Modulations

[Dave2002]

I always used to think that modulations (key changes) would be obvious, but they're not always, and often seem really subtle (to me, at any rate) and not really so apparent to anyone who isn't looking at the music, or very familiar with it.

Here is a Youtube which shows some options - https://youtu.be/Vxac3hHrxg8

To start with there are some very obvious ones - which gives us the idea of what's going on, but later on there will be some less obvious ones.

"Obviously" modulation provides variety for a composer, and also can be more interesting for a listener, but if many people don't notice, then the effects can be lost. Perhaps because most of us are now used to listening to highly chromatic music, or even atonal music, or music which "just" includes random sound effects, our collective expectations about key changes as a musical effect have been somewhat dampened down.

[Joseph K]

"Obviously" modulation provides variety for a composer, and also can be more interesting for a listener, but if many people don't notice, then the effects can be lost. Perhaps because most of us are now used to listening to highly chromatic music, or even atonal music, or music which "just" includes random sound effects, our collective expectations about key changes as a musical effect have been somewhat dampened down.

What makes you think this? All those types of music you mention can feature many subtleties, in the same way a modulation might be subtle.

I think there are levels of types of modulation that occur in tonal music which differ over the course of the history of the music. A lot of it depends on context and yes, expectation; e.g. an abrupt modulation to a distant key will have a more striking effect than a Baroque dance-suite piece A section ending on the dominant, obviously. Then there are secondary dominants, like mini localised quasi-modulations that might appear to travel from key to key in a quick suggestive manner without 'really' modulating to any of them (think Wagner's Tristan). This Romantic harmony influenced the composers of songs now thought of as Jazz standards.

[Pulcinella]

My 'goose-bump' modulation is in Herbert Howells' song King David: an A flat (in E flat minor, the key the song is 'written' in) is held on the word 'rose'; it then becomes a G sharp and the ritornello he uses in the song returns in the key of E major, with the nightingale singing above.
Sheer magic.


Here's Sarah Connolly singing it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN2Jz1vvlHY

And here's Janet Baker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g185MEZfriQ

[Dave2002]

What makes you think this? All those types of music you mention can feature many subtleties, in the same way a modulation might be subtle.

The point there is to do with expectations. Someone who is used to hearing tonic dominant changes as was quite common a few centuries ago, might have been surprised with a change from (say) C to B flat, whereas I think many people these days who would not have such an expectation would perhaps think nothing of it. People who were used to consonant triads would have reacted quite strongly perhaps to some modern works which feature dissonance, but again I think many nowadays would not be too surprised.

[Richard Barrett]

What Joseph said.

Otherwise: when I think of strange and expressive modulations I think of Schubert. Of course tonal music of any given time and place comprises a syntax within which some harmonic turns are expected, others unexpected, but after those centuries and expansions of harmonic resources Schubert's music still has the ability to create that sense of strangeness. Domenico Scarlatti too, actually; within the fairly stereotyped tonic-dominant/dominant-tonic scheme of his keyboard sonatas are hidden some highly unexpected and affecting corners.

[Dave2002]

I agree about Schubert, though are his modulations really strange? It does depend on what one expects. I find his 9th symphony amazing in parts. Also his 8th.

[Richard Barrett]

I agree about Schubert, though are his modulations really strange?

Yes.

As in the A minor sonata D537 - several quite unexpected modulations even in the first 45 seconds! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7pBOQUgfwc

[rauschwerk]

Talking of Schubert, do have a listen to his wonderful Allegro in A minor for piano 4 hands (named Lebensstürme by the publisher). In sonata form, it has a 3 key exposition. The four main modulations are achieved by the second player simply tracing out a 7th chord in unison - most unconventional! So the exposition goes from A minor via its dominant (E) to A flat major and then by the same process to C major. In the recapitulation we go from A minor via the dominant of F sharp minor (C sharp) to F major and then A major (coda in A minor). Terrific tonal planning!

[Joseph K]

The point there is to do with expectations. Someone who is used to hearing tonic dominant changes as was quite common a few centuries ago, might have been surprised with a change from (say) C to B flat, whereas I think many people these days who would not have such an expectation would perhaps think nothing of it. People who were used to consonant triads would have reacted quite strongly perhaps to some modern works which feature dissonance, but again I think many nowadays would not be too surprised.

Well of course. But I think we're confusing 'surprise' with 'dampening down of musical effect' to paraphrase the original post. We can still be surprised about older music, and still find it very expressive. What you were suggesting was that our exposure to more chromatic music for some reason cancels out the surprise we can get from aspects of tonal music - namely, modulations.

I still find the harmonies of Liszt's 'Gretchen' from the Faust Symphony to be quite astonishing and profound, to give you one of many examples...

[Dave2002]

Yes.

As in the A minor sonata D537 - several quite unexpected modulations even in the first 45 seconds! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7pBOQUgfwc

I think a lot depends on how much one has listened to Schubert. I'm not sure that the first minute or so really "concerns" me, but at 3 mins 50 or thereabouts there are some really strange things going on, and after that to the end of the movement. Ah - the 2nd movement - glimpses of recognition!

[Dave2002]

Well of course. But I think we're confusing 'surprise' with 'dampening down of musical effect' to paraphrase the original post. We can still be surprised about older music, and still find it very expressive. What you were suggesting was that our exposure to more chromatic music for some reason cancels out the surprise we can get from aspects of tonal music - namely, modulations.

I think our exposure to lots of different kinds of sounds including music does indeed alter our expectations.

Regarding modulation, there seem to be quite a number of well known ways (at least 10) of doing a shift. Some seem designed to be almost imperceptible, where others are like a rather graunchy gear change in a stick shift car. I suppose some composers play games, such as do a (arguably) "complex" sequence of almost imperceptible shifts, then throw in a very obvious one - say back to the original key - so that the listener might think "how the heck did we ever get there?" or alternatively "where are we going now?".

[Richard Barrett]

I think a lot depends on how much one has listened to Schubert.

Really? Many of the harmonic turns in that first movement are unusual, and unusually densely packed, even for Schubert. Also, something that seems to me unique about Schubert is that he always sets up the syntactic framework of expectation so concisely before subverting it. To put what Rauschwerk says in a different way, Schubert was discovering the possibilities of all kinds of mediant/submediant relationships, and (I think) when listening one feels that sense of discovery even with the knowledge of Wagner, Bruckner et al.

[Joseph K]

I think our exposure to lots of different kinds of sounds including music does indeed alter our expectations.

Yes, but how? This is quite a vague statement. Our expectations always exist in some sort of context, and I am not desensitised to the expressive features of Schubert or Liszt simply because I am familiar with atonal music.

Regarding modulation, there seem to be quite a number of well known ways (at least 10) of doing a shift. Some seem designed to be almost imperceptible, where others are like a rather graunchy gear change in a stick shift car. I suppose some composers play games, such as do a (arguably) "complex" sequence of almost imperceptible shifts, then throw in a very obvious one - say back to the original key - so that the listener might think "how the heck did we ever get there?" or alternatively "where are we going now?".

Well, the modulation that would be closest to whatever key you're in would be either adjacent key on the circle of fifths/fourths, or perhaps the relative minor; either way, I wouldn't claim that these are 'almost imperceptible', nor that they are complex, but there you go.

[Dave2002]

Well, the modulation that would be closest to whatever key you're in would be either adjacent key on the circle of fifths/fourths, or perhaps the relative minor; either way, I wouldn't claim that these are 'almost imperceptible', nor that they are complex, but there you go.

I did write that there could be a sequence. The sequence in its totality might be considered complex even if each step is not.

[Serial_Apologist]

Some of my favourite early "alerts" to the fascination of, for their time, unorthodox key changes, occur in well-known Russian works from the 19th century, which would go on to become "common practice" in Satie, and of course Debussy and Ravel, not to mention whole schools and hosts of 20th century composers who did not give up on tonal harmony, but used it in new ways, often "associatively" juxtaposed with older modal harmonic constructions, or, more accurately, neo-modal formulations, as beautifully explained by Anthony Payne in his radio description of Vaughan Williams's transition from modal ambiguity at the opening of the Fifth Symphony (where is the tonic?) to major diatonic resolution, in *both* senses, as the music modulates up a major third.

But going back to the Germanic expansion, as opposed to suspension (if I dare use the term) of diatonic practice, of enharmonic procedure in the wake of "Tristan", particular richness is to be found - for me, at any rate! - in the anticipation and, often, its thwarting of harmonic resolution - or at least modulation - by means of voice leading in the middle parts being contradicted or subverted by opposing movement or movements in some of the other parts. One finds instances of this in Mahler's sixth and seventh symphonies, and it is here - rather than, in my view, in the often greater dissonances to be found in Strauss's contemporary works, eg "Salome", which are often presented "unprepared" or resulting from part of the harmonic movement snagging while another has already moved on - and, contemporary with these Mahler works, Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No 1. What grips me in the latter, and prepared me for what was to follow, is not only the emotional disposition that allows for the inner disruption in the Schoenberg: a compression of practices already apparent in particular Wagner, Wolf, Mahler and Reger - but that such "warping" at times provides the pretext for the free movement of parts that takes over in the "free atonal" works of all three Second Viennese composers, and eventually "legitimises" the permutational contrapuntal combinations manifest in 12-tone music.

This is one of the aspects of the music of Schoenberg and his school that secures my loyalty as a listener - one can also find it to a lesser degree in the middle period Bartok string quartets. Already at times in the Op 19 "Hanging Gardens" songs of 1909 Schoenberg is entering realms of harmonic abstruseness that preclude the ear from recognising or attributing harmonic directionality of any sort to within the course of the music; yet, even in some of his most "difficult" works of this period, eg "Erwartung", and even later twelve-tone-based works, his music contains passages inner voiced in such ways as to imply movement towards enharmonic modulation or partial resolution: I'm thinking of the opening of the Violin Concerto and parts of the slow movement of the Fourth String Quartet, which one can almost imagine Mahler composing had he lived long enough and become a Schoenberg "convert" - certainly in the third and fourth quartets of Zemlinsky, in which the advanced tonal worlds of late romanticism and the atonality of expressionism blend seamlessly.

I've managed to find this passage from someone who it seems to me clearly knows what he is talking about, in reference to Saget mir, auf welchem Pfad haute sie vorueberschreite, the fifth of the spellbinding Op 15 aforementioned Das buch der Haengenden Garten cycle:

"[It] ends with a kind of G major cadence ... which is very strongly stressed by the bass fifth D-G, and which cannot be weakened by the chromatic movements in the upper parts (something similar occurs in the final bars of the tenth Lied). Yet no tonal interpretation of the whole of the Lied is possible: G major is introduced here only as a means of expression, and its functional power is much smaller than that of the predominantly chromatic use of notes with avoidance of cadences. The system of the 'leading-note relation' in all notes, the advance with the use of semi-tonal movement in several parts, in parallel or contrary motion, is of decisive importance in the Georgelieder. It replaces to a large extent the functional relationship of chords. In an analysis of the harmonic progressions one frequently gets the impression of a strange force of suction which is inherent in these sounds and which forces them into certain motions. It is something like a physical phenomenon, a kind of 'osmosis' of sound, in which it does not matter whether the progression leads to a triad or an unanalysable dissonance ..." (H.H.Stuckenschmidt, (1959, reprinted 1964) Arnold Schoenberg, John Calder, London, PP45-46).

These matters of harmonic movement and tension-resolution are I think germane to the thread subject matter of modulation, which I hope I will be forgiven for introducing in the interest of broadening the discussion.