nietzsche, Solovyov, Schopenhauer, and Ivanov.9
The most specific reference to music is Blavatsky’s association of the major
scale to colours (Example 10.3). Her use of a major scale to align with her
overarching philosophy is two-fold: first, the unification of individual notes
within a greater complex represents the subsuming of the personal into the
collective. Second, the number of notes in a major scale is seven, which is a
sacred number in Theosophy.10 The correlation of colour and music is meant
to underscore their mutual cyclicity, which represents Blavatsky’s belief that
all existence is an eternal process of reincarnation or manvantara.11 Blavatsky
viewed scales as representing this cyclical process because they progress to
where they begin: tonic. The colour wheel emulates this process through its
seamless transition from one colour to the next (e.g., red transitions to orange
by slowing adding yellow, while orange transitions to yellow by slowing taking
away red) until you return to the original colour (Example 10.3).
Example 10.3 Colour/key correlation comparison between Blavatsky and Scriabin (cf.

Sabaneev 1929).
Source: Author.
Although Scriabin was clearly influenced by Blavatsky, his depiction of colour-
music correlations is distinctly different. The most obvious difference is that
Scriabin’s system features twelve different notes (Sabaneev, 1929; Galeev,
2001), which greatly exceeds Blavatsky’s sacred number of seven (2004, p. 534).
More importantly, Scriabin’s system involves closely related major keys that
are related by perfect fifths, not individual scale degrees related by seconds. As
Galeev and Vanchinka note (2001), the similarity of Scriabin’s colour-music
correlations to the circle of fifths is no accident:
First of all, let’s note that in Scriabin’s list, Sabaneyev designates tonalities
with capital letters: C, G, D, etc. (without the extension ‘dur,’ i.e. major).
This is widely accepted among musicians, especially in twentieth-century
music […] It is unfortunate that some researchers, especially those who
are not musicians, take these signs –C, G, D, etc. –for designations of
notes and ascribe to Scriabin a nonsensical version of ‘colour hearing.’12
A deeper understanding of Scriabin’s colour- key associations can be

gleaned through Schopenhauer, who explicitly discusses keys and modula-
tion throughout his writing.13 In Schopenhauer’s philosophy, music is seen
as a conduit to universal Will since it does not explicitly reflect the physical
world.14 In particular, Schopenhauer states that modulation reflects the death
of individual will and the continuation of universal Will:
The transition from one key to an entirely different one […] is like death,
for the individual ends in it; but the will which appeared in this individual
lives after him as before him, appearing in other individuals, whose con-
sciousness, however, has no connection with his.
(Schopenhauer, 1909, p. 337)
This raises the question: what does Schopenhauer mean by the continuation
of individuals? This question is addressed later on in The World as Will and
Representation, in which the continuation of individuals is related to continu-
ation of pitch classes as different scale-degree members:
When the key-note [i.e., tonic] is changed, and with it the value of all the
intervals, in consequence of which the same note figures as the second,
the third, the fourth, and so on, the notes of the scale are analogous to
actors, who must assume now one role, now another, while their person
remains the same.
(Schopenhauer, 1909, p. 238)
To give a specific example, when one modulates from C major to G major, the
note B changes roles from leading tone to mediant. In this way, the individual
note remains, but it has changed roles from a tendency tone to the stable third
of a tonic triad.
The importance of pitch- class invariance in Scriabin’s philosophical
influences is also noted in the research of Anna Gawboy (2010; 2012). She
refers to the complementary concept of polarity, in which diametric opposites
constitute a greater unity.15 One way this unity is expressed is through mutual
inclusiveness, or pitch-class invariance. Citing A. B. Marx’s definition of
polarity between tonic and dominant chords, Gawboy points to the common
scale degree 5 ̂ between tonic and dominant triads as a manifestation of
mutual inclusiveness between functionally inverse chords (Burnham, 1997,
pp. 308–309; Gawboy, 2010, p. 119). Continuing this line of thought, she notes
the duality expressed by Scriabin’s use of tritone transpositions. Specifically,
this transposition is the largest possible motion in pitch-class space, yet it
represents minimum pitch-class change between Scriabin’s tritone-infused
sonorities (Gawboy, 2010, pp. 128–131).
However, Gawboy never relates this concept to key relationships, as
expressed in Scriabin’s colour- key correlations or the philosophies of
Schopenhauer. Instead, her theory of mutual inclusiveness and polarity are
tied to the chord-based theories of Dernova (1968). Instead, I argue that it is
best to view mutual inclusiveness between keys –rather than chords –because
Scriabin is documented as referring to tonal keys (тональносты) and not
chords (аккорди) when he technically describes his compositional method in
Prometheus:
‘For every note there is a corresponding colour’, [Scriabin] announced,

as if this was a widely-known axiom. ‘Actually, not for every note, but
for every key [tonalnost]. For example, I mix the keys of A and F♯ at the
beginning of Prometheus’.
(Sabaneev, [1916] 2000, p. 53)
In my previous work (2017), I established how the collections in Scriabin’s

post-tonal music emulate key relationships in terms of their parallel voice
leading, uniform orthography change, and use of maximally invariance
(Example 10.4).
Example 10.4 Maximally invariant transpositions in Scriabin’s Op. 63, No. 2, mm.

14–15 (cf. Example 10.5).
Source: Author.
These characteristics can be seen in Scriabin’s Op. 63, No. 2. In bars 14–15,
there are three different manifestations of an octatonic subset 7-31. Although
this passage could be seen as one Oct2,3 collection, the sections are clearly three
repetitions of the same musical gesture by T3 that features distinct changes in
pitch-class orthography (especially notable in the shift from flats to sharps
between segments 2 and 3). As with key modulations, these transpositions
maintain a uniform orthography: a minor third and augmented second,
respectfully. In addition, these modulations are closely related/maximally
invariant (see Example 10.5). That is, just as diatonic collections are considered
closely related when they keep the highest possible number of common tones
(i.e., 6) invariant under transposition at T5 or T7, members of 7-31 can be
considered closely related when they maintain the highest possible number
of common tones (i.e., 6) when transposed at T3, T6, or T9. Accordingly, the
closely related key relationships of any collection can be ascertained by its
interval-class vector, and Scriabin’s music consistently implements the dis-
tinct closely related transpositions for every distinct collection featured in
Scriabin’s late music.16
Diatonic collection’s ic vector ic1 ic2 ic3 ic4 ic5 ic6
2 5 4 3 6 1
Common tones Under transposition T1/11 T2/10 T3/9 T4/8 T5/7 T6
2 5 4 3 6 2(1x2)
Octatonic subset’s (7-31) ic vector ic1 ic2 ic3 ic4 ic5 ic6
3 3 6 3 3 3
Common tones Under transposition T1/11 T2/10 T3/9 T4/8 T5/7 T6
3 3 6 3 3 6(3x1)
Example 10.5 Correlation of interval-class vectors to invariance under transposition.

Source: Author.
This key- based approach challenges prior understandings of desire in

Scriabin’s late music. As shown earlier, some interpret Dernova’s theory on
Scriabin’s late music as a series of dominant-function chords, whose inability
to function (due to pc invariance) makes them tonic or non-functional chords
that convey negated desire (Ewell, 2005; Ewell, 2006–2007; Taruskin, 1997).
Conversely, Kenneth Smith recently argued that Scriabin’s multi- tritone
collections suggest multiple resolutions and, therefore, an increased sense of
desire, which aligns with Dernova’s original reading (Smith, 2016).17 However,
this theory raises the problematic issue of perceiving simultaneous keys (Baker,
1993; Huron, 1989; Kaminsky, 2004; Krumhansl, 1986; Thompson 1992) and
ignores pc invariance, which has been shown to be a consistent element in
Scriabin’s late music.18 As stated earlier, my approach suggests both the denial
and realization of desire in Scriabin’s late music by separating desire into two
distinct forms: (1) individual desire, in which the desire of individual tendency
tones is denied through pc invariance, and (2) universal desire, in which the
desire of a key/collection to preserve its members (i.e., be closely related) is
achieved through maximally invariant transposition.
This perspective impacts the perceived nature of Scriabin’s progression
away from tonality and the extent of his progression into atonality. Instead of
viewing his decent into atonality through his increased use of non-functional
dominant chords, I view this progression as a movement away from chord-
centred harmony to key-centred harmony. This movement away from chords
is suggested in the following conversation with Sabaneev:
This is both melody and harmony at the same time … After all, this is
how it should be, harmony and melody are two sides of one principle
[прынцыпа], one essence. First, in classical music, everything became
separated from each other. This process of differentiation –this fall of
the spirit into matter –resulted in melody and accompaniment, as in
Beethoven. And now we begin their synthesis: harmony becomes melody
and melody becomes harmony … And I don’t distinguish between melody
and harmony. They are one and the same.
(Sabaneev, [1916] 2000, p. 54)
I interpret this synthesis of melody and harmony as the avoidance of

segmenting harmonic collections (i.e., keys) through chords (via accompani-
ment). That is, Scriabin removed functional tonality from his late works by
removing functional chords –and their associated tendency tones –altogether.
Accordingly, Sabaneev’s biography rarely documents Scriabin describing his
music in terms of chords (аккорди), in stark contrast to the numerous times
he refers to keys (тональносты) (see Yunek, 2017, pp. 189–190). In particular,
Scriabin explicitly corrects Sabaneev when he refers to functional chords in
Prometheus:
‘It is not a dominant ninth harmony, this is the fundamental harmony, a

consonance’.[…] ‘That’s what it is in the key of A. In C Major it would be
this!! And Scriabin played C-D-E-F♯-A-B♭.’
(Sabaneev, 1929, p. 54)19
Conversely, this passage underscores that tonality never goes away completely
because the tonal concept of keys is personally used by Scriabin to describe his
late works. Put in metatonal terms, Scriabin’s music maintains tonal elements
through its reference to keys, but is beyond tonality through its elimination
of functional chords. Put in a philosophic light, Scriabin completely removed
the tonal element that signified individual desire from his music: functional
chords and their individual tendency-tone resolutions. What remains is closely
related keys, which signify the continuation of universal desire
Transitioning from chord-based desire to key-based desire

This raises the question: how did Scriabin transition from his earlier chord-
based works to his key-based works? In alignment with previous scholars,
the resolution of the dominant chord is increasingly delayed or denied via pc
invariance until it become the overriding transformation, which can be shown
by setting tonal and atonal analyses side by side. However, unlike previous
scholars, I interpret this transition from functional tonality –and the step-
wise resolutions it involves –to maximally invariant transposition through the
bifocal lens of individual and unifying desire. Accordingly, this transition can
be seen as the gradual yielding of individual desire (i.e., functional, parsimo-
nious resolution) to unifying desire (i.e., pc invariance).
This transition will be shown over four works which were chosen for their
following similarities: (1) they all have harmonically ambiguous beginnings
(e.g., auxiliary cadences) and (2) they all feature two, short phrases that
are related by maximally invariant transposition. The pieces are ordered to
show a steady increase in maximally invariant transposition over dominant
resolution:
Op. 2, No. 2 is completely tonal, with maximally invariant transposition
only relating the tonicized keys; Op. 49. No. 3 delays dominant resolution via
maximally invariant transposition until the end of each phrase; Op. 45, No. 2
delays dominant resolution until the very end of the piece and; Op. 58 denies
dominant resolution completely.
Being one of Scriabin’s earliest works, Op. 2, No. 2 naturally features func-
tional tonality throughout. The work begins ambiguously with a single E-
D♯ pianto motion, which can retrospectively be interpreted as an anticipation
gesture from a IV chord to the ensuing viiø7/V (cf. bar 13). What follows is
an extended cadential six-four resolution that cadences in the home key, B
major (see Example 10.6). This phrase is followed by a transposition of the
opening phrase in the dominant, F♯ major, that quickly reverts back to tonic
in bar 10 through the addition of E natural.20 Reading this passage through a
philosophical lens, the constant resolution of dominant-function chords’ ten-
dency tones reflects the complete satisfaction of individual will. On the phrase
level, however, the progression from B major to F♯ major reflects the unifying
desire of the keys to be related by maximally invariant transposition, which
preserves the majority of notes between the two collections.
Example 10.6 Tonal analysis of Scriabin’s Op. 2, No. 2, mm. 1–9.

Source: Author.
As in Op. 2, No. 2, Scriabin’s Op. 49, No. 3 opens on a non-tonic chord, but
this chord defies any definitive tonal analysis. If read as an applied dominant-
function chord, it would be an extended V/♭VII that fails to resolve to ♭VII.
If this chord is read as an extended subdominant chord, the following
G-based dominant chord catastrophically fails by resolving to the extended,
chromatically lowered mediant chord in bar 2. Instead, an atonal analysis of
the opening bars appears more promising because it reveals a consistent use
of members of 6-33, which encompasses the entire piece except for the major
triads in bars 5, 8, 16, and 24. Accordingly, all the non-collection tones can
be analyzed as unaccented appoggiaturas that occur in the middle of triplet
figures (Example 10.7).
Comparison of tonal and post-tonal analyses of Scriabin’s Op. 49,

Example 10.7
No. 3, mm. 1–8.
Source: Author.
These opening pcsets are consistently related by the primary transformation

seen in Scriabin’s post-tonal music: maximally invariant transposition. The
maximally invariant transpositions of 6-33 are T2, T5, T7, and T10 because
its ic vector is highest at ic 2 and ic 5 (cf. Example 10.5). Accordingly, the
opening pcset is related to the following two collections by T2 and T10,
respectively (maximally invariant transpositions are noted with arrows in
Example 10.7).21 This progression is followed by two additional maximally
invariant transpositions by T5.
These key-based operations appear to give way to functional tonality as
the music approaches the C-major cadence in bar 4.22 This C-major tonic
in bar 4 is preceded by an extended dominant (as a member of 6-33), which
clearly arpeggiates its root, chordal seventh, and leading tone above the bass.
The preceding D♭-based chord could be understood through a number of
tonal readings, including an extended Neapolitan chord or Dernova’s tritone
link. This tonal reading can be stretched back further to the E♭-and A♭-based
chords in bar 2, which can be retrospectively understood as a series of applied
dominants leading to the D♭-based chord in bar 3 (applied dominants shown
by arrows).
Taken together, the opening phrase (bars 1–4) could be heard as a steady
progression from maximally invariant transposition (key-based harmony) to
functional harmony, in which the middle could be heard as transitional because
it conforms to both operations. The opening transpositions of members of
6-33 are best understood through maximally invariant transposition because
they have no clear tonal analysis. The interior transpositions by T5 could be
read as either as maximally invariant transpositions or a series of secondary
dominants. The cadence, however, is best understood through functional ton-
ality –as there are no maximally invariant transpositions. This progression
is repeated in the following bars (5–8) and results in an overall motion from
the key of C major to G major, which are closely related/maximally invariant
collections. Seen through a philosophic lens, the piece could be read as the
delay of the impulses of individual desire (i.e., functional harmony) through
the satisfaction of unifying desire (i.e., maximally invariant transposition).
Although individual desire ultimately succeeds via the dominant resolutions
in C and G major, these local satisfactions of individual desire are tempered
by an overarching satisfaction of universal will via closely related keys.
Instead of merely delaying functional tonality, Op. 45, No. 2 denies all
tonal cadences until the end of the work. Not only does the piece begin with
a harmonically ambiguous whole-tone collection,23 but the only triad of the
entire piece –an inverted C-major triad –occurs on the last beat of music
(Example 10.8). The rest of the piece can be primarily analysed as alter-
nating WT1 and WT0 collections, which –as in Op. 49, No. 3 –mainly features
unaccented embellishing tones that occur in the middle of triplet figures
(cf. Example 10.7). The four exceptions are the bass C in bar 2, the bass G in
bar 5, the bass C in bar 14, and the octave G’s in bar 15.
Comparison of tonal and post-tonal analyses of Scriabin’s Op. 45, No. 2.

Example 10.8
A) Ending: mm. 12–16 B) Beginning: mm. 0–6
Source: Author.
These four exceptions serve as the tonal lynch pins of the piece. As mentioned
earlier, the only tonal cadence occurs at the end of the piece, which is where
my tonal analysis begins (Example 10.8A). Noting the final C-major chord
in bar 15, bar 13 can be interpreted as an extended dominant G chord that
arpeggiates its root, chordal seventh, and leading tone –as seen in Op. 49,
No. 3 (cf. bars 3 and 23). The resolution of this dominant to a C-major triad,
however, is staggered. The expected C and G appear in the bass in bar 14, but
the remaining upper notes retain the previous WT1 collection (as if a series
of suspensions). In bar 15, the chord eventually resolves to C major, but only
after the WT0-derived F♯ and A♭s resolve by semitone to G. This delayed
semitonal resolution to tonic mirrors the ending of Op. 49, No. 3, in which B
and D♭ in bar 24 resolve by semitone to tonic, C. This progression is mirrored
in bars 0–3a (and at T7 in bars 3b–7), but without the final resolution to a
major triad (Example 10.8B). Instead, the chord remains a WT0 subset whose
resolution to a major tonic triad is unfulfilled. Put another way, these whole-
tone dominants appear to be resolving to whole-tone ‘tonics.’
I suggest that these dominant resolutions to whole-tone ‘tonics’ engender
the larger WT0/WT1 alternations in the piece. The desire of the whole-tone
G dominant to resolve to C major results in a transposition by T7 (realized
down a perfect fourth). Accordingly, any odd transposition of a whole-tone
collection results in a shift to its complementary collection. That is, instead
of the whole-tone G dominant resolving to a C-major triad, it resolves to a
whole-tone collection that accommodates C (i.e., pc 0): WT0.
With the tonal lynch pins in place, one can now analyse the harmony of
the entire passage. The anacrusis begins with a Neapolitan-based WT1 that
is transposed at a maximally invariant T6 to a dominant-based WT1, which
eventually resolves to a C-affiliated WT0 collection in bar 3. The same passage
is repeated down a fourth to a G-affiliated WT1 collection in bar 6 resulting
in a maximally invariant T7 relationship between the implied major keys, but
a maximally variant relationship between the given whole-tone collections.
Taken collectively, this passage features a similar –but more dramatic –
frustration of functional harmony via pc invariance as the previous work.
As in Op. 49, No. 3, the piece begins with a maximally invariant progres-
sion that gives way to a tonal cadence. However, the satisfaction of the dom-
inant is highly undermined –if not negated –by its resolution to a whole-tone
collection. This frustration persists throughout the entire piece until the
final beat, which remediates this whole-tone tonic through its semitone reso-
lution to an unambiguous major triad in first inversion. As in Smith’s ana-
lysis of Schreker in the previous chapter (Chapter 9), Scriabin’s chromatic
collections mask and refract underlying tonal desires for dominant reso-
lution. Accordingly, the dominant potential of these chords is obscured by
their presentation as scale-like collections until their tonal desire is realized at
the end of the piece.
Referring back to our philosophical lens, this piece can be read as a
prolonged effort of individual will to eventually break universal will. The
opening of the piece features a completely invariant transposition of the WT1
collection, which signifies the continuation of universal will. The subsequent
resolution of the G-based WT1 dominant to C-based WT0, however, reflects
the momentary satisfaction of individual will. This causes an ensuing dis-
ruption of universal desire (i.e., the shift to WT0). Instead of all pitch classes
continuing on through maximally invariant transposition, none continue,
suggesting a negation of unifying desire. This relationship sympathizes with
Schopenhauer’s complementary understanding of desire. Just as universal
desire is achieved through the denial of individual desire, so is universal desire
denied by the striving of individual desire.
The final piece to be explored is Scriabin’s Op. 58, which many scholars con-
sider his first completely atonal work (Baker, 1986; Bazayev, 2018; Dernova,
1968; Ewell, 2006–2007). Accordingly, these scholars analyse the piece as a
series of mystic chords, which are all related by maximally invariant transpos-
ition (Baker, 1986; Pople, 1989; Cohn, 2012).24 As in the previously discussed
works, the vast majority of embellishing tones are rhythmically unaccented
(cf. Example 10.9). However, such analysis fails to account for five prom-
inent bass notes: the Fs in bars 11 and 13 and the Bs in bars 18, 20, and
22. These bass notes are significant, as these bass Bs and Fs are followed by
arpeggiations of B-and F-major diatonic collections in the left hand.
Example 10.9 Comparison of tonal and post-tonal analyses of Scriabin’s Op. 58.

Source: Author.
I suggest that these bass notes suggest an underlying functional tonality that
is never fully realized. Looking at the end of the piece, the bass Bs are each
approached by perfect fifth motion, suggesting a dominant-tonic relation-
ship. Accordingly, the preceding chords can be analysed as extended dom-
inant chords (spelt as mystic chords) that attempt to resolve to B-major
triads, as seen by the initial B–F♯ arpeggiation in the bass (see Example 10.9).
This progression closely mirrors the progression seen at the end of Scriabin’s
Op. 45, No. 2, in which a bass arpeggiation of the root, chordal seventh, and
leading tone of the dominant leads to a bass arpeggiation of a root, fifth, and
suspended fourth of the tonic (see Example 10.8). As in Op. 45, No. 2, the
upper voices preserve the pitch classes of the previous collection.
Unlike Op. 45, No. 2, the dominant resolutions in Op. 58 are continually
delayed until they are ultimately denied. Looking at the first two attempted
resolutions in bars 18–19 and 20–21, the fourth suspensions eventually resolve
to D♯ (albeit up an octave), but the upper notes fail to coalesce into a B-
major chord. This frustration of B-major is driven home by its opposition
by B♯ in the right hand (shown with arrows), which references the previous
mystic-chord collection.25 The resolution of the progression is attempted a
third time in bar 22, which brings the opposing B/B♯s into stark relief through
simultaneous grace-note arpeggiations in the left and right hands. I suggest
that the B♯-aligned mystic-chord collection wins the altercation through its
maintained presence in the upper register, while the grace-note B fades into
obscurity.26
One could argue that the lack of a concluding tonic chord negates a tonal
understanding of the piece entirely, one which lends itself to a more con-
sistent analysis through purely atonal procedures. But this purely atonal
reading of the piece is diametrically opposed to the concept of denied tonality,
which lies at the heart of previous scholars’ interpretation of Scriabin’s late
work (Dernova, 1968; Ewell, 2006–2007). That is, Scriabin’s atonality is not
defined by the absence of tonality; it is defined by the rejection of it. The will
of the dominant to resolve to tonic in Op. 58 is presented as a viable expect-
ation, which would reflect the expectations of Scriabin’s audience based on
the tonality of all of his previous works –not to mention the vast majority
of music at that time. However, this piece ultimately avoids the strivings of
the dominant for tonic resolution by negating B major by displacing its tonic
through a mystic-chord affiliated B♯. In denying the dominant’s desire, the
piece embraces the desire of the collections to be closely related: every mystic
chord is related by maximally invariant transposition and the piece ends with
the same collection it began with. In short, the piece completely embraces uni-
fying desire and completely denies individual desire.
Denying denied desire: performance implications

These four works show decreasing occurrences of dominant resolution in lieu
of maximally invariant transposition. Op. 2, No. 2 (1887) exclusively featured
dominant resolutions throughout; Op. 49, No. 3 (1905) only featured dom-
inant resolutions at the ends of phrases; Op. 45, No. 2 (1904) only featured
dominant resolution at the end of the work; and Op. 58 (1910) denied all
attempts of dominant resolution. I suggest this increasing use of maximally
invariant transposition to delay or deny dominant resolution results in the
perceived degradation in functional harmony ultimately leading to his post-
tonal period.
While analyses of Scriabin’s late music denying tonal closure in lieu of pc
invariance exist in the literature, my account differs in that it establishes pc
invariance as a signifier of unifying desire that complements Taruskin’s notion
that dominant affiliated tendency-tone resolution signifies individual desire.
Therefore, the denial of tritone resolution cannot be exclusively interpreted
as a reduction in desire overall. Instead, the negated individual desires of
tendency tones via maximally invariant transposition should be viewed as a
consequence of fulfilling the key-based desire of the collections to be closely
related –that is, their universal will.
Furthermore, this perspective clarifies the notion in Russian scholar-
ship that Scriabin’s late music is an extension of tonality. As shown earlier,
Scriabin’s late harmonic practice certainly defies common-practice tonality
by removing denying dominant-chord resolution, which thwarts the percep-
tion of both the tonic and the tonic triad. However, this loss in functional,
chord-based harmony is replaced by a focus on key-based harmony that con-
tinues the tonal practice of using closely related (i.e., maximally invariant)
keys. Accordingly, one of the most significant aspects of Scriabin’s post-tonal
music is predicated on a historically tonal operation.
This shift in philosophy has a significant impact on the interpretation
of Scriabin’s transition to post-tonal harmony. Instead of viewing the pro-
gression as solely undermining tonality through delayed and/ or denied
dominant resolution, I suggest that Scriabin’s music is increasing infused
with key- based, closely related (i.e., maximally invariant) transpositions,
which signify increasing levels of unifying desire. This process results in an
increasing degree of tonal abeyance until dominant resolution is completely
negated. Accordingly, the pc invariance resulting from these closely related
transpositions results in sublimely smooth harmonic shifts, which rest upon a
series of dominant-like chords that constantly yearn for resolution.
This interpretation also suggests changes in interpreting and performing
Scriabin’s middle and late works. The prior understanding of Scriabin’s late
music as a series of non-functional dominant collections suggested a zen-like
performance practice that emulates the negated desire of these suppressed
dominants. Instead, my interpretation suggests an ongoing battle between indi-
vidual and universal wills, in which the dominant strivings of these collections
is increasingly superseded by a key-based desire to be closely related. In short,
Scriabin’s late music displays a negation of the ‘will’ of the tone in favour of
the will of tonality, or to reference Schenkerian terminology: a negation of
the Tonwille in lieu of Tonalitätwille.
Notes
1 Although Taruskin specifically employs (completely) invariant transposition and
Dernova references enharmonic equivalency, both fall under the broader oper-
ation of maximally invariant transposition (see Yunek, 2017, 393–400).
2 These other procedures include complementation and similarity relations.
3 Baker also notes that T5 and T7 are the second most likely transpositions.
Accordingly, this results in minimal invariance between many of Scriabin’s chords
in his transitional periods, but simultaneously result in maximal invariance
between diatonic-based harmonies (1986).
4 The term lad is often translated as mode. As others have pointed out, this transla-
tion is insufficient because it conflates classical notions of mode with Yavorsky’s
new and distinctive theory of lad (McQuere, 1983; Bazayev, 2014).
5 Furthermore, any chord containing two tritones has a doubly dominant function,
and any chord containing three tritones has a triply dominant function (cf.
McQuere, 1983).
6 He even prepared for this trip by purchasing a safari hat to protect himself from
the harsh Indian sun (Bowers, 1973, 262–263).
7 Examples are drawn from Opp. 61, 62, and 64. The importance of Scriabin’s per-
formance indications are explored in Garcia (2000, 273–300) and MacDonald
(1978, 22–25).
8 Note that Ivanov states that Scriabin’s visions are threefold, suggesting that they
are interrelated concepts.
9 This preference for theosophy is also reinforced by accounts of Scriabin’s theo-
sophical literature by Sabaneev ([1916] 2000, 63) and Schloezer (1987, 71).
10 The transformation of the spiritual into the physical (and back) is a seven-part
process (Blavatsky, 1888, 1: 242; Carlson, 1993, 120.)
11 This is represented in the theosophical seal by the image of Ouroboros, the
snake that swallows its own tail. This theory is also an extension of Blavatsky’s
combination of Hinduism and Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence (see
Yunek, 2013, 53–118.)
12 Multiple scholars have concluded that Scriabin did not have conventional
chromesthesia (Baker, 1997, 73– 78; Galeev, 2001; Gawboy, 2010, 173–175).
Rather, he had deeply held philosophical beliefs on colour-key associations (see
Yunek, 2013, 101–116).
13 For example, §52 in the third book of the first volume of WWR; chapter 39,
entitled ‘On the Metaphysics of Music,’ in the supplements to the third book in
the second volume of WWR; and §§ 218–220 in c hapter 19 of the second volume
of Parerga and Paralipomena, entitled ‘Towards a Metaphysics of the Beautiful
and Aesthetic.’
14 The reading of this passage as a continuation of the universal will through individ-
uals is confirmed by Sorgner (2010, 128).
15 This concept directly equates to the complementary notion of Ivanov’s eternal
feminism, which contrasts the masculine/physical with the feminine/spiritual (see
Gawboy, 2010, 112–115).
16 All octatonic subsets that feature high ic3 and ic6 content are related by T3, T6, and
T9. All mystic-chord and whole-tone collections are related by T2, T4, T6, T8, and
T10. In rare instances, diatonic collections are featured and are related by T5
and T7, while diatonic subsets (like 6-33) are closely related by T2, T5, T7, and T10.
17 This viewpoint is highly congruent with Yavorsky’s theory of lad, which views chords
with multiple tritones as having multiple dominant function (McQuere, 1983).
18 Even scholars who do not cite pc invariance infer it in their approaches. For
example, Reise’s system of semitonal resolution between central collections and
subsidiary collections is predicated on the high pc invariance amongst collections
in Scriabin’s late music in pc space (1983).
19 Note how Scriabin lists the C-major version of the mystic chord as a scale, which
proceeds stepwise from C. Scriabin’s compositional sketches –currently contained
in the Glinka Museum Archives –for Prometheus reveal that he initially viewed
the collection as a seven-note acoustic scale: C, D, E, F sharp, G, A, B flat. His
sketches show Scriabin writing the collections in various formats, including in
seconds, thirds, and –quite famously –in fourths. Accordingly, it is hard to inter-
pret the collection Scriabin lists as a dominant in C, as some have implied, because
it lacks the tradition root (G), leading tone (B), and chordal seventh (F).
20 The G♯ sharp suspension in the melody resolves on the next beat. The bar was
truncated to align the phrases.
21 The second and third collections are not directly related by maximally invariant
transposition since they only retain two pitch classes, instead of four, which is why
I highlight the third collection’s maximally invariant relationship to the first chord.
That being said, I find this indirect reading is stronger than a tonal reading.
22 The T6 motion in bar 3 is not maximally invariant and the clear C-major triad
arrival eschews an atonal reading, which is already problematic because of the
cardinality differences between a member of 6-33 and a major triad.
23 According to Dernova’s extension of Yavorsky and Protopotov’s theory of lad
(1968), this collection would simultaneously suggest six different possible tritone
(and, therefore, dominant) resolutions because of its three tritones and their two
possible resolutions (i.e., imploding and exploding).
24 Being a whole- tone variant, the mystic chord shares its maximally invariant
transpositions of T2, T4, T6, T8, and T10 (see Yunek, 2017, 397).
25 In pitch-class space, there is a parsimonious change from a Mystic-chord collection
[3,4,6,8,10,0] to a B-major diatonic subset 6-33 [3,4,6,8,10,11], which is achieved
by B-sharp (pc 0) moving to B-natural (pc 11).
26 To realize how close the piece came to cadencing in B major, the reader is invited
to recompose the ending with a B-major triad.
References
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Baker, J. (1993). Post-tonal voice-leading. In J. Dunsby (ed.), Models of Musical
Analysis: Early Twentieth-Century Music (pp. 20–41). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Baker, J. (1997). Scriabin’s music: structure as prism for mystical philosophy. In: J.
Baker, D. Beach, & J. W. Bernard (eds.), Music Theory in Concept and Practice (pp.
53–96). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
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Blavatsky, H. & Besant, A. (2004). Occultism of the Secret Doctrine. Whitefish: Kessinger
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Bowers, F. (1973). The New Scriabin; Enigma and Answers. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
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Carlson, M. (1993). No Religion Higher Than Truth: A History of the Theosophical
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Ewell, P. (1993). Alexander Skryabin and Russian symbolism: plot and symbols in the
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11
Musicology, mediation, metatonality
Rethinking the music of Rebecca
Clarke and Erwin Schulhoff
Chris Dromey
Two incontrovertible yet apparently contradictory facts about tonality

coexist, and each has a huge influence on how we learn about, perform, hear,
and analyse music. The first fact is that, as a conceptual category coined in the
early nineteenth century and refined by musicologists of all types ever since,
tonality occupies a proud and privileged place in music theory and, by exten-
sion, in the telling and retelling of music history. This is why received wisdom
continues to teach students that tonality’s ‘evolution’ is a primary factor in the
division of musical epochs, and to attune listeners to new thresholds of con-
sonance and dissonance (and, relatedly, of continuities and discontinuities).
Such qualities have become central to comprehending and enjoying many
kinds of music –a reality that, for better or worse, is ultimately rooted in
the concept of tonality being entwined with that of an historicizing narrative
almost as soon as it had been conceived.1
The second fact about tonality highlights a chasm that separates this first
set of truths from another: that tonality, for all its undoubted significance,
is virtually absent in public discourse about music. It is tempting to assume
that we simply take tonality for granted; that it is the proverbial invisible
hand, shaping countless musical choices, each subject to a vast number of
cognitive, personal, and social biases. Similar assumptions have long been
fruitful starting points for psychologists and sociologists keen to understand
how musical judgements are formed and enacted, and for scholars setting
out to disabuse the exceptionalizing notion that Western music between the
seventeenth and early twentieth centuries renders other musical cultures and
epochs subservient to it because of its tonal framework (Small, 1977).
However, the ‘taken for granted’ argument does not adequately recognize
the tangible problems that the discussion and teaching of tonality typically
pose, nor the interesting implications of such issues for musicologists and
pedagogues alike. To compound matters, pedagogical perspectives are rarely
examined by musicologists, and this neglect is reciprocated as musicological
advances struggle to influence (pre-tertiary) curricula. Two prime features
of musicology in the 2010s were to advocate for more equitable representa-
tion in music historiography and to fashion a new sense of applied practice,
including public-oriented musicologies. Yet, analytical musicology has been
DOI: 10.4324/9780429451713-11
230 Chris Dromey
slow to embrace such trends. This is not for want of the tools to unpick and
celebrate musical accomplishment. Rather, its own august history has evolved
alongside wider musicological narratives that have served to narrow its scope
of influence and widen the perceived incompatibility of public and analyt-
ical knowledge. The power of these narratives (or dogmatic metaphors, as
we might describe them, e.g. the ‘death’ of tonality or successive ‘waves’ of
modernism) is such that, as Lloyd Whitesell has observed, ‘the cultural sym-
bolism brought to bear on the concept of tonality is extremely telling. As a
“common practice” of harmonic conventions, it has the prestige in the minds
of many, whether vanguard or conservative, of a repressed, shadow image of
modernism’ (Whitesell, 2010, p. 104).
The schisms embedded in this quote are as chronologically and thematically
relevant to this volume’s ‘with and after’ reading of (meta)tonality as they are
to this chapter, which will adopt public-oriented and analytical approaches in
order to elucidate certain mediative problems music faces today and to recali-
brate our understanding of tonality in the interwar period. The chapter duly
explores the subject of tonality from three related perspectives: broadcasting,
programme notes, and pedagogy. Then, against this backdrop, it examines
two dual- heritage composers, Rebecca Clarke (1886– 1979) and Erwin
Schulhoff (1894–1942), whose music has deservedly begun to be revived in
the last twenty years. The interwar years are generally understood as being
crucial to the development of both classical music and musicology. They also
marked the tragically brief highpoints of both composers’ careers: Schulhoff
was a victim of the Holocaust and suffered critically for his eclecticism;
Clarke suffered because of her gender and eventually stopped composing. To
rewrite music history by recognizing such neglected composers is not a new
challenge, but the perspective of metatonality, being a mutable and referential
concept, brings the potential or even the imperative to add a significant new
dimension to analytical musicology. This chapter’s structure reflects this by
framing its analytical findings with discussion of tonality’s multivalency and
of musicology’s modern purpose, including its relationship with the public. In
short: how metatonal-inspired readings might help us look afresh at tonality
and musicology themselves.
Broadcasters make daily decisions about how they frame music for their
listeners. In the context of classical music broadcast on UK radio, I have
shown elsewhere how presenters’ language falls into several overlapping
classes (Dromey, 2018), e.g. emphasizing musical quality, including specif-
ically canonizing language; distancing music from quotidian experiences, or
relating it to them; stereotyping; and/or ‘bracing’ listeners for what they are
about to hear. For the purposes of the present chapter, the absence of tech-
nical language from any of these categories, but particularly the last, is most
noteworthy. Only a tiny fraction of the vocabulary broadcasters use to con-
textualize classical music cites or even alludes to tonality: 2 of 901 references
Musicology, mediation, metatonality 231
(0.002%) in the aforementioned study, namely ‘modal’ and ‘atonal’, neither of
which terms were clarified or defined.
This is not to judge broadcasters, whose arena is one that generally assumes,
and often explicitly acknowledges, a passive style of listening and engage-
ment. The concert hall, on the other hand, offers another case study for public
musicologists, and one where active listening is customarily encouraged by
such modern concert-going rituals as self-policing audience silence and the
provision of programme notes. More so than broadcasters, then, note-writers
face basic, even existential, dilemmas about their public-facing practice. What
tenor and vocabulary are most effective to reliably inform and engage readers
while enhancing their musical understanding? To meet these presupposed
aims by ‘signposting’ listeners has been a principal task for note-writers ever
since Charles Henry Purday (often acclaimed as inventor of the modern pro-
gramme note) called for the adoption of ‘some means… to render musical
performances as intellectual as they are sensual’ (Purday, 1836, quoted in
Hogarth, 1934, p. 795). To signpost is to follow one or more of three likely
paths, each with their own degrees of accessibility and applicability according
to the musical context: highlighting the music’s timbral characteristics, typ-
ically the most straightforward of the three; defining prominent motifs that
arrest listeners’ attention as they reappear in identical or varied guises; and
describing the music’s harmonic structure. The longer the piece of music, the
more relevant this third approach becomes to note-writers and to concertgoers.
But by pairing musical elements and, ordinarily, explaining their teleological
consequences to audiences, the approach is also the most holistic and the least
straightforward.
When broached, discussion of tonality draws on a harmonically oriented
lexicon that is generally either taxonomic (‘C major’, ‘consonant’, ‘atonal’,
etc.) or processive (e.g. ‘modulatory’, ‘cadential’, ‘tonal relationships
[between sections or movements]’, etc.). It is also technical, assumes prior
knowledge (or implicitly demands its acquisition), and therefore collides with
programme notes’ one-size-fits-all medium. Enabling concertgoers to gain,
much less apply, such knowledge is therefore inherently difficult. A broader
consequence of this tension between medium and message is that some con-
cert administrators, wary of classical music’s ‘elitist’ image, encourage writers
to adopt a more anecdotal, historically focussed approach (Bergauer, 2019).2
Other organizations are responding innovatively to classical music’s commu-
nication crisis, for example by trialling digital programme notes (drip-feeding
bitesize notes to phone- glancing concertgoers in real- time), persuading
orchestral conductors and musicians to address audiences directly from the
stage, and commissioning graphical listening guides (Hartley-Chan, 2016).
For now, such novelties remain just that, being introduced in the name
of accessibility –and, ergo, of commerce –and eschewing long- form
prose altogether. Their effects on audience enjoyment and understanding
are therefore not yet fully understood. Earlier studies have proven a more
232 Chris Dromey
general correlation between a lack of lexical understanding and dissatisfac-
tion among first-time classical concertgoers (Dearn/Pitts, 2017), and, sep-
arately, how the presence of programme note-like text can actually reduce
musical enjoyment (Hellmuth Margulis, 2010). Yet, there is no silver bullet for
concert administrators (or for musicologists) to find in existing research on
the problems musical mediation can pose. While studies such as these tend to
agree that the power of discourses surrounding music are emotionally strong,
and, worse, can be unwittingly exclusory, the need for a framework to aid
musical understanding evidently remains.
In relation to modernist and contemporary music, this need is arguably
most acute for the twin reasons that these genres are particularly prone to
misrepresentation and misunderstanding, and because classical music’s
prospects are most naturally tied to theirs. Initiatives such as Molly Murdock
and Ben Parsell’s Music Theory Examples by Women (https://musictheory
examplesbywomen.com/, launched in 2017) and the Institute for Composer
Diversity (f. 2019) belong to a movement that seeks to perpetuate (and
whose impact relies on) further advocacy, i.e. it succeeds only if its musical
discoveries are mediated and its protagonists collaborate. This scenario
implicates an inseparable group of musically interested parties: musicologists,
programmers, musicians, and, of course, the public. To this list we should add
educationalists; musicologists and music teachers alike are effectively tasked
with conceptualizing what is readily heard in music, providing the means of
refining understanding (including what is heard less readily), and thereby
facilitating thinking and conversations about music. Moreover, if we turn our
attention to how music, and specifically tonality, are taught and ‘encultured’,
then clues as to why musical engagement can be so polarizing quickly appear.
At an elementary level, the absence of tonality identified towards the start
of this chapter is again conspicuous. The latest version of the UK’s National
Curriculum (DFE, 2013a), for example, mandates learning to include music’s
‘inter-related dimensions’, in which tonality, at best, is implicit in the teaching
of pitch and structure; harmony is omitted altogether, an act carried over
from 1999’s overhaul of the original National Curriculum (DES, 1992).3 The
upshot is that single melodic and rhythmic lines are teachers’ main preoccu-
pations at Key Stages 1 and 2, encouraged by a curriculum that prizes cre-
ativity and music-making,4 and which no longer references ‘chords’ or sets the
attainment target, as it did previously, to ‘sing songs, in unison and two parts’
(DFEE/QCA, 1999: p. 129).
While creativity and understanding should and can be compatible aims,
a distinction between the two (and a blurring of the latter) easily arises for
three reasons. First, the National Curriculum was dramatically streamlined
in 2013, broadening its interpretability by schools but leaving (typically non-
specialist) music teachers largely to fend for themselves. Second, the stereo-
types that beset classical music –that it is esoteric, irrelevant, and notated
with indecipherable symbols –are germane to its pedagogy because, histor-
ically, the genre has been the prism through which music theory has been
predominantly taught. Third, then, is the uncomfortable but important truth
that the teaching of tonality and related harmonic concepts, and of music
in general, worries many teachers. Low teacher confidence and negative self-
perceptions of ability have been investigated elsewhere (e.g. Zeserson et al.,
2014; Garrett, 2014), yet these challenges continue to be amplified by others,
e.g. a general lack of level-appropriate resources (or a failure to access existing
resources) and a related tendency to identify rhythm-based exercises as being
more kinaesthetic and therefore more accessible to young children. More
broadly, these factors prolong a more longstanding problem whereby, peda-
gogically, music theory and practice are often mischaracterized as being inde-
pendent of each other (Welch, 2001).
That tonality is expected to be identified and used at KS3 would appear to
be positive (DfE, 2013b), however it can also be regarded as belated: studies
have long indicated that children as young as five comprehend diatonic scale
structures and have sensitivity to key membership (Dowling, 1988; Lamont/
Cross, 1994; Koelsch et al., 2003; Schellenberg et al., 2005), and one recent
study found that children as young as three exhibit some knowledge of appro-
priate harmonic progressions (Corrigall/Trainor, 2009). Moreover, a deeply
bifurcated system of music education in the UK serves to stratify musical
learners,5 in turn creating a damaging sense of irreversible musical ‘haves and
have-nots’ by KS3, such that introducing concepts such as tonality as this
stage of learning reinforces the perception that musical knowledge is, and
can only be, specialist. We can extend this charge to the Associated Board of
the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM, still the most popular exam board for
extracurricular learning), whose practical exams assess Aural understanding
of the difference between major and minor tonality only from Grade 4. The
same organization’s series of Theory exams are also admired but are peda-
gogically contentious (e.g. the labelling of inversions as ‘b’, ‘c’, and ‘d’ irks
those who regard figured-bass as the more accurate, nuanced system) and can
be bypassed by teachers and their musicians defecting to exam boards who
do not require Theory as a prerequisite for advanced practical grades. More
broadly, Aural and Theory training is notoriously prone to falling between
the cracks of music education, with teachers sometimes uncertain about who
is responsible for what, and both domains potentially neglected as a result.
Such matters problematize a students’ transition to higher education,
whose courses typically retrain students in music theory, aural, and musician-
ship skills. This training is often ideological, prioritizing practical and theoret-
ical systems over the nurturing of a critical approach to music’s fundamentals,
e.g. that ‘loyalty’ to a tonic is culturally contingent and analysable in a quasi-
scientific way. Meanwhile, students and scholars of analytical musicology –
itself a marginalized discipline –still grapple with twentieth-century-derived
divergencies, including those explored in this volume, which have populated
and expanded their field, but which have also had an encumbering effect
on its pedagogy. An overarching example, already referenced, is music his-
toriography and its related value systems, which modernize very slowly
234 Chris Dromey
(the supremacy of classical music in music departments is a case in point).
Another example, in relation to tonality when it is taught, is the complicated
legacy of its association with a ‘chord of nature’, and, separately, of its much
looser definitions, devised decades ago to give other musicologists a foothold
when analysing specific ‘progressive’ twentieth-century styles.6 This has had
three further consequences: these styles have themselves become pedagogic-
ally canonized; rule-setting and -breaking in pedagogy, analysis, and histori-
ography is valourized; and the lexicon of tonality comes with a panoply of
prefixes (e.g. bi-, poly-, a-, post-, pan-, neo-), each with different degrees of
legitimacy, and often tying students in knots and prompting audiences who
encounter them to wonder: ‘are we intelligent enough to understand this
music?’
The various mediative challenges this chapter has already outlined go a

long way towards explaining why music that does not conform to dominant
narratives still struggles to find a place in contemporary life. The four examples
that this section will analyse –in order to reassess our understanding of ton-
ality in the interwar period –are cases in point: classical, dual-heritage, non-
canonical, and twentieth-century yet not conventional modernist. The first is
Rebecca Clarke’s Sonata for Viola and Piano (1918–19). Clarke’s tonal idio-
syncrasies were under-appreciated during her lifetime. We have Liane Curtis
to thank for retelling Clarke’s story and unearthing much of her music, most
of which remains to be analysed; happily, this volume marks a new chapter
in the championing of Clarke’s cause (see also Chapters 3 (Forkert) and 4
(Fleet) in this book). Worse, her achievements were mischaracterized: Walter
Willson Cobbett’s eminent Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, to which
Clarke herself contributed entries, brands the Viola Sonata ‘atonal’ (Evans,
1929, p. 282) –an error we can perhaps fathom (through a metatonal lens)
by remembering that ‘atonal’ is more polysemous and historically contingent
than we might care to assume, and by seeking to understand and ‘recapture’
the disorientating effect of Clarke’s episodic tonal structures.7
In the sonata’s opening movement (Impetuoso), for example, E4 underpins
a 12-bar-long modal melody whose prominent bugle-like motif, an A-E-A
fifth, immediately ambiguates the tonality: E-dorian and A-mixolydian share
pitch content, and we soon learn that modality is one of several types of
tonality Clarke will employ. The impressionistic Poco agitato (bar 13) that
follows the introduction is harmonically sequential (Example 11.1), unfurling
extended chords connected by diminished motion in the bass (i.e. minor-third
symmetry around F) and by the augmented triads that these chords’ minor
sevenths, ninths, and raised-elevenths twice produce. The passage bears little
relation to its E-minor key signature; Clarke eventually drops the key signa-
ture altogether, albeit only for the outer sections of the Adagio finale.
Rebecca Clarke’s Sonata for Viola and Piano (1918–19), harmonic

Example 11.1
sequence starting at bar 13.
Source: Author.
The broader connection here is between the two suspended chords –a per-
spective that can be extended to account for the second thematic area (Poco
meno mosso), which begins with a G-major triad in bar 39. Indeed, Curtis
cites bar 31 as a dominant preparation (Curtis, 1996: p. 394); the question,
analytically, is one of emphasis, in that to identify a cycle of fifths (E-A-D-G)
is to risk downplaying the aural significance of those chords’ extensions as
well as the local significance of the A♭ evident in Example 11.1 and again in
bars 324 and 332 (latterly as an aurally important whole-tone pivot from D).
Besides, the Poco meno mosso is itself tonally unstable, unfurling a fragile G-
major/-diminished clash that has attracted attention before for its octatonic
implications (p. 396). The same section introduces further tonal ideas whose
structural importance becomes apparent only much later. Bar 98, for example,
signals a stark mood-shift, offering respite from the rapid-fire development
it follows as the sonata’s principal theme makes its return. But the music
is disquieted by a static, extended augmented sixth chord (bars 98–101),8 a
version of which we first hear in bar 33.
Neither chord is easy to explain from a traditional and, in reference to our
first fact in this chapter, privileged tonal perspective. The first is a (German)
augmented sixth (E♭-G-B♭-C♯) that underpins and dovetails with the right
hand’s voices, which prolong a remnant of the passage’s major/diminished
idea, but which also form an octatonic pentachord (G- A♯/B♭-B♮-C♯-D)
above E♭. The second augmented sixth is even more ambiguous: it combines
the familiar theme (and A-E-A motif) with B♭, G♯ and D in the bass –the
melody’s repeated E makes this a French sixth –such that the music contrives
to sound melodically modal, harmonically whole-tone-influenced (B♭-D-E-
G♯), and bitonally derived. To understand the third part of this claim, it is
necessary to observe how A’s chromatic neighbours are isolated in the chord’s
spacing to help emphasize the B♭ centricity (i.e. the modal melody ‘versus’ the
236 Chris Dromey
bass pedal, with the texture pared down to a B flat ‘7’ trichord in bar 101), and
how the Vivace movement’s second theme deploys a further paired-tritone,
augmented-sixth-based idea in a more overtly bitonal fashion, stacking E♭
and A major arpeggios from bar 574.
For all the Viola Sonata’s tonal intrigue, it is important not to fall into
the historiographical trap of valorizing Clarke, or any composer, solely for
‘progressive’ musical qualities, or indeed to search for and laud ‘vestiges’ of
tonality for being singularly progressive. Indeed, the challenge of analysing
modernist tonal music, and of understanding the consequences of that ana-
lysis for modernism itself, has been a notable feature in recent musicology
(Grimley, 2010; Harrison, 2016; Borstlap, 2017), and is advanced by this
volume’s positing of metatonality. Accordingly, the second of Clarke’s works
to be examined is Ave Maria (1937), her first choral work to be published, as
late as 1998. If there is a model at play here, it is the sixteenth-century motet,
however Ave Maria’s approach to tonality elevates it far beyond pastiche. Nor
does it yield easily to conventional analysis, despite the fact it is tonal and
employs none of the Viola Sonata’s extended harmonies. No less beautiful or
interesting, Ave Maria adopts an altogether different tonal strategy, setting
out as though to maximize the potency of an exclusively triadic palette. It
achieves this within, and in tandem with, an upper-voice texture (SSA) and
serene stop-start phrasing, such that 16 different tonal centres are traversed in
just 42 bars. The piece is short enough to map these centres and to explain the
idiosyncratic way in which they progress (see Example 11.2).
Bar 1 a = i i-♭II-i-V4-#3-i3 (cadential 64)

43-4 G ♮ VII perfect cadence
7 A I# minor plagal cadence ( )
8 C ♮ III annuls I#
10 a I ♮VI-i [of a]
15 F ♮ VI ii-I-♭VII-ii-I [of F], ending ‘…tui,’’
16 D IV ♭ II-iv-♮III-I [of D], ‘…tui,’Jesus.’
18 B♭ ♭ II annuls D, suggests V-III#-I [of B♭]
20 C III ♭ VII-IV4-3-i-ii-I [of C] […]
22 c iii i-V♭ 3-iv-V♮3[of c]( )
28 c# #iii[#5] A♭ respelt G#: V3-i [of c#]
29 g# #vii[#5] minor plagal cadence ( )
31 d iv V3-i [of d], clarifying G♮-G#-A voice-leading
32 F ♮ VI perfect cadence, trailed by iii6-I
373 D iv III-♭II-i-♮VII-i, all in first inversion
374 G ♮ VII v-iv-v-I
40 a i ♮VII-v-♮VI-V-i-
42 A I# ♭ II-i-V4-#3-I# (cadential 64) ( )
Example 11.2 Clarke, Ave Maria’s tonal centres

Source: Author.
Most (nine) of A minor’s chromatic scale-steps are visited –I/I♯, ♭II, III,
♯iii[♯5], iv, IV, ♯ VI, ♯ VII, and ♯vii[♯5] –but never the dominant. Instead, the
key centres are evidently diverse and highly fluid. Ave Maria includes multiple
cadences –another contrast with the Viola Sonata –albeit rarely as unam-
biguously as in the opening phrase, which segues to G major, via a Neapolitan
idea that will recur, then back to A (major).9 The absence of the dominant as a
tonal centre is partly explained by the thirds-related scheme that characterizes
(C-a-F-D-B♭) is much clearer than its function, in that the abrupt introduc-
the next section. C major ‘annuls’ A and initiates a pattern whose taxonomy
tion of D (bar 16, after a musical and textual comma), coupled with Clarke’s
next tonal cancellation (B♭, two bars later), begs questions as to which, if any,
tonal centre will prevail.
Ave Maria, then, is tonal but creatively ambivalent, dwelling on each
key centre equally and, usually, fleetingly. The music is therefore open to an
unusual degree of interpretation: in the thirds-related sequence cited, is it as
logical to relate F to B flat, with D a tonal and phrasal ‘interloper’, as it is to
able ♭ II-iv-♮III-I cadence. Lurking behind both associations is the largely

connect A minor and D major, signalling an unusual but aurally unmistake-
tacit influence of G, a symmetry-giving dominant pole of A minor elsewhere

(bars 43-4 and 374), and a key that is recast as an orthodox dominant once
C minor arrives and is belatedly confirmed. A protracted Phrygian cadence
achieves this, but only after C major has been briefly tonicized, in a further
penultimate section (from bar 28), where chromatic voice-leading (G♮-G♯-A)

play on major/minor tensions. The purpose of G’s influence is disclosed by the
binds a tonal and phrasal sequence that, again, is otherwise fragmentary

and fluid.
Turning now to Schulhoff, it is curious that appreciation of his output
has rightly acknowledged his stylistic eclecticism, yet so rarely examined his
approach to tonality. In part, this is understandable; chameleonic composers,
content to work in and absorb different musical styles, commonly baffle
musicologists, teachers, and the public alike. This helps explains why Schulhoff
has been described as having had an ‘almost too prolific gift for composition’
(Black, 1995, p. 231), or that ‘he searched for himself and for a home in mul-
tiple genres’ (Jones, 2018, p. 31), that is, positing and amplifying the possi-
bility of aesthetic problems, rather than creative satisfaction.
Schulhoff wrote the Duo for Violin and Cello (1925) at a time when his
fortunes were at a high: he had more works accepted for publication by
Universal Edition than any other composer in late 1920s (Black, 1995, p. 230).
Its opening movement (Moderato) is immediately striking for its mixture of
diatonic (pentatonic and triadic) and chromatic (atonal and octatonic) ideas,
producing music which, to borrow Anthony Pople’s phrase (on Alban Berg),
‘the word ‘atonal’ seems inapplicable, and yet which cannot easily be held up
as exemplifying ‘tonality’ either’ (Pople, 2004, p. 153). Both the metatonal con-
text and the ‘ingredients’ Schulhoff shares with Clarke are therefore similar,
and their effect is sometimes comparable. But, to explore Pople’s conundrum
238 Chris Dromey
further, the creative inconsistencies of Schulhoff’s approach to tonality
set the Duo apart. In each of its movements except the second-movement
‘Zingaresca’, stable tonal passages are subservient to their atonal develop-
ment. (In ‘Zingaresca’, where C-mixolydian is prominent, the opposite is true,
ironically so given it is the only movement not to make use of the Duo’s prin-
cipal theme, which begins pentatonically.) Yet, because tonal passages frame
the first, third, and final movements, this balance is much clearer audibly than
it is during score-based analysis.
A similar ploy of ambiguation propels the whole of the Moderato, whose
contrapuntal lines Schulhoff traps in a perpetual conflict between tonal centri-
city and motivically ‘stretched’ elaboration. Centricity, moreover, is frustrated
at most turns: the pentatonic violin points to D, the minor pentatonic cello
to G, and the next most stable passage (Allegretto, bar 16ff.) unfurls four
two-bar iterations of a melody centred around E. Yet, this passage is heavily
(and octatonically) embellished, and is recontextualized by the cello’s idiom-
atic spread triads. This idea recurs in the third-movement Andantino, where
the structural significance of comparably extended chords is just as clear, e.g.
bars 39–40 comprise C♯117, anticipating the finale’s C-lydian conclusion. The
interplay and distinction between violin and cello create something akin to
an instrumental theatre, which the movement’s episodic structure serves to
enhance: triadic rhetoric is deployed more transparently at the movement’s
diatonic midpoint (Tranquillo, bars 43ff.), and the instruments finally ‘agree’
as they join to voice false harmonics in the pentatonic conclusion (bars 83–86).
An even clearer example of how Schulhoff’s generic and tonal allusions
interrelate is provided by his series of ‘ten syncopated studies’ for piano, col-
lectively titled Hot Music (1928). Strategically placed, the virtuosic outer
movements lodge manic mono-rhythms in their listeners’ minds, and while the
impression is resolutely atonal –the only ‘melody’ to emerge from either study
is a chromatic scalic fragment (Study I, bars 5–8) –both studies end with aber-
rant, witty tonal allusions: an F7 chord and a D9-Gm7 cadence respectively.
The prevalence of perfect fifths elsewhere in the texture also complicates any
unambiguously atonal reading. The connection of these intervals by chro-
matic and occasional whole-tone motion in the opening study produces a
very different effect to when they are connected by minor thirds in the last,
allowing the final study to be understood as beginning and recapitulating in
E. The true extent and nature of this understanding begs questions that hark
back to twentieth-century analysts’ struggles to rationalize linear and har-
monic structures in music lacking obvious tonal orientation (e.g. Pearsall,
1991; Baker, 1993; Whittall, 2001 –we should also remember the first theorists
to spread the Schenkerian gospel, Adele Katz (1945 [1972]) and Felix Salzer
(1962), who accepted the structuralist, quasi-scientific basis of Schenker’s
ideas but interpreted them more liberally to accommodate modal and post-
tonal music).
Hot Music similarly resists easy classification: the significance of rhythm,
and of rapid harmonic rhythms, cannot be decoupled from the music’s
use of tonality.10 Schulhoff’s play on genre reinforces the highly reflexive
effect: a (parody?) waltz in Study VI, ending teasingly on G116 ; another per-
petuum mobile in Study IX, but now hybridized by a rag, whose ‘vertically’
logical harmonies acquiesce to the relentless syncopation of the propelling
cells above; and a bluesy, modernist habanera in Study III, where a C♯ tonality
is strengthened by the music’s relatively slow harmonic rhythm, weakened by
the separating-out in the texture of chords that extend and distort that ton-
ality (e.g. C♯♮9/11, thereby also referencing D7, and joined by F-B ♭-E nat-
ural), and then stabilized again by the structural use of less extended chords
(Emaj7 from bar 6 and 22, C7 from bar 12).
A reflexive approach persists in Study V, which is the most consonant-
sounding study because of its static, parallel fifths-based melody. Quadruple-
metred and transparently ‘quint-tonal’ (Schuhardt, 2019: pp. 117/206), this
soon rotates around A79 and E ♭79. The intervallic pattern 0-2-4, configured 0-
right-hand melody is heard above a triple-time figure that begins on C79 but
11-13, is transposed eight times until bar 8, when A79 gives way to A♭7 and then
to G117, whose C♯ is both a Lydian fourth and major third beneath the melody’s
A-E fifth. If this double function suggests a bitonal impulse, then this is in
keeping with the study’s cross-rhythmic context and the distinct tonalities of
each hand. Yet, this is not clear-cut: of all of tonality’s prefixes listed earlier,
‘bi’-tonality is often decried as being the least legitimate because of the impos-
sibility of sustaining two operational key centres simultaneously; Schulhoff’s
9
extended chords here, including his E67 ending, bear that out. Nevertheless,
Hot Music reminds us that ‘tonality’ and ‘atonality’ can imply much more
than the presence or absence of a solitary referential key centre. The inescap-
able, if counter-intuitive, inference is that Hot Music’s allusiveness and reflex-
ivity serve to make it both tonal and atonal, i.e. ‘with and after’ tonality.
This chapter has chronicled and critiqued several mediative challenges that
music faces today, and has demonstrated how music by Rebecca Clarke and
Erwin Schulhoff broadens our understanding of the ways in which tonal
schemes can be deployed. These two areas of study might not ordinarily
belong together, but their adjacency allows us to address a final issue: whether
analytical findings carry an obligation to reassess not only tonality, but also
musicological purpose. A metatonal approach, by definition driven to gen-
erate new knowledge and to modernize analytical perspectives, would surely
advocate so. Going further, it follows that a mode of musicology that is more
inclusive, less delimited than traditionally defined and practised, and able to
embrace not only new interpretations and discoveries but also new narratives,
is close in spirit to the state of self-renewal implied by metatonality. There are,
admittedly, pragmatic and ideological difficulties with this suggestion, but they
are surmountable. Whereas musicology at large can struggle to effect change,
much less ‘enact’ inclusivity, musicological practice that is public-oriented is
more intrinsically responsive to social and educational developments. Even
the act of focussing on mediative issues –an act that may once have been
240 Chris Dromey
branded insufficiently musicological to belong to the discipline –is readily
compatible with the sort of analytical subjectivity we have witnessed in parts
of Clarke and Schulhoff’s music. Content to acknowledge this elusiveness,
metatonality and musicology, be it public or analytical, are here as one. Some
readers may nevertheless be uneasy about the potential blurring of analyt-
ical and public musicologies, or about the need to treasure, or at least not to
devalue, hard-won knowledge. Yet, it is possible, and highly desirable for the
future of classical music, to protect knowledge and its acquisition without
straying into protectionist behaviours. That much of Clarke and Schulhoff’s
music remains inaccessible, even today, only underlines the musicological
imperative to appreciate not only how such composers influenced their eras,
but also how they might guide ours.
Notes
1 Bryan Simms (1975) describes how tonalité became engrained in nineteenth-cen-
tury musical discourse, having been conceptualized by Alexandre-Étienne Choron
(Sommaire de l’histoire de la musique, 1810) and developed by the Belgian music-
ologist François-Joseph Fétis, whose subsequent writings on the subject have
recently been reassessed (Christensen, 2019). While Fétis can be credited with the-
orizing and popularizing tonalité, both musicologists noticed the ‘gravitational’
tritone (which Fétis branded a ‘minor fifth’) and both employed such intervals
historiographically, to connote and critique stylistic differences.
2 ‘More and more of our audience are single ticket-buyers, [so] we’ve chosen to
gravitate toward the ‘stories’ behind the music, that aren’t so musicological. It’s our
job as arts administrators to fill in knowledge gaps… [else] we perpetuate the idea
that arts organisations are for the few.’ Aubrey Bergauer (California Symphony),
interview with the author, 23 March 2019.
3 The full list is: ‘pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and
appropriate musical notations’. That texture is regarded as a fundamental dimen-
sion is particularly interesting. It was defined, albeit later (in 1999), in a neutral
way (the ‘different ways sounds are combined’) that arguably made any explicit
reference to harmony seem superfluous. This was also a legacy of the original
National Curriculum, which defined texture in a gradated and polysemous way,
from ‘one sound [or] several sounds’ (Key Stage 1) to ‘melody, accompaniment,
polyphony’ (KS2), and adding ‘solo [textures, and] density of instrumentation’ to
this definition at KS3. Harmony and tonality were again implicit, even if, at the
same level of learning, harmonic rhythm was referenced alongside ‘pace’, i.e. ‘rap-
idity of change [of pace], e.g. of harmony’ (DES, 1992).
4 Across all Key Stages, Music’s current programmes of study begin with the well-
meant but needlessly hierarchical statement: ‘Music is a universal language that
embodies one of the highest forms of creativity.’
5 That is, music pedagogy is susceptible to an unusually high degree of variance and
inequity because it is the responsibility of multiple agents, including classroom
teachers, music co-ordinators, and peripatetic teachers, across multiple arenas, e.g.
whole-class ensemble tuition and other music lessons in the classroom, and, for
those that choose and can afford to progress beyond WCET, one-to-one or group
instrumental tuition in schools and/or at centres run by music hubs and similar
organizations.
6 Two such examples are: ‘Music is tonal when its motion unfolds through time
a particular tone, interval, or chord. It is this tone, interval, or chord, called the
tonic, which identifies the tonality.’ (Travis, 1959, p. 261); ‘One might call tonality
any method of setting up recognizable relationship between musical elements’
(Krenek, 1940, vii).
7 Notably, Clarke’s Piano Trio (1921) would be criticised for lacking ‘consistency of
8 Curtis misidentifies this chord as a G♯-diminished triad beneath A and E (p. 395).
style’ (anonymous Times review, 1922, quoted in Jones, 2004, p. 295).
9 Incidentally, bar 1 also exemplifies the aforementioned argument over how to

label certain second-inversion chords, i.e. Ic, after ABRSM, or V64, accounting
for contrapuntal-harmonic context, in that both are plausible: the second-inver-
sion B flat cannot be labelled VI64, for it chromatically neighbours the subse-
quent chord, a second-inversion A minor that can be labelled V64, as it resolves to
E4-♯3 (the complete progression, disregarding inversions, is given in Example 11.2,
row 1, col. 3).
10 Schulhoff’s aphoristic call in the late 1910s for music to be freed from ‘the imperi-
alism of tonalities and rhythms’ is salient (Black, 1955, p. 231).
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Index
Agawu, K. 2 Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré

Alkan, C.-V. 25–26 (Ravel) 112
Allegro (Čiurlionis) 108 Berger, M. 182, 195
Amis, J. 36 Berlioz, L.-H. 119
Andante (Čiurlionis) 108 Bertoglio, C. 127, 128
Andriušyte, R. 109 ‘Besacas’ Variations VL 265 (Čiurlionis)
Angeleri, A. 128 111–112, 113
A. N. Scriabin House Museum 212 Bix, E. 127, 128–129
Apollon (Čiurlionis) 108 Blavatsky, H. 210, 212–213
Arlecchino, BV 270 (Busoni) 142 Bloch, E. 41
Art of Fugue, The (Bach) 164 Borges, J. L. 153, 162, 169
Assay, M. 89 Bossi, M. E. 142
atonality 166–168, 216 Boulez, P. 11–13, 16
Ave Maria (Clarke) 236–237 Bourgogne (Varèse) 17
Bowlt, J. 121
Bach, J. S. 59; The Art of Fugue 164; Brahms, J. 21–22, 143
Busoni’s early exposure to music bricolage in music 39–41; diatonic-
of 126–129; long term influence chromatic 44–48; microtonal-modal
on Busoni 142–144, 164–165; 48–50; quartal-octatonic 41–44
and metatonality in Busoni’s Bridge, F. 6, 41; diatonic-chromatic
early composition 129–142; bricolage 44–48
Wohltermperierte Klavier 151–152 British early-twentieth-century music
Bagatelles for String Quartet, op. 9 33–51; Arnold Schoenberg and 35–39;
(Webern) 153 Cyril Scott and 6, 33–35, 37; diatonic-
Bagatelle Without Tonality (Liszt) 166 chromatic bricolage in 44–48;
Baker, J. 206–208 emergence of bricolage in 39–41;
Bakst, L. 107 English Musical Renaissance 35, 40;
Ballade No. 2 in F major (Chopin) 19 microtonal-modal bricolage in 48–50;
Ballade No. 4 in F minor (Chopin) 25 quartal-octatonic bricolage in 41–44
Bax, A. 36, 38 Bülow, H. von 127
Beach, A. 75 Busoni, F. 5, 6, 14, 58, 122; Arlecchino,
Beaumont, A. 151, 162–163, 165, 166, BV 270 142; atonality and 166–168;
169, 177 Berceuse Elegiaque 164; Chaconne
Beethoven, L. van 127, 161; Ninth 154–155, 164; childhood works of
Symphony 15 132–133; Contrapunctus XIV 164–165;
Behrend, W. 89 Die Brautwahl 152–153, 161, 170;
Bekker, P. 5, 182 as divisive figure 151; Doktor Faust,
Benois, A. 107 BV 303 142, 154, 158, 161, 162–166;
Berceuse Elegiaque (Busoni) 164 Drei Albumblatter 166, 174–177; early
Index 245
exposure to music of Bach 126–129; chromatic tradition 4, 167
Fantasia Contrappuntistica, BV Chudovsky, V. 108
256 55–57, 142, 158, 163, 164–165; Čiurlionis, M. K. 6, 106–123; art of
Fantasia nach Bach, BV 253 126, 108–110, 121–122; ‘Besacas’ Variations
164; Fantasia sull’opera ‘La forza del VL 265 111–112, 113; biographical
destino,’ op. 1 142; Feda a Bach, Op. 62 information on 106–107; Fughetta
142; freedom in music and 150–154; VL 316 117; Fugue in B flat minor
Fuga a 2 voci in stile libero 130–132; VL 345 114–115; Fugue VL 337 120;
gnosis and 178–179; influence of octatonicism and 117–121; Pater
Bach on 126–144, 164–165; Invenzione Noster VL 260 114; Prelude VL 256
134; Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji and 114; Prelude VL 300 118–119; Prelude
14–15; Klavierubung 166, 177–178; VL 302 119–120; Prelude VL 319
Macchietta medioevali, BV 194 115–116; Prelude VL 331 116; Prelude
139–140; metatonality of 129–142; VL 343 120–121; The Sea 112–113;
Piano Concerto, Op. 39 155–160; ‘Sefaa Esec’ Variations VL 258 112;
pianoforte and 154–162; Prelude three periods of music of 110–111
et Etude en Arpeges 166; Racconti Clark, E. 35
Fantastici, BV 100 135–136, 163; Clarke, R. 6, 40, 239–240; Ave Maria
Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music 236–237; quartal-octatonic bricolage
129, 150, 178; Sonata No. 2 in E 41–44; Sonata for Viola and Piano
minor 25; Sonatina in Diem Nativitatis 234–236; suffering of 230; ‘The Seal
Christi MCMXVII 166, 173–174; Man’ 62, 68–74
Sonatina seconda 160–161, 166–170; Clementi, M. 127
Sonatina Super Carmen 166; Song of Cobbett, W. 234
Hiawatha, Op. 30 152–153; spiritual Cohn, R. 188
transcendence and 179; study with Coleridge-Taylor, S. 152–153
Wilhelm Mayer 137–138; Toccata 161, Collins, S. 39
166, 170–173; transcendence and later Common Practice 2–4, 54, 56–57
piano works 150–179; Variationen und Concerto for Orchestra: Completion
Fuge in freier Form über Fr. Chopin’s and Realisation of Busoni’s Fantasia
C moll Präludium 140–141; Violin Contrappuntistica 165
Sonata No. 2, BV 244 142; widening Contrapunctus XIV (Busoni) 164–165
gap in music and 153–154 Corelli, A. 127
Butler, C. 1 Couling, D. 152, 168
Cramer, J. B. 127
Cage, J. 12 Creation of the World (Čiurlionis) 110
Carl Nielsen and the Idea of Modernism creativity, compositional 7–9,
91 11; composer’s view of 15–16;
Carl Nielsen: Symphonist 91 compositional pull of tonality
Carter, E. 15 in 30–31; through its composers
Cavern of Stellenfoll, The 163 11–15; through its music 16–30;
Cello Sonata (Clarke) 44–48 understandings of tonality in
Cello Sonata (Foulds) 48–50 education on 232–234
Cesi, B. 128 Crispin, J. 162, 178
Chaconne (Busoni) 154–155, 164 Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music 234
Chamber Symphony No. 1 (Schoenberg)
42 Dam, A. E. 90
Chatterley, A. 58 Das Rheingold (Wagner) 17
Chochoły-Planty nocą (Wyspiański) 109 Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin
Chopin, F. 15, 19–20, 140; Ballade No. (Schreker) 182, 184, 187–188
2 in F major 19; Ballade No. 4 in F Daunoravičiene, G. 107
minor 25; contemporary views on Deaux Arabesques (Debussy) 143
work of 28–29; Melodia 27–28 Debussy, C. 119, 122, 143
246 Index
Dent, E. J. 150, 163, 169–170 Five Orchestral Pieces (Schoenberg) 36
Dernova, V. 207–209, 214–215 Fjeldsøe, M. 87, 90, 93, 97
Der Ring des Nibelungen (Wagner) 17 Fleet, P. 129–130
Der Schatzgräber (Schreker) 182, 186, Forte, A. 5
187–188 Foulds, J. 6, 37–38, 39, 41; microtonal-
diatonic-chromatic bricolage 44–48 modal bricolage 48–50
diatonic refraction see Schreker, F. Fourth Symphony (Nielsen) 91, 94–97
Diatonic Study (Scott) 33–34, 39 Franklin, P. 182, 197
Die Brautwahl (Busoni) 152–153, 161, Friedman, M. L. 119
170 Fuga a 2 voci in stile libero (Busoni)
Die Ferne Klang (Schreker) 182, 185–186 130–132
Die Gezeichneten (Schreker) 182, 186, Fughetta VL 316 (Čiurlionis) 117
187–188; Klangmusik in 188–194 Fugue in B flat minor VL 345 (Čiurlionis)
Die Walküre (Wagner) 27 114–115
Dobuzhinskii, M. 107, 122–123 Fugue VL 337 (Čiurlionis) 120
Doktor Faust, BV 303 (Busoni) 142, 154,
158, 161, 162–166 Gade, N. 85
Drei Albumblatter (Busoni) 166, 174–177 Galeev, B. 213
Drei Klavierstucke (Schoenberg) 167 Gawboy, A. 214
Driesch, H. 87 Gazzetta Musicale Milanese 127
Dromey, C. 41 gnosis 178–179
Duo for Violin and Cello (Schulhoff) Gostautas, S. 108
237–238 Grainger, P. 6, 37, 62; ‘Pastoral’ for
Dussek, J. L. 127 piano 62–68
Dutilleux, H. 12 Grand Duo Concertante (Alkan) 25–26
Greenfeld, L. 122
Eaglefield Hull, A. 38–39 Grimley, D. M. 91, 93
Elektra (Strauss) 16 Grohmann, W. 108
Eller, H. 122 Guenther, R. 209
English Musical Renaissance 35, 40 Gurrelieder (Schoenberg) 15, 16, 17
Entartung (Nordau) 85, 87
Etudes (Liszt) 152 Habert, J. E. 135
Evans, E. 46–47 Hadow, W. H. 28
harmonic chromaticism 16
Fairy Tale (Čiurlionis) 109 Harmony for a New Miillennium: An
Fanning, D. 88, 89, 90, 97 Introduction to Metatonal Music 5
Fantasia Contrappuntistica, BV 256 Harper-Scott, J. P. E. 102
(Busoni) 55–57, 126, 142, 158, 163, Harrison, D. 6, 62, 183
164–165 Hawking 153–154
Fantasia nach Bach, BV 253 (Busoni) Haydn, F. J. 127
126, 164 Heckert, D. 36
Fantasia sull’opera ‘La forza del destino,’ Heseltine, P. 36
op. 1 (Busoni) 142 hexatonics 189–195
Farben (Schoenberg) 18 Hillier, B. 57, 82
Fauré 112 History and Theory of Vitalism, The 87
Faust Symphony, A (Liszt) 21 Hoffmann, E. T. A. 152
Feda a Bach, Op. 62 (Busoni) 142 Holbrooke, J. 35
Fenaroli, F. 127 Holm-Hudson, K. 107
Field, J. 28 Hot Music (Schulhoff) 238–239
Fifth Symphony (Nielsen) 94–95, 97–101 Howe, M. 6, 62; Sand 75–81
Finale (Fugue) (Čiurlionis) 108 Hughes, M. 35
First Symphony (Nielsen) 91, 92–93 Hull, A. E. 37
Fischhof, J. 129 Husserl, E. 58
Index 247
Ibsen, H. 87 Leipzig School 85
Immovable Do (Grainger) 62 leitmotif 87
Impetuoso-poco agitato (Clarke) 41 Lerdahl, F. 58, 187
impressionism 86 Le Sacre du Printemps (Stravinsky) 15,
In a Nutshell (Grainger) 37, 62 17, 26, 27
Intermezzo in B minor (Brahms) 21–22 Leskiewicz, S. 112
Invenzione (Busoni) 134 Lévi-Strauss, C. 39–40, 47
Is the Symphony Dead? 31 L’histoire du soldat (Stravinsky) 35
Ivanov, V. 121, 209 Library of Babel (Borges) 169
Ives, C. 41 Liszt, F. 17–18, 21, 23, 151; Bagatelle
Without Tonality 166; Etudes 152;
Jackendoff, R. 58 Mephisto Waltzes 24, 166
Jarnach, P. 162 l’Oiseau de feu (Stravinsky) 15
Jensen, J. 90 Loos, A. 8–9
Johnson, B. 161 Lucca of Milan 127
Jurjāns, A. 122
Macchietta medioevali, BV 194 (Busoni)
Kammersymphonie (Schreker) 195–202; 139–140
development section 200; opening Mahler, G. 16, 100–101, 143; Symphony
of 197–199; recapitulation and coda No. 7 24; Symphony No. 10 21
200–201; two-dimensional form of Makovsky, K. 107
195–196 Marlowe, C. 162
Kammersymphonie No. 1 in E major Martini, G. B. 127
(Schoenberg) 23–24 Martini, Padre 128
Kandinsky, N. 108 Martucci, G. 142
Kant, I. 87 Marx, A. B. 214
Katz, A. 238 Masefield, J. 62, 68
Keller, H. 36 Mattei, S. 127
Kjerulf, A. 89 Matthews, C. 15
Klangmusik 188–194 Matthews, D. 15
Klavierubung (Busoni) 166, 177–178 Mayer, W. 137–138
Kleppinger, S. 5 Mayr, G. S. 128
Knight Prelude, The (Čiurlionis) 109 Melodia (Chopin) 27–28
Knockaert, Y. 5–6 Mengelberg, W. 151
Knudsen, H. 90 Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn (Fauré) 112
Knussen, O. 15 Mephisto Waltzes (Liszt) 24, 166
Knyt, E. 151 Metatonal Closure 3
Kogan, G. 150, 154 metatonality 6–7; of Busoni 129–142; of
Krebs, H. 102 Schreker 184
Krebs, W. 184 metatonal music 5–6; British (see British
Kreek, C. 122 early-twentieth-century music);
Krzyzanowski, K. 108 Fantasia Contrappuntistica 55–57;
Kučinskas, D. 107, 120 revealing the architecture of 81–82;
Kymantaite, S. 106–107 space and structure in (see space
and structure in metatonal musics);
Ladson-Billings, G. 8 Temporal Intentionality Graphs
Lambert, C. 38 (TIG) 57, 58–82
Landsberg, L. 128 Metodo teorico-pratico per lo studio
Landsbergis, V. 107, 117 dell’organo 142
Landscape (Čiurlionis) 109 Mettinger, T. 163
Lark Ascending, The (Vaughan microtonal-modal bricolage 48–50
Williams) 43 Min Fynske Barndom (Nielsen) 86, 89
L’arte antica e moderna 127 Minuet in G 59, 59–60
248 Index
Młoda Polska [Young Poland] movement octatonicism 117–121
108, 109, 122 Ogdon, J. 15
Modern Harmony: Its Explanation and Oginski, M. 106
Application 38 Ornstein, L. 6; Sonata for violin and
Monahan, S. 100 piano 29–30; Sonata No. 1 for cello
Morel, B. A. 86–87 and piano 30
Moroney, D. 165 Ossa Arida (Liszt) 23
Moscheles, I. 28
Mozart, W. A. 127 Pace, I. 154
Murdock, M. 232 pan-tonal music 5
music: absence of tonality from public Parsell, B. 232
discourse about music 229–233; with ‘Pastoral’ for piano (Grainger) 62–68
versus after tonality 1–4; broadcasters’ Pater Noster VL 260 (Čiurlionis) 114
decision-making about 230–231; Pelleas und Melisande (Schoenberg) 20,
limitations of discussions of tonality 26–27
in 231–232; new term for turn of the Penderecki, K. 29
twentieth century 4–7; orthodoxy and Perle, G. 117–118, 166–167
freedom in 150–154; value of mining Pērle, R. 110
the gap in continuity of 7–9 Petzold, C. 59
Musical Standard, The 36 Philosophy of Modernism-Its Connection
Music Ho! 38 with Music, The 37
Music & Letters 36 Piano Concerto, Op. 39 (Busoni)
Music Theory Examples by Women 232 155–160
Music To-Day 37–38 Piano Trio (Chopin) 20
Mysterium (Scriabin) 210 Pierluigi da Palestrina, G. 127
mystic chord 25 pitch-centric music 5
Politiken 89
Nation and Classical Music 35 Pople, A. 5, 237–238
neo-tonal/neoclassical music 5, 183 post-tonal music 5, 49
Neuwirth, G. 195 Povilionine, R. 107
New Age, The 15 Prelude et Etude en Arpeges (Busoni)
‘New English Music’ 63 166
Newman, R. 35 Prelude in C Minor, Op. 28 (Chopin)
New Theory On Time Indicates Present 140
and Future Exist Simultaneously, A 14 Prelude Op. 74 (Skryabin) 118
Nielsen, C. 6, 85–103; Fifth Symphony Prelude VL 256 (Čiurlionis) 114
94–95, 97–101; First Symphony Prelude VL 300 (Čiurlionis) 118–119
91, 92–93; Fourth Symphony 91, Prelude VL 302 (Čiurlionis) 119–120
92, 94–97; on harmonic series in Prelude VL 319 (Čiurlionis) 115–116
his compositional process 90–91; Prelude VL 331 (Čiurlionis) 116
imperfect authentic cadence (IAC) Prelude VL 343 (Čiurlionis) 120–121
used by 95–97; Min Fynske Barndom Prometheus (Scriabin) 210–211, 214
86, 89; ‘Musical Problems’ 88–89; Purday, C. H. 231
Sixth Symphony 101–102; Symphonic Puritan tunes 48–49
Suite for piano 92, 94; Third
Symphony 88, 92, 94–95; on Wagner quartal harmony 23–24
85, 87–88 quartal-octatonic bricolage 41–44
Nietzsche, F. 87, 122 Quattro Pezzi Sacri (Verdi) 119
Nocturne in B major 19
Nocturne: Warsaw Droshky on a Rainy Rabe, J. 90–91
Night (Pankiewicz) 110 Racconti Fantastici, BV 100 (Busoni)
Nordau, M. S. 85, 87–88, 102–103 135–136, 163
Nunokawa, Y. 121 Raigardas (Čiurlionis) 109
Index 249
Rannit, A. 108 Klangmusik and 188–194; neo-
Ravel, M. 15, 122; Berceuse sur le nom de Riemannian theory and 186–187;
Gabriel Fauré 112 sound, space, and speed used by
Rayborn, T. 63 182–188
realism 86; of Čiurlionis’ art 108 Schulhoff, E. 6, 230, 237–240
Reger, M. 143 Scott, C. 6, 33–35; Diatonic Study 33–34,
Reinecke, C. 106 39, 40; The Philosophy of Modernism-
Remy, M. 170 Its Connection with Music 37; on
Rémy, W. A. 138 Schoenberg 37–38
ressentiment 122 Scott, J. 58
Rex (Čiurlionis) 108 Scriabin, A. 6, 25, 47, 205–225; negation
Reynolds, A. 86 (and creation) of desire interpreted by
Rihm, W. 183 206–211; performance implications
Riley, M. 35 of denying denied desire 224–225;
Rimsky-Korsakov 118, 122 philosophical influences on 205–206,
Rite of Spring (Stravinsky) 168 210; progression from tonality to
Rochberg, G. 29 atonality 215–216; transition from
romanticism 87 chord-based desire to key-based desire
Roosevelt, E. 75 217–224; two forms of desire and their
Ross, A. 12 harmonic analogues interpreted by
Rossini, G. 127 211–216
Roussel, A. 15 Scriabin’s Harmony 209
Ruszczyc, F. 108 Sea, The (Čiurlionis) 112–113
‘Seal Man, The’ 62, 68–74
Sabaneev, L. 209, 210–211 Searle, H. 36
Šalkauskis, S. 121 Seascape (Čiurlionis) 109
Salome (Strauss) 16, 27 Secret Doctrine 212
Salzer, F. 238 ‘Sefaa Esec’ Variations VL 258
Sand (Howe) 75–81 (Čiurlionis) 112
Sandke, R. 5–6 Shostakovich, D. 12
Savage Mind, The 39 Sibelius, J. 100–101
Schenker, H. 56, 91, 93, 95–97 Signale fur die Musikalische Welt 152
Scherzo (Čiurlionis) 108 Simpson, R. 91, 92–93
Schmalfeldt, J. 91 Sinfonia Espansiva 90, 93, 102
Schnabel, A. 151 Sinfonia Semplice (Nielsen) 102
Schoenberg, A. 5, 12, 13, 152; British Sitsky, L. 163, 165, 177, 178
early-twentieth-century music and Sixth Symphony (Nielsen) 101–102
35–39; Chamber Symphony No. Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music 129,
1 42; criticisms of 36–39; Drei 150, 178
Klavierstucke 167; Eaglefield Hull Skryabin 118, 119, 122
on 38–39; Five Orchestral Pieces 36; Small, C. 55
Foulds on 37–38; Gurrelieder 15, 16, Smith, A. D. 35
17; Kammersymphonie No. 1 in E Smith, K. 5
major 23–24; on Liszt 151; Pelleas und Solovyov, V. 210
Melisande 20, 26–27; Scott on 37–38; Somov, K. 107
Variations for Orchestra 16, 17–18; Sonata for Viola and Piano (Clarke)
Verklärte Nacht 17, 35 234–236
Schopenhauer, A. 87, 206, 213 Sonata for violin and piano (Ornstein)
Schreker, F. 6, 182–202; Das Spielwerk 29–30
und die Prinzessin 182, 184; Der Sonata No. 1 for cello and piano
Schatzgräber 182, 186; Die Ferne (Ornstein) 30
Klang 182, 185–186; Die Gezeichneten Sonata of the Sea (Čiurlionis) 110
182; Kammersymphonie 195–202; Sonata of the Summer (Čiurlionis) 108
250 Index
Sonata of the Sun (Čiurlionis) 110 Tobias, R. 122
Sonatina in Diem Nativitatis Christi Toccata (Busoni) 161, 166, 170–173
MCMXVII (Busoni) 166, 173–174 Tolstoy, L. 87
Sonatina seconda (Busoni) 160–161, tonal centre 20–21
166–170 Tovey, D. F. 165
Sonatina Super Carmen (Busoni) 166 Triester Zeitung 129
Song of Hiawatha, Op. 30 (Busoni) Triik, N. 110
152–153 Tristan und Isolde (Wagner) 17
Sorabji, K. S. 14–15, 166 tritones 207–209
Sorrow (Čiurlionis) 110 Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé
space and structure in metatonal musics (Ravel) 15
54–86; Fantasia Contrappuntistica two-dimensional form 195–196
55–57; ‘Pastoral’ for piano 62–68; Tymoczko, D. 4
Sand 75–81; Temporal Intentionality
Graphs (TIG) 57, 58–82; ‘The Seal Vallotti, F. 127
Man’ 62, 68–74 Vande Moortele, S. 91, 195
Space is the Machine 57 van der Linden, B. 38
Sparks (Čiurlionis) 110 Van Dieren, B. 30, 150, 160–161
Species Counterpoint 4 Vanechkina, I. R. 213
Sprague Coolidge, E. 41, 44 Varese, E. 151
Stabrowski, K. 108 Variationen und Fuge in freier Form
Stars and Sand (Howe) 62 über Fr. Chopin’s C moll Präludium
Staškevičius, D. 110, 117 (Busoni) 140–141
Stein, D. 68 Variations for Orchestra (Schoenberg)
Steiner, G. 179 16, 17–18
Stevenson, R. 48, 163 Vaughn Williams, R. 35, 36, 38; The
Stokowski, L. 75, 78 Lark Ascending 42
Stradling, R. 35 Verdi, G. 119, 127
Strauss, R. 16, 27 Verklärte Nacht (Schoenberg) 17–18, 35
Stravinsky, I. 122; Le Sacre du Printemps Via Crucis (Liszt) 17
15, 17, 26, 27; L’histoire du soldat 35; Vial, F-G. 187
Rite of Spring 168 Violin Sonata No. 2, BV 244 (Busoni)
Stuckenschmidt, H. 167 142
symbolism 86, 87 vitalism see Nielsen, C.
Symphonic Suite for piano (Nielsen) 92, Vītols, J. 122
94 voice-leading parsimony 187
Symphonie Fantastique (Berlioz) 119 Vydunas, W. S. 121
Symphonisk Suite (Nielsen) 93
Symphony No. 7 (Mahler) 24 Wagner, R. 17, 127; ‘Brünnhilde’ motif
Symphony No. 10 (Mahler) 21 of 88–89; Die Walküre 27; Nielsen’s
Sztuka art group 108–109 critique of 85; romanticism of 87
Warlock, Peter 15
Tartini, G. 127, 129 Webern, A. 153
Taruskin, R. 118, 205, 206, 207, 209, 211 Wellesz, E. 36
Temporal Intentionality Graphs (TIG) Well Tempered Clavier, The 127, 135, 139
57, 58–82; ‘Pastoral’ for piano 62–68; Welsh, M. 48
Sand 75–81; ‘The Seal Man’ 62, 68–74 Western Classical Tradition 7–8
terrorism 12–13 Whitesell, L. 230
Tesla, N. 167 Widok z okna pracowni artysty
third-space 4 (Wyspiański) 109
Third Symphony (Nielsen) 88, 92, 94–95 Wilde, O. 87
Thoene, H. 164 Wilson, L. 162
Time Is a River without Banks 14 Winter (Čiurlionis) 110
Index 251
Wohltemperierte Klavier (Bach) 151–152 Wynter, S. 8
Wood, H. 35 Wyspiański, S. 108–109
Woolf, C. 164
World as Will and Representation, The Xenakis, I. 153
213
Wright, Kenneth A. 35 Zubovas, R. 107

Musics With and After Tonality

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Musics With and After Tonality

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Musics with and after Tonality

Paul Fleet is a Senior Lecturer in Music at Newcastle University, UK with

Compositional Process in Elliott Carter’s String Quartets

The Music of Pavel Haas: Analytical and Hermeneutical Studies

Concepts of Time in Post-​War European Music

Heitor Villa-​Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/​

Note for the Reader

Under each title and author is a selection of listening that is recommended

List of music analysis abbreviations  x

1 Mining the gap of musics with and after tonality  1

2 Mining the gap: what gap?  11

3 Savage minds in British early-​twentieth-​century music  33

4 Space and structure in metatonal musics  54

6 The cautious experiments of M. K. Čiurlionis

7 J. S. Bach and metatonality in the early piano pieces of

8 Ferruccio Busoni –​mirror and enigma: transcendence

9 Diatonic refraction through metatonal spaces  182

10 Transformed desire: Scriabin’s transition away from

11 Musicology, mediation, metatonality: rethinking the

Twelve-​Tone Technique (Schoenberg, 1975)

Set Theory (Forte, 1977)

Sonata Form Theory (Hepokoski & Darcy, 2006)

Chris Dromey (Middlesex University, UK) wrote The Pierrot Ensembles:

Example 1.1 A simple Common Practice three-​chord perfect cadence in a generic

Example 1.2 A simple metatonal three-​chord closure in a generic orchestration of

Question: what is the gap that can be mined?

Musical creativity through its composers

A composer’s view of such musical creativity

Compositional creativity through its music

Example 2.1 From Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4.

Example 2.2 From Liszt: Via Crucis.

Example 2.3 From Schoenberg: Farben (Funf Orchesterstücke, Op. 16 –​iii).

Example 2.4 From Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4.

Example 2.7 From Chopin: Piano Trio, Op. 8 (1829) –​ii.

The following passage, which opens Schoenberg’s symphonic poem Pelleas

Example 2.8 From Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande.

Example 2.9 From Liszt: A Faust Symphony.

Example 2.10 From Mahler: Symphony No. 10 (i).

Example 2.12 From Liszt: Ossa Arida.

The introduction of quartal harmony represented an enhancement of –​if not

Example 2.13 From Schoenberg: Kammersymphonie No. 1 in E major, Op. 9.

Example 2.14 From Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (i).

Example 2.15 From Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 3.

Example 2.17 Scriabin: ‘mystic chord’.

Example 2.21 From Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps, Part II.

Example 2.22 From Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande.

Written shortly after Richard Strauss’s ground-​breaking opera Salome, the

Example 2.23 From Wagner: Die Walküre.

which might be seen as having its origins in Chopin’s song Melodia,

Example 2.24 From Chopin: Melodia.

The compositional ‘pull’ of tonality

Debates surrounding the emergence of middlebrow and anti-​intellectual

Example 3.1 From Cyril Scott, Diatonic Study, bb.1–​6.

Arnold Schoenberg, mathematician

I instantly developed an ice-​cold antipathy to Schönberg and his whole

this supposed prerequisite for greatness on the part of the academically-​

The value of Schönberg’s contribution to the progress of music is that in

is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks; but, unlike the

Clarke’s quartal-​octatonic bricolage

Formal Thematic area Rehearsal Pitch content Pitch content

Introduction 1-​[1]‌ E dorian (va), modal & quartal

Quartal harmony is very much at home in twentieth-​century music, one of the

Concepts of Time in Post-War European Music

Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

List of music analysis abbreviations x

1 Mining the gap of musics with and after tonality 1

2 Mining the gap: what gap? 11

3 Savage minds in British early-twentieth-century music 33

4 Space and structure in metatonal musics 54

8 Ferruccio Busoni –mirror and enigma: transcendence

9 Diatonic refraction through metatonal spaces 182

Twelve-Tone Technique (Schoenberg, 1975)

Example 1.1 A simple Common Practice three-chord perfect cadence in a generic

Example 1.2 A simple metatonal three-chord closure in a generic orchestration of

Example 2.1 From Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4.

Example 2.2 From Liszt: Via Crucis.

Example 2.3 From Schoenberg: Farben (Funf Orchesterstücke, Op. 16 –iii).

Example 2.4 From Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4.

Example 2.7 From Chopin: Piano Trio, Op. 8 (1829) –ii.

Example 2.8 From Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande.

Example 2.9 From Liszt: A Faust Symphony.

Example 2.10 From Mahler: Symphony No. 10 (i).

Example 2.12 From Liszt: Ossa Arida.

The introduction of quartal harmony represented an enhancement of –if not

Example 2.13 From Schoenberg: Kammersymphonie No. 1 in E major, Op. 9.

Example 2.14 From Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (i).

Example 2.15 From Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 3.

Example 2.17 Scriabin: ‘mystic chord’.

Example 2.21 From Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps, Part II.

Example 2.22 From Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande.

Written shortly after Richard Strauss’s ground-breaking opera Salome, the

Example 2.23 From Wagner: Die Walküre.

Example 2.24 From Chopin: Melodia.

Debates surrounding the emergence of middlebrow and anti-intellectual

Example 3.1 From Cyril Scott, Diatonic Study, bb.1–6.

I instantly developed an ice-cold antipathy to Schönberg and his whole

this supposed prerequisite for greatness on the part of the academically-

Clarke’s quartal-octatonic bricolage

Introduction 1-[1]‌ E dorian (va), modal & quartal

Quartal harmony is very much at home in twentieth-century music, one of the

Example 3.3 From Rebecca Clarke, Viola Sonata, first movement, bb.1–2.

Example 3.4 From Rebecca Clarke, Viola Sonata, first movement [9]‌.

Bridge’s diatonic-chromatic bricolage

neither neo-Classical pastiche nor the complete chromaticism of seri-

Huss identifies four characteristics of Bridge’s pre-Piano Sonata style in the

Example 3.5 From Frank Bridge, Cello Sonata, second movement [5]‌.

Foulds’s microtonal-modal bricolage

Example 4.1 Ferruccio Busoni, ‘Plan of Works for the Fantasia Contrappuntistica’,

Example 4.4 Temporal Intentionality Graph of an imagined piece.

Example 4.5 Bars 1–4 from ‘Pastoral’.

Example 4.11 {e} at bars 57–58 (piano and vocal line).

Example 4.15 {e} at bars 60-63 (flute).

It is a well-known fact that Carl Nielsen was an outspoken critic of Wagner’s

Example 5.1 Wagner’s ‘Brünnhilde’ motif.

Example 5.2 Diagram of the harmonic series included in Nielsen’s letter, dated 18

This is an example of the antagonistic tonal agent –the flattened 7th of

Example 5.3a Nielsen, Symphonic Suite, Op. 8–ii, bars 1–4.

Example 5.3b Nielsen, Symphonic Suite, Op. 8–ii, closing bars.

Example 5.4 Nielsen, Fourth Symphony (‘The Inextinguishable’), Op. 29, Finale,

Before the cadence is reached, the seventh presents itself as an energy-gen-

Example 5.5a Schenkerian reduction of Nielsen, Fourth Symphony (‘The

Example 5.5b Schenkerian reduction of Nielsen, Fourth Symphony (‘The

Example 5.5c Schenkerian foreground reduction of Nielsen, Fourth Symphony (‘The

Example 5.5d Schenkerian middleground reduction of Nielsen, Fourth Symphony

Example 5.6 Nielsen, Symphony No. 5, Op. 50, bars 1–40.

The opening sonata-form movement of Nielsen’s last symphony reproduces

Example 5.7 The ‘collapse chord’ in Nielsen’s Sixth Symphony (Sinfonia Semplice),

It is possible here to identify an ironic response to the nineteenth-century

Example 6.1 ‘Besacas’ Variations VL 265: theme.

Example 6.2 ‘Besacas’ Variations VL 265: variation 5, theme in bass in retrograde

Example 6.3 ‘Besacas’ Variations VL 265: successive transpositions of the theme for

Example 6.4 ‘Sefaa Esec’ Variations VL 258 (1904) –theme.

Example 6.5 The Sea VL 317(b) (1908), bb. 11–12.

Example 6.6 VL 325, bars 4–6.

Example 6.7 VL 325, bar 12.

Example 6.8 ‘Sefaa Esec’ Variations VL 258, variation 4 (ed. Landsbergis), bar 1

Example 6.9 ‘Besacas Variations’ VL 265, bars 14–15.

Example 6.10 Prelude VL 256, concluding bars 25–31.

Example 6.11 ‘Pater Noster’ VL 260 (1904), bars 1–8.

Example 6.12 Fugue in B flat minor VL 345: theme, bars 1–4.

Example 6.13 Fugue in B flat minor VL 345, bars 39–42: C major episode.