The Embodiment of Western Harmony
Huang’s harmony basically followed the traditional Western harmony, referring to the period of 1870-1925. In the 1930s, there were not a lot of composers of modern music. He was the first one to use a large number of harmony techniques in his vocal works to express the connotation and artistic conception of the lyrics, and create a distinctive musical image.
A. Parallel Progressions of thirds and sixths
In the traditional harmony of Western composition techniques, parallel progressions of thirds and sixths often appear. This technique was also widely used in Huang’s songs, it helped to make the timbre more full. For example, at the end of the first section of the art song Longing for Home, Huang used the method of descending parallel thirds (mm. 11). In addition, the desolation in the music can be expressed in conjunction with the 2nd degree descending motion.
Here the piano part in the right hand interacts greatly with the melody. Regarding the pitch, it tightly pairs up with the melody. But the piano is more alive than the melody, which I believe is to strengthen the artistic conception of the poem. Parallel progressions of thirds here lively depict the image of more cuckoos actively returning to home and they urge the poet to go home as well, in contrast to the long and sustained phrase of the melody.
B. Dissonance and Seventh Chords
On top of traditional chords, Huang Tzu had been exploring more complex chords from the West to strengthen the colour of music and better match the artistic conception of poetry. For example, he played with western dissonance and seventh chords. In his songs of different styles and contents, he blended the colourful chords with different national modes to show richer colour changes and musical vitality. Here we can really see how he borrowed the methods from the west to serve his ultimate goal.
(1) Major Seventh Chord
The major seventh chord contains the most harsh major seventh interval, so the timbre of the major seventh chord is sharp and has a strong sense of discomfort, but it also has a strong tendency and rich colours.
Three Wishes from a Rose is a lyrical song. The content expresses the regret and emotion for beautiful but fragile objects or being, and also reflects the national conditions at that time, as well as the anger, grief and shouts in the hearts of patriots, and their longing for beauty.
The song is in E major, which is different from the normal practice, it starts with a special Major 7th chord (F#M7, IV43) rather an E major chord, which brings a refreshing impression and tension. This implies a sense of desolation, tangled and longing emotion.
The second chord is ii 42 (with E as the bass), which is also tense and urgently needs to be resolved. In mm3, on the basis of the main chord E (I), the fourth note A is used instead of the third note #G to form a fourth-degree structural chord I4-3 (Esus4), which is then connected to the main chord E after creating a sense of contradiction. In mm.4, it goes from E chord first inversion (I6) to ii 65 , then to dominant 13th chord (V13). In just four bars, the poignant theme and atmosphere of the song was set.
Secondary dominant chords always give the music more tension, nuance and interest, and at the same time makes the tonality unclear and blurr. It also makes a great contrast or musical illusion from the tonality. In Huang’s composition, he used a lot of secondary dominant chords to have fuller colours, as you might have already discovered in the previous chapters. It is hardly found in the other composers of the period.
We can perfectly show how Huang used the secondary dominant very frequently in Longing for Home.
The music elements and content of this song are very rich and compact. Regarding the poem itself, it was developed around the inner emotions of the wanderer. From the tonality, we can see that the wanderer was fluctuating and complicated through the harmony, and the secondary dominant at this process plays a key role in the arrangement, and it can set off the wanderer's chaotic and anxious mood.
The original key of "Longing for Home" is Eb major. From the interlude to "full of other thoughts'' (mm. 15-18), Huang used many secondary dominants, and the whole process changed from Eb major to Bb major. He started with D Chord (mm.15) and he transferred the music to G minor. G minor is the relative minor of Bb. Through the downward scale (half degree), the E Half Diminished 7th-F major 7th (mm.16-17, viiø7/V-V2) is created.
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Exploration of Chinese Harmony
Huang also explored national harmony while borrowing Western traditional harmony as the main body. This kind of exploration is more prominent in pentatonic or natural major and minor works. As mentioned above, when Huang Tzu designs melodies for traditional poems, he often uses traditional Chinese modes (pentatonic scale). So this brought about some directions to the chords, and within it, Huang Tzu tries to find chords with Chinese characteristics, considering whether the effect behind the chords is in line with the artistic conception of the poem. Technically, In terms of chord structure, added tone chords were used (add2, for example) to have special effects. In addition, chords omitting thirds, and empty fifth chords, parallel octave, makes the harmony sound more "Chinese": having some sense of nihilistic and tranquil.
Especially while playing plucked string instruments (Guqin, for example), players often add higher and lower octaves, between phrases, or play octaves with sudden up or down, to retouch and embellish a melody in order to achieve the effect of polyphony. This is called "jiahua (加花)" or "heterophonic texture". These techniques are a type of "improvisation", an expression of interaction between musicians. They chose to add "addition" at the right time to make the music have different texture, timbre, complexity and density. Regarding the chord progression, since at the base of the pentatonic scale, it does not usually have the leading tone, which plays a very important role in Western tonal and progression systems. This means that the chords of V, vii° might not be used very often in some repertoire to have a sense of “home returning”, or the chords created do not associate with “home” from another perspective.
A Flower in the Haze
It is in the pentatonic D Gong mode (D Chinese pentatonic). Huang Tzu made some special arrangements in the harmony or orchestration to suit the melody (poetic conception). In the piano accompaniment, the left hand mainly repeats the main melody in low octaves, and the right hand plays the high-pitched melody and harmony. In this way, the high and low parts form parallel octaves (empty octaves), resulting in an extremely ethereal effect.
While listening to the excerpt, it is very much like musical instruments interspersing between a song, and they both contributed around the basic melody, which constitute as mentioned above "heterophonic texture". The harmony progress is based on I64-vi-I64. This is what we understand as the possibility of a chord progression in Chinese music. Besides, the harmony also extensively uses I64 chords, which has a feeling of suspension, hanging, under support. The harmony progression of I—vi—I lacks strong tendency and tension, the music sounds lighter, more plain, slimmer, which I believe is very consistent with the quiet and hazy artistic conception of the song.
