Chapter 19: Harmonic Style of Wagner and its Relationship to the Late Romantic Composers

Over this last summer I had the privilege of studying twentieth music with University of Hartford professor Dr. Michael Schiano and it is from his lectures and discussion that I draw the majority of my thesis in this blog.

I know I frequently come back to this production, but I personally feel as though no one tackles the issue of 19th century dissonance in compositional style better than Leonard Bernstein in his lectures at Harvard University. In these lectures, Bernstein states that “tonal ambiguity” had been pushed so far by the likes of Wagner and company that there was no other place for Germanic music to go other than to Schoenberg’s “destruction of tonality.” This idea is corroborated in the introduction of Dr. Robert Morgan’s text Twentieth Century Music, Morgan writes:

Another important development in nineteenth-century tonality (exemplified especially in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde) is that key centers came to be defined more by implication than by actual statement. Although tonal motion was still directed toward a goal, the goal itself might never actually appear… (Morgan p. 4)

Robert Morgan is a genuine expert in this subject and so I want to include one more quote:

The [tonal] repercussions were decisive for the future course of music. The twentieth century inherited a tonal system shaken to its foundations and already well on its way to total collapse. A final rupture was inevitable… (Morgan p. 8)

So, what are Bernstein and Morgan discussing? After all, they can’t be discussing just dissonance, for that we have only to look to the music of Gesualdo in the 16th century for cross relations and frequent key changes.



Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_q3EJNUKis


Furthermore, if we trace the more experimental side of Mozart we find some very interesting things in terms of tonality.



Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMhOC_asLxg


So, obviously, writings that skewed tonal centers are not unique to the 19th century. In my opinion, the reason why the 19th century is hailed as the final era of tonality is because those composers came up with such a wonderful justification for it, that of literary intention. This is something that Morgan states very frequently in his writings. Through “story telling” or “tone poetry” the composer was liberated to make tonal and formal considerations that were not usually in accordance with common-practice writing. This meant that Wagner’s choice to never resolve a series of diminished 7th chords or dominant 7th chords could be justified as trying to convey a situation of anticipation. Let us have a listen to “Tristan” for more clarification.



Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fktwPGCR7Yw

Finally, on a personal note, I almost hate the fact that this music is so incredible. As someone of Jewish Descent who had family die in the Holocaust, Wagner is a particular sore-spot for me, but his effects on the art-form to which I have devoted my life (music) are not something I can ignore and therefore I am forced to consider his genius.

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Works Cited:

Schiano, Michael. Private Interview. June 2009

Bernstein, Leonard. The Unanswered Question - Six Lectures at Harvard. Kulture Video 1972

Morgan, Robert. Twentieth Century Music. W.W. Norton, New York: 1991