Making it Modern: Chromaticism and Phrase Structure in Twentieth-Century Tonal Music

Abstract

This article explores a particular neoclassical-style that features sufficient characteristics of classical phrase structure to create strong expectations of tonal continuity. The focal point of this study is how some twentieth-century composers thwart these tonal expectations with anomalous chromatic gestures, which I will argue function as metaphors for modernity. This inquiry began because I was intrigued by distinctive uses of chromaticism in phrases by Sergei Prokofiev and Francis Poulenc. To my ears, these composers use chromaticism in a manner completely different from earlier chromatic practices. According to William Caplin's theory of phrase structure, chromaticism in the eighteenth century acts as a loosening device, or as a means of expression and expansion.1 This article examines how some twentieth-century composers deform these classical conventions in a selfconscious and shocking manner.2 In the twentieth-century tonal-style described here, chromaticism becomes an agent of dislocation and fractured coherence. Similar to the way time shifts and multiple perspectives of modernist fiction challenge narrative conventions, the chromatic excursions of these twentieth-century tonal phrases challenge conventions of classical tonal structure. In this paper, I explore twentieth-century phrases that rework eighteenth-century tonal phrase structures. In most cases, the formal function, grouping structure, and middleground harmonic syntax of the twentieth-century phrases follow common-practice conventions. In other words, the analytic method presented in this paper is intended for twentieth-century phrases that can be modeled well by Caplin's prototypes of sentence and period structure.3 What distinguish these twentieth-century phrases from earlier precedents are their jarring and abrupt shifts to remote chromatic regions in unexpected places of the phrase.4 Unlike eighteenth-century chromatic progressions, which are integrated into

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