Analysis by Key: Another Look at Modulation

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ANALYSIS BY KEY Monotonality; Key Succession as Large-Scale Chord Progression The Beethoven and Haydn illustrations, where the governing linear and chordal pitch structure differs from the succession of keys, call into question a frequent analytic assumption- that key successions are simply chord progressions writ large. This is by no means a recent notion: in the earliest stages of modern harmonic analysis, theorists attempted to relate secondary keys - at least those most frequently employed - to the whole piece rather than regarding them as separate and self-contained entities. Schenker praises C. P. E. Bach for conceiving of 'keys' as prolonged Stufen, drawing this inference from Bach's referring to the goals of modulation as scale degrees in the main key ('fifth with major third, sixth with minor third' and so on). 12 But Bach was by no means the only eighteenth-century theorist to define in this way the relation between prlmary and secondary keys. Both Rameaul3 and Kirnberger do so; and Kirnberger'4 even uses Roman numerals to indicate the scale degrees in the main key on which the new 'tonics' fall. The most beautiful formulation of this idea that I know stems from Brahms, though the precise wording comes from his pupil, Gustav Jenner. In discussing his lessons in song composition, Jenner writes: The position and form of the cadences is closely bound up with the path of modulation. Here Brahms demanded the utmost restraint and consistency. In the disposition of even a very long song with extended and self-contained episodes, the main point was to express fully the primary key and to reveal its control over secondary keys through clear relationships. In this way, so to speak, the sum of all the keys employed in a piece appeared like an image of the primary key in a state of activity. 15 [my emphasis] For me, at least, Jenner's simile conveys more truth than much technical descripiion along similar lines, largely because it suggests a difference between the intensity of a primary key activated by modulation and the lesser intensity of a key not so activated. Compare, for example, this citation from the Fifth Edition of Grove's Dictionary: 'The same rules apply to key progressions which apply to any harmonic progression .... Those progressions to or from the tonic which are in themselves complete and satisfactory within the key find an equally satisfactory counterpart in the wider sphere of modulation . . .,.16 The idea is plausible because it is well expressed and partly true. But only partly. The article's main example of modulation in Baroque music is a chart of the key scheme of the Allemande from the Fourth French Suite. The analysis shows (correctly, I think) that the main modulations are from Eb to Bb to C minor to Eb. But is VI-I a 'complete and satisfactory' return to a tonic within the key? Hardly. Nor is the picture any better when we consult the many transient and hinted-at keys shown in the chart, for taking them into account yields a return to IfromII.l7 The problem with this partly valid approach is its failure to give due weight to MUSIC ANALYSIS 6:3, 1987 299
CARL SCHACHTER linear, contrapuntal structure. The tonicized C minor in the Bach Allemande is indeed part of the return to I: as Ex. 9 shows, it moves within V from Bb to D, and the D goes on to the tonic Eb . The return to I, then, is not from VI (C minor), but from a prolonged V that encompasses the tonicization of VI. The area governed by V changes its key focus several times: first from Bb major to C minor, then through several tonicized chords (Ab major and F minor) that belong both to C minor and to Eb ma jor, and before the final cadence, to Eb; the core of these occurrences is a rising linear progression Bb (tonicized) - C (tonicized)- D- Eb . Because the key areas of the Allemande function within a contrapuntal web of great (but typically Bachian) complexity, we cannot begin to understand them without coming to terms with the voice-leading structure of the piece. In Ex. 9, I have tried to illuminate the parts of this structure relevant to the subject of this essay; I suggest that the graphs be read at first in the order presented, from background to foreground. Much of the difficulty posed by the piece results from the many transfers in register and from part to part (e.g. bass to soprano). One structure disguised by such transfers is the rising fourth-progression from Bb to Eb . Starting with level (b), the example shows that this large-scale linear progression forms an enlargement of a motivic element fundamental to the Allemande and indeed the entire Suite. The list of keys (eleven in ten bars of music!) comes from the Grove article, whose author has underlined the important, structural keys and has placed the transient ones in parentheses. Note the curious place where a structural return to Eb is read; as in Tovey's account of the E minor Prelude, this comes from analysing by key without considering voice leading and chord prolongation. Schenker's early writings about modulation also sometimes overlook linear factors, but he does not make the mistake of equating all key successions with chord progressions. In his Harmonielehre, he distinguishes among three categories of chromatic elaboration: tonicization, where there is no sense of departure from the tonic key; illusory keys (Scheintonarten), where the diatony, or diatonic framework (Diatonie), recedes into the background but still exerts a controlling influence; and true modulations, which do not return to their point of origin, and which remain independent of any overarching diatony. 18 Schenker's illusory keys behave more or less as the Grove article indicates: they can be regarded as expansions (and sometlmes as chromatic equivalents) of diatonic scale steps. He cites the C major passage in the exposition of the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata, Op.7 (bs 81-9) and shows - very convincingly, I think - that the V-I of C major represents an expanded and chromatically elaborated VI-II progression in the locally governing key of Bb maor. Schenker's main example of real modulation is the development section of the same movement, about which he says, 'the keys are real keys, and their sequence is: C minor, Ab major, F minor, G minor, A minor, D minor. It would be illicit to do violence to this situation by explaining all these keys or part of them as consequences of the Bb major diatony which concluded the first part of 300 MUSIC ANALYSIS 6: 3, 1987
Page 1 and 2: Analysis by Key: Another Look at Mo
Page 3 and 4: CARI SCHACHTER of modulation and to
Page 5 and 6: CARL SCHACHTER implicit in every mo
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Page 9 and 10: CARI SCHACHTER Might we say that bs
Page 11: 11 CARI SCHACHTER historian and the
Page 15 and 16: CARL SCHACHTER the movement.'20 Six
Page 17 and 18: CARI SCHACHTER of bs 181ff.) Unques
Page 19 and 20: CAR I SCHACHTER diatonic framework,
Page 21 and 22: CCARI SCHACHTER example, that the f
Page 23 and 24: CARL SCHACHTER rising to a climax a
Page 25 and 26: CARL SCHACHTER forms a common eleme
Page 27 and 28: CARL SCHACHTER My derivation of the
Page 29 and 30: CARI SCHACHTER 11. David Beach, 'A
Page 31: CARL SCHACHTER reappear until b. 80

Analysis by Key: Another Look at Modulation

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