Adam Ricci
Tonal compositions that begin in one key and end in another have posed thorny problems for analysts. A monotonal perspective must insist that one key is structurally subordinate to another, as in the Schenkerian auxiliary cadence, which interprets a seemingly "dual-key" piece as beginning "off-tonic." Robert Bailey and Harald Krebs, among others, propose that for some dual-key pieces, both keys are equally important, and elaborate their position by showing how the two keys develop and intertwine with one another.
While the heyday of dual-key compositions was in the nineteenth
century, the species is found in recent popular music as well.
The so-called "pump-up," popular music's adaptation
of expressive tonality, typically propels a song into the key
a half- or whole-step higher than the one with which it began.
Two songs performed by the band Chicago, "Hard Habit to Break"
and "You're the Inspiration," chart toppers in the mid-1980s,
both begin an end in different keys, and make use of the pump-up.
However, their use of the pump-up is far from trivial - rather,
the pump-up is integrated into the large scale quasi-Schenkerian
structure of one song, and bound up with a sophisticated harmonic
cycle in the other. Detailed analyses of the two songs illustrate
how the songs coordinate quasi-Schenkerian backgrounds and harmonic
cycles, each weighing the two aspects differently.