2.3 The emancipation of dissonance

The first time, in his Harmonielehre (1911) he was completely wrong:

In his second theory of harmony, Structural Functions of Harmony (1954) he gives the first two chords the but then chokes so badly on the next sequences that his explanation no longer has a single note in common with what Wagner wrote.

Is this just a case of ‘what a pity’? Except for the fact that it is always nice when a textbook is actually correct, it is also telling of Schönberg’s inability to provide a theoretical foundation for his revolution, his innovation.

Ex. 4Tristan chord &

J œ œ. œ J œ bb ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙n b

II

in Eb major (VII)

1 1 # w w w w

II lowered in d sharp minor

jœ# œ # œ œ œ j œ‰ J œ œ œ

V in a minor

In his Harmonielehre he writes: „In solchen Momenten bedaure ich, dass ich so weinig weiß. Ich muss alles erraten.” [At such moments I regret that I know so little. I have to guess at everything.] Martin Vogel adds: "Es ist bedauerlich, dass sich Schönberg viele Jahre seines Lebens mit der Abfassung musiktheoretischer Lehrbücher befasste, ohne sich dazu verstehen zu können, die musiktheoretische Fachliteratur einzusehen.“ [It’s a pity that Schönberg occupied himself with writing music-theoretical textbooks for so many years of his life without being prepared to look at the music theoretical professional literature.] In: Der Tristan-Akkord und die Krise der modernen Harmonielehre (1962), p. 53.

Perhaps this is why Schönberg remained sceptical of free atonality. By ear, he made brilliant decisions and wrote his most brilliant works in free atonality, but his evolutionary fixation on the lines of tradition compelled him to present something more academic. The composers from his school and the entire post-World War II modernistic line, referred to in this publication as Young Music, adopted his Cultural Darwinisim and made it into the most important dogma of German modernistic music.

2.3. THE EMANCIPATION OF DISSONANCE Like many musicians, Schönberg does not clearly distinguish between tonality and functional - or cadential - harmony. However, tonality is more than just harmony. In fact, the cadential harmony drives all other parameters of music, as shown in the tonality diagram below:

tonality diagram

At the core of this system is the triad; without triad there is no cadence. Schönberg explains his step into atonality mainly from the voicing, which had become linear and chromatic. But in doing so he is reversing cause and effect: because of the incredible richness of the harmonic language in the late-Romantic era, the voicing becomes chromatic. This is amply illustrated by the works of Strauss, Wagner and Chopin. So, Schönberg announces his greatest revolution almost in passing: the emancipation of dissonance as an independent sound. It is typical of Schönberg that he wants to take the sting out of his revolution: dissonant tones are merely somewhat higher overtones than consonants.

However, the emancipation of dissonance explodes tonality: without triad no cadence, without cadence no tonality.

This exploding of tonality opens up a treasure trove of possibilities, as the music parameters can now develop independently. Rhythm is no longer bound to the regularity imposed upon the music by the cadence; melody and harmony can continue independently of each other; the texture that is formed in this freedom can behave as either harmony, melody, or counterpoint; the number of expressive means become infinitely large.24

The emancipation of dissonance came at a price: the bond with the audience who attended classical concerts as a matter of course and who

24 Later, in Penser la musique d’aujourd’hui (Thinking contemporary music, 1963), Pierre Boulez is aware of these possibilities, but only after sticking a knife in Schönberg’s back in his article Schönberg est mort (Schönberg is dead) (1952).