ABSTRACT
The book begins by discussing the trend in modern music theory – associated with the sub-sub-discipline of ‘Neo-Riemannian Theory’ (NRT) – to conflate tonality with diatonicism and to suggest consequently that chromatic music often establishes a separate syntax that necessitates the theorisation of a new language, characterised by geometric spaces and post-tonal transformations: that is, an entirely new form of pitch-space logic. This ‘Copernican’ revolution in music is disputed by the authors, in that they point to both the ubiquity of tonal ideology in the late nineteenth century and the resonance of many tonal concepts for today's listeners. They argue instead for a theory of chromatic function, rooted in the traditional categories of Hugo Riemann's classic text, Harmony Simplified (1893). By returning to Riemann, they argue, and by extrapolating his ideas along a different evolutionary trajectory from NRT, one may formulate a model of tonality adequate to the harmonic complexities of composers like Wagner.
