Voice Leading as Harmonic Determinant in Atonal Music
Music theorists who are interested in abstracting coherent musical structures from the surfaces of atonal music often face significant challenges. Analyses of atonal music based on set theory have traditionally focused on structures created by set-class (i.e. harmonic) consistency. This approach works well in pieces that are harmonically and motivically unified. However, it is often difficult to identify set-class consistency in pieces that exhibit greater harmonic heterogeneity. For these latter pieces, an alternative analytical approach is suggested by recent studies in transformational voice leading. In this paper, I submit that in certain atonal pieces, a coherent musical structure is created through the use of consistency in voice leading, rather than through consistency in harmony.
Dialectical Opposition Between Tonal and Atonal Structures in Berg's Piano Sonata
The explanation of unity in fin-de-siècle music through primarily Schenkerian or set-theoretical approaches has been problematic, as opposition between tonal and atonal harmonic structures is fundamental to this repertory. In their analyses of Berg’s Piano Sonata (1908), Dave Headlam (1996) and Janet Schmalfeldt (1991) acknowledge the conflict between whole-tone and tonal structures, but ultimately analyze unity through a Schenkerian/cyclic sketch (Headlam) and a distributional/set-theoretical analysis (Schmalfeldt). This paper switches focus to the interaction between tonal and atonal harmonic structures in Berg’s Op. 1. It critiques past analyses of Op. 1, proposes new types of balance and imbalance, as inspired by Schoenberg (1995) and Patricia Carpenter (1983, 1988), and traces their fluctuation in dialectical formal plans to explain overall unity in Op. 1. In music of a common-practice style, Carpenter analyzes balance and imbalance as normative (close) and non-normative (remote) harmonies and keys. In the fin-de-siècle style, however, balance is also created by normative tonal structures, imbalance by atonal pc set structures, and intermediate balance by interval cycles. The paper traces how small motives, such as atonal pitch sets and interval cycles, create “problems” against a tonal context (thesis), how the motives are supported by cyclic or more atonal harmonic contexts (antithesis), and how the motives are assimilated within a controlling tonal framework (synthesis).
In exploring this thesis, the paper focuses on a specific class of voice leading, the chromatic wedge. The use of this voice leading in pieces such as Berg’s op. 5, no. 1 and Schoenberg’s op. 19, no. 1 is explored. In addition, a voice-leading space is constructed to explore trichordal harmonies that can be connected using the same voice leading. The paper suggests that characteristic voice-leading gestures can act as structural elements that bind an atonal piece together. In such cases, it is voice leading that determines harmony, and not the other way round.