Extraordinary Function and the Half-Diminished Seventh in the Song of the Wood Dove

Abstract

This study considers the half-diminished seventh, a chord that, in post-Romantic contexts, often fails to yield to easy classifications because of the multitude of potential interpretations. The seventh is crucial to an understanding of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Tauben von Gurre!” (the Song of the Wood Dove), from the end of Gurrelieder ’s Part I—a lush, tonal work that remained incomplete until 1911. In combination with the story’s three main characters, the seventh’s local and large-scale implications help to provide an interpretation that weaves its way through “Tauben,” Gurrelieder , and touches briefly on Schoenberg’s own life.

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