Tonal Ebb, Sunken II Chords, and Text-Music Correspondences in Robert Schumann’s Lieder

In this article, I posit and develop the principle of tonal ebb to account for breaches of harmonic syntax in the normative tonal flow of common practice era music, with special reference to V going to II. Though typically forbidden, V—II progressions occasionally arise in a handful of special cases. Rarely, one may encounter a sunken II chord: this is my term for an apparent, diatonic II chord that arises from contrapuntal motion within V in major keys. To ground this rather abstract contrapuntal artifact and highlight its unique affective properties, I develop a conceptual model for the apparent V—II—V tonal formation that draws on an analogy to a folding technique from origami. Owing to its voice leading properties, the sunken II chord is particularly well-suited to conveying a sense of “that which lies within” in musical terms. I argue that Robert Schumann was sensitive to this effect—consciously or unconsciously—and that he employed it in his songs to underscore moments of inwardness, introspection, or heightened subjectivity in the poetry. I proceed to investigate three Schumann songs from 1840 that feature a text-music correspondence involving a prominent sunken II chord and some manner of inward turn in the text.