Tonal Problems as Agents of Narrative in Brahms's Unbewegte laue Luft, Op. 57 No. 8

Abstract

Scholars have often invoked the progress of chromatic pitches through a piece as a metaphor for dramatic events, defining ‘tonal problems’ and ‘promissory notes’ as chromatic pitches that enter early in a piece, threaten the governing tonality's sovereignty and signify a conflict to be resolved (see Cone (1982), Carpenter (1988) and Schachter (1999).). Edward Cone's well-known reading of Schubert's Moment musical in A♭ (Op. 94 No. 6) posits the inability of E♮ to be fully assimilated, expressing ‘the occurrence of a disquieting thought to one of a tranquil, easy-going nature’. This article extends these models, interpreting the tonal problems F♮ and C♮ in Brahms's song Unbewegte laue Luft, Op. 57 No. 8, as realising present and future temporalities that remain latent in Georg Friedrich Daumer's poem. Brahms's E major song seems to model the poem's temporal progression from present to future, invoking F♮ to signify the protagonist's suppressed desire in the present and later respelling the pitch as E♯ to suggest emergent desire and its imagined future. Whereas Daumer's poem only contrasts the images of nature's external calm with the protagonist's internal passion, the tonal consequences of F and C in Brahms's setting also draw these images together, suggesting that they are intertwined in the protagonist's perceptions. His initially subconscious desires influence his experience of nature.