Chapter 2 - Hidden harmonies and pitch resources

Summary

“Gli enigmi sono tre”

Turandot, Act II, scene 2

The three musical puzzles that most often impede analyses of Puccini's music (if and when they are attempted) are passages that sound strikingly dissonant (even atonal) and yet seem to cohere in a familiar, even traditional manner; his so-called “bass-less” melodies; and the strings of nonfunctional harmonies linked together by invariant pitch classes. As we examine Puccini's pitch-related “trademarks” in this chapter, we will find that the “solution” to each of these riddles involves the discovery of hidden or suppressed elements, and the untangling of interwoven traditional and progressive modes of composition. In addition to examining the “what” of Puccini's musical language, we will also look here at the “how”—that is, his means of combining the more basic elements. And, occasionally, the territory of “why” may be broached, searching for hermeneutic interpretations for particular compositional features.

William Drabkin has written, “the analyst's task is […] to penetrate the surface of the score, and to discover the true basis of its musical integrity.” Although he denies in Puccini “a governing system of elements of what one may wish to call a steadily maturing ‘personal style,’” we offer here means of understanding the composer's pitchrelated materials that encompasses all his operatic works. In short, we turn our attention to that which has been “disguised” in the variegated surfaces of the each opus, and attempting to truly penetrate, as Drabkin suggests we do, the inner workings of the composer's technique— aspects that Puccini, the deft musical magician, employs behind the scenes.

riddle 1

When René Leibowitz writes, “Puccini had to be the man in whom the antithetical elements of Verdi and Wagner would have found their true synthesis,” he seems to refer not only to historical influences but to compositional approaches that were, in the context of an Italian Verdi vs. Wagner culture war, often generalized as traditional and progressive. In reality, Verdi was innovative in many respects—as Hepokoski writes, “By pursuing ‘the fusion of genres’ in the 1840s and early 1850s […] [Verdi] was labouring to erect an image of himself as a Romantic progressive”—and Wagner was no stranger to ancient traditions. One should be cognizant too that the then-current view of music history as artistic “progress” is a questionable axiom at best.