Desire in Chromatic Harmony: A Psychodynamic Exploration of Fin de Siècle Tonality(Oxford Studies in Music Theory)

How does musical harmony engage listeners in relations of desire? Where does this desire come from? Author Kenneth Smith seeks to answer these questions by analyzing works from the turn of the twentieth- century that are both harmonically enriched and psychologically complex. Desire in Chromatic Harmony yields a new theory of how chromatic chord progressions direct the listener on intricate journeys through harmonic space, mirroring the tensions of the psyche found in Schopenhauer, Freud, Lacan, Lyotard, and Deleuze. Smith extends this mode of enquiry into sophisticated music theory, while exploring philosophically engaged European and American composers such as Richard Strauss, Alexander Skryabin, Josef Suk, Charles Ives, and Aaron Copland. Focusing on harmony and chord progression, the book drills down into the diatonic undercurrent beneath densely chromatic and dissonant surfaces. From the obsession with death and mourning in Suk's asrael Symphony to an exploration of "perversion" in Strauss's elektra; from the Sufi mysticism of Szymanowski's Song of the Night to the failed fantasy of the American dream in Copland's The Tender Land, Desire in Chromatic Harmony cuts a path through the dense forests of chromatic complexity, revealing the psychological make-up of post-Wagnerian psychodynamic music.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Preface Chapter 1: A Linguistic Theory of Chromatic Harmonic Substitution and Progression in the Diatonic Unconscious Chapter 2: Romantic Provenance Chapter 3: Transcending Root Motion: Productive Death Drives and Cybernetic Cycles in Charles Ives & Aaron Copland Chapter 4: Karol Szymanowski's Dominant Drive Model and the Excess of the Cycle Chapter 5: Tragedy and the Gaze of the Living Dead: Functional Harmonic Rotation in Strauss's Elektra Chapter 6: The Thanatonic and the Hexatonic: Repetition, Mourning, and "Mother" in Suk's Asrael Chapter 7: When Octatonic and Hexatonic Collide: Skryabin's Accelerationist Last Piano Sonata Epilogue: The Way Forwards (and Backwards) Bibliography

About the Author :
Kenneth M. Smith is Professor of Music Theory at University of Liverpool and serves as Vice President of the Society for Music Analysis. He is the author of Skryabin, Philosophy and the Music of Desire and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis.

Review :
In this simultaneously psychodynamic and music-theoretical discussion of the Oedipal triangle of Tonic, Subdominant, and Dominant functions in fin-de-siècle music, Kenneth Smith offers a potent new theory of how late tonal musicÂplayed its part in the development of modern concepts of psychological desire. Scintillating, challenging, and always engagingly written, this book makes a decisive contribution to our understanding of the libidinal landscape of musical modernity. In Desire in Chromatic Harmony, Kenneth Smith explains the unexplainable. And does so in compelling readable prose. Lying at the intersection of psychology, critical theory, philosophy, music theory, and historical musicology, Smith invites the reader into an in-depth yet unassuming contemplation of complicated music-analytical themes — through the chromaticism of Ives, Copland, Szymanowski, Strauss, Suk and Skryabin — from the 19th century right up to today. Something of a post-poststructuralist account of the philosophy of desire in music through the useful psychoanalytic notion of psychodynamics, Smith's incisive work will surely be required reading for all in the music academy, and beyond. In short, a great read. Kenneth Smith's scintillating new book is the best kind of interdisciplinary work: psychoanalysis becomes not a goal of music theory here, but its drive, the engine for a real adventure in concept-making. It rewards the mind but also the ears, which cannot hear this endlessly beguiling repertoire in the same way afterwards. A rabbit-hole of a good read! This book is integrative, since Smith has considered the various approaches to chromatic music with an ecumenical attitude...An attractive addition is that he broadens the usual scope of these kinds of studies to consider music outside the German tradition...Up front, Smith's Desire in Chromatic Harmony brings to fruition many of the promises of the scholarly inquiry around chromatic harmony. It is a very modern and fascinating way to consider the concept of harmony and, in general, to look at life through musical eyes.