And he played a chord: all black keys: F sharp, A sharp, C sharp, and added an E, and so unmasked the chord, which had looked like F-sharp major, as belonging to B major, as its dominant. ‘Such a chord,’ he said, ‘has of itself no tonality. Everything is relation [Beziehung]’
Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus[1]
In this passage, Thomas Mann shows how the addition of one single note can give a chord an instance of context and belonging―that is, to a specific key, and with that a series of relationships defined by practice in 18th and 19th centuries Western music. A chord that is simply stacked thirds, as suggested initially (by F# - A# - C#), would essentially be nothing when played alone. A chord like that would sound stable, constituting a consonance, but very little beyond that. To add the seventh, in this case the dominant seventh, according to Western Classical music theory, would already give the impression of movement, of a desire inherent to the relation (as Mann describes) it has to resolve into another chord. The E has what sounds to be an inclination to resolve to B sharp, and the A sharp to resolve to B, moving the chord to somehow where it belongs in B major (its “home key”).
A chord alone, a major triad alone, of course has tonality. Nevertheless, it is curious that even if a major chord is played and insisted upon, it can still sound static. One piece that illustrates this particularly well is Beethoven’s Sonata in G Major, Opus 31, No. 1 (the lesser known of the more popular sonatas of this group, formed by this Sonata in G Major [Op. 31, no. 1], “The Tempest” [Op. 31, No. 2] and “The Hunt” [Op. 31, No. 3] sonatas). The sonata was composed between 1801-1802, and for this reason still retains some aspects where the shape of many themes looks backward toward Classicism (for example, the dolce second theme), but harmonically show Beethoven reaching into new territory and intentionally avoiding some traditional harmonic patterns. This is to say, the relations between chords are at times pushed in somewhat unexpected directions in this group of sonatas.
Example. Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonata in G Major, Op. 31, no. 1, I/0-16.
The movement starts with two motifs, which Beethoven will bring up throughout the movement. The first being what starts the movement and asserts the tonic (the main key of the movement); the second motif (starting at m.3) is made up major chords, similar to the first one Thomas Mann’s character (Adrian Leverkühn) was describing. Although punctuated by octaves in the left hand, the chords, played in inversions, seem to stall the motion of the sonata in its first bars. There is no continuous harmonic progression. Many times, a theme or melody will indicate the kinds of chords that will accompany it (even if they are not present). Here, however, our motif is simply chords, without any notes that would indicate movement to another key area or cadence. The way in which this motif resolves includes the seventh scale degree (the A major seventh in measure 10, briefly constituting the modulation to D major).
What is perhaps more interesting after this is the way in which the relation is stretched to an unexpected area. With a noisy entrance at forte, the first motif comes in again at a very distant relation to the main key of the piece (in G major) or even to D major (into which it has just solidly modulated). This is simply one instance where Beethoven is using a relation of a third, and not even a “normal” mediant relationship but a chromatic one. This is because of the natural sign in front of the F, which introduces this new entrance of the first motif[2]. It negates the first thing that differentiates the key of G major from the key of C major (that is, by eradicating the F# of G major) and similarly negates what “positive” elements D major has brought to the sonata at this point. This is because the D major chord (which appears immediately before the theme) without F sharp and would be a D minor chord (and thus sound “sad”). This sudden F natural is like a lightning bolt that goes straight down into the D major chord that has come before it, almost causing the listener to think what they heard before was maybe actually a D minor chord.
There is something about the clomping about of the major chords in the second motif that does not suggest much “positive” movement on its own. However, by asserting its major-ness in such a pronounced way, it may be for this reason that perhaps Beethoven imagined that engaging this distant relation (F major) would create some amount of intrigue. Imagine one of those big family reunions where you start trying to figure out who is related to whom by blood or by marriage; and then there are those odd faces who are simply friends or neighbors. Beethoven, by bringing in F major at this point, and asserting this modulation with a single note, is like the host of the party pulling a kind neighbor to the front and making a toast to their presence at the event; in any case, the blood-relations are intrigued, a little baffled, but also understand the possibilities behind doing such a thing.
A single note has the ability, as Thomas Mann describes, to point to direction and belonging at the same time as create a sense of confusion. As his character adds on the following page:
Relationship [Beziehung] is everything. And if you want to give it a more precise name, it is ambiguity [Zweideutigkeit].
The ambiguity expressed here relates to how certain keys share much of the same tonal sounding material and chords, as long as certain notes are left out. This would be to avoid the accidentals that push one chord or theme into another key’s territory. Ambiguity in this way is interesting in the sense that it has inspired different ways of analyzing Western music to view a broader picture, and to not necessarily analyze every single chord as it appears but rather see sections of music as belonging to larger key areas or groups. What is gained by this method of analysis is to embrace ambiguity, on the one hand, saying: “it’s overly complex to name this thing, and we don’t really don’t have much certainty about it anyway, so it shall have no real name;” while, on the other, by highlighting the similarities between keys, it plays down the antagonism sometimes associated with ambiguity. This antagonism might be imagined as a question, along the lines of: by not really belonging to one key or another, can a theme gain tonal coherence in this section, or does it have to wait for a more explicit harmonic landscape to give it meaning?
It is here that we return to relation. The names we give to words that serve a specific purpose in syntax or style seem to not really describe the relation those words have to the content they determine. A Neapolitan sixth, a most interesting development in cadential movement, hardly captures the sensation of hearing this device prepare a cadence. And to rationalize that relationship is less unusual than that example of Beethoven’s chromatic mediant in Op. 31, no. 1, simply because Neapolitan sixths have a stronger presence in Western music starting in the 17th century. The relation is the name given to the device that has been invented to connect sounds to each other, as following consonance or not. A theme’s coherence ultimately depends somewhat on those relations because they are at the foundation of the experience, and for many generations, specialists have worked at giving more and more precise names to these tonal motions. Whether a relation is named or simply called “ambiguity” drives to the heart of the matter how some individuals think about, and understand, music (and which Thomas Mann’s character expresses in these two sentences). To explain music does not need to be aimed at answering questions about harmonic relations; it can rather revel in the paradoxical, and yet elementary, movements within tonal material which may or may not have clear reasons for being or behaving in a certain way. Ambiguity need not constitute a loss of vision, but simply a momentary suspension of expectation within the frame of a tradition. And even within the tradition, the most distant relations still find names or might be considered anticipations or delayed resolutions of something else (and thus not deserving of a name in its own right); this ultimately suggests that this has all happened before, and that this particular ambiguity may not be as enigmatic as some may desire it to be.
