Arnold Schoenberg · section 20 of 30

The Minor Key

Until now we have carried out our exercises only in the major key; we shall now apply the knowledge we have gained to the minor key as well. To do this, we must first clarify the nature of minor. Both major and minor are remnants of the seven church modes. Our present major is the Ionian of the older musicians, and our minor their Aeolian. The other five church modes began as follows: Dorian on d, Phrygian on e, Lydian on f, Mixolydian on g, and Hypophrygian on b.

Each of these modes consisted of the seven notes of a series. For example, within c, d, e, f, g, a, b, Dorian began with d and ran d, e, f, g, a, b, c. Like our major and minor, these series could be transposed, so that there were actually eighty-four modes, although not every transposition was in use. Further details about the church modes can be found in one of the older works. Here I discuss only the properties relevant to us: those that, as far as I can see, influenced development. These should not merely be considered*); they must be considered if one wishes to convey an idea of the harmonic sense of form upon which ours rests. It should therefore be mentioned that the church modes sought to imitate the characteristic of the Ionian mode whose seventh note is an ascending leading tone, only a semitone below the eighth. I have already said that I regard this tendency as the cause of the dissolution of the church modes. Their distinguishing features were thereby eliminated, and the individual modes became so similar that ultimately only two clearly differentiated principal types remained: major, which combined the properties of Ionian with those of the other major-like modes, and minor, which combined those of Aeolian with the minor-like modes. Minor is thus purely an artistic product, and attempts to present it as directly given by nature are futile. Its natural basis is indirect, as with the church modes, rather than immediate. Certainly, the fact that major and minor result from development and represent a substantial simplification of what preceded them—for they are a sum containing everything that occurred in the old seven series—and the fact that their dualism recalls the two sexes and divides the fields of expression into pleasure and displeasure, giving it the power of a symbol suggestive of higher institutions: all these circumstances could support the mistaken belief that these two modes alone are natural, final and enduring, and that nature’s will has been fulfilled through them. To me something else follows: we have come closer to nature’s will. But we are still far enough away: the angels, our higher nature, are sexless; and the spirit knows no displeasure.

*) A harmony textbook by Max Loewengaard prompted me to consider the church modes in discussing the minor key.

Our predecessors surely considered the church modes as perfect as we consider major and minor. The number seven has the same symbolic power as two, and instead of the two principal fields of expression recognised by science there were probably seven sanctified by the imagination. Had they been shown the future—that five of their seven would disappear, just as the future is indicated here in which the remaining two will one day become one—they would have argued against the possibility much as our contemporaries do. They would have spoken of lawlessness, anarchy, lack of character, impoverishment of artistic means, and so on: all the things that would be lamented today if development brought something other than what those people wish who like to sit comfortably beside a warm stove and refuse to understand that every advance must lose something on one side if it is to gain on the other.

The preliminary work is the stake; progress is the gain, yet the gain also contains the preliminary work. It may not contain everything of which that work consisted, but it contains its most essential part. Measured against development, every advance is itself only preliminary work. Thus there are no unsurpassable summits, since even a summit is only a relative measure against summits already surpassed. In the same way, I do not believe in inevitable decadence in the life of peoples. I do not believe the Romans could not have surpassed their highest development if an event entirely outside the factors relevant to a culture’s development had not occurred: the migrations of peoples. Certainly, a nation’s strength could then manifest itself chiefly in military prowess. But one must remember that a culture was defeated by an absence of culture. It was not that a culture had failed, become unproductive, worn out and in need of removal. Such removal could have taken place within the organism as a revolution that eliminated dead organs but preserved the whole organism. To attribute Rome’s destruction to the declining strength of the nation would require one to regard the migrations themselves as a consequence of Roman over-cultivation. Even pessimists who scent decline everywhere the courageous sense new strength will hardly wish to go so far.*) The decay of the church modes is the necessary process of decomposition from which the new life of major and minor springs. And when our tonality dissolves, it already contains the seed of the next artistic manifestation. Nothing in culture is definitive; everything is merely preparation for a higher stage of development, for a future that can for the present be imagined only dimly. Development is not over; the summit has not been passed. Development is only beginning, and the summit is still to come—or perhaps never, since it will always be surpassed. “Here flows the last wave,” Gustav Mahler once said to Brahms, pointing at a river, when Brahms, in a pessimistic mood, spoke of a summit of music that he considered the last.

*) These sentences, written ten years ago, may today—in 1920—encourage all who have lost their self-confidence through the lost war. Since we lost a war, little remained for the others but to win it. Losing it lay more in our hands than winning it lay in theirs; we were fully active. It did not simply get lost: we lost it. We have moved ourselves back a few ranks: that is their war indemnity. We need none, or we should receive one too. We are not merely able to do what they do not trust themselves to do, namely continue to exist without an indemnity; they themselves rate our strength highly enough that we can even pay one. Who, then, can claim that we are decadent?

The certain “decline” of a culture—the decline of an entire continent is fortunately an impossibility at least in language—is a genuine historian’s concept without any direct perception behind it. A capable man becomes a likeable old man; and if he was not much worse than average, he possesses wisdom. Similarly, a people whose achievements posterity respects does not become contemptible from the instant when posterity’s interest turns, for unknown reasons, to other peoples. Only someone who sees in an old man nothing but the corpse the worms will soon consume, who does not believe in the soul’s continued life, who does not suspect that an old man’s soul is approaching a new, as yet unhistorical, summit, can forget to consider what old men Goethe, Wagner, Schopenhauer and Kant must have been. Nor need a people be decadent at the moment when it is defeated, even destroyed. Hector kills Patroclus and Achilles kills Hector: at least two of them would then be decadent. The better is the enemy of the good: a 1920 model typewriter may be displaced by a 1921 model if the latter is better. Yet the former does not on that account write worse than before—in principle, naturally—but just as well.

Our present minor is therefore the old Aeolian mode, whose series is a, b, c, d, e, f, g. Occasionally, when the seventh note was to move to the eighth, it was changed into a leading tone: g-sharp replaced g. This, however, produced the augmented interval f–g-sharp, which the older musicians preferred to avoid. Consequently f was also replaced by f-sharp, so that where a leading-tone effect was wanted, the scale segment ran e, f-sharp, g-sharp, a. It is probably still true today that f–g-sharp is difficult to sing in tune. It is certainly not easy to intone it absolutely purely, and the use of such intervals may contribute much to choirs’ difficulty in maintaining pitch when singing a cappella. The objection that older keyboard music also avoids such intervals, although one interval is as easy as another on a keyboard, and that the appeal to difficulty of intonation therefore fails, is answered by the fact that such an interval is difficult to intone because it is difficult to imagine and, for that reason, difficult to grasp. Moreover, instrumental and vocal music have never differed in the essentials of style. What is expressed and how it is expressed remain the same in harmony, counterpoint, melody and form. The use of augmented intervals in conspicuous melodic positions on the keyboard would also have had to lead to their use in singing. But since music proceeded from singing, such intervallic moves were understandably avoided not only in vocal writing but in instrumental writing as well.

The replacement of the seventh note, and consequently the sixth, by raised notes occurred only for leading-tone purposes. Where there is no such purpose, the unraised scale notes remain. It is therefore incorrect to base the discussion on the so-called harmonic minor scale. The only correct course, it seems to me, is to begin with the Aeolian mode, which also possesses the properties of the melodic minor scale. It must be firmly maintained, however, that the raising took place only when one wished to move to a for leading-tone purposes, that is, for a close. Only then was g-sharp used instead of g, and f-sharp was taken only for the sake of g-sharp. There are consequently two forms of the minor scale, known as the melodic minor scale: the ascending form, which replaces the unraised seventh and sixth notes with raised ones, and the descending form, which uses the plain series of unraised notes. The two series are not mixed: ascending, use the raised notes; descending, only the unraised notes. What has been said here, expressed as rules, gives the four turning-point laws of the minor scale.

First turning point, g-sharp: g-sharp must go to a, since it is used only for the leading-tone step. Under no circumstances may g or f be introduced, nor f-sharp, at least for the present.

Second turning point, f-sharp: f-sharp must go to g-sharp, since it was introduced only for the sake of g-sharp. Under no circumstances may g follow, still less f; nor, at least for the present, e, d, a, and so on.

Third turning point, g: g must go to f, since it belongs to the descending scale. Under no circumstances may f-sharp follow, still less g-sharp.

Fourth turning point, f: f must go to e, since it belongs to the descending scale. Under no circumstances may f-sharp follow.

Observing these instructions is indispensable, since without them the character of the minor key can scarcely be brought out. We must for the present refrain from chromatic steps, since their conditions have not yet been discussed. A different use of the raised sixth and seventh notes can easily blur the feeling of key, which at first we insist on keeping clear. Once we have richer means at our disposal, it will be easy to check even more extensive apparent departures. For now we can scarcely do so. The third and fourth turning points may later be treated somewhat more freely by appealing to the Aeolian mode. Where raised notes do not replace the originals, it coincides with Ionian, our relative major. The turning-point laws correspond more closely to modern melodic minor, in which long passages without raised notes occur less often than in Aeolian; in such passages the unraised sixth and seventh notes do indeed move freely. In this sense a freer treatment could already be permitted. It would then not be excluded that g, perhaps in an inconspicuous inner voice, is followed by a, or f by g. Near raised notes, however, this can easily produce a roughness similar to the so-called cross-relation, which will be discussed later. Then g or f would at least have to resolve afterwards, as it were—g going to f, and f to e—before raised notes occur. In any event the restriction still applies absolutely that g and f must never move to f-sharp or g-sharp. It is more expedient, however, to reserve this freer treatment for later.

The A-minor scale as we treat it is therefore a C-major scale beginning on a, which in certain cases, for leading-tone purposes, permits the seventh note to be raised and, for melodic reasons and for the seventh’s sake, the sixth to be raised as well. Where no such raising occurs, everything is as in the relative major key. Where raised notes are used, the instructions determined by the turning points come into force.