Vagaries of Harmony: Global Major-Third Relations in the Instrumental Music of Brahms

Abstract

Internal key relationships in Brahms’s music are an important yet often overlooked area in which he adapted classical forms to a new harmonic language. Using analytical resources developed by Richard Cohn and other so-called “neo-Riemannian” theorists, Brahms’s harmonic ingenuity can be better analyzed in the context of nineteenth-century chromaticism, rather than in a context that is entirely beholden to the principles of diatonic tonality. Nineteenth-century harmonic features that are relevant to Brahms’s music include modulation by major third, augmented triads as structural objects, and hexatonic cycles. This paper will incorporate these harmonic features into a discussion of three compositional trends. First, local modulations by major thirds are used as central contents of sonata-form theme groups. Second, Brahms employs a Schubertian treatment of second subjects in major-third related keys, resolving both the key and the key relations in the recapitulation, but his practice deviates slightly from Schubert’s. Third, he replaces typical dominant or subdominant key relationships with major thirds in the most global contexts. While Brahms was only one of many composers using major-third related harmonies in the nineteenth century, the interplay between diatonic and chromatic structures in his classical forms contribute several interesting innovations to Romantic compositional practice.

Keywords

• Johannes Brahms
• Franz Schubert
• Richard Cohn
• neo-Riemannian theory
• nineteenth century
• major third