Sunday, 1:30 pm–3:00
PM
Popular Music
Chair: Robert Wason (Eastman School
of Music)
Program
“Starting
in the Middle: Auxiliary Cadences in the Beatles’ Songs
Naphtali Wagner (The Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
Establishment of the opening
tonic is one of the basic principles of tonal music, whether it is eighteenth-
or nineteenth-century Western art music or twentieth-century popular music. This
principle was almost always honored in the eighteenth century, but nineteenth-century
composers sometimes deviated from it, as did the Beatles in many of their songs.
The discussion of non-tonic beginnings will be based on the Schenkerian concept
of the auxiliary cadence, adapted to the Beatles’ music. We will focus on
such cadences that organize musical phrases located at the beginning of a song
or at the beginning of one of its inner sections. We will look at the rhetorical
meaning of the absence of the tonic at the start of the phrase and will explore
how the phenomenon serves the text in each case. In the course of the analysis,
we will distinguish between auxiliary progressions and regressions, between open
and closed auxiliary units, and between short-range and long-range auxiliary progressions.
Among the songs mentioned in the discussion are “She Loves You,” “All
My Loving,” “If I Fell,” “No Reply,” “I’ll
Follow the Sun,” “Help!” “Strawberry Fields,” “I
Am the Walrus,” “Hello Goodbye,” and “Happiness Is a Warm
Gun.”
“Tonal
Plateaus in Two Works by Wayne Shorter”
Patricia Julien (University of Vermont)
This paper discusses two
compositions by jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter. Both pieces include
numerous segments of functional harmonic relations, generating well-established
but briefly employed tonal regions that are referred to here as tonal plateaus.
The works demonstrate Shorter's agility in employing such ideas in both a tonal
composition ("Powder Keg") and a nontonal piece ("El Toro").
As one listens to "Powder
Keg," consecutive tonal regions with roots a descending third apart are
revealed. Until the final tonal region (E-flat minor) is heard and understood
to be the tonic governing the entire composition, the tonal plateaus appear
equally well-established and influential. Upon the arrival of the final chord
of the head, the preceding tonal regions are recognized to be a series of tonicizations
of the chord members of this E-9 sonority, effecting a linear presentation
of the vertical tonic chord. Thus in successive hearings, the tonal regions
organize themselves hierarchically according to their relation to the home key
of the piece.
The structure of "El
Toro"comprises an equality of four keys with no sonority or tonal region
exhibiting fundamental influence over the composition as a whole. The tonal
plateaus in "El Toro" do not reveal themselves to be part of a larger
tonal scheme, but instead are self-sufficient and irreducible. Thus within the
tonal plateaus are functional harmonic relations used to establish the various
keys, while the nonfunctional relations between the plateaus result in a nontonal
composition.
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