Tonal Stratification and Uncertainty in Britten's Music

Abstract

An atmosphere of uncertainty complicates the definition of functional tonal relations in Britten's music. The clarity of a single tonic is blurred, most often by the presence within the texture of a second focal pitch, undermining the possibility of unequivocal tonal priority within motions at the phrase level, and over wider spans. This basic hesitancy of tonal definition is nowhere more evident than in Example 1, the opening of the opera Billy Budd (1951). Uncertainty in this orchestral Prologue is the result of an unsettling tension among mutually contradictory elements. Phrase 1 itself (mm. 1-5) immediately establishes a delicate resistance to tonal unity in several ways. Above all, one notes: (i) an overt polarization of the texture, dividing the complete compass into two distinct and autonomous-sounding layers, or strata (upper-violins; lower-violas, cellos); (ii) a constant and unresolved opposition between chromatically distant pitches, B6 and B4, salient boundaries in the melodic motion of upper and lower strata; (iii) a wide spatial separation between these boundary pitches-B63 and B45-frozen in contrasting registers; and (iv) the residual presence of B6-major diatonicism, functioning most clearly in the lower stratum, but also (in a more veiled sense) as the result of a contrapuntal interaction of outer voices across the complete stratified texture.

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