Nineteenth-Century Approaches to Eleven-Pitch-Class Systems Derived from the Viennese Classical Tradition

This chapter focuses on several prominent German and Austrian composers who were particularly interested in expanding the forms and harmonic language of the Viennese Classicists in new and novel directions. Of all the composers who followed in the footsteps of Mozzart and Hhaydn, it was undoubtedly Ludwig van Beethoven who was most successful in pushing chromaticism to its limits, yet always within the confines of the tonic background. Besides their increased interest in chromaticism in general, composers of the nineteenth century seem to have been especially interested in exploiting the harmonic potential of the individual pitch classes of the rising PCA chromatic octave as compositional determinants. The influences upon Franz Schubert for these experiments in tonality come from many sources. Where Schubert differs from his predecessors is in the extent to which major/minor juxtapositions determine the harmonic plan of the work on the deepest structural level.