ANALYS1S BY KEY Ex. 10 Beethoven: Piano Son<strong>at</strong>a, Op.7, I, development (f) $)$) (i) (i) (i) .. ,, 3 ( - lSb : V I ) V * <strong>Key</strong>s: v a * from Schenker, Hannumy (English version), pp.299-300 D - ES d I MUSIC ANALYSIS 6:3, 1987 303
CARI SCHACHTER of bs 181ff.) Unquestionably the tonal daring of this development, which ventures on keys so remote from the main tonic, is one of the factors th<strong>at</strong> differenti<strong>at</strong>es it from other pieces th<strong>at</strong> contain similar voice-leading structures - the Bach Allemande, for example. Schenker's graphing technique does not emphasize visually such differences, and to a casual reader, graphs of the Allemande and of the development might look pretty much the same. But anyone reading the Beethoven graph correctly - with ears as well as eyes - will hesr the difference th<strong>at</strong> the excursion to A minor makes. And of course the analyst could easily refer to the key plan in a text accompanying the graph, or label some of the keys in graphs of the l<strong>at</strong>er levels, as Schenker often does. Critics of Schenker sometimes wonder <strong>at</strong> his seeming unconcern for such striking fe<strong>at</strong>ures of the music he analyses. True enough, he often does not call <strong>at</strong>tention to them, but they are usually fe<strong>at</strong>ures th<strong>at</strong> are right on the surface and much easier to hear than the middleground structures th<strong>at</strong> weld them into a unity. <strong>Key</strong> Relstionships In a very general way the evolution of musical style in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries includes as an obvious fe<strong>at</strong>ure a gre<strong>at</strong>er and gre<strong>at</strong>er use of large-scale (modul<strong>at</strong>ory) chrom<strong>at</strong>icism, much as far earlier centuries saw a growth in the use of local chrom<strong>at</strong>icism, from a simple choice between BS and B to the extravagances of Gesualdo. Musicians tend to characterize the modul<strong>at</strong>ory style of a piece or period <strong>by</strong> means of a sp<strong>at</strong>ial metaphor: modul<strong>at</strong>ions are 'close' or 'distant' . Few of us would deny, I think, th<strong>at</strong> the Bach Allemande modul<strong>at</strong>es only to closely rel<strong>at</strong>ed keys, whereas the modul<strong>at</strong>ory p<strong>at</strong>h of the Beethoven development encompasses far more remote rel<strong>at</strong>ionships; the pieces are not stylistically <strong>at</strong>ypical in this regard. The 'distance' between successive keys also influences our time sense, for a key cre<strong>at</strong>es a feeling of a more or less extended 'now' - a 'specious present', to use th<strong>at</strong> un<strong>at</strong>tractive expression - and key rel<strong>at</strong>ionships have a lot to do with the ways these 'nows' flow one into the other or isol<strong>at</strong>e themselves. Theorists from Kirnberger to Schoenberg have <strong>at</strong>tempted to establish a taxonomy of key rel<strong>at</strong>ionships without, as far as I can see, agreeing among themselves or with the practice of the gre<strong>at</strong> composers. We can decide, perhaps, on a few general principles: a scarcity of common harmonic and melodic elements places two keys into a remote rel<strong>at</strong>ion (unless mitig<strong>at</strong>ed <strong>by</strong> mode mixture), the immedi<strong>at</strong>e succession of two tonics sounds disconnected when these tonics are a major second apart, and so on. But to combine such criteria into an elabor<strong>at</strong>e system is pointless. Trying to understand from an abstract schema how the modul<strong>at</strong>ions work in a piece is r<strong>at</strong>her like trying to understand the power structure of a large corpor<strong>at</strong>ion from the official charts of who reports to whom, without taking into account the possibility th<strong>at</strong> the president's secretary (who doubles as his mistress) might be a more powerful person than 304 MUSIC ANALYSIS 6:3, 1987
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