Harmonic-Narrative Trajectory

Underpinning the topical and motivic components of Pearl that depict its environment and agents is a long-term harmonic design that governs, in Almén’s musical-narrative framework, the actantial level of the work (2008: 229). Using Almén’s formulation of narrative hierarchy, as the piece unfolds, its ‘rank’ values can be seen to shift: the pitiful (‘low rank’) qualities of the lament (and its protagonist) give way to increasing excitement; the subsequent long-term accumulation of harmonic tension suggests an impending arrival. As he approaches Pearl, the Jeweller’s (and music’s) sense of ecstatic joy increases and continues to do so as she, and the heavenly chorus, speak (/sing) to him.

From a musical theoretical perspective, these hierarchical shifts can be seen at the level of harmonic voice-leading, as shown in the middle-level reductions in Figure 5. Specifically, the melodic and bass descents characteristic of the lament and sinking topics heard in the Jeweller’s waking world (Figure 5i) are contrasted with several middle-ground ascents (Figure 5ii) that occur as the Jeweller awakens and begins his dream-journey onwards.

As shown in the deeper structural-level voice-leading graph (Figure 8), a large background-level ascent then begins in bar 343 (the point from which the Jeweller sees Pearl in her radiance ‘and she shone’), leading through to the gleaming, uncanny moment of her arrival (bar 427). Yet while this high-point is briefly followed by a temporary abating of tension on a local musical level, crucially, the ascent of structural upper voice soon resumes and continues to reach upward, reaching its true apex when the heavenly chorus sings of its ‘great joy’ in the aleatoric climax in bar 504. (The latter point that took me a very long time to recognize consciously; my first noted acknowledgement of this was written after the premiere; this epiphany and the difficulties its delay caused me are considered further in Part 2.)

During the first phase of this ascent (bars 343–427), harmonic instability accumulates through the high degree of tension generated between the middle register and bass, which often contains adjacent seconds (‘rumbling’) that undermine the possibilities for harmonic resonance. However, because of the spacing of these verticals, a degree of resonance is arguably perceptible. For example, the ‘otherworldly’ chord shown in Figure 6a is derived from the overtones on a low E; however, with its G and A cluster in the bass, a degree of resonance is generated by its near, but not actual, alignment with the overtones on a very low G (Figure 6c). On a metaphorical-narrative level, I intended this harmonic ‘in-betweenness’ to create a sense of uncanny to mirror the strangeness of the Jeweller’s and the vision of his deceased Pearl. [1] 

The topical shimmering in the upper register (shown in the uppermost stave in Figure 8) mirrors this trajectory, achieving its peak in bars 425–29 (‘maximal shimmer’), just before Pearl speaks. As her character and the heavenly chorus sing, a subsequent increase in the resonance occurs as the rumbling topic dies away and the bass tends increasingly to support, harmonically, the notes above it, coinciding with the poem’s depictions of heavenly joy and the Jeweller’s delight. However, a complete sense of resolution arguably only truly occurs through the final descent in the bass in parallel twelfths (from bars 517–95, briefly derailed by the Jeweller’s failed attempt to ford the river in bar 531), onto the C–G double-pedal that resonantly reharmonizes the opening ‘breathing’ chords. Thus, through this long-range harmonic approach, the inherent unease first encountered in the medieval (early music + lament) topic of the opening is resolved, and the Jeweller is a changed man.

On a very simplified level, this process can be seen by charting the evolution of the ‘tonic’ chord from bar 2, into the ‘uncanny’ chord in bar 343, and its ultimate resolution, over the C-G bass twelfth, in the final section of the piece (from the climax in bars 504 onwards to the end), shown here in Figure 7.

Figure 8 below thus represents a more elaborate music-graphic attempt to show the work’s long-range voice-leading processes, including the structural melodic ascent to the moment of ‘maximal shimmer’ in bar 427, and its continuation to the climax in bar 504 described above. The graph is shown in two levels of detail (i and ii) to aid reading and clarify which harmonies and pitches have the greatest structural significance for the long-term musical trajectory of the work. [2] (I have included a key for those unfamiliar with these analytical methods; knowledge of Schenker/voice-leading theories is not a prerequisite for reading the graph.)

[1] In Heidi Schlipphacke’s rereading of Freud’s famous essay, ‘Das Unheimliche’, she notes: ‘the uncanny embodies in-betweenness both in temporal (specters, ghosts, effigies, children) and in spatial terms (India and Europe as uncanny doppelgänger, neither same nor other; the garden as a space both controlled and uncontrollable; the doll as a representation in the here and now that both conjures and murders the beloved)’ (Schlipphacke 2015, 171). ↩︎

[2] I should acknowledge here that such a graph is of course dependent on an understanding that Pearl exhibits a high degree of pitch priority: the sense that some notes, and combinations of notes (in chords), are more important than others, in a hierarchical and goal-directed manner comparable (but also distinct from) that encountered in common-practice tonality. A detailed discussion of this principle here, elsewhere in my work, and within the wider contemporary musical landscape to which it belongs, is outside the scope of this paper. For a good overview of pitch priority/centricity in a range of post-tonal styles and contexts, see Kleppinger (2011).

This could be read as an indication of my adherence to certain theoretical norms derived from the Western canon, and Schenker in particular. While this is undoubtedly true to a degree, and a product of my artistic and theoretical background, I feel this should not be overemphasized. The work arguably operates on many levels, of which voice-leading teleology is one; one that is also fundamental to many types of music (Agawu 2021), much of which Schenker did or would undoubtedly have rejected. Indeed, my voice-leading graph departs from Schenker’s own ideals in a significant number of ways, and I actively reject many aspects of his work and its status: including both his overt racism but also what Philip Ewell describes as the perpetuation of the ‘white racial frame’ that has arisen from continued uncritical acceptance of his work and its implications within music theory and education (2020).

In this case, voice-leading notation offers a ready-made graphic solution for showing certain kinds of embedded deep structure around significant pitches and harmonies in relation to my musical-narratological analysis, which otherwise displays nothing resembling a Schenkerian Ursatz. ↩︎

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