Dr. Mathew Arndt
Assistant Professor of Music Theory,
University of Iowa
University of Iowa
Location: Humanities 2441
The tonic triad at the end of Arnold Schoenberg’s non-tonal song “Ich darf nicht dankend” (1907), has often been criticized as wrong yet also acknowledged as appropriate to the text. If we can understand this chord as both structurally sound and expressive, then perhaps we can better understand suspended tonality more generally. Meanwhile, text-music analysis has almost entirely disregarded Stefan George’s broader poem cycle Waller im Schnee. A more comprehensive analysis—drawing on Schoenberg’s writings and conceptual blending theory—illuminates the startling tonic triad, the phenomenon of suspended tonality, and Schoenberg’s psyche.
Schoenberg identifies with the poet as an artist inspired by nature who unsuccessfully attempts to realize himself by realizing a vision, in Schoenberg’s case a vision of the tone in nature. The song’s harmonic and motivic development realizes such a vision and also reflects the poet’s and Schoenberg’s failed attempt at overcoming self-division. In the end, an altered fourth chord, an imitation of tone color, is partially emancipated, but the tonic triad is emaciated. The suspension of tonality—the paradoxical fulfillment of the tonic through its nullification—continues in Schoenberg’s subsequent music to be an emblem of his life-long, lonely quest to express the inexpressible.
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