Half-Diminished Functions and Transformations in Late Romantic Music

Theoretical discussions of harmonic function and of neo-Riemannian voice-leading transformations have centered on triadic relationships. Transformational models for seventh chords have been proposed, but without demonstration of their usefulness in the analysis of complete musical structures. This study focuses on half-diminished seventh chords independently of their inversional relatives, the dominant sevenths, and offers an analytic model that is directly applicable to the nineteenth-century repertoire. In late-Romantic practice, half-diminished chords are adaptable to a variety of extended harmonic functions, and they can also be organized into three groups of four members each, within which they are associated by minimal voice-leading distance. The total pitch content of each group expresses an octatonic collection, and in works where half-diminished chords appear with some regularity, there are two tendencies that can be observed with regard to their usage: Ž rst, the proximate grouping of members of the same system, and second, changes from one system to another across larger spans in some systematic way. These functional and transformational relationships are illustrated in examples from the works of a diverse group of composers, including Wagner, Richard Strauss, Dvor I ak, Puccini, and Rachmaninov, and in the analysis of a complete piece by Scriabin. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.139 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:17:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms