Harmony and Dissonance

27 July 2024

Harmony is a fundamental building block of music. It creates and evokes certain emotions that are ingrained in us. However, this also means that unusal uses of harmony is often puzzling or uncanny, unless the listener is willing to familiarize themselves with it. We shall, through this tour of a few pieces, hope to better understand late Romantic harmony.

Hindemith - 2nd String Quartet

If i needed to demonstrate neo-classicism in a single piece, this would be my choice. With almost exclusively Mozartian and Beethovenian gestures emanating throughout, it feels almost like any other string quartet written in the past 200 years; yet, Hindemith’s use of consonance and dissonance to drive tension and development frees the functions of chords from their traditional roles of dictating cadences, and instead focuses more on the particular intervals within those chords themselves.

Beethoven - Grand Fugue

Compared to the Hindemith above, there is less harmonic craziness here, but plenty of rhythmic creativity present. In the words of the famous composer Stravinsky, the Grand Fugue is an “eternally contemporary” piece. Multiple motifs and themes feature throughout the piece: most prominently is the chromatic figure that is first introduced as a countersubject in the first section, expanded upon in the middle intermezzo section, and completely upended in the second section via multiple rhythmic augmentations and diminuitions. I could go on for another hour analyzing the structure of this entire piece, but it’s best that you experience this firsthand before anything else.

On a side note, Beethoven wrote plenty of fugues in his later years, and there are in particular a few that are less accessible to the listener, such as this one, the fugue in the last movement of the Hammerklavier, and perhaps the fugue from the first movement of the 14th quartet, which is often said to be Beethoven’s favourite. It is absolutely daunting and emotionally draining to listen to and analyze some of these late Beethoven works, so don’t be discouraged the first time around!

Ravel - Noble and Sentimental Waltzes

In this suite of eight waltzes, constructed almost purely in triadic harmony, Ravel adds his own blend of impressionism and tonal ambiguity. From his pre-war works such as this one, in my opinion, there is a more academic quality to it, as in these modern, post-romantic elements are sprinkled in carefully; on the other end of the spectrum are his post-war works, which are much rarer in quantity, but usually involve a much larger emotional outburst (see the his two piano concerti).

Scriabin - 4th Piano Sonata

As of the time of writing, this is my favourite piece of music that I have found this year. Superficially, it has a dreamy quality that is in stark contrast to the traditional romantic sound; I really could only describe it as feeling like a daydream on a summer’s night, which quite accurately describes the mood right now. Substantially, on the other hand, the music is barely tonal, as in you can ascribe it the key of F-sharp major, but the development ventures far away from that tonal center. Scriabin’s use of (to his contemporaries, relatively) complex polyrhythms is in full display throughout, often pitting 3 against 4 against 5.

Debussy - Violin Sonata

His large major composition and last performance, Debussy’s violin sonata is a fine example of his unique composition style (as compared to other romantic period composers). In my opinion, this sonata is best contrasted with Ravel’s violin sonata, as it starkly contrasts debussy’s heavy use of atmospheric effects, as opposed to Ravel’s more traditional use of melody as a driving element.

Scriabin - 7th Piano Sonata, “White Mass”

When listening to late Scriabin, one should throw away all they know about classical music, and think purely in terms of motifs. In this piece, function of chords are, once again, like the Hindemith quartet no longer part of constructing cadences, or at least, the cadences are definitely not classical. Classical music theory usually dictates that the dominant seventh drives resolutions, while the diminished seventh drives tension; on the other hand, one example in this piece, in as early as the 4th measure, the composer disguises, through chord inversions, a clustered major and minor chord into a triadic chord, supported by an interval of major seventh, which is used as one of the major driving points of tension in the piece.

Like beethoven, Scriabin likes to build his music from complex rhythmic structures; but the composer here brings this even further, sprinkling his infamous quintuplet gesture everywhere throughout the piece. moreover, the diminution and augmentation of the subject material layered together is the exact same counterpoint structure that Beethoven uses in his Grand Fugue (2nd fugue section, about 9 minutes into the earlier recording).

Although atonal, this Scriabin sonata does not lack in melodic elements. This I will leave to the listener to discover, but one can indeed say that this piece is melodically driven, with the powerful motifs from the beginning of the piece coming back multiple times in the recapitulation, in different forms.

When comparing Scriabin’s “White Mass” to his 4th sonata, one can say this sonata is an extremized version of that dreamy quality that draws me to his 4th sonata. However, the moment that I would like to emphasize is the chord close to the end of the “White Mass”, the large, 5-octave, arpeggiated chord representing a revelation; it is not so dissimilar to the end of the 4th sonata, where the chords, in triple forte, come out in full force, driving the music to its finale.

Finally, one can interpret Scriabin’s deviation from tonality as one form of impressionism. We can compare this piece with the Debussy violin sonata, for its use of descriptive, almost sentence-like musical passages. One such example is how both composers like to trail off after certain gestures, as if they are losing, momentarily, their train of thought (this appears multiple times in the 1st movement of the debussy, as early as the 14th measure).