Matthew Santa
CUNY Graduate Center
Much interesting work on the organization of pitch in Stravinsky's neoclassical music has dealt with identifying referential pitch collections and their tone centers. Despite the considerable contribution this work has made to an understanding of Stravinsky's neoclassical music, it has at times seemed ad hoc because no generalized theory of centricity has yet been written that might substantiate its claims. This paper seeks to identify factors by which we distinguish between the tone centers and the subordinate pitches of post-tonal diatonic harmonies found in Stravinsky's music, as well as to explore its tonal allusions and how they relate to the voice leading associated with them. It proposes that four types of factors be considered: 1 ) the intervallic composition of a harmony; 2) the doubling of a harmony; 3) the voicing of a harmony; and 4) the linear context in which a harmony appears. It then organizes these factors into a hierarchical scheme thereby allowing theorists to discuss in a roughly quantitative way the polarities in a given work and how they are balanced therein, as well as the relative strengths of cadences in a given work.