A Theory of Early Twentieth-Century Harmony (Rajan Lal, Trinity College Cambridge)

Theories of early twentieth-century harmony are legion, and often toggle between two main frameworks that alone seem insufficient to address the affluences of the period. Framework 1 views twentieth-century ‘music in transition’ as an expansion of tonal precedents set in motion by Wagner, Liszt and others. Framework 2 focusses much more on the intrinsic status of harmonic objects via the set-theoretical tools developed in North America circa 1960; its critical evidential mass lies with the Second Viennese coterie. The unification of these two modes of thinking into a single coherent theory, that addresses what Anthony Pople once termed the fin-de-siècle’s multiple ‘Tonalities’, remains, in my view, the Holy Grail of music-analytical discourse. This lecture takes a step toward the mythical goblet. It proposes a new theory of harmony that synthesises currents in musical set theory (scalar inclusion and chordal quality) with a tonal perspective mapped not in terms of discrete categories (Riemannian hauptfunktionen, Schenkerian stufen, Roman numerals, etc.) but with regard to a continuous spectrum of possibilities that reflect the appreciation of posttonal music with respect to the elder tonal tradition. I term this framework the tonic/dominant-quality continuum, and demonstrate its flexible application to repertoire ranging from Scriabin to Webern. The gendered hermeneutics it unravels are also addressed, as harmonic evaluations transmute from extrinsic-priority – to local events and broader structure – to intrinsic status. Referring to Schoenberg’s contradictory writings on symmetry, I also demonstrate the interaction of my continuum with the so-called ‘geometry of music’ expounded by contemporary North American discourse.

Biography

RAJAN LAL is a Title A Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. He completed all his degrees at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge from 2017–2024, where he was a Senior scholar and a Tammy Chen scholar. He won his current fellowship with a Ph.D. thesis on Scriabin’s late works – in a draft form after two years of study; the project was supervised by Nicholas Marston and advised by Paul Wingfield. Rajan’s research is published or forthcoming in Music Analysis (twice), the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Music Theory Online and in OUP’s Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers, Vol. 4. He has just completed his first book manuscript, Webern’s Lost Cello Sonata and Music in the Aphoristic Style, and has two more books in progress: a study of the ‘art of recomposition’ spanning concert, film and popular contexts, plus a major tome on Scriabin’s sonata forms and the gendered intensification of harmonic languages across the fin-de-siècle. Rajan has taught across all year groups in analysis and tonal skills on the Cambridge Music Tripos since 2020, including supervision of more than twenty Part II Analysis Portfolios. He presently lectures in Analysis at Part IB. Further research interests include Russian music, particularly Stravinsky, the Second Viennese School, Liszt, Sorabji, musical set theory, and music in film.