O Compositional commentary as a means of revealing latent harmonic functionalities

exposition of the method and commentary on Schoenberg’s Op. 19/6

Abstract

Since the abandonment of functional tonality by Schoenberg, Scriabin, Ives and others between the years of 1908 and 1909, several authors have enquired whether there would be an underlying participation of tonality in their works. In view of this old discussion, this paper aims at presenting an analytical procedure which we understand to be particularly adequate in recognizing and disclosing a posteriori functional relations (both local and large-scale ones) in the so called post-tonal music. This procedure is methodologically based (1) on an experiment by Schoenberg in his Harmonielehre (1922) and (2) on Luciano Berio’s practice of compositional commentary (Berio 2006) and it consists, basically, in adding to the analyzed work (which rests otherwise intact) an instrumental line that performs, in each dissonant harmonic formation, preparations and resolutions intended to demonstrate how such formation could have happened within a pre-1908 tonality. Besides considering (1) that functional relations can be established a posteriori, we also assume as theoretical assumptions: (2) that a posteriori functionalities tend to be fuzzy (Oliveira 2018); and (3) that the emancipation of the dissonance would be a historical process occurred mainly within functional tonality itself – which is why preparations and resolutions of dissonant formations (i. e., the reversal of their emancipatory processes) would be effective in reporting them to previous stages of tonality. After explaining, within the opening bars of Schoenberg’s Op. 11/1 (1909), how our procedure effectively works, we present a thorough analysis of his Op. 19/6 (1911), through which we demonstrate how the work comprises, virtually and in a fuzzy way, a surprisingly conventional tonal scheme.