Tonality
By the standards of the second half of the 19th century, Tchaikovsky was certainly no trailblazing composer. He died in 1893, a decade after Wagner and a dozen years after Musorgsky, but he had never attempted anything so ambitious as Wagner's highly chromatic chains of unresolved chords or Musorgsky's experimental, almost random chord progressions. For Tchaikovsky, the established system of major-minor tonality was sophisticated enough, and he rarely pushed at its limits. He was, after all, the first great success of the Conservatoire system in Russia, as his opponents from the Mighty Handful never failed to point out - according to them, he had absorbed the respectable Germanic harmony texts all too well.
There are many instances, however, when Tchaikovsky can achieve exciting tonal effects within these limits. In Romeo and Juliet, for instance, we find that a sonata form with a very unusual combination of keys for the main themes: B minor for the first theme, and then instead of the customary D major for his lyrical theme, we have the startling choice of D-flat major. Tchaikovsky, however, had an interesting reason for what he did: B minor and D flat major were Balakirev's favourite keys (as anyone can soon discover from his scores), and it was Balakirev who had encouraged Tchaikovsky to compose a Romeo and Juliet overture. Fittingly, the work was dedicated to Balakirev, and the choice of keys is therefore a kind of musical homage. Even then, D-flat major could simply have been slotted into place, but instead Tchaikovsky pulls of a great dramatic coup, preparing up to the last moment for D major, until we suddenly sink down a semitone into a magical D flat. The second time round, when the love theme is recapitulated, it is deliberately robbed of this other-worldly quality, and placed simply in D major, as cruel fate hastens to destroy the two lovers.
On rare occasions, Tchaikovsky can suspend major and minor tonality for a time. In The Queen of Spades, for example, we find a mysterious theme for the "three cards" that will provide Herman - an obsessive gambler - with the victory and riches he craves. The theme consists of three notes, repeated in a rising pattern, at times rendered especially sinister through Tchaikovsky's use of the whole-tone scale. These strange harmonies signal to us that no good will come of Herman's obsession.
At other times, the miracle is not so much in the chords or keys but in their pacing. In the beautiful slow movement of the Fifth Symphony, the Fate theme appears twice. On the first occasion, Tchaikovsky prepares us for what is to come, with an increasingly uneasy transition. But on the second occasion, we are given no warning at all. A wonderful love theme has just reached its climax and is slowly descending towards the resolution and repose of the tonic chord. But that final chord never arrives, and instead we are wrenched away brutally by a terrifying diminished-seventh chord which brings in the Fate theme, now unbearably distressing. The theory books would simply call this an interrupted cadence, but in the dramatic sound-world that Tchaikovsky has created, what we hear is the cruel destruction of a noble and beautiful dream by an implacable Fate. Tchaikovsky is able to achieve such powerful wordless dramas precisely because the tonal system he employs is so familiar, allowing him to create strong expectations, which can be fulfilled or dashed according to his dramatic purposes.
© Dr Marina Frolova-Walker/BBC
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