Analysis by Key: Another Look at Modulation

CARI SCHACHTER
Might we say that bs 29-36 of the Schubert excerpt are in F minor? Yes, I
think, as long as we realize that they are 'in' F minor in a more attenuated sense
than the Chopin Prelude is. Hearing these bars as containing the V of F minor is
part of our moment-by-moment experience of the piece, just as responding to a
false clue is part of our moment-by-moment experience of reading a mystery
novel. But in neither case is the experience grounded in the larger reality created
by composer or author. The 'tonic' is an expected centre that is never
confirmed; in no sense is its harmony a matrix for the pitch content of the
passage. When we use the word 'tonic' in analysis, we should do well to
remember that it can represent quite different kinds of musical structure. We
can quickly infer a tonic as centre from signals given by other pitches; neither
the tonic chord nor even the tonic note need be present. We can infer a tonic as
matrix, however, only through the presence of at least two (and typically all
three) of the tonic triad's constituent notes, and these notes must be spread out
through time as the beginnings or goals of significant linear and harmonic
structures.
'Keys' without tonics (like the 'F minor' in the Schubert Scherzo) can enliven
a musical foreground precisely because they arouse specific expectations that
they do not fulfil. (Passages of 'roving harmony' which lack any distinct or
abiding tonal focus create quite different, though equally valuable, effects.) In
the second half of the eighteenth century, as Charles Rosen points out, cadences
tonicizing VI occurred so frequently near the end of development sections as to
become a cliche.7 Rosen then shows how composers can avoid the cliche by
withholding the expected goal. 'One way of escaping the eternal cadence on vi
preceding the return to I - or at least enlivening it - was by a cadence on V of vi,
followed by a jump into the tonic and the main theme.'8
One of Rosen's examples of this device is the Kyrie of Haydn's
Harmoniemesse, a piece in sonata form; as he writes, 'the cadence on vi (G minor)
is neatly avoided'.9 But the G minor harmony is not simply avoided as a
cadential goal; it does not occur anywhere in the passage. As in the Schubert
excerpt of Ex. 6, if this passage has a local tonic at all, it is an absentee tonic.
Example 7 contains a voice-leading reduction of the development section, and
shows that the putative V of G minor turns out to have a different function: it
leads by downward arpeggiation from V to I in the progression V-(IIIs)-I. This
event resonates with important motivic implications that I cannot go into here,
but the quotation following the graphs shows how the chromatic melodic line of
the entire development section is prefigured in the section's opening phrase.
Like Tovey's account of the Bach Prelude, Rosen's analysis is correct but
insufficient. His pointing out the non-fulfilment of an expectation is perfectly
valid, but he does not go on to explain what in fact does happen. Non-events
have their importance, but partly, at least, in the light of the outcome that their
expectation masks. And none of the great composers - least of all Haydn, with
his unparalleled powers of invention - makes compositional choices just to avoid
stereotypes; indeed they are often more willing than lesser musicians to use
cliches if the context is appropriate.
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MUSIC ANALYSIS 6:3, 1987