Cohn - Tonal Signification in The Freudian Age

American Musicological Society
Uncanny Resemblances: Tonal Signification in the Freudian Age

Author(s): Richard Cohn
Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp.
285-323
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society
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Uncanny Resemblances: Tonal Signification
in the Freudian Age
RICHARD COHN
omething is wrong with Figure 1:1
S
6
Figure 1
Hugo Riemanncharacterized this harmonicpairingas among "theweirdest

casesthatarise."ErnstKurthfindsit "supernaturallystrange,"SusanYouens
For the a
"magical." Dahlhaus, pairing"depicts paradox"; forAdorno,it "oc-
cludesdaylight";forLendvai,it induces"tonaldeath."2Paradoxical,
supernat-
ural,magical,weird,dark... dead!Whencombined,theseingredientsblend
into a potentbrew.The Germanbottlersof thatbrewlabelit unheimlich;
their
Anglophonecolleagues,uncanny.
This paperdevelopsan argumentfirstsketchedon pages21 and 22 of my article"Maximally

SmoothCycles,HexatonicSystems,and the Analysisof Late-Romantic TriadicMusic,"Music
Analysis15 (1996):9-40. Between1998 and2003, versionsof "UncannyResemblances" were
presentedat Harvard,Yale,Ohio State, LouisianaState, and the universitiesof Cincinnati,
Connecticut, Wisconsin,Illiniois,andCaliforniaat SantaBarbara.
Questionsandcommentsfrom
AlainFrogleyandNicholasTemperley, aswellasfromBertholdHoecknerandYonatanMalinof
myhomedepartment, wereparticularly useful.
1. Figure1 shouldnot be interpreted aspitch-or order-specific.
It represents
a harmonicrela-
tionshipthatcan occurin eitherorder,and at anyof twelvetranspositions andwith anyenhar-
monicsubstitutions.
2. AdolfBernhardMarx,Die LehrevonderMusikalische Komposition,PraktischTheoretisch,
9th ed., rev.anded. Hugo Riemann(Leipzig:BreitkopfundHartel,1887), 1:525;LeeA. Roth-
farb,ed. and trans.,ErnstKurth:SelectedWritings(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,
1991), 124; SusanYouens,Retracinga Winter's]ourney: Schubert's (Ithaca,N.Y.:
"Winterreise"
CornellUniversityPress, 1991), 161; Carl Dahlhaus,"Zur chromatischenTechnikCarlo
Gesualdos,"Analectamusicologica 4 (1967): 79; TheodorAdorno,Momentsmusicaux:Neu
gedruckte Aufsiitze1926-1962(Frankfurt amMain:Suhrkamp, 1964), 32;andEmraLendvai,The
[JournaloftheAmericanMusicological
Society2004, vol. 57, no. 2]
? 2004 by theAmericanMusicologicalSociety.All rightsreserved.0003-0139/04/5702-0002$2.00
286 Journal of the American Musicological Society
Something else is wrong: the progression lacks a name. The only histori-
callyplausiblecandidate,Riemann's Gegenkleinterzwechsel, restson an obsolete
theoreticalbasis;3moreover,both the term and its English translation,antino-
mic minor third exchange, are cumbersome. No other label, whether gener-
ated systematicallyor ad hoc, has achievedanythingclose to standardization.
This essay explores the relationship between the discursiveand affective
problems:the difficultyof talking about the progressionand of conceptualiz-
ing it, the sense of spontaneous disorientationthat the progressionengenders
and the nameless sensations stimulated by that sense. The harmonic pairing
representedin Figure 1 is shown to acquireits signifyingpower not only by
convention, but also in part from a homology between the propertiesof un-
canniness(as a reaction to expectationsof how the world works) and those of
the harmonic progression (as a reaction to expectationsof how triadicmusic
goes). The title of this essay,then, refersto resemblancesthat both co-relate
individualmusical representationsof the uncanny,and bind those representa-
tions to the uncanny (as a unitaryphenomenon or sensation).
Although the triadic pairing has no name, we need to provide it with a
John Doe for consistency of reference. In more systematic writings about
chromaticharmonyunderthe "neo-Riemannian"rubric,I have referredto the
type of progressionexemplifiedin Figure 1 as a hexatonicpole.4For the pur-
poses of this essay,this label may be regardedas arbitrary,or theoreticallyneu-
tral. The paper is intended not as a contribution to neo-Riemanniantheory
per se, but ratheras a historicaland psychologicalstudy of a harmonicphe-
nomenon that has elsewhereengaged me from a more systematicperspective.
Few documents from the early decades of the twentieth century have
drawn as much scholarlyattention as Sigmund Freud's essayon the uncanny,
Workshop ofBart6k and Koddly(Budapest:Editio Musica, 1983), 707. The Adorno quote in this
context is perhapsnot quite sanctioned:he is referringto the more generalphenomenon of sud-
den third-relatedmodulationsfrom a major to a minor key.Yet two of the three examplesthat he
offers, from Schubert'sBbSonataand EbTrio, contain the progressionrepresentedin Figure 1.
3. On this term and its position in Riemann's conceptualworld, see David Kopp, Chromatic
Transformationsin Nineteenth-CenturyMusic(Cambridgeand New York:CambridgeUniversity
Press,2002), 72-73.
4. I introducedthe term in "MaximallySmooth Cycles."The cyclesof the title arederivedby
arrangingthe twenty-four majorand minor triadssuch that two triadsare adjacentif they are re-
lated by semitonal displacementof a single pitch class. This arrangementyields four cycles,each
containing three major and three minor triads.The triadsof Figure 1 are included in a cyclicor-
dering of E major,E minor, C major,C minor, Abmajor,and G# minor. The cycles are hexatonic
becausetheir constituent triadsdraw from a fund of six pitch classes;the source hexachordfor the
Figure 1 cycle is {C, D#/E6, E, G, G#/A6, B/C6}. E major and C minor are hexatonic poles
because they lack common pitches, partitioning the source hexachord into two complementary
triads.E minor is likewise the hexatonic pole of Abmajor,and C majorof Abminor. See also my
"As Wonderfulas Star Clusters:Instrumentsfor Gazing at Tonality in Schubert," 19th-Century
Music22 (1999): 213-32.
Tonal Signification in the Freudian Age 287
published in 1919.5 Initiallyintended as a contribution to the psychology of

aesthetics, "Das Unheimliche" has become "a key reference-pointin discus-
sions of art and literature,philosophy, film, culturalstudies, and sexual differ-
ence."6 Literary historian Terry Castle considers Freud's paper "first and
foremost a sort of theme-index: an obsessional inventory of eerie fantasies,
motifs, and effects, an itemized tropology of the weird."7 Although "Das
Unheimliche" does have some qualities of what Nicholas Royle calls a
"strangeconceptual shopping-list,"8Castle's formulationundervaluesits the-
oreticalaspirations.Freud intended, above all, to pull this wide-ranginginven-
tory of stimuli and symptoms under the canopy of a single explanation,whose
central component is the tendency of the repressedfamiliarto emanate in a
strangelydefamiliarizedform.
Freud'spoly-thematicessayhas crossed over into musicalwritingsat several
checkpoints. Some musicologists have focused on how distinct items from
Freud's shopping list, such as ventriloquism,automata, doubleness, and repe-
tition compulsion, lend themselves to musical manifestationor depiction in
ways that draw out their uncanny qualities.9Others have worked more closely
with the theoreticalcore of Freud's essay,suggesting that musicaluncanniness
results from failed attempts to repress familiar or "homelike" musical ele-
ments, which upon resurfacingare heard as newly defamiliarized.'0The cur-
rent essayworks to coordinateaspectsof these two levels. I begin with a sketch
of pertinent aspects of Freud's essay,many of which had alreadybeen intro-
duced in an earlierpsychologicalpaper of Ernst Jentsch. In the second part,
"A Galleryof Hexatonic Poles," I present evidence that composers frequently
use hexatonic poles when they seek to depict the range of phenomena that
Jentsch and Freud identify as inducing the uncanny. This range is wide, in-
cluding dead bodies, necroanimism, reincarnation,magic, and spirits. But it
does not match psychologicalwritings term for term, in part because certain
tropes of weirdness, such as wax figures, epileptic seizures,and numerological
coincidences, are not topics that composers are moved to depict.
5. Sigmund Freud, "The 'Uncanny,' " in An Infantile Neurosisand Other Works,vol. 17

(1917-1919) of TheStandard Edition of the CompletePsychologicalWorksof Sigmund Freud, ed.
JamesStrachey(London: Hogarth, 1955), 217-52.
6. Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny(New York:Routledge, 2003), 12-13.
7. TerryCastle, TheFemaleThermometer: Eighteenth-CenturyCultureand theInvention of the
Uncanny(New York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1995), 4.
8. Royle, The Uncanny,13.
9. CarolynAbbate, Unsung Voices:Operaand Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century
(Princeton:Princeton UniversityPress, 1991), 56; LawrenceKramer,Musicas Cultural Practice,
1800-1900 (Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress, 1990), 203-9; and David
Schwarz,ListeningSubjects:Music,Psychoanalysis,Culture(Durham, N.C.: Duke UniversityPress,
1997), 66-72.
10. Michael Cherlin, "Schoenberg and Das Unheimliche:Spectres of Tonality,"Journal of
Musicology11 (1993): 357-73; and Nicholas Marston, "Schubert'sHomecoming," Journal of the
RoyalMusicalAssociation125 (2000): 248-70.
Psychologicaltheory is supplantedby music theory in the next two partsof

the paper,which explore the syntacticpropertiesthat provoke the signifying
power of hexatonic poles. I suggest in "Harmonic Theory and the Signifying
Potential of Hexatonic Poles" that these propertiesare largelysuppressedby
recent theories of tonality,and in "Hexatonic Poles and Harmonic Theory in
the FreudianEra" that they are more successfullyilluminated by tonal theo-
rists of Jentsch'sand Freud's time and place. Psychologicaltheory resurfaces
in the finale, in which I seek to align aspectsof Freud's explanatorymodel of
"das Unheimliche" with what has been observed about hexatonic poles.
Again the psychologicalmodel serves as a selectiveratherthan comprehensive
source of musical explanation.Freud's ideas about the defamiliarizedhome
play a centralrole in the model of the musicaluncanny developed here, but I
have envisioned no musical equivalents for such central components of the
Freudianuncannyas repressionand castration.
The Psychological Uncanny in the Early Twentieth Century
Jentsch's "Zur Psychologie des Unheimlichen" of 1906 appearedin a rela-

tively obscure publication, and until its recent English translation by Roy
Sellars it was known mainly through the filter of Freud's commentary."1
Anticipating Freud, Jentsch begins by observing that the word unheimlich
embeds the word for home (Heim). Accordingly,"someone to whom some-
thing 'uncanny'happens is not quite 'at home' or 'at ease.'. .. a lack of orien-
tation is bound up with the impression of the uncanniness of a thing or
incident" (p. 8). Jentsch clustersthose stimuli that induce an uncannysensa-
tion around a set of terms relatedto disorientation,including uncertainty,in-
determinacy, undecidability, ambiguity, doubt, paradox, and liminality.Of
particularinterestis "doubt as to whether an apparentlyliving being is animate
and, conversely,doubt as to whether a lifeless object may not in fact be ani-
mate."12The former case includes spasmodic behavior induced by epileptic
seizures, where, to the "unschooled observer ... mechanical processes are
taking place in that which he was previously used to regarding as a unified
psyche" (p. 14). Examples of the reciprocalcategory are life-size automata,
wax figures, and-above all-"a dead body (especially a human one), a
11. Ernst Jentsch, "Zur Psychologie der Unheimlichen," Psychiatrisch-Neurologische

Wochenschrift8, nos. 22-23 (1906): 195-98, 203-5; translated by Roy Sellars as "On the
Psychology of the Uncanny," in Angelaki:Journal of the TheoreticalHumanities 2, no. 1 (1995):
7-16. All page referencesare to the Sellarstranslation.It may interestreadersto know thatJentsch
also authored a two-volume monograph entitled Musikund Nerven (Wiesbaden:J. F. Bergmann,
1904, 1911).
12. Jentsch, "Psychology," 11. This is one of the two sentences that Freud quotes directly
from Jentsch'sessay;see Freud, "Uncanny,"226. Strachey'stranslationdiffersin some particulars.
Tonal Significationin the FreudianAge 289
death'shead,skeletons,andsimilarthings"(p. 15). Thesephenomenainduce

"thoughtsof latentanimatedness": theyliterally"embody"humanformsthat
lackthe potentialforhumanaction.
FreudimportsJentsch'srosterof stimuliandsymptomswholesale,includ-
ing some items that Freud accuseshis predecessorof overemphasizing.
the explanatorypower that Jentschattributesto undecidability
Specifically,
makesFreudparticularly uncomfortable.'3 Freudnonethelessdeclaresnear
the end of his essaythat"anuncannyeffectis oftenandeasilyproducedwhen
the distinctionbetweenimaginationandrealityis effaced,aswhensomething
that we havehithertoregardedas imaginaryappearsbeforeus in reality."'4
Waxfigures,epileptics,andautomatafindtheirwayinto Freud'srosterof un-
cannystimuli.So, too, doesJentsch'sprototypical case:"Manypeopleexperi-
ence the feelingin the highestdegreein relationto deathanddeadbodies,to
the returnof the dead, and to spiritsand ghosts."15Freudembellishesthis
idea with some supplementary examplesof his own: "Dismemberedlimbs,
a severedhead,a handcut off at the wrist,... feetwhichdanceby themselves
... -all these have somethingpeculiarlyuncannyabout them, especially
when, as in the last instance,they prove capableof independentactivityin
addition."16
Freud ultimatelyjudges those themes that he appropriatesfrom Jentsch to
be more symptomaticthan central.Disorientation and undecidabilitymay be
common components of the uncanny,but Freud arguesthat these and similar
qualitiesare not sufficientin themselves.17Similarly,uncanninessis often iden-
tifiedwith the gruesome,frightful,and terrible.For Freud,these qualities
"overlay"more fundamental characteristics.18 Nor does uncanniness reduce
(in the words of Anthony Vidler) to "the parapsychological-the magical, the
hallucinatory, the mystical, and the supernatural ...; nor was it present in
everything that appearedstrange,weird, grotesque, or fantastic,"although it
sharesqualitieswith all of these phenomena.19
13. Freud, "Uncanny,"221, 230.

14. Ibid., 244.
15. Ibid., 241.
16. Ibid., 244.
17. Freud is not entirelyconsistent on this matter: "an uncanny effect is often and easilypro-
duced when the distinctionbetween imaginationand realityis effaced" suggests that undecidabil-
ity is sufficient after all. In the preface to his translation of Jentsch, Sellars captures Freud's
ambivalenceon this question in a characteristically fractalformulation:"Jentschemphasisesthat
the uncanny arisesfrom a certain experienceof the uncertain or the undecidable, and this seems
to be intolerablefor Freud. Freud decides, in other words, that the undecidablecannot be toler-
ated as a theoreticalexplanation,but it nonetheless recursin his own essay,undecidably"(Jentsch,
"Psychology," 7). Royle engages similarthemes: Freud's efforts to repress Jentsch's ghost, to
bury him alive,are uncannyin their futility(The Uncanny,52, 149-50).
18. Freud, "Uncanny,"219, 241.
19. Anthony Vidler, TheArchitecturalUncanny:Essaysin theModern Unhomely(Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1992), 22.
Freud identifiesthe component that is centralto his own account through

an etymological tour de force that runs rings around the meager observations
with which Jentschbegan his more modest essay.Jentschbelievesthat unheim-
lich denotes the unfamiliar,tout court, because he only noticed its antonymic
relationto heimlich.What he missesis that heimlichalso refersto that which is
private,secret, clandestine.In regardto this latterset of meanings, unheimlich
is an intensification:the clandestineis transformedinto something so interior,
so familiar,that it is hidden from the viewing eye and the inquiring mind.
Freud'sessayfamouslyformulatesthe uncannyas "thatclassof the ffightening
which leads backto what is known of old and long familiar."20
The coincidence of the alien and the hyper-familiar,in this single word, re-
flects the psychologicalproximity between the apparentcomfort and orienta-
tion afforded by the bourgeois home, and the terrifying,disorienting, and
grotesque, which lie close at hand, if just out of sight. Vidler refersto "a dis-
quieting slippage between what seems homely and what is definitivelyun-
homely,"21highlighting the continuum on which the heimlichand unheimlich
coexist, and the difficultyof discerningthe moment when the borderthat sep-
arates them is traversed.Here is where Jentsch's notions of undecidability,
doubt, and paradoxhave a very particularrole to play in Freud'svision of the
psychologicaluncanny.They will come to play a quite similarrole in the vision
that we will develop of the musicaluncanny.
We will returnto these themes quite explicitlyin the final part of this paper;
in the interimit will be sufficientto rest them on a nail on the wall, and experi-
ence an occasional shivering anxiety as their strings sound sympathetically
when touched by the breeze or by the wings of a bee.
A Gallery of Hexatonic Poles
What resources are available to a composer who wishes to depict death,

grotesquerie,disorientation,paradox,or the living dead on stage or in song?
What stimuli evoke those phenomena for an acculturatedlistener, even in
response to "absolute"music lacking para-musicalcues? In this section, we
consider some examples of hexatonic poles, together with a set of associated
verbal texts. Some of the texts are provided or selected by the composer:
words that the music sets, an operaticstage direction that the music accompa-
nies, a title or a programmaticcommentary. Others are inferred by critics,
scholars, or performing musicians who seek to articulatetheir responses to
events in instrumentalmusic. The galleryof examplesis intended to suggest,
through sheer weight of accumulation,that hexatonic poles are invoked by
composers to express a significant range of the sensations that Jentsch and
20. Freud, "Uncanny,"220.

21. Vidler, TheArchitecturalUncanny,ix-x.
Example 1 Carlo Gesualdo, "Moro Lasso," opening and closing measures(Sdimtlichemadri-

galefiirfiinfstimmen, bk. 6 [Hamburg:Ugrino, 1957], 74, 77)
(a) (b)
ahi, mi dh mor - te!
Mo - ro, las - so, al mi d' mor - te!
Mo - ro, las - soal ahi, mi da mor - te!
Mo - ro, las - so, al -te, ahi, mi dA mor - te!
Mo - ro, las - so, al mi d- mor - te!
Freud associatewith the uncanny,and that they spontaneouslyevoke the same

in knowledgeablelisteners.
We begin with the depiction of "proto-uncanny"phenomena in music of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Example 1 presents the opening
and closing of the Gesualdo death madrigal "Moro lasso." The opening
(Ex. la) famouslyjuxtaposesC# majorwith its A-minor pole; the progression
is transposed and reversed, as C minor to E major, just prior to the final
A-major cadence (Ex. lb). Example 2, from Gesualdo's "Languisce al fin,"
joins two phraseswhose texts refer to death's affliction. The cadence of the
firstphrasejuxtaposesC minor and E major;the echoing pole in the following
phrase, BLminor to D major, transposes the cadential progression down a
whole step. The four chords together exhaust the stock of available pitch
classesunder equal temperament,a feature also found in some of the chrono-
logically later excerpts treated below. Example 3 presents the moment when
Orfeo banishesEuridicenetherwardwith a backwardglance. Monteverdi sets
this moment by juxtaposingC minor and E majoracrossa long silence.22
22. Daniel Chua writes of this passage that "magic, monody, and vision collide with such
force that they repel each other as a kind of epistemic fissure between the ancient and modern
world" (AbsoluteMusicand the ConstructionofMeaning [New York:CambridgeUniversityPress,
1999], 48-49).
Example 2 Carlo Gesualdo, "Languisce al fin," mm. 13-15 (Simtliche madrigalefiir fiinf
stimmen,bk. 5 [Hamburg: Ugrino, 1958], 45-46)
14
L'af- flig - ge si
flig gesi,
L'af- ges
'af-flig
L'af-flig - ge si, I'af-flig - ge si
L'af - flig - ge si
Example 3 Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo,act 4, mm. 131-34 (from ex. 6 in Chua, AbsoluteMusic
and the Constructionof Meaning, 49)
Qui si volta Orfeo, & canta al suono

131 dell'Organo di legno.
- 0 al
O dol-cis - si-mi lu - mi io pur vi veg - gio, lo pur...
Qui canta Orfeo al suono del clavic[embono]

133 Viola da braccio basso, e un chitar[one].
ma qual E - clissi ohi m? v'os - cu ra?
[O sweetest eyes, I see you now, I see ...

but what eclipse obscures your light?]
It is difficult to make the case that any of these instances are uncanny.In
Gesualdo'smadrigals,death is experiencedratherthan witnessed;its uncanny
potential is masked by anguish.And even with the Monteverdi,with its magi-
cal actions and animatedead, there yawn two vast chasmsthat must be negoti-
ated before we arrive at the properly unheimlich.One is epistemic: literary
historianshave suggested that uncanninesswas an eighteenth-century"inven-
tion" that responded to both the shedding of theological certitudesand the
social forces of industrialization.23 The other is musical:semanticsvarieswith

syntax even when the lexicon of musical objects remains evidently constant.
We cannot assumea world of tonal expectationsbefore such expectationswere
consolidated. These settings are nonetheless of interest because of the poten-
tial model they provide, for composers of later generations, of how a vital
element of the uncannycan be effectivelydepicted.24
It is in this same spiritthat we take note of Example4, a portraitof the liv-
ing dead from a Haydn composition with a continuous history of circulation
and performance.The C-minor setting of "Affrightedfled hell's spiritsblack
in throngs; down they sink in the deep of abyss to endless night" displacesa
prolonged E major, the tonicized dominant of the A major with which the
movement begins. So incomprehensible did the English composer George
Alexander Macfarrenfind this juxtaposition, almost sixty years later, that he
sought in vain to know of "some transpositionof this piece, induced by cir-
cumstancessuch as the compass of the original singer'svoice, or other like ex-
traneous necessities, that might account for, if not vindicate, the peculiarity
under consideration."25
With the next four exampleswe step properlyinto the age of the uncanny.
Here death is portrayedfrom a variety of perspectives:thanatos-compulsive,
portentous, grief-inducing, gruesome. Example 5 is the recurrent "Death-
devoted" theme from Tristanund Isolde.The phraseis scored for woodwinds
and is diatonic in C minor, except for the rhetoricallymarkedtriadpreceding
its midpoint. Scored for brass and timpani, this A-major triad leads across a
caesurato its hexatonic pole, the F-minor subdominant. Example6, from Die
Walkiire,marksthe moment when Wotan firstforetellsthe death of the Gods.
The <E+, C-> hexatonic pole bridges a fermata.An identical example, bridg-
ing a long silence, occurs in Siegfried,when the Wanderer, in response to
Erda'sprodding, preparesto recalland realizehis earlierprophecy.
The progression of Example 7, from Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite (1874-75),
recursthroughout the second half of the movement that depicts the death of
Aase and her arrivalat St. Peter's Gate (as imagined by Peer). The progression
incorporatesa motion from a Bt-minor triad to D major. The minor triad is
notated as {B6,C#, E#} and is accompaniedby a G under-seventh.26Death, in
a particularlygrislyform, is also the topic of Example8: Puccini'sTosca taunts
23. Castle, Female Thermometer, 8; and Royle, The Uncanny,22.

24. Both passagesfrom "Moro Lasso"were excerpted and discussedin Carlvon Winterfeld's
Johannes Gabrieli und sein Zeitalter (Berlin: Schlesinger'sche, 1834), 2:94-96. Monteverdi's
Orfeocame backinto circulationin the 1880s.
25. Macfarren'sessay,published in London in 1854 by the Sacred Harmonic Society, is ex-
cerpted in Nicholas Temperley,Haydn: The Creation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), 98.
26. For a discussionof enharmonicrenotations, see the next section below. Dissonant under-
sevenths are discussedbelow in connection with Example 11.
294 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSociety
Example4 JosephHaydn,TheCreation,"2. Arie(Uriel)mit Chor.Nun schwanden

vordem
mm.48-56 ([Frankfurt:
heiligenStrahle," C. F. Peters,n.d.], 11)
48
IIIF" i I
keimt em - por.
por.
fz fz fz ff
52 Allegro moderato
'ff
-SII - ="i ""IFE .. .
(f Er - starrt ent - flieht der - gei - ster Schaar,
H61l-len
fZ
Example 5 RichardWagner,Tristanund Isolde,Death motive, mm. 318-24 (vocalscore [New

York:G. Schirmer,1906, 1934], 16)
318
I fI P IT
- e- wI
II
Tod - ge - weih-tes Haupt! Tod - ge - weih-tes Herz!
---- IP
I
:' -
~'L. L:.I-
the dying Scarpiaover a Gb-majortriad, then ushers him to the burningfires

with its hexatonicpole, D minor.
We now survey five examples that feature Jentsch'sprototypicaluncanny
stimuliin full bloom. In all of these examples,agentspassfrom life to death, or
from death to life, or hover in between. The dead behave as living subjectsor
are treatedas living objects.
Example 9, from act 1 of Parsifal, marks the moment when Titurel,
"bowed down with age and stricken,"firstsings "froma vaulted niche ..., as
if from a tomb." Thus perched between life and death, Titurel askstwo ques-
tions, separatedby a long silence. "Shall I still see the Grail once again and
Example 6 RichardWagner,Die Walkiire,act 2, scene 2, mm. 942-46 (vocal score [New York:
G. Schirmer,1904], 127)
942 f
das En - de das En - de!
---- - 7-
"0-r
Example 7 Edvard Grieg, Peer Gynt Suite: Ase's death, mm. 25-28 (Samledeverker,vol. 18
[Frankfurt:C. F. Peters, 1988], 138)
25
pp
F-
p
~3 ~ t~T
pp
-R PII
•-=
live?Must I die, unguided by the savior?"Wagnerhas arrangedthe syntaxchi-

astically:life and death directlyflank the caesura;light and darknessstand at
one degree removed from the center. The EI-majortriad is life and light, its
CG-minorpole death and darkness.27
Example 10, the final chromatic event of Parsifal, marks the moment of
Kundry's death, the opera's final stage action. Wagner's stage direction asks
something impossible from the actressportraying Kundry: that she gaze in-
tensely at Parsifalwhile simultaneouslyprojectingto the audiencethat her soul
27. For a compelling discussionof the grotesque aspectsof this scene, see CarolynAbbate, In
Searchof Opera(Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 2001), 131-34.
Example 8 Giacomo Puccini, Tosca,act 2, Scarpia'sdeath, mm. 1030-35 ([Frankfurt:Ricordi,

1966], 219)
1029 conferocia
r---3 3r- 3
T .1 1
) 1- 1
Ti sof- fo-ca il san-gue? Muo-ri dan-
S3 1 rantolando 3
a - iu - to! Muo-io!
poco
con forza crescente

1033 3 3 3---- 3
A >
T. A-
- >3 - >>
-na- to! Muo-ri, muo-ri, muo-ri!

Br.
poco
Pk.
has departedfrom her body. "Gazingup at Parsifal,Kundrysinksslowlyto the

ground in front of him, de-souled." (De-souledis a neologism; in Wagner'sar-
chaic term, entseelt,the firstsyllableis a prefix that denotes an externalization,
a removal,perhapsa "leachingaway.")Wagnerimaginesher as a dead woman
with the hypnotic gaze of the hyper-living.Initially,Wagner envisioned this
event with a more explicitlyuncanny component: in the 1877 poem, Titurel,
having just attended his own funeral, raises himself up from his coffin and
performsa blessing.28
28. Martin Geck and Egon Voss, eds., Dokumentezur Entstehungund erstenAuffiihrungdes
Parsifal, vol. 30 of Richard Wagner Sdmtliche Werke(Mainz: B. Schott,
Biihnenweihfestspiels
1970), 134.
Example 9 RichardWagner,Parsifal, act 1, mm. 1250-57 (vocal score [New York:

G. Schirmer,
1962], 76)
1250
(Langes Schweigen.)
Soil ich den Gral heut' noch er - schau'n und le - ben?
[Timp.]
1254
Muss ich ster - ben, vom Ret - ter un - ge - lei - tet?
Example 10 Richard Wagner, Parsifal, act 3, mm. 1123-27 (vocal score [New York:
G. Schirmer,1962], 276-77)
1123
lot
If• oi
IIr1? ,. t
J.%,+ tr
cresc ------------------------f dim.---------
1125
1p pi 1p
41L
Although Wagner renounced his necroanimative impulse at the end of

Parsifal, he indulged a similarconception near the end of Giitterdfimmerung,
when the ring-bearinghand of the dead Siegfriedraisesitself in threat against
Hagen (Ex. 11). During the seven measuresthat accompanythe sequence of
actions triggered by this event (Gutrune shrieks, the vassals react in terror,
and Brunnhildeadvancesfrom the rearof the stage), a BL-minortriad,with G
Example 11 Richard Wagner, Giitterdiimmerung,act 3, scene 3, mm. 1158-64 (vocal score

[New York: G. Schirmer,1904], 314)
Bedeutendlangsamer.
1 58
dim. marcato
1 61
1161 BRONNH.
8va-- -- - ----
I •li i
as 00
-
j o o o o
under-seventhin the bass, initiates a sounding of the Tarnhelmmotive. The

motive progressesthrough F# minor, but then is aborted by a D-major triad
that sounds for six measures,supporting a graftingof Sword and Gitterdfim-
merungmotives.
To hear Example 11 on the model of Figure 1, juxtaposingB minorwith
its D-major pole, one must be prepared to accept two distinct reductive
moves. The firstasksus to suppressthe F#-minortriadon the basisof its inter-
mediate position, both in the event space of the segment and in the tonal
space that the segment traverses;F# minor sharescommon tones with both of
its flankingchords, which sharenone with each other. Perhapsmore radicalis
the interpretationof the {G, B6, D6, F} formation as a minor triadwith sup-
plementary under-seventh,rather than as the half-diminishedseventh chord
universallypurveyed by harmony textbooks. To do so requiresus to resistthe
pseudo-naturalizingthird-stackingdogma that has dominated harmonypeda-
gogy in the last century,and to recoverthe view of an era of harmonictheory
that ran from Rameauthrough Riemann to Kurth,which recognized that the
putative "root" of such a chord is the sole agent of its dissonance. Such a re-
covery is empiricallyabetted by the Tarnhelmprogression,whose firstchord
appearstypically as a minor triad. That Wagner supplied and retractedthe
"root" at his pleasuresuggests that he considered it, not the "seventh,"to be
the dissonantsupplement.
Example 12 Richard Strauss, Salome, final scene, R349 through four measures after R350
(vocal score [London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1943], 197-98)
F3491
Und das Ge - heim-nis der Lie - be ist
W l I 9 9 wI
TI...-
"IL -- ,Wf
F35'01
iv " r?? i4 7 I" 1?.iI i-iq -
grb - sser als das Ge - heim - nis des To - des
'7
-u00
.,17-01,71 .-
In Example 12, Salome serenades the severed head of Jochanaan:"And

the secret of love is greaterthan the secret of death." One polar progression,
F majorto C# minor, underlies "is greaterthan the secret";a second, framing
progression,G majorto EBminor, sets the paralleltexts "of love ... of death."
Over this progression, Salome sings all twelve pitch classes. The aggregate-
completing potential of the hexatonic collection is realizedin a more explicitly
dodecaphonic environment in Example 13, the opening of Schoenberg's
String Trio, which he composed in August 1946 as "a memorial to his own
momentary death" after a violent asthmatic attack stopped his heart.29
(Schoenberg's piece is thus more literally "posthumous" than anything by
Schubert or Chopin.) The firsthexachordjuxtaposes"G minor" ( {G, A#, D })
with "B major"({B, E6,F#});the second pairsA minor with "D6major"({D6,
F, G#1).
If composers call forth hexatonic poles to convey the uncanny, does the
conveyancereachits destination?We alreadyhave some evidence that this is so
from the passages cited in the opening paragraph. Youens, writing of
Schubert's Die Winterreise,finds magic in the juxtaposition of Erstarrung's
C minor and Der Lindenbaum'sE major;she attributesthis, without further
29. CharlesRosen, Arnold Schoenberg (New York:Viking, 1975; reprint,Chicago:University

of Chicago Press, 1996), 94. For more on this episode, see WalterBailey,ProgrammaticElements
in the Worksof Schoenberg (Ann Arbor,Mich.: UMI ResearchPress, 1984), 151-57. The uncanny
qualitiesof the String Trio are treated by Michael Cherlin, from a slightly differentperspective,in
"Memory and RhetoricalTrope in Schoenberg'sStringTrio," this Journal 51 (1998): 559-602.
Example 13 Arnold Schoenberg, String Trio, Op. 45, opening measures (Arnold Schinberg
SlimtlicheWerke[Mainz: B. Schott's Sihnes; Vienna: UniversalEdition AG, 1982])
Teil 1
=60
quasi Triller
simile
Geige
quasi Triller sf
simile
Bratsche
pp sfppl
Violoncello
Ad-
qualification, to its mediant relation. Adorno perceives darkness when

Schubert modulates from B6 major to F# minor in his last piano sonata, and
from E6 major to B minor in his Piano Trio; he attributesit to the displace-
ment of a majorkey by a minor one. Ernst Kurthhearssupernaturalstrange-
ness when the Grail music of Parsifalis chromaticized,juxtaposingE6 major
and B minor, G major and E6 minor; he attributesit to the "unfamiliarity" of
the "disjunctivemediant shifts."We conclude our inventorywith four further
examples of what listeners say when they have their ears tuned to hexatonic
poles.
Example 14 is excerpted from the "Todtenfeier"movement of Mahler's
Second Symphony, a composition whose programmaticsubtitle refersto the
raisingof the dead. CarolynAbbate, in Unsung Voices, writes extensivelyabout
the uncanny qualities of this symphony, taking as her cue the play by Adam
Mickiewicz on which the first movement is evidently based, together with
Mahler's own informal characterizationof the third movement Scherzo as
a "horriblechimera."30Both movements feature motions from C minor to
E major and back at global levels of modulatory structure. The Scherzo is
transformed into a grotesque dance (Mahler writes, in the letter Abbate
quotes: "always-stirring,never-resting,never-comprehensiblepushing that is
life becomes horribleto you, like the motion of dancing figures in a brightly-
lit ballroom") by a set of local gestures, perhapsthe most eccentricof which
is quasi-klezmermusic for E6clarinets,marked"mit Humor," which layersan
Ak-minortriad (notated {A1,B, E1}) over a C-majorprolongation (mm. 52-
53 and passim). In the music of Example 14, Abbate is particularlyattunedto
30. Abbate, Unsung Voices,125.

Example14 GustavMahler,SecondSymphony("Resurrection"), firstmovement,mm.43-49

(reductionpreparedfromSiimtlicheWerke
[Vienna:Internationalen
GustavMahlerGesellschaft
andUniversalEdition,1970], 7-8)
43
-• • " - -
,• "i,
Ile 1& I 1&
(46) . .
li j li iU
?
~~ ~• ~ ~ - • ~
•e•n•ii
.T.-J ~ T ,.
w ,wm 1 14
• i
.. I,. . I. IL
. Jv11 I I• I I I I
., • h I •, , I l
, ,
Example 15 Franz Schubert, Piano Sonata D. 960, firstmovement, mm. 115-17b (Neue aus-
Werke[Kassel:Birenreiter,1996])
gabe Stimdtlicher
115 rit.
o
v- "
I ?WS!
- I T!
the qualities of the emerging E-major Gesang,which consummates a rapid

modulation from the C-minor tonic. She hears a "deep sonic break,"a "hy-
perbolic musicaldisjunction"where "cracksfissurethe music."31Of particular
relevanceis her characterizationof the last two entries of the Gesang:they are
"markedby musical blankness,by a sense of substancethat is leached away."32
It is easy to imagine Abbate's Mahler sung by Kundry at the moment of her
Entseelung.
A similarsense of "leachingaway"is capturedby RichardKramer'saccount
of the music of Example 15, from a posthumous Schubert sonata that lacks
explicit semantic content: C# minor, following immediately upon a tonicized
F major, is "audacious and unorthodox, ... a single bar of breathtaking
31. Ibid., 150-51. Abbate's account (which ascribes"Orphic force") is uncannilyechoed by
Chua, who, in the passage quoted in note 22 above, hears an "epistemicfissure"in the C minor
to E majorof Orfeo.
32. Ibid., 152.
Example 16 Jean Sibelius, Seventh Symphony, opening measures (reduction preparedfrom

Copenhagen and Leipzig:Wilhelm Hansen, 1925)
Adagio
p p fz
Example 17 Maurice Ravel, Le tombeau de Couperin, Forlane, opening measures (Paris:

Durand S. A. Editions Musicales,1918)
Allegretto J. = 96
1 F
=t.oo I--OP
music."33Breathand soul are relatedconstructs;in Greek,they are united in a

single word, pneuma. Kramerhearsthis moment perhapsas an Entatmungto
parallelKundry'sEntseelung.
Example 16 is from the opening of Sibelius's Seventh Symphony,which
also lacks a program. The conductor Colin Davis "described the opening
C-majorscale. .... 'It's what happensat the end of the scalethat's so horrible,'
he continued. 'It hits a chord of A flat minor,which is reallyhorrifying It's
....
as though something has been born. It opens its eyes on that chord, and it
experiencesa shock.' "34
Example 17 opens the Forlanefrom Ravel's Tombeaude Couperin.Abbate
writes that "tombeaux are uncanny ... because they summon a more nebu-
lous object that is heard despite having been entombed. There is a dead
Forlanewithin Ravel'sForlane;its hand moves the piece from within, but it is
not Couperin's Forlane."35Abbate attributesthe grotesquerieof the Forlane
to "the obliviousnesswith which a dance rhythm wears its harmonic distor-
tion,"36 citing the dissonancesthat besmirchthe triadsin the opening phrase.
33. RichardKramer,"PosthumousSchubert,"19th-CenturyMusic14 (1990): 202.

34. Jamie James, "He No Longer Has to Make Points. He Just Makes Them," New Tork
Times,19 March 1995, Arts and Leisuresection, 31.
35. Abbate, In Searchof Opera,216. This formulationoriginallyappearedwith slight modifi-
cations in Abbate, "Outside Ravel'sTomb," this Journal 52 (1999): 498.
36. Abbate, In Searchof Opera,216.
We can supplement this observation by considering the identities of the har-

monies: an E-minor triad, with added D#, is followed by its G#-majorhexa-
tonic pole, with added E.
These finalexamplesmake evident that hexatonic poles are an effectivesig-
nifierof the uncanny:a composer transmitsa message, and the knowledgeable
listenerreceivesit on a clearchannel. In the next part, we begin to explore the
propertiesof the progressionthat make it so.
Harmonic Theory and the Signifying Potential

of Hexatonic Poles
This section lays the groundwork for the claim that the associationof hexa-
tonic poles with uncanny phenomena is not an arbitrarysystem of significa-
tion. Hexatonic poles in some sense embody the very features that they are
called upon by composers to depict, and that they spontaneously evoke in
knowledgeablelisteners.The constituents of hexatonic poles both are and are
not triads;they both are and are not consonant. In terms of music-theoretic
writings of Freud's contemporaries, their status as entities is both real and
imaginary,both alive and dead. Their secure status as perceptuallyfused uni-
ties, tonverschmelzt Zusammenhfingen,is chimerical:these harmonic entities
are disquietinglysusceptibleto disintegration.
One might initiallythink that such equivocation could only be prompted
by an anxietydisorder.After all, both of the harmonies in Figure 1 manifestly
are consonant triads, one major, the other minor; gauged by the traditional
metric of root-distance, they exemplify a species of third (or mediant) rela-
tion.37True; but this is how they practice their deceptive art. Their putative
consonance is compromised in their juxtaposition. To establish this claim,
we will explore it now in three distinct contexts, which together exhaust the
possibilities.
First,consider a situationwhere E majoris establishedas a tonic. The most
popularapproachin recent Americanharmonytextbooks derivesthe C-minor
triad via doublemodal mixture.38The interchangeabilityof modes sharing a
tonic, long an element of musical practice, was first theorized in terms of
modal mixture in Schenker'sHarmonielebre(1906). In the case at hand, the
C-minor triadis diatonic to neithermode that takes E as tonic, and so mixture
37. For a recent treatmentin this vein, see Kopp, ChromaticTransformations.

38. The term originates with Felix Salzer's Structural Hearing. Tonal Coherencein Music
([New York: Dover, 1962], 1:180), but the process was described much earlier in Arnold
Schoenberg's Harmonielehre(1922). Schoenberg writes that, to derive A6 minor from C major,
"the tones ... e and abwere introduced through the minor subdominant," and then the C is
then
derived via "minor-for-majorsubstitution" (Theoryof Harmony, trans. Roy E. Carter [Berkeley
and Los Angeles: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1978], 386).
304 Journal of the AmericanMusicologicalSociety
must be appliedtwice. Figure 2 summarizesthe derivation.The E-majortriad

(a) is initially integrated into a diatonic scale (b) for which that triad is
presumed to serve as tonic. A first stage of mixture converts that scale to its
parallelminor (c), from which a C-major triad is extracted(d) and labeled as
bVI (although some symbol systemswill use ?VI in this particularcase). That
triad is temporarilyreinterpretedas a tonic (e) that sprouts its own diatonic
scale (f). A second stage of mixtureconverts that scaleto its parallelminor (g),
from which the target C-minor triad (h) is extracted and labeled as bvib(or
Svib),with the two flanking accidentalsrepresentingthe two stages of modal
mixture.39
The label is descriptivelyadequate,in the sense that it uniquely specifiesthe
target object. But as Figure 2 shows, the derivationfreelyinterchangestriads
and scales as if they were unproblematicallyidentical,and thus partlyrelieson
a sleight of hand. Accordingly,it should not be a surpriseto discoverthat the
label implies problematicclaims about the phenomenological status and dis-
positional behaviorof the individualpitch classes.Flatwardmixturescharacter-
isticallyresolve downward or, more weakly, neutralize the pressureon their
constituent pitches to dischargeupward.The first stage of mixture accurately
capturesthe dispositionof C as it pressesdownwardtoward B. But the second
stage of mixturefalselysuggests that the E6, ratherthan behavingas a D# lead-
ing tone, is similarlydisposed toward a flatwardfate. Figure 3 capturesthese
dual dispositions by enharmonicallyrenotating the "C-minor" chord. If we
hear both of the individualvoices as diatonic semitones, then we are hearing
the notated major sixth {EI, C} as a diminished seventh {D#, C}. That is, we
are hearingit as a dissonance,not as a consonance.
If C minor is heard as tonic, as in Figure 4, the above analysisis replicated
inversely.The C-minor triad (a) is initiallyintegratedinto a diatonic scale (b)
for which that triad is presumed to serve as tonic. A first stage of mixture
converts that scale to its parallelmajor (c), from which an E-minor triad is
extracted(d) and labeled as #iii (or iii). That triadis temporarilyreinterpreted
as a tonic (e) that sproutsits own diatonic scale (f). A second stage of mixture
converts that scale to its parallelmajor (g), from which the target E-major
triad(h) is extractedand labeled as #III#(or III#). The problematicpitch class
here is G#. Its notation as a # degree implies a sharpwardpressure,yet it is dis-
posed to dischargeflatward,hence an Abrepresentingthe flattened sixth de-
gree. Again what is notated as a consonant majorsixth, {B, G#}, is perceivedas
a dissonantdiminishedseventh, {B, A6}, as in Figure 5.
39. Figure 2 resembles the composite neo-Riemannian operation <P,L,P> (Parallel,

Leittonwechsel,Parallel),which is one of the two shortest paths between hexatonic poles via basic
operations (i.e., those where two common tones are retained;the other such composite transfor-
mation is <L,P,L>). Those operations act on triads, however, whereas mixture acts on diatonic
collections. This comparisonsuggests that the theory of mixturefailsthe test of Occam'srazor:to
triadic reinterpre- scalar
(a) scalarintegration (b) modal mixture,stage 1 (c) extraction tation reorientation
S(c)(d) (emodal
E: I E: fVI C: I
Figure 2 Derivationof C minor from E majorvia mixture
~a~i~W
Figure 3 Enharmonicrenotationof C minor
triadic reinterpre- scalar

(a) scalarintegration (b) modal mixture,stage 1 extraction ii tation (e)
(c a)s c(f)(d) reorientation
e(g)
.t
c: i c: iii e: i
Figure 4 Derivationof E majorfrom C minor via mixture
p o/5E
Ai
Figure 5 Enharmonicrenotationof E major

Example 18 Richard Strauss, Salome, opening measures (vocal score [London: Boosey and
Hawkes, 1943])
1) J4 . a11LI
Wie schiin ist die Prin-zess - in Sa - lo - me heu - te Nacht
A single paradoxunderliesboth cases. In general,tonal listenersprocessin-

tervals,where possible, by accommodating their components to a single dia-
tonic collection. The general principledictates that, by default, a semitone is
heard as a change of degree (minor second), while at the same time dictating,
again by default, that a span of nine semitones expressesa major sixth rather
than a diminished seventh.40The juxtaposition of a C-minor triad and an
E-majorone, in either direction, causes these two defaultsto conflict, and the
listeneris forced to relinquishone of them.
Syllogisticreasoningin the face of music is often suspectedof mere scholas-
ticism. A considerationof Example 18, the opening phraseof Strauss'sSalome,
is intended to counteract such suspicions. A C#-majortriad in the orchestra
supportsNarraboth'sentry,and will orient him at both the beginning and the
ending of the phrase. But consider how the tenor might conceive the pitches
that set Salome'sname. He could fix on the E?of the firstsyllableand obliter-
ate the memory of the C#-majorenvironment. Imagining an unrelatedtonal
universe,a minor one in which E servesas the fifth scale degree, he arpeggiates
down through its tonic triad.The singer who does so will hear the C0 as the
third of the A-minor triad, but will have difficultyconceiving it as the leading
tone of the initial C# tonic, which has been deliberatelybanished from mem-
ory. Employing a quite differentstrategy,the tenor could maintainan "auxil-
iary mental image" (Riemann) of C# and G#, slotting in the pitch of "-lo-" as
the leading tone (B#), and the pitch of "-me" as the upper leading tone (A)
of A.41This singer will be singing dissonant intervalsand will have difficulty
fusing the pitches of "Salome"into a single harmonic entity. The firstsinger,
like the characterthat he is portraying, will recognize the royal beauty of
the extent that mixtureoperationson seven-tone scalesaretranslatableto neo-Riemannianopera-

tions on three-tone triadswithout loss of significantinformation,the four nontriadictones of the
scalesare dead cargo.
40. This principleis stated in EytanAgmon, "Diatonicism, Chromaticism,and Enharmoni-
cism: A Study in Cognition and Perception" (Ph.D. diss, City University of New York, 1986),
185; and preliminaryempiricalconfirmationis provided in David Temperley, The Cognitionof
BasicMusicalStructures(Cambridge:MIT Press,2001), 128-36.
41. "A large number of intervalsbecome easily singable (imaginable) through the auxiliary
mental image of a succeeding leading tone (even when it does not follow in reality)."Hugo
Riemann, "Riemann's 'Ideen zu einer "Lehre von den Tonvorstellungen' ": An Annotated
Translation,"trans. Robert W. Wason and Elizabeth West Marvin,Journal of Music Theory36
(1992): 108; Riemann's essaywas originallypublished in 1915.
the named princessonly by neglecting her context; the second, like the omni-
scient viewer of the opera, will recognize the power of the offstage incestuous
stepfather to split the consciousness of that adolescent persona into frag-
mented particles.42
Consider now the third and final case, where the two triadsare juxtaposed
in a tonally indeterminateenvironment. How might we discernwhich one of
the two triadsis more intrinsicallystable?Our impulse is to seek out leading
tones, which channel the energy of one of the triadsinto the other. But here
we encounter a problem: each triad contains the other's leading tone. B dis-
chargesinto C; Eb (qua D#) dischargesinto E. The reciprocityof the two tri-
ads is magnified, moreover, if we adopt an expanded conception of leading
tone. German theorists around 1900 recognized that the downward pressure
of the flatted sixth degree toward ? echoes and balancesthe upward pressure
of the leading tone toward the tonic.43Both of the triadsin Figure 1 beareach
other's flatted sixth degree as well: C dischargesonto B, G# (qua Ab) onto G.
This double leading-tone reciprocityis unique to hexatonic poles.44
Figure 6 capturesthis double reciprocityas it appliesto the components of
Figure 1, illustratinghow each triad of the pair powerfully "summons" the
other. Their relationship constitutes an exceptionally potent instance of a
Wechselwirkung,a reciprocal exchange. Each triad destabilizes the other;
Lendvaiwrites that they tonally "neutralize"each other.45Such relationships
are among "the weirdest cases that arise":they are the musical equivalent of
Escher'shands, which draweach other's cuffs.46
42. On Salome as incest victim and hysteric,see SanderL. Gilman, "Straussand the Pervert,"
in Reading Opera,ed. Arthur Groos and Roger Parker(Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1988), 316. At the time of Salome's composition, Freud held that hysteriawas caused by sexual
traumaand resultedin split consciousness.The view of the resulthe held in common with Breuer
and with severalFrench theorists. In the view of the cause he was quite alone, and indeed he re-
scinded it in 1905. See Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, Studieson Hysteria (1893-95), trans.
and ed. JamesStrachey(New York:Basic Books, 2000), 12; and JeffreyMoussaieffMasson, The
Assault on Truth:Freud'sSuppression of theSeductionTheory(New York:Farrar,Strausand Giroux,
1984).
43. This insight is centralto dualistsin the Oettingen/Riemann lineage, but also was main-
tained by harmonic thinkers with a more empirical grounding, among them Carl Friedrich
Weitzmann,Rudolf Louis and Ludwig Thuille, and Kurth.For a compelling case for the continu-
ing relevanceof this viewpoint, see Daniel Harrison, Harmonic Function in ChromaticMusic:A
RenewedDualist Theoryand an Account of Its Precedents(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1994), 26-34 and passim. Harrison'smetaphor of a "double-barreldischarge"(p. 105) is partic-
ularly appropriate to the situation depicted in Figure 6 below; one imagines two warriors
(duelists?)simultaneouslyaiming double-barreledfirearmsat each other.
44. For more on the double reciprocity of hexatonic poles, see my "MaximallySmooth
Cycles," 21; and Richard Kurth, "Suspended Tonalities in Sch6nberg's Twelve-Tone Compo-
sitions,"Journal of theArnold SchonbergCenter3 (2001): 239-65.
45. Lendvai, Workshop, 235-36, 378.
46. Riemann, in his rev. ed. of Marx, Die Lehre(1887), 1:525. More to the psychological
point, they reflect the Lacaniangaze, which "often bears an uncanny sense of looking and being
lookedat; subject/object relationsare confused" (Schwarz,ListeningSubjects,64; his italics).
308 Journalof the AmericanMusicological Society
b6-5 b6-5
#7-1 #7-1
Figure6 Doubleleading-tone betweenC minorandE major

reciprocity
Hexatonic Poles and Harmonic Theory in the Freudian Era
Music theorists of the second half of the nineteenth century were awarethat
hexatonic poles were a problem. In the fourth edition of his Kompositionslehre
(1852), Adolf Bernhard Marx's attention fell upon the juxtaposition of a
B-majortriadand a G-minor one, reproducedhere as Figure 7a. Marx enter-
tained, but ultimatelyrejected,the possibilitythat the G-minor triadmight be
a notational stand-infor a dissonantformation.
the thirdBbinto anA#,
If one wantsto explainthe progressionby transforming
asat [Fig.7]b, thenanentitycomesinto beingwhichis not a chordat all,or is
a wronglynamedchord.Thereby,one wouldhavejustmadea biggerenigma
out of a smallerone. Ordoesone wantto giveweightto the factthatA#points
upwardas a sharpedtone?Thenat [Fig.7]c, the fifthD wouldhaveto become
a Cx, andthe incomprehensibilitywouldbe exacerbated.47
For Hugo Riemann, Marx'sattempt at a reductioad absurdamwas ineffec-
tive. In his 1887 revision of Marx's treatise, he embraced the interpretation
that his predecessorhad dismissed,substitutingthe following wording in place
of that quoted above:
The earhearsthe threetightmelodicjunctionsanddiscoversfromthe newhar-
monya reinterpretation of the old. The G-minorchordbecomes,viathe pro-
gressionto B major,a ninthchordoverF#with augmentedfifth([F#]A# Cx
[E]G).48
Figure 7d providesa hypotheticalrealizationof Riemann'sinterpretation.The
inferredF# root is a residueof post-Rameauian Frenchtheory,whichinter-
preted chords on the seventh degree as dominants whose roots had been
omitted.49
Apart from thisissue,Riemann's claimis thatthe chord
essentially
47. Adolf BernhardMarx,Die Lehrevon derMusikalischen Komposition, 7th ed. (Leipzig:

Breitkopfund Hiirtel,1868), 1:519;mytranslation.
48. Marx,Die Lebre, 9th ed. (rev.anded. Riemann[1887]), 1:525;mytranslation.
49. InitiallyadvancedbyJeanLaurentde B&thizy dela thiorieet delapratiquede
(Exposition
Suivantlesnouvelles
la musique: [Paris:M. Lambert,1754], 88), thisnotionwastrans-
dicouvertes
mittedto GermantheoryviaJohannPhilippKirnberger (TheArt of StrictMusicalComposition
(a) (b) (c) (d)
S
.1
•,
B:V#7
#5 I
Figure 7 (a-c) From Marx's Kompositionslehre;(d) a realization suggested by Riemann's
remarks
is a species of diminished-seventhleading-tone chord. In its complete and dia-

tonically unaltered form, this chord would appearin B major as {A#, C#, E,
G#}. To transformthis chord into the firstchord of Figure 7c, the fifth is omit-
ted, the third sharpenedby one chromatic degree, and the seventh flattened
by one chromatic degree, both chromatic alterationsintensifying the resolu-
tion to the tonic by substituting a semitone for a whole step. Such alterations
were characteristicof the process of appellation identified in Fetis's 1844
Traiti de l'harmonie,of which Riemann was an enthusiasticchampion.50
Example 19 suggests how Riemann's reading might have been inspiredby
contemporaneous compositional practice. The passage, from the Revenge
Trio of Giitterdimmerung,opens with a stronglyarticulatedauthenticcadence
in C major,confirming for the firsttime the tonic that closes the opera's sec-
ond act. Abminor follows immediately,with the bass C - CLreversingthe ca-
dential resolution of the leading tone. One measure later, the notated CLis
revealedas a B?, and the consonant major sixth {CL,AJ} as a dissonant dimin-
ished seventh {B, A'}. A fully diminishedseventh chord leads immediatelyto a
dominant and anothercadence. Riemann's readingof the abstractprogression
as an altereddiminishedseventh chord missing its fifth, and ultimatelyas an al-
tered dominant ninth chord also missing its root, applieshere without strain.
Riemann's analysiswas subsequentlyechoed by one of his most vigorous
detractors,Georg Capellen,who offered the following analysisof Example20,
[1771-79], trans. David Beach and Jiirgen Thym [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982],
146-47). For discussion, see Charles Jay Moomaw, "Augmented Mediant Chords in French
BaroqueMusic" (Ph.D. diss., Universityof Cincinnati,1985), 180.
50. Indeed, FRtis'sTraitt includes a progressionidenticalto the one that Riemann proposes,
4
transposedto C, with the fifth added in the bass, as one of severalcadentialintensificationsof the
chord on the seventh degree (Frangois-JosephFetis, Traiti completde la thdorieet de la pratique
de I'harmonie,4th ed. [Paris:Brandus, 1849], 99). For a passagethat conforms closely to Fetis's
synthetic example, see Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus4, measure 61, where the D#
arisesas part of a diminished-thirdturn figure in the countersubject.
Example 19 act 2, scene 5, mm. 1643-47 (vocal score [New York: G. Sc
RichardWagner,G6tterdiimmerung,
1643 BRUNNH.
All - rau -
GUNTH.
All - rau
HAG.
ent - ris - sen! Al - ben-va

A 3
stacc. A 3
cresc. f fmf
:?F* ky
Vc~
Example 20 RichardWagner, Das Rheingold, scene 4, mm. 3835-37 (vocal score [London
and Mainz: B. Schott's Sohne, n.d.], 216)
3834
0 Um dich, du kla - res, wir nun kla - gen: 1

gebtuns dasGold,
" i- " 7F i1" 1F' -r 1")
Um dich, du kla - res, wir nun kla - gen: gebtuns dasGold,
Um dich, du kla - res, wir nun kla- gen: gebtuns dasGold,
a passage from Das Rheingold:"G-B-F? is not an enharmonic E-minor triad

but an elliptical ... E6 Hochquinttiefnonklang [raised-fifth/lowered-ninth
chord]."5' Capellen's analysisattracted a response from Heinrich Schenker,
in his 1910 Kontrapunkt: "One should avoid hearing ... anything but
neighboring-note harmonies [Nebennotenharmonie].... one graspsimmedi-
ately the true characterof mere neighboring-note harmonies."52After quot-
ing Capellen, Schenkerturns vitriolic:"Whoeverperceivesa somewhat more
individualmanifestationof the neighboring note ... as nothing more nor less
than an 'ellipticalHochquinttiefnonklang'(sic!) is a barbarian..... How easy it
is to fabricatetheory and history of music when one hearsbadly!"53
What Schenker is disputing is not Capellen's dismissalof the "Marxist"
E-minor reading, but rather the notion that the dissonant formation repre-
sents any sort of classifiable,reifiedharmonic state. Schenker'suse of the term
Nebennotenharmonie,which he would have dismissed as self-contradictorya
decade later,indicatesthat he is not yet readyto deny dissonantstructureshar-
monic status altogether. But he is well on the way. The 1910 Kontrapunkt
contains another analysisthat more closely anticipatesthe language that char-
acterizedhis laterwritings.An EB-majortonic surroundsan aggregationthat is
enharmonicallyequivalentto its CG-minorhexatonic pole, againstwhich an Ak
51. Georg Capellen, Die "Musikalische" Akustik als Grundlage der Harmonik und Melodik
(Leipzig:Kahnt, 1903), 93; according to Rothfarb(SelectedWritings,107), Capelleninitiallydis-
cussed this progressionin "Harmonikund Melodik bei RichardWagner,"BayreutherBl/itter25
(1902): 22.
52. Heinrich Schenker, Counterpoint(1910), trans. John Rothgeb and Jiirgen Thym (New
York:Schirmer,1987), 1:192-93. The juxtapositionof the prescriptiveand empiricalmodes is of
interest-if one graspsthe correcthearingimmediately,why does one need to be warned off from
the incorrectone?-but not pursuablehere.
53. Ibid., 193.
Example 21 Anton Bruckner,SymphonyNo. 1 (ex. 52 in Schenker,Counterpoint1:61)
under-thirdis sustainedin the bass (Ex. 21). Schenkerwrites that the doubly
diminished fifth {F#, Cb} "is in truth no interval at all" ("in Wahrheitalso
tiberhaupt kein Intervall"), and is to be explained rather as an encounter
between the harmonic tone CG(in D-F-AK-CG)and the chromaticpassing
tone F#.54
Just as significantas the substanceof Schenker'sanalysisare its ontological
claims,which turn out to be of centralimportanceto our investigationof how
hexatonic poles signifythe uncanny.When Schenkerwrites that the IF#, Cb}is
"in truth no interval at all," he edges toward a preoccupationof his postwar
writings, where consonance and dissonance are explicitlyentangled with the
metaphysicsof realityand appearance.In his "mature"theory (now known as
"Schenkeriantheory" tout court), simultaneously sounding pitches do not
qualifyas real harmoniesunless they attain the status of a scale-step(Stufe) at
some level. Once their components are understood as executing a linearfunc-
tion at a given structurallevel, these putative harmonic entities lose their uni-
tary status, fragmentinginto components that bear no direct relationto one
another. Their reality becomes invested in the Zug rather than the local
Zusammenhang.The latterentities are not real;they are consigned to the bin
of "mere appearance"(Erscheinung),a category that Schenkerassignspejora-
tive value as a type of false cognition that weighs down the listenerand pre-
vents the exercise of Fernhiiren.In Free Composition,Schenker writes of
"deceptive,inauthentic[scheinbare,uneigentliche]intervalswhich displaceand
obscure the actual [eigentlichen] intervals which originate in the middle-
ground," and devotes a subsection to distinguishinggenuine (wirkliche)from
illusory(scheinbaren)(elsewhere:erroneous [falsche])entities (Einheit).55
It is not particularlysurprisingto find that the categoricaldualismof reality
and appearanceshould preoccupyboth Schenkerand Freud:the enduringin-
54. Translationadapted from ibid., 61. Compare Schenker'sreading of the Till Eulenspiegel
chord, pp. 187-88. Schenker'sinterpretationof both passagesis surprisinglyclose to that of Fetis,
for whom he cultivateda profound distaste.
55. Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition,trans. Ernst Oster (New York:Longman, 1979),
55, 74, 133, at 55. In German, Der Freie Satz (1935), 2d ed., ed. Oswald Jonas (Vienna:
Universal, 1956), 95, 120, 205.
fluenceof Kantis responsiblefor theirprominencein all sectorsof German

andViennesethought,and indeed,as we shallsee, Schenkeris not alonein
viewingconsonanceanddissonancein termsof realityandappearance.56 What
is noteworthyis Schenker'sinsistencethat tonal eventsbe submittedto ab-
solutecategoricaldetermination. Althougha dissonancecan be transformed
into a consonanceat a "later"level,no ambiguityor undecidability
is conceiv-
ForSchenker,consonantanddissonant,realandimagi-
ableat a givenSchicht.
nary,shareno boundary,much less a permeableone. As categories,they are
separated by an ocean.ReadthroughJentsch'seyes,Schenkerhadno tastefor
the uncanny.Disorientation,paradox,and magicare distinctlynot the aes-
theticvaluesthatSchenkerchampioned.57
The writingsof Schenker'sSwisscontemporaryand rival,ErnstKurth,
forma significantpoint of comparison.In his 1920 Romantische Harmonik,
Kurthtakesup the topicof falseconsonance.The chapterentitled"Distortion
of HarmoniesandHarmonicProgressions" beginswith the followinggeneral
comments:
Thechromatic modification
of a chordtoneandneighbor-note insertion...
causetherelationship betweentensionchordandresolution chordto simulate
[vortiuschen] different
entirely harmonic formations thantheyactuallyrepre-
sent[alssiewirklich if tracedbackto theirbasicprogression.
darstellen], This
[simulation] occursmainlybecausetensionchordsoftencorrespond to [har-
monic]formsthatareelementary and,moreover, in their
simplified
imprecisely
notation,i.e., theyarenot notated accordingto the function
leading-tone of
theindividual notes.58
The progressionsthat are the topic of our studyare among the formations
thatKurthhasin mind,asbecomesclearwhenhe considersthe analysisof the
Fate motivefrom Die Walkiire(Ex. 22a). The famouslyapparentD-minor
chordsoundsin a contextthatindicates,but rarelyrealizes,anF#tonic.When
thattonic soundsin its majorform,the "D-minortriad"soundsas its hexa-
tonic pole, invokingthe specificnexus of relationsthat has occupiedus in
thispaper.Example22b is one suchinstance;herethe complexis transposed
up by majorthird,an "F#-minortriad"leadingthroughan F dominantto a
Bb-major cadence.
56. On Schenker'srelationsto Kant'swritings,see KevinKorsyn,"Schenkerand Kantian

Epistemology," Theoria3 (1988):1-58.
57. It is temptingto go a step furtherand hypothesizethat Schenker'sdispositionsymp-
tomizesa compulsionto repressanypotentialemanationsof the uncanny,to stuffthemunderthe
rug or heavethem into the darkestcorner.Thishypothesishelpsus to overcomerevulsionand
cultivatesympathyfor the Tourette-likereflux that erupts acrossSchenker'spalate at the slightest
provocation. Little is known of Schenker'searlylife, but the basicfacts are suggestive:it is easy to
imagine that, for a Jewish physician'sson in Galicia,the comforts of the bourgeois home may
have felt fragileand tenuous.
58. ErnstKurth, RomantischeHarmonik und ihreKrisein Wagner's"Tristan,"3d ed. (Berlin:
Max Hesse, 1923), 205; translationadaptedfrom Rothfarb,SelectedWritings,116.
Example 22 RichardWagner,Die Walkiire,mm. 1462-63 and 1506-9: (a) Fatemotive;

(b) linkedto Valhalla
musicin act2, scene4 (vocalscore[New York:G. Schirmer,1904], 152,
154)
(a)
Sehrfeierlichund gemessen.
1462
| _
(b)
1506 BRUNNH.
wer mich er- schaut, der schei-det vom Le - bens Licht.
pp,
I/ k-we 4w 1 I I
In reference to the transposition at Example 22a, Kurth writes:
According to the externalform, a D-minor chord precedes a dominant seventh

on C#. . . . As the notation indicates here, a completely differentinterpretation
is the basis.The firstchord is a tension distortion of the second, with which it is
practicallyidentical tonally. D is a neighbor-note insertion, from above, to C#;
likewise A in the uppermost voice is a neighbor-note insertion to G#, so that
here too the first melody note of the motive appears as a dissonant, non-
chordaltension tone.59
Although Kurth selects physical metaphors where Schenker inclines to biolog-

ical ones, his analysis of Wagner's putative D-minor triad's status as a false en-
tity is fully consistent with Schenker's analysis of the apparent CG minor from
Bruckner's First Symphony. Kurth's reference to simulated (vortfiuschen)
59. Kurth,RomantischeHarmonik,210; translationadaptedfrom Rothfarb,Selected

117-18.
Writings,
chords harmonizescloselywith Schenker'snotion of deceptive (tauschend)in-

tervals,as does his appealto musicalreality.
Kurth's subsequent remarks,however, are inconceivable from a Schenk-
erianstandpoint:
It is remarkablethat,in theverylastmeasuresof Walkiire (fromthe tenthmea-
surebeforethe end onward),the motiveundergoesa transformation and oc-
curstwicesuchthatthe firstchorddoesin fact[in derTat]appearas a D-minor
chord,followedby a secondchordthatis no longerC#7 butratheran E-major
triad..... The characterof alteration,as it initiallyoccurredin the firstmotivic
chord,D-E#-A, is neutralized[aufgehoben] here,andthe harmonicshapeitself
is consolidated.The originaltensionformationis convertedinto something
harmonic,and the transformation of thismotivereflectsnothingelse thanthe
mostgeneral,basicgeneticandhistoricalprocessof allmusic.60
"Appearance"is not always "mere appearance"-under the appropriatecir-

cumstances, appearancescan be revealed as reality.Moreover, the use of the
term aufgehobensuggests that this process of revelationnot only is historically
central, but also accrues considerableaesthetic capital. The term is not easily
translatable,but in its richest Hegelian sense Aufltebung is the process by
which the terms of an antithesis are fused into a higher-level synthesis.
Assuming that Kurthhas this range of meaningsin mind, we might conjecture
that this synthesis consists of a cognitive state where we are alert to the dual
natureof the chord's status:it is both a D-minor triadand a dissonanttension-
distortion of the dominant. This conjecture is consistent with Kurth's claim
that such dualities were the essence of the Wagnerian style: "Everywhere,
Romanticism exploits the ability to hear one and the same phenonemon
[Erscheinung]in two and more ways; it is fond of this coexistence and its
indefiniteness."61
A similar attitude is cultivated in greater specificity and detail by Alfred
Lorenz, whose analyticalwritings in the 1920s and 1930s on Wagner'smusic
dramas bore the strong influence of Kurth.62In the 1933 Parsifal mono-
graph, the music of Example 23 motivates Lorenz to interject a discursive
Sonderbetrachtung on the topic of apparentconsonances into his chronologi-
cal analysisof act 1. He firsttakesup the generalcase:
If a triadproceedsto its chromaticexchange-tones
or is preparedby "neighbor-
note insertion"(expressionof ErnstKurth),the earhearsin the firstinstance
the leading-toneenergiesthat exist between the exchange-tonesand the
chordaltones. In this manner,structuresfrequentlyarisethat are intensely
dissonantbutwhichincidentally areenharmonically akinto triads.By meansof
60. Kurth, RomantischeHarmonik, 210; Rothfarb,SelectedWritings,118.

61. Kurth, RomantischeHarmonik, 226-27; Rothfarb,SelectedWritings,134.
62. Concerning Kurth's influence on Lorenz (despite the former's Jewish heritage and the
latter's antisemitism), see Stephen McClatchie, Analyzing Wagner'sOperas:Alfred Lorenz and
GermanNationalist Ideology(Rochester,N.Y.: Universityof RochesterPress, 1998).
longerduration, dissonant
theseactually structures seemto theear
eventually
to be consonant.The psychological effectof the procedureis magical;fordur-
ing the lingeringon the temperednotes thatareinitiallyunderstoodas disso-
nant, the Klang is purified[reinigtsich],withoutany motion, into the most
radiantbeauty.63
Lorenznow turnsto the musicof Example23, whichpresentstwo chromati-
cizedversionsof the Grailtheme,the secondof whichis identicalto the music
thataccompanies Kundry'sEntseelung at the opera'send (cf.Ex. 10):
When ... an A-minortriadis placedbetweenDb-majortriads,it is actuallya
dissonance,for the A standsin forB$ as a neighbortone to Ab,whilethe E/C
thirdis understoodas lowerleadingtonesto F/Db. ... But no soonerarethe
neighbortones reached,whenthe Klangis coveredoverby the appearance of
a consonance,which acts like a beam of light. Althoughhere the neighbor
tones againcorrectlyreturnto the womb from which they were conceived,
threemeasures whatis initially
earlier, takento be the sameprogression
leads
awayin a different fromG majorfollowsthedissonance
manner: IF#,A#,Eb},
soundingas Ebminor,whichthen is establishedas scheinkonsonant andleads
to Dbmajoras the ii-chord.... The reversepathcan alsooccur:an originally
pure triadbecomestransformed, throughits progressionto an actuallyunfa-
miliarchord, into a structurewhose consonanceis merelyapparent,hence
dissonant.M6
Whatthisquotemakesevidentis that,forLorenzasforKurth,thereis no
firmboundarybetweendissonanceand consonance.One cannotpointto a
momentwhen the dissonantbecomesconsonant.Or viceversa.The process
Aufbau vonRichard Wagners"Parsifal"(1933), vol. 4 of

63. AlfredLorenz, Der musikalische
Das Geheimnis derFormbeiRichardWagner(Tutzing:HansSchneider,1966), 89; my transla-
tion.Theideaof growinga consonant(alive)structure out a dissonant(dead)one seemsparticu-
larlyapt for this opera,which has, as a centralimage, a lush gardenbloomingin a desert
wasteland.
64. Ibid., 89-90; my translation.There are some confusingaspectsto this passage.The
penultimatesentencesuggeststhatscheinkonsonant is an intermediate statebetweendissonance
and consonance;but the finalsentence("scheinkonsonantes also dissonantes") suggeststhat
Scheinkonsonanzen areinherentlydissonant.I believethatLorenzis usingscheinkonsonant in two
distinctways.For nineteenth-century just-intonationists such as SimonSechterand Moritz
Hauptmann, a minorchordon theseconddegreewasmistunedby a syntoniccomma,andhence
its consonanceimpure,only apparent.This sense of Scheinkonsonanz was then adaptedby
Riemannto referto all "secondary" diatonictriads.ThroughoutLorenz'sSonderbetrachtung,
Scheinkonsonanz refersto the misidentification
of enharmonicdistinctions,a muchmoreacute
caseof mistuning.WhenLorenzrefersto the E6-minortriadas a Scheinkonsonanz, he is employ-
ing a deadmetaphor,whoseidentitywiththe topicof hisexcursusis occludedfromhisview.The
linguisticsituationcan be comparedto an utterance(say,by a voiceteacher)suchas:"singthat
D naturalwith a less naturaltone."The firstitalicizedtermis a deadmusicalmetaphorcon-
vertedto technicallanguagethroughoveruse,whilethe secondcorresponds to moregeneralap-
plication.Wherean outsiderwould be struckby the paradoxical qualitiesof the utterance,a
memberof the linguisticsubcultureof musicianswouldbe unlikelyto recognize,muchlessbe
disturbedby,thehomonymousstatusof theseterms.
Example 23 RichardWagner,Parsifal,act 1, mm. 1480-87 (vocal score [New York:

G. Schirmer,
1962],90-91)
1484
~---
1486
Sehr allmAhlich das

Zeitmass etwas bewegter.
8
1488 ? a
__ ___
piu, p
p
1V4"4..!"
of transformationis located everywhereand nowhere; it is distributedin some

sense across the time that it takes to reorient our interpretationof the disso-
nant neighboring formation as a consonant triad, or vice versa. The conso-
nance or dissonanceof the triadis undecidablein a very deep sense.
How Hexatonic Poles Signify: A Freudian Reading
Recall Freud's formulationof Jentsch'sview: "an uncanny effect is often and

easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is ef-
faced, as when something that we have hitherto regardedas imaginaryappears
before us in reality."For Lorenz, as for Kurth and Schenker,musical realityis
consonance, musicalappearanceis dissonance.Accordingly,a simple substitu-
tion of terms will lead us to the musicallyuncanny:"an uncannyeffect is often
and easilyproduced when the distinction between dissonanceand consonance
is effaced, as when something that we have hitherto regardedas dissonantap-

pears before us as a consonance." Lorenz's magic is, evidently,nothing more
nor less than a direct musicalrealizationof Jentsch'suncanny.
But Jentsch's uncanny is not ultimatelyFreud's. Neither the magicalnor
the gruesome nor the undecidable is at the heart of the Freudianuncanny.
Rather,the uncanny is that class of the magical, gruesome, and so on "which
leads back to what is known of old and long familiar,"and which is indetermi-
nate on the basisof its simultaneouslyalien and hyper-proximatestatus.From
this standpoint, hexatonic poles are uncanny not only because the stabilityof
their constituents is undecidable;their uncanninessmust have something to
do with the capacityof those constituents to associatewith, but at the same
time resistor defamiliarize,the musicallycomfortableand heimlich.
We are led uncannilyback, then, to a reconsiderationof one of the most fa-
miliar metaphors in all of musical discourse. The musical home has been at-
tached to a range of entities associatedwith tonality.According to BrianHyer,
"Marpurg(in his translationofd'Alembert) was the firstwriterto describethe
tonic as a musical 'home'... , an image that has remainedin circulationever
since."65For Michael Cherlin, writing about the serialmusic of Schoenberg,
it is tonality itself that is musically heimlich.66For Nicholas Marston, "The
metaphoricalidentificationof the tonic key as 'home' is a commonplacein dis-
course about tonal music," to the point that "it hardly engages our atten-
tion."67That is to say:we are quite at home with the notion of the tonic key as
a musicalhome. It is a dead metaphorthat requiresresurrection.68
Although Marpurg'stonic pitch, Marston'stonic key, and Cherlin'stonal-
ity are ontologicallydistinct, musicaldiscoursenonetheless slips easilybetween
and among them. The reason is that they are mutuallyimplicative:a tonal sys-
tem implies a tonic key implies a tonic pitch-classimplies a tonal system.We
can get on and off this wheel of implicationwhereverwe like. We can also add
to it a fourth component: the tonic triad. The set of tonic triads is nothing
more nor less than the set of entities that are the constituents of hexatonic
poles.
The cognitive expectationsof the fluent listenerto tonal music-whether a
nineteenth-centuryone for whom tonal music is coextensivewith music tout
65. Brian Hyer "Tonality,"in The New GroveDictionary of Music and Musicians,2d ed.
(2001), 25:585; revised in The Cambridge History of WesternMusic Theory,ed. Thomas
Christensen(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,2002), 732.
66. Cherlin, "Schoenbergand Das Unheimliche,"362.
67. Marston, "Schubert'sHomecoming," 248.
68. In both musicaland psychoanalytictheory, the metaphorof home has an organicequiva-
lent in the form of the womb. On the musicalside, see the Lorenz quote above ("the neighbor
tones again correctlyreturn to the womb from which they were conceived"), and also Schenker,
TheMasterworkin Music:A YearBook,vol. 2 (1926), ed. WilliamDrabkin,trans. Ian Bent (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 22. On the psychoanalyticside, see Freud, "Un-
canny,"244-45; and Royle, The Uncanny,143-44.
court,or a twenty-first-century one who comesto the concerthallexpecting

to hearmusicof the tonalera-are suchthat,the soundingof, say,an E-major
triadat the beginningof a piecetriggersan entireflood of associationsand
inferences.The soundis a metonymfor a heimlichworldin a generalsense,a
tonal worldwherethe listeneris shieldedfrom certainsorts of cacophony.
From this E-majortriad,the listenerinfersan entire tonal system.Wrote
GottfriedWeber:"Itis naturalthat,in the beginningof a pieceof music,when
the earis asyet unpreoccupied withanykey,it shouldbe inclinedto assumeas
the tonic harmonyany majoror minor triad that firstpresentsitself."69
Nothingin musicis betterknownto us, is morefamiliarandcomforting,than
majorand minor triads.For the musicalmetaphysician,from Lippiusto
Schenker,they are the acousticmanifestationof the true, the perfect,the
divine.The worldinevitablycontainsdissonance,falseness,and illusion;the
musicalhome providesthe guaranteeof resolution,restoration,reconstitu-
tion,recuperation.
The securityof thisidealizedworldis shatteredwhenthatE-majorchordis
juxtaposedwithits C-minorhexatonicpole. The new chordis evidentlya dis-
sonance,forallthe reasonsoutlinedin the thirdpartabove.Andits dissonance
mightwell be confirmed,as Example19 (from Giitterdfimmerung) indicates.
Yetas KurthandLorenzshow,it alsohasthe potentialto blossominto a con-
sonance.Andif it hasthatconsonantpotential,thenit mustin somedeepbut
tangiblesensebea consonance,justasits orthography indicates.To the extent
thatC minoris dissonant,it is thatclassof the dissonant"whichleadsbackto
whatis knownof old andlong familiar."
Moreover,thereis a zero sumat work:as demonstrated in part3, E major
andC minorcannotboth be pure,secureconsonances.The degreeto which
C minorhas consonantpotentialis exactlythe degreeto whichthe heimlich
E-majortriadhas an inclinationtowarddissonance.The initialguaranteeof
the securemusicalhome turnsout to be underwritten by flimsycollateral.As
the consonantpotentialof C minorerodesthe consonantsecurityof E major,
we become awareof Vidler's "disquietingslippagebetween what seems
homelyandwhatis definitively unhomely."
Whichwayshallthe listenerturn?A commitmentto eitherversionof reality
-the consonanttriador its consonantpole-may at anymomentleavelisten-
ersvulnerableto reversalinto an alternative realityfor whichthey areunpre-
pared. The prudent listener may remain frozen at the boundarybetween
and
reality illusion, or oscillate
wildlyback and forth acrossthatboundary.
For all its shimmeringconsonantbeauty,the triad,like Herod'strauma-
tizedstepdaughter, hasa latentpotentialto fragmentinto a set of component
parts that stand in dissonantrelationto each other. The listeneris at any
69. GottfriedWeber,Theory ofMusicalComposition(1817), trans.JamesF. Warner(Boston:

Wilkins,Carter,1846), 1:336;I havemodernizedthe translationslightly.Fora recentrestatement
of thisview,seeFredLerdahl,TonalPitchSpace(Oxford:OxfordUniversity Press,2001), 174.
moment at riskof being cast out on a vast sea of tonal indeterminacy,without

compassor anchor.Each triadseems to be a port, yet each restson naught but
its own corrodible bottom. The lines between good and evil, life and death,
truth and appearanceare cast into doubt. Severed heads are so beautifulone
cannot but kissthem. The energy of a dying woman is transferredinto a fixate
gaze. A dissonantharmony burstsinto a consonant but bleached-out Gesang.
Superannuatedwraiths sing from their crypts, dead heroes animatedlyguard
their treasure,and spiritsscamperback down theirinfernalholes. A greatcom-
poser surviveshis own death to compose it in tones. What enables music to
portray effectivelyeach of these uncanny events is the consonant triad'sim-
plicit potential to turn dissonant. This potential is realized, made explicit,the
moment the triadis mated with its hexatonic pole.
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Press,1991.
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Abstract
Early twentieth-century psychological theorists (Ernst Jentsch, Sigmund

Freud) associatedthe uncanny with the occlusion of the boundary between
real and imaginary,and with the defamiliarizationof the familiar.Their music-
theoretic contemporaries(Heinrich Schenker,ErnstKurth,AlfredLorenz) as-
sociated realitywith consonance, imaginationwith dissonance.Late Romantic

composersfrequentlydepicted uncannyphenomena (in opera, song, and pro-
grammaticinstrumentalmusic) through hexatonic poles, a triadicjuxtaposi-
tion that inherently undermines the consonant status of one or both
constituents. Quintessentiallyfamiliarharmonies become defamiliarizedlimi-
nal phenomena that hover between consonance and dissonance, thereby em-
bodying the characteristicsthey are called upon by composers to depict.
Examples of uncanny triadic juxtapositions are drawn from music of
Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Haydn, Wagner, Mahler, Grieg, Richard Strauss,
Sibelius,Puccini, Ravel,and Schoenberg.

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Uncanny Resemblances: Tonal Signification in the Freudian Age

omething is wrong with Figure 1:1

Hugo Riemanncharacterized this harmonicpairingas among "theweirdest

This paperdevelopsan argumentfirstsketchedon pages21 and 22 of my article"Maximally

published in 1919.5 Initiallyintended as a contribution to the psychology of

5. Sigmund Freud, "The 'Uncanny,' " in An Infantile Neurosisand Other Works,vol. 17

Psychologicaltheory is supplantedby music theory in the next two partsof

The Psychological Uncanny in the Early Twentieth Century

Jentsch's "Zur Psychologie des Unheimlichen" of 1906 appearedin a rela-

11. Ernst Jentsch, "Zur Psychologie der Unheimlichen," Psychiatrisch-Neurologische

death'shead,skeletons,andsimilarthings"(p. 15). Thesephenomenainduce

13. Freud, "Uncanny,"221, 230.

Freud identifiesthe component that is centralto his own account through

A Gallery of Hexatonic Poles

What resources are available to a composer who wishes to depict death,

20. Freud, "Uncanny,"220.

Example 1 Carlo Gesualdo, "Moro Lasso," opening and closing measures(Sdimtlichemadri-

ahi, mi dh mor - te!

Mo - ro, las - so, al mi d' mor - te!

Mo - ro, las - soal ahi, mi da mor - te!

Mo - ro, las - so, al -te, ahi, mi dA mor - te!

Mo - ro, las - so, al mi d- mor - te!

Freud associatewith the uncanny,and that they spontaneouslyevoke the same

L'af-flig - ge si, I'af-flig - ge si

Qui si volta Orfeo, & canta al suono

O dol-cis - si-mi lu - mi io pur vi veg - gio, lo pur...

Qui canta Orfeo al suono del clavic[embono]

ma qual E - clissi ohi m? v'os - cu ra?

[O sweetest eyes, I see you now, I see ...

social forces of industrialization.23 The other is musical:semanticsvarieswith

23. Castle, Female Thermometer, 8; and Royle, The Uncanny,22.

Example4 JosephHaydn,TheCreation,"2. Arie(Uriel)mit Chor.Nun schwanden

Example 5 RichardWagner,Tristanund Isolde,Death motive, mm. 318-24 (vocalscore [New

Tod - ge - weih-tes Haupt! Tod - ge - weih-tes Herz!

the dying Scarpiaover a Gb-majortriad, then ushers him to the burningfires

das En - de das En - de!

live?Must I die, unguided by the savior?"Wagnerhas arrangedthe syntaxchi-

Example 8 Giacomo Puccini, Tosca,act 2, Scarpia'sdeath, mm. 1030-35 ([Frankfurt:Ricordi,

Ti sof- fo-ca il san-gue? Muo-ri dan-

con forza crescente

-na- to! Muo-ri, muo-ri, muo-ri!

has departedfrom her body. "Gazingup at Parsifal,Kundrysinksslowlyto the

Example 9 RichardWagner,Parsifal, act 1, mm. 1250-57 (vocal score [New York:

Muss ich ster - ben, vom Ret - ter un - ge - lei - tet?

Although Wagner renounced his necroanimative impulse at the end of

Example 11 Richard Wagner, Giitterdiimmerung,act 3, scene 3, mm. 1158-64 (vocal score

under-seventhin the bass, initiates a sounding of the Tarnhelmmotive. The

Und das Ge - heim-nis der Lie - be ist

grb - sser als das Ge - heim - nis des To - des

In Example 12, Salome serenades the severed head of Jochanaan:"And

29. CharlesRosen, Arnold Schoenberg (New York:Viking, 1975; reprint,Chicago:University

qualification, to its mediant relation. Adorno perceives darkness when

30. Abbate, Unsung Voices,125.

Example14 GustavMahler,SecondSymphony("Resurrection"), firstmovement,mm.43-49

the qualities of the emerging E-major Gesang,which consummates a rapid

Example 16 Jean Sibelius, Seventh Symphony, opening measures (reduction preparedfrom

Example 17 Maurice Ravel, Le tombeau de Couperin, Forlane, opening measures (Paris:

music."33Breathand soul are relatedconstructs;in Greek,they are united in a

33. RichardKramer,"PosthumousSchubert,"19th-CenturyMusic14 (1990): 202.

We can supplement this observation by considering the identities of the har-

Harmonic Theory and the Signifying Potential