Analyzing Harmonic Polarities

Analyzing the harmony and form of musical compositions remains a valuable tool for students of music, performers, composers, and musicologists. Yet many traditional approaches tend to focus on how complex features can be reduced into simpler categories and questions of unity and coherence. This book advocates an alternative tonal narrative approach, which uses a framework of polarities in dynamic interaction and interdependence to elucidate the life forces animating tonal compositions. Drawing on the writings of Arnold Schoenberg, Donald Francis Tovey, Charles Rosen, and others, the approach identifies three sets of polarities—centrifugal/centripetal, sharp/flat, and spatial/temporal—that interact in works by composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. The approach suggests the methods by which the reader may delve into these polarities and thereby deeper into the meaning of masterworks. It proposes several tonal narrative functions, including intensifications to culminations and counterbalancing leading to completeness of harmonic space, which aim at helping the interpreter perceive the overall shape and narrative dynamics of a work.

Stephen Whale is a pianist, music analyst/theorist, and piano teacher and holds degrees from Sydney Conservatorium of Music (B. Mus, Hons), Yale School of Music (M. Mus), and City University of New York (DMA, 2019). Currently residing in Denmark, he works as an accompanist, piano teacher, and freelance pianist. Dr. Whale performs a wide range of repertoire as a soloist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist. He has performed at festivals and on concert series in many countries, including Australia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United States. He has presented academic papers at conferences such as the Society for Music Analysis at Oxford University.