I begin with an anecdote describing an activity that has not worked in my classroom. Mid-to-late in the third semester of music theory (chromatic harmony and form), the class has just spent 40 minutes toughing out a Roman-numeral analysis of Schubert’s Sehnsucht, D. 310 (Examples 8a and 8b, below). They’ve identified the D-flat minor chord in measure 5 as an example of modal mixture (a topic they learned two weeks ago); they’ve teased out the enharmonically reinterpreted leading tone seventh chord pivot in measure 9 (a topic they learned one week ago); they’ve recognized the common-tone/chromatic mediant modulation from A-flat major to C-flat major in measures 11–12 (a topic from the last class); and they’ve learned how to use the German augmented sixth in measure 17 as a position-finding chord that points toward C minor, even though C minor never materializes (a new topic!). On top of all that, they navigate the enharmonically spelled keys in this Lied: B major is the same key as C-flat, and they both function as ^bIII in the key of A-flat major! Now, with their heads reeling, you ask, what could the significance of the key of ^bIII be to the meaning of the song? I usually get a combination of very confused looks and glazed eyes.

Introducing meaning in texted music through these magnificent art songs seems like a logical thing to do. Indeed, many commonly used textbooks either pepper their chapters on chromatic techniques with examples from art songs, or else devote entire chapters to them. Introducing meaning in this way, however, can be problematic for two somewhat contradictory reasons. Sometimes the student works very hard to come up with the “label” of the technique in question, and therefore the student thinks that the label is the point of the analysis. Such labeling, however, is merely the first descriptive step on the way to a meaningful analysis.¹ Rogers, Teaching Approaches in Music Theory, 74­–5 Alternatively, the very notion that the technique has a “label” can mislead the student into thinking that the moment in the music is standard, and as a result not worthy of further interpretation. The latter problem especially is exacerbated if the student is less familiar with the Lied repertory: the language is foreign, the poem esoteric, the chromatic concepts are new and complicated, even the sound of the music could be unfamiliar.

Many educators identify making connections between the familiar and the unfamiliar as a successful strategy. Ivan Jimenez identifies several such studies in his article “Maximizing the Benefits of Using Familiar Music in Undergraduate Music Theory.”²Jimenez, “Maximizing the Benefits of Using Familiar Music,” 1. His article focuses on solving specific pedagogical problems (identifying augmented seconds and beginning counterpoint) through association with familiar folk and classical music examples. In her teaching, Melissa Hoag draws on examples from repertoire that her students are currently performing as well as familiar examples from popular music and jazz; to Hoag, “incorporating repertoire that has immediate relevance to students’ musical experiences greatly helps the importance and applicability of theory and aural skills come alive for students.”³Hoag, “Seven Strategies for Enabling Student Success,” 12. Ken Stephenson cites the use of popular music in the theory classroom as a way to “make theory class more relevant,” “increase a class’s enthusiasm,” and “provide inroads to certain topics because of the students’ familiarity with the music.”⁴Stephenson, “Popular Music in the AP Music Theory Classroom.” Similarly to the works discussed above, this article approaches pedagogical issues through association with popular music; while the students might not be familiar with the specific songs chosen, the more familiar style of popular music makes them more accessible.

Applying notions of musical meaning to unfamiliar music can be intimidating for students. For this reason, as well as the reasons given by the teacher-scholars discussed above, I introduce musical meaning with popular music styles that are more familiar to the students before applying the concept of meaning to the art song repertory. For the purposes of this paper, I will focus on the generation of meaning from voice-leading factors and the key scheme in several popular songs, including the Beatles’s “Please Please Me,” Blondie’s “Dreaming,” the Rays’s “Silhouettes,” and Ray Charles’s version of Beasley Smith’s “That Lucky Old Sun.” Through these songs, students will be introduced to the meaning implicit in several compositional devices: the (non)resolution of tendency tones, the reciprocal process, the key scheme, and common-tone mediant modulations.

These topics are all transferable to the study of meaning in nineteenth-century music. The discussion of each device below begins with an example from a familiar popular style, then provides several examples from art music of the nineteenth century that use the same or a similar device that can elicit an interpretation of meaning. The instructor should take care to point out both the parallels and the differences in the use of the device between the popular style examples and the art music examples so that the students will understand that the device, and its potential to create meaning, transcends the style. By first discovering these devices that create meaning in familiar styles, students are more likely to recognize the devices in the less familiar style of nineteenth-century art music and become more comfortable forming their own interpretation of the meaning of the music.

Meaning and Tendency Tones

According to Walter Everett, “the Beatles’s early music displays a substantial variety of dissonance treatment and a rich exploitation of scale-degree functions...usually in an unambiguous setting of an idea in the poetic text.”⁵Everett, “Voice Leading and Harmony as Expressive Devices,” 20. “Please Please Me,” the title song of the Beatles’s 1963 debut album, could be a study in the exploitation of the leading tone.⁶Schiano, “Theory Seminar: Music of the Beatles.” The avoidance of the tonic pitch, especially of the leading tone ascending to the tonic over a tonic harmony, musically embodies the frustration of the singer, whose girl will not “please” him. Example 1a shows the lyrics.

Example 1a:

After the students listen to the song without, then with, the score, they can locate all instances of the leading tone in the vocal line and describe its behavior. All the sections in the song—the introduction, verses, chorus, and bridge—avoid ascending to the tonic pitch over tonic harmony (Examples 1b and 1c; while I would not introduce the sketches in a third-semester undergraduate class, they are provided here for convenience). In the introduction, the harmonica and lead guitar line descend stepwise before arpeggiating from scale-degree  to , leaving out the lower tonic. The vocal line in the verses echoes the stepwise line from the introduction and sets up the Kopfton on , leaving out the final skip to the mediant. The effect of the omission of the lower tonic in the introduction, and the mediant and tonic in the verses, can be demonstrated by having the students sing it both as written and with the lower tonic included (in the verses, the students can give the girl a name to fill out the lyrics: “...to my girl Eileen” where “Ei-leen” drops from  to ). The complete arpeggiation sounds more closed and final than the written version.

The “Come on” section in the chorus complements the main line in the verse by ascending; the melody quests upwards and achieves the line –––(B–C#–D#–E). The melody achieves leading-tone to tonic motion, but the leading tone is not supported, and the final tonic scale degree occurs over the subdominant A major harmony. On the lyrics “Please please,” the vocal line “pleads” with an upward octave leap on the dominant pitch, and the line ends with another frustrated leading tone from  to . Again, the effect of recomposing the music to end on  to  at the lyrics “like I please you” is much different, more satisfying, than the written version.

The bridge and coda continue to frustrate the leading tone. Example 1c shows the bridge, which is inserted between the Verse 2/Chorus and Verse 3. The antecedent ascends from  to , then descends ––. The structure of this line promises a C#–D#–E ascent (––) in the next phrase; but instead, the leading tone descends to  yet again and overshoots the tonic with another octave leap to the upper dominant. If the line ended D# to E on “reason with you,” the effect would be completely different. In the coda, the frustration of the leading tone to either the lower or the upper dominant repeats three times, and the song ends with an upper vocal line echoing the skip from  to  found in the introduction, that again does not descend to the tonic. With the tonic goal either frustrated or overshot each time, the progression of – seems to represent a taboo area that is what the singer wants, but is not getting.

In Please, Please Me, the nonresolution of the leading tone represents literal emotional and/or sexual frustration. By exploring this song, students will learn that composers manipulate tonal tendencies to create meaning, and in this texted example, to effect the meaning of the lyrics. This concept of meaning can then be extended to non-texted music, where the nonresolution of tendency tones may carry different, more nuanced meanings. For example, Edward T. Cone uses voice-leading factors to extract meaning from Schubert’s Moment Musical no. 6 (op. 94, D. 780, 1824) in his 1982 article “Schubert’s Promissory Note: An Exercise in Musical Hermeneutics.” In his analysis, Cone cites a locally unresolved secondary leading tone; the non-resolution of the leading tone begs for a resolution later in the piece and encourages a long-distance aural connection of the leading tone and its note of resolution. Cone eventually interprets the meaning of this “promissory note” as the “injection of a strange, unsettling element into an otherwise peaceful situation...the element has not been tamed; it bursts out with even greater force, revealing itself as basically inimical to its surroundings, which it proceeds to demolish.”⁷Cone, “Schubert’s Promissory Note,” 239–40. Additionally, Robert Hatten explores the bass motion of #––during the chord succession V/V–V–I⁶ in the opening phrase of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 4 in E-flat Major, op. 7/ii as an instance of “‘willed’ resignation...[that] may suggest the more refined concept of abnegation.”⁸Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 58–60. In this case, the frustration of the secondary leading tone progresses to a later transcendence.

For both the popular music example and the art music examples, the nonresolution of the leading tone is a device loaded with potential for interpreting meaning. The meaning ascribed to it is already ingrained in the words we use to describe it: the tendency of the leading tone is “unfulfilled,” or “frustrated.” In the art music examples, the tendency is initially unfulfilled, then later resolved. The eventual resolution of the hanging leading tone is then assigned more significance. In the popular song, however, the leading tone never resolves, so that the protagonist is left perpetually unfulfilled. In the next popular example, however, the leading tone does eventually resolve, underscoring the importance of the moment of resolution as in the art music examples above.

The Reciprocal Process

Blondie’s 1979 hit “Dreaming” offers an opportunity to introduce the reciprocal process as well as continue the exploration of manipulating tendency tones.⁹Justin London’s analysis of Bruce Springsteen’s 1987 song “One Step Up” also contains an instance of the reciprocal process as well as a clever interpretation of the bass line that reflects the lyrics of the refrain. “One Step Up,” 112. “Dreaming” avoids leading tone to tonic voice leading in the verse, saving it for the chorus. The lyrics (Example 2a) contrast the world of reality in the verses with the dream world of the chorus.

Example 2a: “Dreaming,” Chris Stein & Debbie Harry, Lyrics

In the verse, the singer speaks of an actual meeting, whose reality is brought home in the second line, “you could tell I was no debutante.” The verse is structured like a sentence, where the first two lines are a basic idea and its repetition; see Example 2b. Like the Beatles’s “Please Please Me,” the basic ideas of the verse descend, this time from scale-degree . In the fragmented continuation, the descent from  to  is teased, but denied twice by leaps away from scale-degree : on “pleasure”  leaps up to  (E to A), on “movie or a measure”  leaps down to  while the “measure” avoids the tonic area by leaping from  up to  (B to F#). The song achieves a descent to tonic melodically on “I’ll have a cup of tea,” a moment that is also a turning point in the lyrics (in each verse, the singer turns from observation to action). The tonic pitch isn’t given tonic support, however, until the chorus, where the leading tone progresses to the tonic over dominant to tonic harmony, right on the word “Dreaming.” The implication of the voice leading is that resolution occurs only in a dream, while reality is spent trying to get to that dream.

In his article “Rockin’ Out: Expressive Modulation in Verse-Chorus Form,” Christopher Doll identifies what he terms a “breakout chorus” as a “standard compositional option;” such a chorus “convey[s] an increase in intensity with respect to various parameters, including loudness, lyrical content, pitch level (both melodic and harmonic), rhythmic and textural activity, and timbral noise.”¹⁰ Doll, “Rockin’ Out: Expressive Modulation in Verse-Chorus Form.” The chorus in “Dreaming” could be described as an “anti-breakout chorus,” since the pitch level via its resolution to the tonic decreases in intensity. Rather than the chorus, what breaks out in this song is the bridge section (“Feet, feet, walkin’ a two mile”). The entrance of the bridge stands out since it seemingly interrupts the chorus. Here the drums change into a more standard rock’n’roll pattern, while the vocal line is quicker, and its rhythm switches from emphasizing beat one to emphasizing beat two. In addition, C-naturals in this vocal line suggest a different tonal center: G rather than D. The sketch in Example 2c shows the bridge, with the Urlinie reconfigured in G major.

In the same article, Doll states that “If we are truly hearing a verse and a chorus [or in this case a verse and a bridge] as establishing different tonal centers, then the decision as to which of these pitch classes is hierarchically superordinate—as to which is the global center—cannot be reached a priori.” In the song “Dreaming,” which is the global center: D major, or G major? “Dreaming” could be considered an example of Guy Capuzzo’s “sectional tonality” with the verses and chorus in D and the bridge in G. In sectional tonality, two equal keys govern, but the first and last keys are the same.¹¹Capuzzo, “Sectional Tonality...in Rock Music,” 159. Rather than beginning and ending in the same key, however, the bridge introduces an ambiguity that casts doubt on the tonality of the final verse and chorus. This ambiguity reflects the reciprocal process, whereby “the listener loses tonal grounding because of conflicting tonal implications that confuse the three harmonic functions (T, PD, and D).”¹²Laitz, The Complete Musician, 665. The students can experience the reciprocal process by singing the verse’s melody in “Dreaming” using moveable-do solfege in D major, then in G major.

This shift in tonal center is an expressive modulation referred to by Doll: “With analogous changes occurring in other musical parameters, the centric relocations themselves can easily be understood as expressing some sort of extramusical meaning, especially when read against the lyrics.”¹³Doll, “Rockin’ Out: Expressive Modulation in Verse-Chorus Form.” From the lyrics, the singer in the bridge seems to be dreaming (rather than being awake and talking about dreaming, as in the verse). Interestingly, the vocal line in the bridge never progresses from its leading tone F# to its tonic G, which would parallel the chorus’s C# to D, but rather leaps to A (2) at the end of each statement. When the third verse enters, the bridge has invited us to hear it with a new tonic: G; the end of Example 2c shows the beginning of the verse through the lens of G major. Through the reciprocal process, what was motion from the tonic to the subdominant becomes motion from the dominant to the tonic (see the parenthetical Roman numeral analysis under Example 2b). When viewed in G major, the vocal line in the verse progresses from the leading tone F# to the tonic G frequently. The final chorus, then, with its arrival on C# to D, is even more unreal, since the C# takes the singer out of the realm of G major, back to D major. The ambiguity of the global tonic that results from the reciprocal process replicates the singer’s living in two different worlds, and perhaps her eagerness to confuse her dream world with her reality.

The reciprocal process is common in both texted and instrumental music from the nineteenth century. Often this process occurs near the end of the coda in instrumental works, as in Steven Laitz’s example of Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Etude in C Minor, op. 10 no. 12 (1830–32).¹⁴Laitz, The Complete Musician, 664. In this piece, the final tonic is major and is approached via a plagal progression, creating the possibility of hearing the final C major chord as either a major tonic or a dominant to F. A similar process occurs at the end of Beethoven’s Bagatelle in G Minor, op. 119 no. 1 (1822; Example 3). In the coda, the G minor tonic chord transforms to G major but is approached with its minor subdominant (C minor).¹⁵Robert Bailey describes the iv–I progression as an instance of semitone voice leading; in the music of the nineteenth century, “linear considerations (with either diatonic or semitone voice leading, or both in alternation) more and more take precedence over harmonic ones.” He also claims the progression demonstrates “a principle of reciprocal function characteristic of the musical idiom of the later nineteenth century.” Bailey, “An Analytical Study of the Sketches and Drafts,” 117–19. The final two chords are a second-inversion C minor and G major, which can be heard as either iv–I in G or i–V in C. The ambiguity functions as harmonic preparation for the next Bagatelle in the series, which is in C major; the first chord of the second Bagatelle resolves the inner voices in the same range as the last chord of the first Bagatelle. Because this music is instrumental, any extramusical meaning to be gleaned from the ambiguity is more subjective, but this passage does project an uncertain or dreamlike quality. This subjectivity provides an opportunity for students to develop their own interpretation, armed with technical evidence from the music.

Text provides clues to more specific meanings of the reciprocal process. Like Beethoven’s Bagatelle, tonal ambiguity at the end of the seventh song, “Auf einer Burg,” in Schumann’s Liederkreis, op. 39 (rev. 1850), prepares the tonality of the eighth song, “In der Fremde.”¹⁶Laitz uses “Auf einer Burg” as an example of the reciprocal process without commenting on its meaning through the text-music relationship. The Complete Musician, 665–6. The song is strophic, where each strophe contains two stanzas of poetry (see Example 4). While the song begins in E minor, the first strophe ends with an explicit tonicization of the subdominant A minor. The second, final strophe cuts off the resolution to A minor to end on a prolonged E major. This E major can be heard as either (or both) the major tonic of the tonality in which the song began, or as a dominant to the next song in A minor.¹⁷Such a tonal connection is common in Schumann’s song cycles. John Daverio writes, “Almost without exception, adjacent songs demonstrate a close tonal bond.... Occasionally an inconclusive ending...increases our sense for the necessity of a continuation.” Robert Schumann, 215. The ambiguity relates closely to the poem. The quiet, peaceful forest scene of the first three stanzas contrasts with the image of a cheerful, faraway wedding party in the fourth stanza. The final line introduces a twist:¹⁸Such twists occur elsewhere in the cycle as well. The song “Im Walde” “uses disturbing juxtapositions and contrasts to highlight the theme of alienation and deception;” the juxtaposition of a wedding with a hunt causes the question, “Is the wedding a celebration of a loving union, or is it the culmination of a scene of seduction?” Ferris, Schumann’s Eichendorff Liederkreis, 218. the poem reveals that “the lovely bride weeps.”¹⁹Although the sequence “Auf einer Burg” into “In der Fremde” seems inevitable due to motivic and harmonic connections, Patrick McCreless offers an intriguing analysis of the cycle with the songs rearranged according to their order of composition. That order puts “Auf einer Burg” as the final song, which pairs with the first song “Waldesgespräch,” in E major. “Song Order,” 24–5. Why does the bride weep? The ambiguity of the reciprocal process introduces the question of whether the bride weeps from joy or despair.

Example 4: “Auf einer Burg,” poem by Joseph Freiher von Eichendorff, translation by Celia Sgroi