Journal of Musicological Research, 31:326329, 2012

Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 0141-1896 print/1547-7304 online
DOI: 10.1080/01411896.2013.720917

Book Review

Audacious Euphony: Chromaticism and the Triads Second Nature.

Richard Cohn. Oxford Studies in Music Theory. Richard Cohn, general
editor. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xviii, 237 pp. ISBN
978-0-19-977269-8. Hardcover, $35.00.
When we think of the development of harmonic syntax throughout the nineteenth century, some version of a typical emplotment may come to minda
story told to us many times, one we have probably even told in our own
teaching. The story is usually cast in terms of a single organizing force: traditional tonal harmony, the heyday of which was back in the mid- to late
eighteenth century, of course, in the music of Haydn and Mozart. This music
is principally diatonic, harmonic roots usually progress by perfect fifth, and
modulation requires careful addition (or subtraction) of sharps and flats.
As the music of Beethoven guides us into the nineteenth century, however,
tonal harmony begins to be strained. By and by, the works of Schubert,
Schumann, Chopin, and Brahms stretch the seams of tonal harmony further as relationships between harmonic fundamentals (and their attendant
diatonic collections) grow ever more complex. One daring harmonic progression, among several others, involves direct harmonic root motion by
third to some harmony outside of the prevailing diatonic collection: for example, from a C-major triad to an A-flat major or E-major triad. Such a move
brashly circumvents careful deployment of accidentals, and we imagine it
sounded piquant and exhilarating to eighteenth-century ears. Despite these
new harmonic progressions, the end stages of our story cling to tonal harmony, and carry tragic implications: With Wagner, tonal harmony becomes
dangerously distended, and with Schoenberg (about 150 years after the story
began), our beloved tonal system finally gives out, shattering into a million schizophrenic pieces. This narrative of eighteenth-century harmony is
oversimplified, no doubt, but the extent to which it makes intuitive sense
illustrates the extent to which such complex phenomena are conceived in
terms of a single guiding principle, even when that principle (and the story
itself) strains to accommodate less-convenient phenomena.
In Audacious Euphony: Chromaticism and the Triads Second Nature,
Richard Cohn challenges such a unified harmonic narrative, suggesting that
a parallel story arises directly from nineteenth-century harmony, a history
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born of a separate, and typically overlooked property inherent to consonant

triads. Rather than hearing the exotic nineteenth-century progressions and
modulations as some kind of eighteenth-century harmony gone wild, Cohn
urges us to hear them as epiphenomenal to parsimonious voice leading
of individual triadic tones. Motion from a C-major triad to an A-flat-major
triad readily demonstrates this concept: C remains fixed as a common tone,
E descends a semitone to E flat, and G ascends a semitone to A flat. From
an eighteenth-century perspective, C major and A-flat major are distantly
related; but in terms of parsimonious voice leading, they are closely related
because only two of three voices move, neither of them by more than a
semitone. In fact, assuming enharmonic equivalence, parsimonious voice
leading renders the C-major triad as adjacent to no fewer than nine other
consonant triadsA-flat major, E minor, E major, C minor, F minor, G-sharp
minor, B minor, D-flat major, and C-sharp minor.
Except for E minor, eight of these nine triads contain members foreign to the C-major diatonic collection. Such parsimonious voice-leading
relationships thus freely depart from the putatively diatonic palette of the
eighteenth century, implicitly introducing the complete chromatic gamut into
nineteenth-century triadic language. This observation allows Cohn to illustrate how his alternate history stems from a property inherent to consonant
triads themselvestheir second nature. In an equally tempered chromatic
universe, we can understand consonant triads as minimal perturbations of
an octave divided into three equal parts, which are also called nearly even
trichords. All major and minor triads represent an augmented triad with precisely one triadic member displaced by semitoneone wrong notethe
minimum possible semitonal adjustment. (Adjusting any one member of an
augmented triad up a semitone produces a minor triad; adjusting any one
member down a semitone produces a major triad.) The C-major triad, for
example, is a minimal perturbation of the C-E-G sharpaugmented triad (G
sharp is lowered to G natural), as are five other consonant triads (A-flat major,
E major, A minor, F minor, and C-sharp minor). Therefore, all twenty-four
consonant triads lie only one semitone alteration away from precisely one of
the four augmented triads. Equal division of the octave might sound like an
overtly clinical (i.e., music-theoretical) observation, but its function within
this particular triadic property, and within the conception of nineteenthcentury harmony in general, is absolutely vital: Because their intervallic
content comprises only (enharmonic) major thirds, augmented triads lack
intrinsic harmonic roots. To the extent that six consonant triads from diverse
diatonic backgrounds relate closely to one another via semitonal voice leading through the rootless augmented triad, the traditional interrelationships
between the consonant triads harmonic roots dissolve, along with the governing powers of those roots. Parsimonious voice leading thus arms us with
a new conception of triadic distance, which we might employ alongside a
more traditional, circle-of-fifthsoriented conception. Cohn writes that these

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Book Review

two incommensurate ways of measuring triadic distance emerge respectively

from two independent properties of consonant triads (p. 199).
Augmented triads serve a crucial function in Audacious Euphony, allowing Cohn to make what is, in my opinion, his principle contribution to our
understanding of the historical development of nineteenth-century harmony.
Near the end of chapter 3, Cohn shows that in an 1853 monograph, Der
bermssige Dreiklang (The Augmented Triad), Carl Friedrich Weitzmann
explicitly identified the close relationship of the four augmented triads to
all twenty-four consonant triads.1 Because only one augmented triad relates
to multiple consonant triadsand not the other way aroundWeitzmann
promotes them from their typically subservient music-theoretical role to a
generative one. Accounting for Weitzmanns work, Cohn demonstrates that
the triads parsimonious voice-leading potential was already acknowledged
and disseminated by the mid-nineteenth century, and that to cast the development of nineteenth-century harmony exclusively in terms of (progressively
distorting) eighteenth-century harmony simply misses the boat.
Rather than merely highlighting Weitzmanns contribution as a historical convenience, however, Cohn explicitly adopts the generative status of
augmented triads into what he calls Weitzmann regionsa discussion that
structures three and a half chapters of Audacious Euphony. Each Weitzmann
region centers around one of the four augmented triads, but as regions, they
also each include the six consonant triads to which they relate via minimal
perturbation. More practically put, the augmented triads at the center of each
Weitzmann region bridge the tonal (and enharmonic) chasm that would otherwise disperse the six consonant triads according to an eighteenth-century
perspective; a C-major triad connects to an A-flat-major triad through the CE-G sharpaugmented triad. Taken all together, the four Weitzmann regions
organize the twenty-four major and minor triads into four groups of six.
But this is not the only way to arrange them into four groups of six: In
an earlier article, Cohn posits the four hexatonic systems, each of which
includes the six consonant triads one can create with the six pitches from
one of the four hexatonic scales.2 In chapter 5, building on Jack Douthett and
Peter Steinbachs Cube Dance diagram,3 Cohn then superimposes the four
Weitzmann regions over the four hexatonic systems in his Unified Model
of Triadic Voice-Leading Space (pp. 8586). In this model, the two systems
cleanly overlap to the extent that no triad appears more than once, and
transformations within hexatonic systems serve as transformations between
1

See Two Monographs by Carl Friedrich Weitzmann, I: The Augmented Triad, trans. Janna Saslaw,
Theory and Practice 29 (2004), 133228; originally published as Der bermssige Dreiklang (Berlin: T.
Trautweinschen, 1853).
2
Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic
Progressions, Music Analysis 15/1 (1996), 940.
3
Jack Douthett and Peter Steinbach, Parsimonious Graphs: A Study in Parsimony, Contextual
Transformations, and Modes of Limited Transposition, Journal of Music Theory 42/2 (1998), 24164.

Book Review

329

Weitzmann regions and vice versa. In chapter 7, Cohn extends the nearly
even status of augmented triads, along with the notion of parsimonious
voice leading, to seventh chords, conceiving both dominant-seventh and
half-diminished seventh chords as minimal perturbations of a division of
the octave into four equal partsthe fully diminished seventh chord. Using
what he calls the Tristan genus and the Boretz spider4 (which function
like Weitzmann regions and hexatonic systems for trichords), Cohn presents
a unified model of tetrachordal voice leading. Additionally, because none of
our favorite nineteenth-century works are comprised exclusively of triads or
exclusively of seventh chords, he addresses how we might approach relating
the two kinds of chords within the same system, an issue that music theory
has found to be notoriously tricky.
At this point, the reader may wonder if, with these abstractions,
Audacious Euphony stifles our familiar eighteenth-century emplotment of
nineteenth-century harmonic syntax, leaving it entirely back in the eighteenth
century. It does not. Although the book primarily focuses on developing a
conception of triadic (and tetrachordal) relationships based on parsimonious
voice leading, it teems with musical examples from our favorite nineteenthcentury (and even eighteenth-century) composersmusic whose traditional
tonal syntax still readily articulates itself. Some of Cohns most telling
discussions treat music in which his more audacious parsimonious-voiceleading conception and a more traditional tonal conception compete in a
sophisticated phenomenological tug of war.
Lastly, Audacious Euphony is not written exclusively for specialists.
Cohn also aims his ideas at readers uncomfortable with or uninterested
in the technical literature in scholarly journals, an audience that may actually include not only some music theorists but also music historians and
psychologists, performers of nineteenth-century repertoires, composers who
find creative vitality in triads and seventh chords, and anyone else who has
the appropriate background (p. xii). Adding to this books accessibility is its
companion website through Oxford University Press, which includes musical scores and recordings energized by animated diagrams. For any scholar
interested in nineteenth-century music, Richard Cohns Audacious Euphony
is undoubtedly worth reading.
James Bungert
University of WisconsinMadison

4
Benjamin Boretzs analysis of Wagners Tristan und Isolde appears as part of his 1970 dissertation
titled Metavariations, which was published in volumes 811 of Perspectives of New Music. The analysis
itself, titled Metavariations, Part IV: Analytic Fallout (I), appears in volume 11, no. 1 (1972), 146223.

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