As Timothy Johnson demonstrates in his book, Adams avoids the traditional functional harmony in favour of chord progressions than can be approached with a Neo-Riemannian harmonic language. He uses chords, both triads and sevenths chords, to represent the emotions of the characters and the evolving attitude of the characters towards each other. To avoid discussing too much of the plot, I will focus solely on the music, and not the text. Adams uses non-functional chords in such progressions that it mimics functional harmony. In certain sections some chords can be called the functional tonic and dominant, while in others, chords serve as different levels of “terraces”, either stepping up tension or releasing it. As with all theories, there are a few holes in Johnson’s analysis of Nixon in China, some of which will be addressed to the best of my ability. I do not believe that Adams composed with this “system” in mind, mostly because it hasn’t been invented yet when he wrote the opera; the theory attempts to fit music, just as grammar attempts to fit language. Some things just do not fit neatly within the Neo-Riemannian context.
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Notes for “News has a kind of
mystery”
The first aria, Nixon’s
aria “News has a kind of mystery” starts on an Ab major triad. For ten measures
(mm. 374 – 386), this chord remains before changing to an F minor chord, a
relative transformation. Since this is a basic transformation, I consider is a
“non-tension” movement. In the Johnson book, he talks about how the Ab and the
Fm are from separate hexatonic systems, but I think that the systems are good
for categorizing the different transformations, just not so good at analyzing
the chords that are a part of the systems. The “set up” not only makes little
sense contextually, but also, more importantly, make little sense aurally. The
sequence sounds, in a functional way, like I – vi (and to iii when it moves to
Cm later). These two chords are all basic transformations from Ab major, and
therefore should considered mere colourations of the “tonic” or what I’m going
to call “home” triad.
In
mm. 409, the Ab triad goes through a leading tone and then a parallel
transformation, a complex transformation, into C major. This, followed by a crescendo,
sounds to me like a real chord change, into a new tonic, effectively making the
Ab major triad the tension chord resolving into the C major. The C major then goes
through another LP transformation into E major, and C becomes the new tonic
before finally going to the new home centre, F minor and Db major. From E major
to F minor, the chord goes through a SLIDE transformation, keeping only one
note constant. This always sounds like a modulation to me. The system of
keeping a home centre around two or three chords continues in this aria, and
modulations or tension building occurs on compound transformations.
Section
F (starting mm. 542) has a curious section that uses a new technique to achieve
tension. Bichord dissonance set in contrasting registers. I can only describe
this section as a flowing tension and release, as the chords are connected by
many complex transformations. This does not fit with the Neo-Riemannian
understanding of the rest of the aria, and I believe that is why Johnson did
not include this section in his analysis. There is another section like this
one at measure 616, which Johnson just wrote “transitional section” and moved
on. The bichords Abm/Db into Bbm/Gb are true non-functional chords, that only
adds colour to the melodic line, which stays solely in Db major. The chord
change only then occurs in mm. 553, at the F#m chord. From that point onwards,
the Fm chord at mm. 560 only serves to reposition the melody. Then the C#m add major
7 chord melts into Ab+ and Ab, which is the home of the next section. I believe
Adams wrote this section to colour the existing melody. The F#m at mm. 553
heightens the tension before falling back to “home” at the Fm chord. Then, the
C#m add major 7 is the real climax of this section, falling twice, first
halfway to the Ab+, losing the bass note, and then finally back to Ab major.
Adams uses tension as levels, not tension and release, which will also appear
in the next aria.
Notes for “I am the wife of Mao
Tse-tung”
“I
am the wife of Mao Tse-tung” uses the dominant and subdominant transformations.
A dominant transformation changes a minor chord into its “tonic” as if the
chord was the dominant, for example, Bbm into Eb. The subdominant
transformation does the opposite.
Although
we have not seen 7th chords yet, in this aria, they serve as an
added layer of suspension, usually played by a separate instrument than the
rest of the chord. The A section of this aria has a Neo-Riemannian section,
where the voice leading makes conventional sense. The Bb to Bbm to Eb7 to Ebm
goes though parallel transformations at the major to minor switch, aurally
sounding like a depression to scare you into the dominant which is actually
more of a IV sound to me. The pull is still from the Eb (IV) to the Bb (I) and
not, as you would probably have guessed a V to a I, Bb to Eb. The basic
transformation of the major to minor, is still only a colour change.
By the end of the
aria, during the instrumental coda (mm. 961-end), the chords D7, E7 and the
home chord, Bb are used to represent different levels of tension. The D7 and
E7, both only sharing one note with Bb serve as tension towards the Bb home
chord. Since E7 also has a tritone relationship with Bb, it sounds more jarring
in relation to D7. In addition, the way the bass always starts on the 1 of the
chords during this section makes the D7 sound like it wants to move to the E7,
and in turn, to Bb. Therefore, it can be said the D7 serves as a subdominant
function chord, and the E7 and Bb serves as dominant and tonic.
A quirk of Adams
in this aria that we haven’t discussed yet is at mm. 832, the dominant sound of
the Bb chord, with the E7 chords. The tritone distance makes the E7s sound very
jarring, and it can be seen as a secondary dominant to the “resolution”: a Gb
chord at mm. 852. This isn’t a V-I though, Adams still steps down to it,
through a P and L transformation, after the high note. This climax, you would
think, needs a climatic harmony to compliment it., but with the transformations,
Adams “side steps” your ear, and modulates into a new “home”. This technique of
stepping down into a resolution happens very often throughout the entire, and
often at traditional cadential points.
Notes for “I am old and cannot sleep
forever”
I
am going to diverge once again from the Johnson. He analyses this aria from the
melodic solo line and then moves to describe the function of the bichords and
how they serve to harmonise the very dissonant melody. I do not believe that
the bichords serve a function in this aria. There is a background dissonance
from the lower half of the bichord, that being the chord on the bottom, the
lower range, serves no functional purpose. When listening to it, all the
“dissonance” that Johnson has analysed sounds only like noise, and not
additional notes of the chord. In addition, the bichords share many of the same
notes as the main chord, and it can be viewed as extensions. Basically, the
bichords colour the melody. Therefore, we can analyse the A section as three distinct
colours, without tension between the three. E minor, G# minor and C minor are
used to propel the melodic line along, but the shared common tone doesn’t allow
for, at least from what I can hear, much tension and release.
The
C section, at the tail end of the opera, uses Eb+/Cm chords, or just a C minor
major 7th chord as the “home” chord. And honestly, I cannot figure
the rest of it out. From mm. 907 to the end, just the last couple of bars, I
really don’t know what Adams was trying to achieve. We know that the opera is
ending, and that Chou En-Lai is struggling with his insomnia and his legacy.
The muddy mess of colour and chord that populate the final few bars of this
opera sound just like that. No function, no purpose, just… noise? It’s still a
mystery.
Additional Notes
For
the flowchart, I decided to just mark the flow of the chords out with the form
and sections marked in, since there’s very little cadential action in these
arias. In addition, I did not use roman numeral analysis for these arias since
that would make very little sense harmonically, due to the whole lack of
traditional functional harmony.
There
are still some sections in the flow chart that doesn’t make functional sense.
The A prime section in the capo of “News has a kind of mystery” where the E
half diminished chord moves to the F# minor then to the D of the B prime
section makes little sense to me. I labeled it “transitional period” but that’s
just to sidestep writing nothing there. The quartal chord throws me off. And so
does the 7th chord since I’ve been ignoring the 7th
chords in general. I think quartal theory and a deeper dive into the newer
papers on 7th chord in a Neo-Riemannian context will be helpful to understand
Adams’s compositional technique there. Of course, the very last section of the
opera is still foggy to me. And then there’s the transformations. I have found
that basic transformations sound little like real functional chord changes, but
then then question arises on what counts as chord function. I have always
labeled a chord as the “home” or tonic, but that’s just the chord that begins
the aria and therefore, what I start analysing on. Then, perhaps, just like
Johnson’s theory, this one is also kind of wrong and kind of wonky at certain
areas. Things don’t always fall in place in a functional context, like I
thought it would. And unlike a scientific paper, I’m not going to try to make
the data fit my erroneous hypotheses.