ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the ways that composers systematically pushed the tonal system to its limits—paving the way for compositional approaches explored in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Some late Romantic works modulate and end in a key other than the opening tonic—a procedure known as progressive tonality. Most tonal music is overwhelmingly consonant, with dissonance providing points of instability that ultimately resolve. In phases of suspended tonality, Roman numerals are difficult or impossible to apply to a succession of chords. Suspended tonality is often more fleeting: the unfolding of the tonal syntax is put on pause, but it eventually resumes to close a phrase with a cadence. The LR cycle is disturbed by a single P operation, which bumps the music to a lower diagonal path in the Tonnetz.
