The Mirror of Tonality: Transitional Features of Nineteenth-Century Harmony

Author(s): Lawrence Kramer

Reviewed work(s):
Source: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Spring, 1981), pp. 191-208
Published by: University of California Press
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The Mirror of Tonality:
Transitional Features
Harmony
Nineteenth-Century
LAWRENCE KRAMER
The transition from Classical to Romantic
harmony, and ultimately to atonality, is still
commonly described from the point of view
that Schoenbergdeveloped to establish the his-
torical inevitability of his own music. Seen in
this way, the force of harmonic change in the
nineteenth century was a gradual heightening
of chromaticism that eventually obscured
tonal functions so much that tonality "broke
down." As Schoenberg himself put it in a fa-
mous sentence, "The overwhelming multitude
of dissonances [could] not be counterbalanced
any more by occasional returns to such tonic
triads as represent a key."'
Schoenberg clearly felt that this situation
justified, even demanded, his own harmonic
style, which tended toward total chromaticism
long before he developed the twelve-tone
'Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (New
York, 1975), p. 86.
0148-2076/81/010191+18$00.50 @ 1981 by The Regents of
the University of California.
of
system. His earliest atonal pieces, the finale of
the Second String Quartet and Das Buch
der hdngenden Gdrten, quote texts from
Stefan George that intimate the discovery of
something unknown, miraculous, perhaps
terrifying-all of which the music evokes
hauntingly. Yet the rhetoric of discovery is de-
ceptive; the truth is that Schoenbergwas inter-
preting, not discovering, atonality as chromatic
saturation. At the same time, he was rejecting
the other interpretive prospects opened by
composers like Debussy, Busoni, and Skriabin.
Schoenberg's exclusive claim on the territory
of early atonality has gradually evaporated as
the cultural identity of his style has grown
clearer: a "classical" expressionism as firmly
rooted in turn-of-the-century Vienna as clas-
sical psychoanalysis.2 His vision of tonality in
collapse has been more stubborn.
2See Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Sidcle Vienna (New York,
1980), and Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgen-
stein's Vienna (New York, 1973).
191
 19TH
CENTURY
Persistent ideas endure for a reason, and
MUSIC this one is no exception. Though most varieties
of nineteenth-century chromaticism can still
be heard as harmonically directed, and though
a good many tonally unstable pieces are not ex-
cessively chromatic, the myth of creeping
chromaticism is clear as an explanatoryprinci-
ple and dramatically appealing as a vision of
musical entropy. It helps make sense of a body
of music in which the structural assumptions
are still doubtful and the line of historical de-
velopment still indefinite. The point can be
made emphatically by referring back to the
previous period of major harmonic change, the
mid-eighteenth century. Without pretending to
exhaustiveness, one can accept with confi-
dence Charles Rosen's characterization of the
transition from Baroqueto Classical harmony:
the Classical style emerged from the strong
polarization of tonic and dominant and an ele-
vation of dissonance from the level of "an un-
resolved interval to an unresolved chord ... to
an unresolved key."3 Unfortunately, the
movement from Classical to post-Classical
harmony is more intractable. The common ex-
perience is that any description of nineteenth-
century music based on the ascendancy of
specific harmonic features is doomed to mis-
representation.
One possible response to this problem is to
convert the problem itself into a constitutive
principle: to see nineteenth-century harmony
as a welter of contingency, idiosyncrasy, and
limited intelligibility. Rose Rosengard Subot-
nik has argued for an understanding along
those lines in this journal and elsewhere.4 The
trouble with this view is that it presents the
supposed eccentricity of nineteenth-century
music as a deviation from the conventions of
Classical tonality, which are privileged by
being called "quasi-logical." Nineteenth-cen-
tury music thus takes on a curious secon-
3The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (New
York, 1972), pp. 26, 120.
4"The Historical Structure: Adorno's 'French' Model for
the Criticism of Nineteenth-Century Music," this journal
2 (1978), 36-60; "The Cultural Message of Musical Se-
miology: Some Thoughts on Music, Language, and Criti-
cism since the Enlightenment," Critical Inquiry 4 (1978),
741-68; "Tonality, Autonomy, and Competence in Post-
Classical Music," Critical Inquiry 6 (1979), 153-63.
192
dary status, made possible by forgetting that
any musical convention sounds logical if it is
accepted. Both the Classical and Romantic
styles make octave-doubling sound logical;
Schoenberg's early twelve-tone style makes it
sound eccentric. Any change of style implies a
change of norms, as Subotnik herself suggests
when she argues that "listener competence" in
Romantic harmony is fundamentally different
from its Classical counterpart.5 What a
Classical piece presents as a deviation may ap-
pear in a Romantic piece as perfectly nor-
mative--"quasi-logical." All that can follow
from obscuring the autonomy of separatestyles
is another myth of entropy.
A more fruitful approach, present for in-
stance in Jim Samson's recent book on early
atonality, is to emphasize the evolutionary role
of "extended tonality" in nineteenth-century
music.6 Ironically, "extended tonality" is a
term employed by Schoenberghimself to mean
the assimilation of remote or indistinct har-
monies to a given tonal region.7It is possible to
argue that Romantic harmony is moved by an
insistent impulse to extend tonality in this
sense. This is a thrust that both affirms the
structural force of tonal centers and at the
same time places them under considerable
stress. Some version of key-feeling remains
paramount, but it is called on to counterbal-
ance an impulse toward harmonic dispersion
that can become fantastically extravagant.
What results is a continual testing of the
boundaries of tonality. And this creates a
steady, undirected inner tension that tends to
replace the more linear pattern of tensions in
Classical works, where tonalities move
dramatically and sometimes dissolve, but
where tonality itself is firm.8
Extended tonality is not limited to chro-
maticism and it does not necessarily lead to-
nality to "break down"; it has proved to be a
durable basis for most twentieth-century tonal
music. Yet it may well suggest the severance of
S"Tonality, Autonomy, and Competence," p. 158.
6Music in Transition (New York, 1977).
7Structural Functions of Harmony, ed. Leonard Stein (New
York, 1969), p. 76.
sSee my "The Shape of Post-Classical Music," Critical In-
quiry 6 (1979), 144-52.
"extensional" patterns from their tonal
ground, and so lead organically to various
forms of atonality. By recognizing harmonic
extension as a primarysource of form, and even
of closure, we can interpret the discontinuities
so central to Romantic works not only as con-
gruent with intelligible structure, but as basic
to it. We can also clarify the special problem of
describing post-Classical harmony. Where an
eighteenth-century piece concentrates on the
articulation of an integral tonal structure,
its nineteenth-century counterpart is likely
to exploit the interplay between tonal
structures-removing, in the process, the need
for formal and stylistic consistency.
I
In this essay, I would like to explore the
transitional force of extended tonality in post-
Classical music, and at the same time to em-
phasize the analysis of extended harmony as a
basis for interpreting structure. Since this har-
monic style involves the continual blurring
and redefinition of tonal centers in the music,
it can be studied most fruitfully with the help
of a phenomenological concept designed to ac-
count for just such a creative indefiniteness:
the concept of horizon. As defined by Husserl,
the horizon of an object is the immediate con-
text within which the object has shape and
meaning. Itself indefinite, the horizon em-
braces everything outside of the object which
renders the object intelligible, and thereby acts
as the source of the object's definition. The ob-
ject can only appear, only be apprehended,
against its horizon. If, for example, I look at
some apples on a table, the apples do not appear
in and of themselves, but "partly pervaded,
partly girt round by" their horizon: a dim sense
of the objects around them and an indefinite
fringe of non-specific perception.9 Horizon,
however, is only metaphorically spatial: if I
gaze at the apples with a sense of their sensu-
ous roundness and fullness, the horizon of my
experience embraces a dim sense of other such
gazes, together with an assortment of other
things from greeting-card covers to Cezanne
9Edmund Husserl, Ideas, trans. W. R. Boyce (London,
1952), p. 102.
still lifes. Applied to tonal music, the concept LAWRENCE
KRAMER
of horizon discloses a set of relationships that The Mirror
clarify nineteenth-century harmony both in it- of Tonality
self and in its relationship to Classical practice.
Consider a representative moment from a
Classical work; here, for instance, is the first
measure of Beethoven's String Quartet, op. 18,
no. 5 (ex. 1):
Allegro
" sfp
Example1
In this measure, two "objects" are straightfor-
wardly presented, both of them tonic triads of
A major.The horizon of this presentation is the
A-major tonality of the movement as a whole.
The opening triads appear as tonic chords of
the tonic key; they embody the center of refer-
ence for a large-scale harmonic process. Later,
when E-majortriads appear. they will be pre-
sented as dominant chords and situated in the
horizon of E major within the tonic A major.
Similar relationships will obtain everywhere in
the movement: tonality, in this Classical
piece, will always appear both as presentation
and as horizon. The dramatic and expressive
design of the harmony will always mirror the
tonal identity of the music.
In contrast to this, consider an equally rep-
resentative moment, mm. 1-5 of an unpreten-
tious little piece from Schumann's Album ffir
die Jugend, "Thema" (ex. 2). The horizon of
this passage is obviously C major, seemingly a
straightforward tonic; the music's presenta-
tion, however, is not at all as obvious.
Except in the vicinity of m. 4, the harmony
here leads unambiguously from tonic to domi-
nant through a diminished triad, then from
dominant to tonic through an augmented triad.
From the perspective of the horizon, this pat-
tern is the product of passing dissonance, but
Schumann's phrase structure prevents it from
sounding that way. The tonic and dominant
chords are tentative, featureless: they all occur
193
 19TH Langsam.Mit inniger Empfindung
CENTURY
-F1 M----
M. 1.
MUSIC
P cresc.
. ....
7•"
. I.
t""/ ---; ,P • ..I
t
.- ,
- • r-. r..
•...
Example2
on weak beats, and they close each beat by ab-
sorbing a diatonic dissonance. The altered
chords, in contrast, occupy strong, accented
beats and are undisturbedby harmonic motion.
Furthermore,every phrase in the passage ends
non-cadentially; the movement within phrases
is always from consonance to dissonance. This
design effectively identifies the music with the
pattern of its dissonances, and gives the aug-
mented chords a particular air of dissolving
the harmony as they enhance the disorienting
effect of the diminished chords.
In m. 4 this presentational pattern becomes
intensified, throwing the music's tonal defini-
tion out of focus. Instead of the augmented
triad on the dominant that begins the previous
two measures, a diminished triad on the
flat supertonic sounds against a tied inner-
voice note, then turns unhelpfully into a
diminished-seventh chord as the tied note as-
cends a semitone. A minor triad on the leading
tone follows, its raised fifth quickly producing
a tritonal dissonance (see ex. 2x).10Strikingly,
what restores a sense of direction to the now
rather perplexed music is not a return to the
tonic, but the reappearance of the dominant
augmented triad at the juncture of mm. 4 and 5
(see ex. 2y), where it closes the piece's first
large-scale phrase unit. What the music pre-
sents, then, is a pattern of alternating
diminished and augmented triads that first
overshadows and then effaces the alternation
of tonic and dominant triads-a pattern that is
loThis dissolution of the tonic-dominant pattern has been
anticipated by the submediant chord at the close of m. 3.
This chord seems to articulate the "crisis" in the music. Its
tied A, if held long enough, would absorb the Cg-E-G di-
minished triad at m. 4 into V7 of ii. But the A is itself ab-
sorbed into the diminished seventh before this can happen.
194
y
?
y
Et~j
I" ,
• -_
1•, r
.
... ?
,- .
." iJ•' •" .
essentially dialectical and, in its symmetrical
arrangement of symmetrical chords, not espe-
cially tonal (ex. 3):
. I
Example3
Once recognized, this presentation subtly al-
ters the nature of its horizon, whose C major is
present less as a palpable tonic than as a real-
ization of tonality itself, understood as a struc-
turing by major triads. In contrast to the
Classical paradigm,the Romantic one followed
by Schumann produces tonality only as hori-
zon, not as presentation. Moreover, the Ro-
mantic horizon involves a certain depletion of
the Classical one, a reduction of the tonic to its
premises in tonal organization.
It cannot be stressed too much that
Schumann's piece is not radical, daring, or
anything more than a beautifully wistful
Albumblatt. The presentation-horizon rela-
tionship it manifests is perfectly ordinary, as
ordinary for Schumann as a stretch of tonic
dominant harmony is for Mozart. Either
Mozart's or Schumann's tonal language can be-
come radical,of course-it would even be nice to
believe that the radicalization of Mozart's lan-
guage led to the extended tonality of
Schumann's, which in turn moved through its
own radicalization to atonality-but neither
version of tonalityis intrinsically either stable or
unstable. Neither one is static, though; and it
seems plausible to say that the transition from
Classical to Romantic harmony involves the
gradualexchange of a horizon-paradigmcharac-

terized by doubling or overlapping, where to-
nality appears as both presentation and hori-
zon, for a paradigmcharacterizedby separation
and singularity, in which tonality appears as
horizon alone.
The "feel" of this difference is strongest,
perhaps, in the contrast between the dramatic
flow of time in the Classical style and the more
fluid temporality of Romanticism. The contour
of a Classical horizon restricts what a work can
present at any given moment. The result is the
sharply modeled Classical design: an opposi-
tion of clearly articulated units which acts as a
large-scale projection of the tensions within
tonal relationships. The Romantic paradigm
attenuates the restrictive power of the Clas-
sical one-or frees itself from the burden of
negativity-by breaking the mirror relation-
ship between presentation and horizon.
A romantic presentation may or may not refer
to a structure within the horizon during any
passage in a given piece. The boundaries be-
tween discrete segments of music thus tend to
blur because the basis for differentiating those
segments has been removed. This effect, I
imagine, is what bothered Schenker when he
complained that Wagner's music has no
background."
II
Many of the familiar features of nine-
teenth-century music can be similarly a-
ligned with the emergence of the Romantic
horizon-paradigm-the increasing reliance on
motivic unity, for instance, or the gradual
elimination of literal repetition, or the equal
treatment of successive key centers so that
none is an unequivocal tonic. Perhapsthe most
basic effect of the Romantic horizon-structure
on musical form, however, is its transforma-
tion of the basis of musical necessity, the qual-
ity of inevitable forward movement that most
composers before Debussy tried to secure.
Within the Classical style, necessity or in-
"1No background, but certainly a horizon. This is the place
to note that the concept of horizon does not run parallel
with the Schenkerian concept of background. For one
thing, a horizon is always an audible element in the music;
for another, a horizon does not (necessarily) produce the
musical presentation. For further discussion, see below, p.
206.
LAWRENCE
evitability is almost always allied to the articu- KRAMER
lation of form. One must be careful here: there The Mirror
is nothing intrinsically inevitable about the of Tonality
shape of the sonata, rondo, song or dance
forms basic to Classical music, as any merely
competent example of one will show. Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven, however, are able to
turn the sectional differentiations of Classical
form into "forcesof tension or expectancy by in-
terpreting them with differentiations of tex-
ture, rhythm, harmonic rhythm, timbre, and so
on.12Mozart, for instance, motivates the return
of the Minuet in his D-Minor String Quartet,
K. 421, by exaggerating the differences in tex-
ture between the Minuet and the Trio. The
Minuet, in the minor, is restless, agitated,
chromatic, and contrapuntal, with the viola
and cello particularly active. The Trio, in the
major, forms a blithe interlude, utterly (even
ironically) simple in its diatonicism and
homophony, a solo for first violin over piz-
zicato accompaniment. The result is an in-
evitability that presents itself in emotional
terms. The Trio may systematically turn the
Minuet inside out, but it so obviously fails to
balance the Minuet's passionate urgency that
the latter's return not only feels compelling but
also fiercely satisfying.
On the whole, the sense of necessity in
Romantic music does not depend on this kind
of alliance with harmonically-based form. The
12Subotnik ("Tonality, Autonomy, Competence," pp.
154-55) arguesthat Classical form is "implicative," on the
model of logical entailment, and that in taking this model
it tries to be independent of its cultural specificity. Though
logic leaps inevitably to mind (at least to some people's
minds) as a metaphor for aesthetic coherence, this view
must be rejected.It drasticallyunderestimates the cultural
allusiveness of Haydn, Mozart,and Beethoven, while over-
estimating the cohesive power of pure form-form
abstractly conceived as a pattern of harmonic relation-
ships. Harmonyis never genuinely implicative, i.e., predic-
tive, no matter how Classical; its binding force is ex-
planatory, interpretive. Nothing could "entail" the slow
movement of Mozart'sPiano Concerto K. 449 to repeat its
Bb solo exposition in Ab;the music's harmonic coherence
explains the Ab as the key of the flatted leading tone of Bb.
Furthermore,the most "logical" of Classical forms, the
sonata, dependsas much or more on elements that can't be
anticipated-the harmony of the development, varied re-
capitulations, developing codas-as on assured ones. And
what of the fact that Liszt and Wagnersaid that their musi-
cal goal was an immediate, culture-free intelligibility,
while Mozart was always in trouble with his father for
wanting to please the "connoisseurs"?
195
 19TH
CENTURY form, in any case, rarely has enough definition
MUSIC to support an alliance. Instead one finds a pat-
terning of presentational elements that inti-
mate a sense of necessity by working in opposi-
tion to the music's horizon. In Classical works,
presentational patterns normally blend into
the horizon-structure that they mirror--a
mingling of boundaries that occurs precisely
because of the mirror-relationship. The Ro-
mantic paradigm, however, with its disjunc-
tion between presentation and horizon, se-
verely inhibits any such blending. As a result,
the presentational patterns of Romantic works
take on a peculiar vividness. Enclosed within
their horizons, the patterns remain unassimi-
lated, their boundaries distinct. For them, the
object-horizon relationship is simplified into a
figure-ground relationship in which the con-
tours of the figure stand out sharply.
From this situation, Romantic music draws
a form of inevitability that is uniquely its own.
Where Classical works generate a series of
specific expectancies, expectancies with a par-
ticular object in view-the appearance of the
tonic, for instance, at various points in a sonata
movement-Romantic works use their dis-
junctive horizon-structure to create an undi-
rected, free-floating expectancy, one deprived
of (or not restricted by) particularity. Where
Classical music locates its inevitability in the
Adagio
a.
A
b.
Aber
collavoce
VOC
Example4
196
heightening and satisfying of the specific ex-
pectancies that it creates, Romantic music
achieves inevitability when its presentational
patterns provide a release from the ambiguity,
the continous tension, of non-specific expec-
tancy. (In its acuter forms, this tension can
blend into anxiety-one reason why some lis-
teners have trouble with certain atonal styles is
the absence of any such release.) The power of
works that are harmonically fluid and in-
tensely motivic, like the opening movement of
Brahms's C-Minor String Quartet, or of cycli-
cally organized works, especially extended
pieces in one movement like Liszt's B-Minor
Sonata, belongs to this peculiarly intense
sphere of Romantic inevitability. So, too, do
small-scale pieces, like most of Chopin's Pre-
ludes, that are built entirely from a single
rhythm. There, the rhythmic constancy effaces
instead of relieving the objectless expectancy
created by the use of extended tonality.
On the whole, necessity in Romantic music
is an essentially rhythmic phenomenon, even
when its elements are not literally rhythms. In
other words, it is a kind of periodicity,though
an irregular one, a periodicity that tends to
shape the flow of time rather than to be shaped
by it. A good example appearsin the opening
Adagio of Brahms's Alto Rhapsody.I quote the
relevant measures (ex. 4):
vn'
w
ab - seits,wer ist's?

auf, die 0 -
-NI I o~
-- Z--
The sense of necessity that Brahms conveys in
the Rhapsody is the tragic necessity of charac-
ter turned into fate through obsessive self-
consciousness, which is the burden of Goethe's
text. Brahms projects the grim and anguished
force of this predicament into a complex pre-
sentational pattern set against the horizon of C
minor. The music opens ambiguously with an
augmented triad, brought into relief by its sfor-
zando articulation (see ex. 4a). After the or-
chestral introduction is finished, the same
harmony returns, with the same articulation,
to cut across the unaccompanied alto's first
hesitant phrase, thereby giving a bitter force to
Goethe's despairing question, "Aber abseits,
wer ist's?" (see ex. 4b). Yet the harmony at this
point is dramatically less certain of direction
than it was at first. Brahms allows the am-
biguity of the opening chord to linger but he
resolves it by treating the dissonant B? as an
appoggiaturato the tonic. The harmonization
of "ist's," by superimposing the alto's Ebon the
orchestra's solitary B? sforzando, momentarily
implies a triad of B major. This is a remote, un-
focused relationship, especially since the alto
line has seemed to anticipate the tonic by trac-
ing out a dominant seventh chord (ex. 4b,w).
The ambiguity only lasts for a single beat, but
its effect is extraordinary,in part because what
"resolves" it is the previous ambiguity, the
opening augmented triad. The wrenching an-
guish that sounds in the "ist's" is testimony to
the force of the presentation.
This anguish is to be consummated near
the close of the Adagiowith the vision of empti-
ness, "Ode," that swallows up the figure of
Goethe's wanderer. Brahms's harmony for the
LAWRENCE
KRAMER
The Mirror
of Tonality
de ver - schlingt ihn.
Spp
Example4c
word, sustained over a whole measure, is a bare
tritone, F#-C, articulated ppp across a two-
and-a-half octave gulf. The music acts as if it
were transfixed by the F# octave lodged in its
bass. The resolution of the dissonance is ex-
cruciatingly slow, and it moves in a curious
pattern that goes beyond mere tonal ambiguity
by briefly giving the tritone the referential
force of tonality itself. After a long moment of
paralysis on the first syllable of "Ode," the alto
drops a vertiginous ninth to B (ex. 4c, x). As
the leading-tone, this B? invites the F# into its
orbit as a raised fifth, but the F# refuses to be
pacified. It persists as the B? moves again to C,
and in so doing directs the harmony back to the
F#-C tritone through the very step that is sup-
posed to yield the tonic (ex. 4c, y). Only then
does a resolution to the tonic triad appear-one
deliberately weakened by indirect octaves be-
tween the voice and the bass and by the de-
ferred appearance of the root and third of the
tonic chord.
The drastic suspension of tonal direction at
"Ode" is a climactic heightening of the previ-
ous ones, and this not only in effect but in
form. Brahms has chosen to expand the dis-
orienting force of the symmetrical relation-
ships in his earlier augmented chords. From a
symmetrical triad set uncertainly within a key,
he moves to a non-triadic symmetrical chord
set outside any key. One sonority grows organ-
ically into the other: in the measure preceding
"Ode," Brahms brings back his chosen aug-
mented triad (ex. 4c, z), then expands its G-B
third outward by half step to form the bleak
Ft-C tritone that haunts the close of the
Adagio.
197
 19THI What appearshere, then, is a presentational
CENTURY
MUSIC rhythm consisting of the periodic return to two
intertwined elements at moments of emo-
tional extremity: a movement from piano
dynamics to a dynamic extreme, either sf or
ppp; and the presentation of a symmetrical
chord of increasing remoteness from the hori-
zon. (It should be stressed, though, that the
C-minor horizon itself is secure throughout,
even at "Ode.")Brahmstakes pains to give this
pattern a firm foundation by also constructing
a periodicity on a larger scale. The first four
measures of the orchestral introduction are lit-
erally repeated as the accompaniment to the
four measures of song beginning with "ist's";
the next nine measures of introduction are, in
addition, rhythmically identical to the corre-
sponding measures of accompaniment. This
gives the Adagio a kind of gravitational im-
pulse toward recurrencewhich is fully realized
in its leading presentational pattern. Only the
measures just preceding "Ode" differ in har-
mony and rhythm from the correspondingpas-
sage in the introduction. And this creates a
moment of uncertainty, so that when the
tritone on "Ode" is reached, the characteristic
Romantic necessity, the disburdening of an
undirected expectancy, realizes itself with
immense power. By comparison, the tonic and
dominant cadences that follow do not sound
inevitable at all.
III
As a structuring force, the Romantic ho-
rizon-paradigmcan be studied usefully in any
number of nineteenth-century works. As a
force for change, however, it shows itself to
best advantage in experimental pieces, works
that do not simply follow the paradigm but
take pains to expose and to problematize it, in-
corporating within the musical form a self-
consciousness of the variability that is possible
in horizon-presentation relationships. The
nineteenth century is, with the early twen-
tieth, especially rich in this kind of music; my
examples of it, from Beethoven and Liszt, are
perhaps pivotal. In this respect as in so many
others, Beethoven is a critical figure. Most of
his innovations, like most of his major works,
represent developments of the Classical style
and fall within the Classical paradigm. Yet it is
probably fair to say that he was the first com-
198
poser to experiment systematically with re-
stricting tonality to the horizon; and he started
early.
The Finale of the String Quartet in Bb, op.
18, no. 6, is such an early experiment. The
movement is, of course, well known for the
wayward harmony of its opening section,
called "La Malinconia" by Beethoven, and for
the problem raised by the relation of this open-
ing to the delicate vivacity of the movement's
other music. Beethoven, who early on wrote a
bagatelle called "LustiglTraurig,"was fasci-
nated by the problems that follow from ab-
ruptly juxtaposing an emotionally intense,
even feverish passage with something drasti-
cally lighter in tone. The issue had already
been raised in an acute form by Mozart, in
the disjunctive two-part structure of his Piano
Fantasy in D Minor and in the similar, more
disturbing disjunction in the Finale of his
G-Minor String Quintet, with its Adagio intro-
duction. Beethoven returned to the pattern at
every phase of his career,notably in the Finales
to the Quartets op. 95 and op. 135, together
with the Introduction of op. 59, no. 3, and in
the overall design of the Piano Sonatas op. 78
and 90. The early Bb Quartet has been
criticized for failing to create an adequate emo-
tional balance between "La Malinconia" and
the subsequent Allegretto,13 but a failure of
communication between the two parts of the
movement is the basis of the music's design.
The discontinuity is functional. It is there to
problematize Classical tonality, at least to the
extent of questioning Classical harmony as an
absolute.
The design of this movement calls for the
interlocking of elements that are incommen-
surable not because of a simple emotional dif-
ference but because they belong to entirely
different frames of reference-in effect, to dif-
ferent tonal systems. The Allegretto, a model
Classical composition, follows the Classical
paradigm:its tonality appears as both horizon
and presentation. The Adagio, "La Malin-
conia," is a singularity in its Classical setting,
13By Philip Radcliffe, Beethoven's String Quartets (New
York, 1968), pp. 33-34. Joseph Kerman, The Beethoven
Quartets (New York, 1966), pp. 80-82, takes the opposite
view.
and follows the Romantic paradigm:its tonal-
ity appears as horizon alone. The relationship
between the two sections is competitive, not
merely contrastive. In particular, they do not
follow the Classical pattern of a slow, harmon-
ically restless introduction clarified and super-
seded by an Allegro in the tonic. The Adagio is
too long, too elaborate, and too strongly
characterized to be heard as a mere introduc-
tion, and Beethoven's handling of its double re-
currence later in the movement clearly estab-
lishes its dialectical character.14
More radically, one can argue that the
Adagio is not even uncertain harmonically;
within its own horizon-paradigm, its to-
nality-Bb major-is perfectly secure. The
Adagio and Allegretto are probably best
thought of as constituting an unresolvable dis-
sonance on the largest possible scale-one so
extreme that the horizon-paradigm of the
finale proper, as distinct from those of its sec-
tions, is impossible to specify. The effect of
this dissonance is to cloud over the music's
ability to reach a satisfying closure. The final
cadential thrust must, of course, come from
the side of Classical tonality, yet the closural
force of that tonality is badly compromised, at-
tenuated, by the presence of the Romantic to-
nality that intrudes on it. As a consequence,
the cadential effectiveness of the Classical
paradigm shows itself to be dependent on an
ability to exclude other possibilities, to repress
an awareness of alternatives. Instead of the ra-
tional, "scientific" disposition of tones pos-
tulated by Fux, Rameau, and other Enlighten-
ment theorists, Classical tonality appearsas an
act of imaginative choice. Instead of a realiza-
tion of nature, it constitutes an expression of
subjectivity, temperament, will.
Beethoven projects these conclusions
through the music in two major ways. First, he
maximizes the systematic differerence be-
tween the Adagio and the Allegretto by turning
14Compare Mozart's reprise of the introduction to the first
movement of his String Quintet in D, K. 593. The intro-
duction returns before the coda; the coda consists of a re-
petition of the first eight measures of Allegro. This prob-
lematizes the introduction-allegro relationship and then
affirms it strongly; the relationship has at no time been
negated.
the most disruptive dissonance in Classical to- LAWRENCE
KRAMER
nality, the diminished seventh chord, into the The Mirror
source of presentational stability in "LaMalin- of Tonality
conia." The two halves of the movement are
thus inversely related in the direction of their
harmony. Second, he unfolds the movement in
a way that dramatizes the necessary but in-
adequate exclusion of alternativity by the
Classical paradigm. Both patterns will repay
detailed analysis.
One thing that "La Malinconia" must do
before it broaches the matter of diminished
sevenths is to make certain that it has a secure
Bb-majorhorizon. Its opening statement, there-
fore, articulates the two main elements of the
Adagio, a theme rising by steps and a chord
with a triple grace-note upbeat (a turn) in an
unambiguous Bb (ex. 5):
Adagio
f
smpre
Example5
Later statements of the same motives in re-
mote or directionless tonal areas will always be
heard in reference to this clear assertion of the
tonic. Beethoven takes pains to reinforce this
tonal foundation. Midway through the Adagio,
he reintroduces the long-suppressed Bb-major
triad at the very moment when the music's
chromatic waywardness is reaching its height;
a few measures later, a sequence of turn-
ornamented chords appears, alternating piano
statements of diminished triads with forte
statements of diatonic triads related to Bb. The
impressive breadth of this horizon-pattern is
necessary because Beethoven extends his pre-
sentations beyond the orbit of the tonic for
considerable stretches of time.
These presentations occupy three crucial
passages. The first of them begins a piano/forte
alternation of turn-ornamented chords with a
B-minor triad mysteriously produced by the
rising theme. The chords that follow are func-
tionless diminished sevenths. They completely
suspend tonal definition for four measures,
then overlap into a restatement of the rising
theme (ex. 6):
199
 19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
_) f P
Im0
JpcjLZ W P
Example6
This creates a distinctive harmonic texture, a
strange blend of stasis and pendulum-like
movement, that defines an area of stability as a
presentational pattern, in contradiction to its
erosion of key-feeling. What makes the stabil-
ity possible is the nonrestrictiveness of the
music's Romantic paradigm. The harmonies
leading up to the piano/forte passage are blur-
ry and tenuous as reflections of the tonic and
amorphous as elements in the rising theme;
the strict antiphonal play of diminished
sevenths is defined more sharply. On its own
terms, the antiphonal passage makes more
sense as a pattern than what precedes it, even
though it makes no sense at all in the horizon.
The rather uncanny presentational "conso-
nance" thus established becomes "dissonant"
Ing iW3J.
TILL•
Example 7
Seen from the horizon, this pattern can be un-
derstood as a movement around an upward cir-
cle of fifths if the major chords are taken as al-
tered supertonic steps in the keys of the minor
ones.'s The effect of this strange progression,
200
PP
f P__
x
X
. . ..
only as the rising theme continues, exchanging
diminished-seventh harmony for dominant-
seventh harmony (see ex. 6x). Beethoven then
sustains and intensifies the presentational dis-
sonance in a remarkablepassage consisting en-
tirely of triads. This episode, a mysterious
fugato full of hushed intensity, turns the tonal
triad into a source of musical entropy. The
primary values of Classical tonality undergo a
reversal as the music strips its triads of all re-
solving or closural power and prepares for the
return of the diminished-seventh chord as a
source of resolution. Startingfrom E minor, the
remotest key possible with respect to the tonic,
a series of alternating minor and major triads
unfold as if in bewilderment, creating an un-
easy sense of motion without purpose (ex. 7):
Ixwa
crerescsc.
•
Sf
though, is to disturb rather than to affirm the
horizon, because the movement of the har-
s50n this point and the next one, see Kerman, pp. 78-79.
mony in the dominant direction ought to be
leading away from the tonic and is actually
(though not very distinctly) leading toward it.
Seen presentationally, the same series of har-
monies is not a progression at all but a tonally
hazy rhythm of minor and major chords, each
of which gestures tenuously toward the tonal-
ity of its root.16 Unlike the diminished sev-
enths, which occupy an indefinite tonal re-
gion unique to themselves, the wandering
triads give no sense of consistency. They sim-
ply seem lost.
It is at this point that the Bb-majortriad I
mentioned earlier makes its appearance(see ex.
7x) with a profoundly dissociative effect. The
chord is so compromised by the harmonic
fluidity from which it emerges that it has vir-
tually no tonic feeling at all, even in associa-
tion with a subsequent triad of the dominant
and other related harmonies. This lapse of
function is supported, paradoxically, by the
horizon. According to the modulatory pattern
of the fugato, the tonic triad is only an altered II
step of Ab minor on its way to Eb minor, while
the dominant chord is a similar II step of Eb
minor itself. This means that the chords affirm
the horizon more strongly if they are drawn
away from it and taken presentationally as an
intrusion of tonic-dominant harmony into an
indefinite extension of Bb major. As presenta-
p decresc crescff
p decresc crec.
p
decresc.
;S
cresc.
p cresc
p decresce
Example 8
16Thequality of alternationhere underlines the pervasive-
ness of alternation throughout the movement-of piano
with forte, majorwith minor, chordalpassage with theme,
and Adagio with Allegretto. Alternation is the basic tex-
ture here, a fact that helps subvert the Allegretto's closure.
tions, these Bb triads are not identical with LAWRENCE
KRAMER
themselves as elements in the horizon, and for The Mirror
the moment it is just this difference that keeps of Tonality
the sense of Bb from dissolving away.17What
sustains the horizon is less its won weak
definition than the strong, intrusive contour of
the tonic chord in a presentational texture that
ordinarily suppresses it.
Following this crucial passage, the second
piano/forte episode and subsequent reminis-
cence of the fugato sustain the tension sur-
rounding triadic harmony in a more subdued
way, prolonging the music's uncertainty while
intensifying its emotional agitation. Then a
resolution begins at last, with the reappearance
of a diminished-seventh chord at m. 36. The
prolonged crescendo that follows constitutes a
double statement of the pattern of resolution in
the Adagio. As the bass rises by semitones, the
music arches climactically to its registral
high-point; along the way, it presents a resolv-
ing sequence of harmonies directed toward the
diminished seventh. Strikingly, this sequence
is exactly the reverse of the tensional one that
leads from the first piano/forte passage through
the rising theme to the fugato. With mounting
intensity, the music rises from a minor triad, to
a dominant seventh, to a diminished seventh,
then repeats the sequence as it continues to
rise (ex. 8):
attacca subito
il Allegretto
p decresc. Pp
dcresc ff p PP
decresc.
ff p decresc.
PP-
p decresc.P
17Similarconsiderations aprplyto the subsequent Bb-minor
triad. Though it is producedas a true tonic, its dissociative
context tends to enfeeble it, as does its minor mode.
201
 19TH Reinforced by a dramatic octave leap in the
CENTURY
MUSIC bass, a thickening of texture in an inner voice,
and its ff articulation, the final diminished
seventh emerges in its fierce anguish as the
goal of the entire Adagio.18The force of its pre-
sentation is so strong, has been so carefully
shaped, that the horizon is almost completely
overshadowed. The effect of this overshadow-
ing is double underlined: by the position of the
climactic crescendo as a heightened form of
the first strangely stable pattern of turn-or-
namented chords in mm. 12-16, and by the
fact that "La Malinconia" ends in the tonic
minor. The reason why the Bb major of the Al-
legretto sounds so curiously hollow-and at
once, before its emotional character can really
define itself-is that it asks us to hear triads as
stable again, after we have just learned by ear
not to do so.
Ideally, the role of the Allegretto is to make
the listener forget what has just been heard.
But the design of the movement suggests that
the mere appearanceof Classical tonality is not
sufficient to do that. The Allegretto lies con-
stantly under the shadow of the Adagio, a
condition that Beethoven heightens with the
upbeat to the Allegretto's main theme, which
in its rhythm echoes the Adagio's characteris-
tic turn (ex. 9):
Allegretto quasi Allegro
6 L
P Sf sf P "La Malinconia" can muster neither a di-
Example9
(This linkage also satisfies a formal demand for
unity in the movement, though only in a pretty
tenuous way.) What the Allegretto must do
somehow is to erase, not merely ignore, the
Adagio; and this it does near the close of the
movement by bringing back and gradually
assimilating the Adagio to the Classical
18The top note of this climactic chord is Gb. As Kerman
(pp. 77-79) shows, this note (as F$) is the chief source of
instability for the tonic; its appearance here thus amounts
to a strong affirmation of the music's presentational au-
tonomy.
202
horizon-paradigm.This subversion is the effect
of a series of harmonic adjustments which, as
Joseph Kerman has pointed out, provide "rea-
sonable" versions of what has gone before.19As
a first step in this process, the Allegretto pro-
duces a diminished-seventh chord-its only
one-and resolves it into the tonic triad that
opens the Adagio. A truncated version of the
Adagio's first half follows, somewhat thick-
ened in texture. The music seems to be both
intensified and eroded by this compression,
and the ambiguity is sustained by its close: the
first pianolforte bloc of diminished sevenths
starts to return, but is cut short by a dominant
seventh that resolves back into the Allegretto.
This, coupled with the music's "derivation"
from the Allegretto's diminished seventh,
presents the fragment of Adagio as a large-scale
resolution of diminished-seventh harmony,
badly effacing its earlier identity, its rad-
icalism. Yet the harmony of this music does
retain its waywardness. The dominant seventh
belongs to E major, which does little enough to
secure the tonic.
This tension necessitates the second re-
prise. Three measures of Allegretto, now in A
minor, break off inconclusively into a measure
of silence, as if under a strain. But the Adagio is
under a still greater strain, and returns only on
the brink of erasure, a bare contour of two
measures-the start of the rising theme and
a turn-ornamented chord-in unproblematical
harmony. Here, for the first time, the music of
minished seventh nor a forte. The music's
tenuous hold on the movement seems to
crumble as the Allegretto instantly assimilates
the turn to its upbeat and dances blithely for-
ward. Yet the Adagio has not, even yet, been
fully exorcised. The shadow of its tempo may
seem to fall over the brief ritardandothat pre-
ceded the coda, and the Prestissimo coda
itself affirms Classical tonality in an almost
manic way. Its whirling energy is an overcom-
pensation for the movement's dialectical
uncertainty.
Why does Beethoven work so hard to de-
19P. 79.
construct the Classical paradigmat the heart of
his music, so that it reveals itself, like human
life in Wordsworth's "Intimations" Ode, to be
"a sleep and a forgetting"? Like Wordsworth,
Goethe, and other of his contemporaries,
Beethoven was interested in finding aesthetic
forms that would register not simply the ele-
ments of an aroused consciousness--moods,
intensities, nuances of feeling-but the activ-
ity of consciousness itself. Here, by relativizing
the presumed absolutes of Classical harmony,
he implies that his own consciousness is de-
tached from them. This gesture represents
his subjectivity as an autonomous imaginative
principle, one set over against the music, not
circumscribed by it. The technique is essen-
tially a version of Romantic irony, something
Beethoven was fond of both in music and in
life20-one thinks of those famous improvisa-
tory episodes in which he reportedlymoved his
listeners to tears, then suddenly punctured
their mood with something coarse and
rambunctious. This problematizing impulse
changes the Classical relationship between the
creative ego and its imaginative language from
dependence to a dialectical equality. Such a
position is possible only on the edge between
the two tonal systems. A composer who works
wholly within either paradigm may develop a
style of extraordinarysuppleness and imagina-
tion, but can never posit a consciousness ex-
terior to it.
IV
A similar position of exteriority is available
at the edge between the Romantic paradigm
and atonality. In his later piano works, well
known for their "advanced" harmony, Liszt,
for one, sought that position out-not to affirm
subjectivity as an autonomous creative princi-
ple, as Beethoven had, but to chastize it, to give
the detachment of the ego from the musical
material an austere, mystical negativity.21The
feeling in these pieces has perhaps its closest
20See Rey M. Longyear, "Beethoven and Romantic Irony,"
in The Creative World of Beethoven, ed. Paul Henry Lang
(New York, 1971), pp. 145-62
analogue in the music of Webern'sfreely atonal LAWRENCE
KRAMER
period, which works toward a mystical ex- The Mirror
teriority from paradigm itself, in effect at- of Tonality
tempting to nullify all sense of horizon.
In Nuages Gris, Liszt broaches the territory
of atonality by interpreting the Romantic
paradigmon the model of the Classical one, as
a force of exclusion-a move quite at odds with
the almost promiscuous inclusiveness of the
Romantic style. The piece consists of alternat-
ing passages in the two paradigms, first
Classical, then Romantic, creating a structural
dissonance much like Beethoven's in op. 18,
no. 6. Here, though, the Classical tonality is
severely attenuated, at times barely recogniz-
able, while the Romantic tonality is equally
extreme, utterly bare of presentational ele-
ments with Classical affinities. These two
tonalities are woven together seamlessly, their
presentational borders blurred by the mu-
sic's consistency of mood and texture; the re-
sult is to suggest a gradual dissolution of the
Classical areas, which cannot sustain their
identity without the clear-cut, "diacritical"
differentiation they get in the Beethoven
movement. At the close, this dissolution con-
summates in the famous final cadence, which
produces a whole-tone chord. The tonal in-
definiteness that results partially effaces tonal-
ity as the music's horizon, and retrospectively
underlines the dependence of the Romantic
paradigm on the Classical relationships that
envelop its presentational fluidity.
The first section in Classical tonality con-
sists of a four-fold repetition of the piece's
haunting little wisp of a theme. Lacking a bass,
and incorporating a tritonal dissonance in its
first, rising half, the theme begins in am-
biguity. But its second half, a falling phrase,
spells out the chord of G minor, the key of its
horizon. The addition of an ostinato Bb in the
bass briefly clarifies the rising half of the theme
as a tonic triad containing a strong non-
harmonic dissonance (ex. 10):
21Samson (pp. 15-18) provides an incisive discussion of
these pieces, together with a useful harmonic precis of
Nuages Gris.
203
 19TH mm. 3-6
CENTURY
MUSIC
Ep
E
Example
Liszt makes the fragile harmony seem espe-
cially brittle by directing the passage to be
played without pedal. Then, without transi-
tion, he melts it away. The ostinato bass quick-
ens to a tremolando, the pedal is brought into
play, and an Eb-minor triad appears out of
nowhere. This leads to a non-harmonic presen-
tation of four parallel augmented triads, gener-
ated by successive semitonal modifications of
the Eb-minor chord. Liszt maintains the
music's horizon during this passage in a very
tenuous way, by suggesting that the G-minor
tonality has dissolved along with its presenta-
tion. The augmented triads are unfolded over
alternate measures of Bb and A tremolando in
the bass, a kind of harmonic ostinato that
seems to combine the tonic and leading-tone of
the relative major, Bb. This decidedly odd im-
pression is confirmed at the close of this sec-
tion when the semitonal evolution of aug-
mented triads produces one on Bb, at which
point the tremolando in the bass shifts, and
mm. 26-29
Example 11
The theme has become incoherent, split into
one fragment too harmonically indefinite to be
resolved, and another fragment too definite to
be believed.
This further weakening of the Classical
204
10
thickens slightly, in order to articulate the
same chord.
Following a pedal release, a stark phrase in
octaves is sounded twice, more or less affirm-
ing Bb;then the G-minor theme returns in the
bass and the second Classical episode begins.
Over the four-fold statement of the theme,
Liszt arches two strange, slow-moving phrases
in the treble. At the start of the first statement,
he uses the interplay of the two voices to
reinstate the earlier doubling of G minor as
presentation and horizon; with a Bb above it,
the rising half of the main theme again implies
the combination of tonic chord and non-
harmonic dissonance adumbratedearlier. After
this, though, the effect of the treble voice is to
disintegrate the harmony of the main theme's
rising half, and then to reinforce the presenta-
tion of G minor in the falling half. The result is
like a widening hairline fracture, opening up a
hopeless gap between dissonance and conso-
nance (ex. 11):
paradigm leads to a corresponding intensifica-
tion of the Romantic one, a heightening to ex-
cess that brings the music to the border of an
atonal horizon. The Bbl/Aalternation now re-
turns in the bass, but reduced from a thrum-
ming, pervasive tremolando to a modest se-
quence of pedal tones. Above these the earlier
sequence of augmented triads is sounded by
mm. 34-38
emnpre
plegato
Example 12
These octaves move in a pattern of their own,
and their primary effect is to heighten the
triads' ambiguity with non-harmonic disso-
nance. Eventually, the sequence of octaves
spells out an entire chromatic scale; and this,
in combination with the semitonal production
of the augmented chords, creates a sharply
characterizedpattern of non-tonal presentation
that almost assimilates the Bbl/Aalternation to
its irresistable movement. In the process, the
music's last link to its G-minor horizon thins
out to the vanishing point.
At this juncture, the horizon must either
recrystallize or dissipate; Liszt proposes to set-
tle the question with a single cadence. After a
suspenseful bar of silence, he slowly arpeg-
giates an ambiguous chord (ex. 13):
8
Example 13
From a tonal standpoint the best that can be
done for this mysterious shimmer of notes is to
read it as an inverted altered ninth chord of G
major. The chord could then be resolved by
new middle voices. This time, each triad is ar- LAWRENCE
KRAMER
ticulated twice, and each articulation coincides The Mirror
with an octave in the upper voice (ex. 12): of Tonality
step, the higher tones treated as passing
dissonances-the Ebmoving to D, the F# and A
to G. The B? could either be left alone (produc-
ing a sort of Picardy third) or returned to Bb.
What the music does instead is to imitate this
kind of tonal maneuver, presenting an atonal
analogue to stepwise resolution and situating
that presentation in an atonal horizon-thus
forming a new mirror relation on the "other
side" of Romantic tonality. Reading the prob-
lematic chord as an unresolved atonal forma-
tion, Liszt resolves its Fgs to G, just as if he
were moving from leading-tone to tonic, but he
keeps the Eb and the A in place. The result, of
course, is that celebrated whole-tone chord
which closes the piece, a nuage gris spreadover
the horizon of tonality (ex. 14):
8.3.
hd
Example 14
A tonal resolution would have deleted the dis-
sonance from the penultimate chord and re-
duced it to a triadic skeleton. Liszt's atonal
resolution adds dissonance-in fact, it ironi-
205
 19THH
cally makes G, the ostensible tonic, the
CENTURY
MUSIC climactic dissonant tone-and fills out the
chord as a whole-tone collection, a non-
harmonic plenitude. This conclusion repre-
sents the triumph of the movement's presenta-
tional system over its tonal foundation. It
provides the logical fruition of the music's
systematic emphasis on the augmented triad.
Both the strength and the weakness of this
close is that, unlike Beethoven's, it is satisfy-
ing. The mood of Nuages Gris is all of a piece,
an impressively hazy and mysterious feeling,
at once precise and indefinite, but its effect is
to smooth over the structural incongruity on
which it depends. Beethoven's exposure of the
correspondingtensions in his quartet finale is,
as is customary with him, perfectly ruthless, a
bold exchange of conventional aesthetic inte-
gration for a provocation of thought. Liszt, to
some degree, disguises a beautifully subversive
construction as a sample of coloristic harmony.
Nuages Gris is considerably more than a mere
exercise in special effects, but it does, so to
speak, refuse to surrenderits protective colora-
tion as a pretext for harmonic change.
V tic paradigm,this tension becomes fully dialec-
To close, I would like to offer a pair of
reflections, one on the use of horizon as an
analytical concept, and one on the nature of the
Romantic horizon-paradigm. The distinction
between horizon and presentation is one of
several available dualities that make it possible
to analyze music both historically and formally
from the same standpoint. Others would
include both the widely used concepts of fore-
ground and background--taken in a general,
not specifically Schenkerian, sense, though
some overlapis appropriate-and a division be-
tween areas of personal and systematic utter-
ance, corresponding to the structuralist dis-
tinctions between parole and langue, perfor-
mance and competence, self and system.22
Though valuable, foreground/backgroundand
personal/systematic dualities have a number of
disadvantages. For one thing, the divisions they
make are absolute, mapping out areas of struc-
22Samson's approach makes use of the foreground/
backgroundduality, Subotnik's of the self/system duality.
206
ture that can neither modify nor affect one
another. Moreover, they commit the interpret-
er in advance to stress distinctions that in
practice may blur or coalesce. The horizon-
presentation distinction, by contrast, insists
only on the process of differentiation, not on
specific differences, and its structural areas are
dynamically interactive. Unlike langue, for in-
stance, a horizon is not unaffected by individu-
ation; it is always an interpreted pattern, the
reflection of a system rather than the system
itself. Though both are Classical, Mozart's
horizons differ from Haydn's, in some cases
emphatically, as in the composers' treatment
of sonata movements in the minor. Likewise,
presentation is not uniquely the area of per-
sonal choice or subjective elaboration; the
style associated with its paradigminfluences it
constantly.
Neither is horizon a background that sup-
ports presentation and holds it within the orbit
of a harmonic system. Even in Classical works,
the relationship between horizon and presenta-
tion is tensional rather than supportive, be-
cause local patterns can and do contradict the
large forms that subsume them. In the Roman-
tical. The tonal horizon neither mitigates the
harmonic fluidity of the presentation nor com-
promises the identity of its more wayward
elements. When Jim Samson writes that "even
the most tonally unstable passages in Wagner
are composed against a background which re-
tains tonal-harmonic progression as the chief
means of shaping and directing the phrase,"23
what he says is certainly accurate, but the
backgroundhe has in mind is a presentational
element of voice-leading whose relationship to
the horizon is not fixed in advance. Presenta-
tion and horizon, in sum, are always impli-
cated one with another; they "feel" interwoven
yet distinct, rather as different parts of one's
body do. Their structural and transitional force
is rooted precisely in that interwovenness-
something in turn rooted in the conditions of
perception rather than those of utterance.
As for the Romantic paradigm itself, a good
23. 17.
way to gauge its position both structurally and
historically is to consider the kind of interpre-
tation that it sponsors. During the Enlighten-
ment, music was widely understood as a ref-
erential or mediating form, an expression of
typical emotions. When Beethoven remarked
that the first listeners to the Largo from his
D-Major Piano Sonata, op. 10, no. 3, all recog-
nized that it expressed "the soul-state of a
melancholy being, with all the nuances of light
and shade which occur in a delineation of
melancholy," he showed a firm confidence in
music as mediation (extended, characteristi-
cally, from the feeling to the feeling subject).24
His comment that the Pastoral Symphony is
"more an expression of feeling than painting"
is even plainer. By the time Berlioz gets hold
of the Pastoral, however, the referential
standpoint is less certain and the music begins
to recede into the state of mind it expresses: "It
is no longer an orchestra one hears [in the
"Storm"],it is no longer music, but rather the
tumultuous voice of the heavenly torrents....
This is terrifying, it makes one shudder, the il-
lusion is complete."25 For Berlioz, the music is
feeling, and a unique feeling: an awed percep-
tion externalized by the composer and reinter-
nalized by the listener. What is more, the feel-
ing seems to be unmediated, though Berlioz
(who still accepts the Enlightenment position)
acknowledges that this is an illusion. Liszt, in
his early essay on Berlioz, goes further,
explicitly denying the idea of reference: "Feel-
ing lives and breathes in music without repre-
sentational shell, without the mediation of ac-
tion or thought.'"26
The Romantic paradigm supports the un-
derstanding of music as pure immediacy be-
cause it weakens the referential concreteness
of presentation. In Classical works, the rich
24The quotation: Beethoven, the Man and the Artist, As
Revealed in his Own Words, ed. Friedrich Kerst and Henry
Edward Krehbiel (1905; rpt. New York, 1964), p. 42. The
rest of Beethoven's remark, a complaint that later listeners
failed to recognize the melancholy, suggests the com-
poser's awareness of an erosion in the referential view.
25Hector Berlioz, "Rossini's 'William Tell'," in Source
Readings in Music History: The Romantic Era, ed. Oliver
Strunk (New York, 1965), pp. 70-71.
26"Berlioz and His 'Harold' Symphony" (excerpts), in
Strunk, p. 109. The text misprints "mediation" as "medita-
tion."
network of harmonic meanings that results LAWRENCE
KRAMER
from the presentation of functional tonality The Mirror
encourages the recognition of the music as of Tonality
a sign, a mediator; and this supports-
perceptually-a further sense of the music as a
sign of an emotion. When the Romantic
paradigm breaks the Classical mirror of tonal-
ity, thinning out the referential texture of the
harmony, it tends to inhibit perception of the
music as a mediating surface and to encourage
an identification of the emotion the music pro-
duces with the music itself. That identification
is precisely what Nietzsche saw Wagner's
music as soliciting, and the willful, extrava-
gant, irresistible solicitation is what he called
sick. His insight led him to make some per-
verse judgements, such as his well-known
"preference" for Carmen over Tristan, yet
there is substance to his misgivings. The unre-
stricted intensity created by merging music
with feeling, something that Wagner him-
self associated with Schopenhauer's Will-
"'desiring, longing, raging, languishing-
perishing"-is too enormous to sustain, or to
want to. Even Wagner,said Nietzsche, used the
Ring to "recuperate"from Tristan.27The same
burden prompted Liszt toward the scepticism
of his later works, and Brahms to his insistent
negotiation with Classical forms, and Mahler
to his many-sided irony, really a subtle inter-
play of paradigms.
Seen against this movement away from the
most extreme implications of the Romantic
paradigm, the problematical development of
atonality takes on a new aspect. Late Liszt,
Brahms, and Mahler all modified Romantic to-
nality in order to re-secure the referentiality of
musical presentation. Schoenberg, Debussy,
and their colleagues developed new paradigms
in order to do the same. Their innovations in-
volved a gesture of restitution more than a
simpler rejection, but it was based partly on a
sense that Romantic harmony could no longer
be trusted--trusted, that is, in relation to the
self. Schoenberg, whose imagination I have
treated here as both a help and a hindrance, il-
27Nietzsche: Ecce Homo, from The Geneology of Morals
and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York,
1969), pp. 248-50. Wagner: Strunk, p. 147.
207
 19TH lustrates this point because his acceptance of
CENTURY
MUSIC the referential understanding of music is as
firm as Beethoven's. In a diary entry, prompted
by a publisher's request for titles to his Five
Pieces for Orchestra, Schoenberg writes that
"the wonderful thing about music is that one
can say everything in it, so that he who knows
208
understands everything; and yet one hasn't
given away one's secrets-the things one
doesn't admit even to oneself."28 The only
strange thing about this modest recognition of
music's referential richness is the upheaval in
musical history that was required fa
before it could be achieved. '.
28Reprintedin the booklet enclosed in the record album,
The Music of Arnold Schoenberg, Vol. III, Columbia M2S
709.