CAPITULO 5. CARACTERIZACIÓN DE LAS COMUNIDADES DE
5.3. Asociaciones de Ephemeroptera
5.3.1.1. Ordenamiento de los puntos de muestreo y de los géneros
A discord exists somehow independently as little as does a key. It seems impossible to exclude it from the score, to say nothing at all of the fact that the entire dominant effect has been shaped and comprehended only
on the basis of a maintained tonality. Nonetheless Schonberg, for exam ple, indicated no key signature for the last movement of his F# minor Quartet, although according to its main theme it belongs to f# major, even if the most expressive constructions in it, the altered quartal chords, are liberated from every mode, from every
tonality.
The note from which it all emanates can hover quietly in the air, after all. Instead of conclud ing the piece on the same note, there is still the possibility, as Schonberg writes, of indicating the relationship more conspicuously one time and blurring it the next. What thus results is a kind of infinite harmony that no longer needs to announce the departure and destination points every time, and even less may fear journeys of discovery in the broad fields of the tonal vacuum. Anyway, it has been the case for a long time now thatit is no longer the cadences that govern the harmonic developments of a piece. So it is also unnecessary to set up other keys in order to come to the aid of a wavering tonality, in other words to erect new, subordinate, here and there certainly surprisingly useful means such as perhaps the ex otic whole-tone scale, into a system. There is nothing for which the chro matic scale would not suffice, as soon as one simply gives up sanctioning every possible deviation from the old scale and then at the end nonethe less upholding the cliche of the sovereignty of tonality. If this rule is to be achieved, then all leading tones must stay out if they cannot be tied, and above all certain proportions must be observed within the modulations,
as Classical composers actually did. But one simply cannot act free, and exploit every possibility of such a condition, while not wanting to face the actual dangers and obligations of being free. In Schonberg's neat turn of phrase, it really appears as a disturbing asymmetry when the relation ship to a root is maintained after the harmonic possibilities of the aug mented triad and above all of vagrant chords are applied not just occa sionally but continuously, under the pressure of the imperative of con tinuous expression, which ought to stand above the axioms of tonality. The'song then concludes with "new," "infinite," or "unfulfilled"; it trav- , els without arriving, the meaning is in the wayfaring, and the formerly
i 1
operative center, the root, or the stationary voice, the sustained pedal or Jeven just its ideationally perceived requirement, which only becomes real . again in the reprise, has disappeared with the fluctuation or suspension
of tonality. Instead there are many groups of tonics; indeed every chord can achieve harmonic definition through its own tonic; there are inter mittent tonal relationships or just shifting centers; and the sense of a to tality that permits a work to be concluded, in order to necessarily lead it back from the condition of ideal infinity to real finitude, need be no har monically necessary termination, even if living form, like artistic form, previously did not permit the inner limit of the work, as the proper shape of its form, to be dictated to it except from out of itself, out of its own disposition, growth and
a priori.
Thus the limiting element here must be derived from something other than the tonic of the whole, and there is no doubt that this something can absolutely not be a premature inter ruption, since it pushes toward no finitely attainable target, but rather at tains its high point and potential full stop in the strongest, most genuine expression of an inner power, boundlessness, infinitude, in other words in a tonic now explicable only in rhythmic and certainly not in harmonic terms. Anyway, when Schonberg requires a deeper #ubstantiation, the harmonic almost always becomes the contrapuntal. What may arise al most by itself, unsought as a chord, although constantly dispersed as such into the parts, can simply not be harmonically justified or grounded. If for example one has two voices in C major move in contrary over a sta tionary harmony of c-e-g, an abundance of the most splendid and inter esting dissonances will occur, without these sudden and fantastic chordal riches having any source but the counterpoint of the simplest finger ex ercises. Even there, however, anything can stand for anything else, and so, however self-evident a precondition contrapuntal diligence may remain at least technically, only the whole human being, only the artist's moral sense may finally really decide if some harmonic-contrapuntally baffling spot indicates that a "mistake" was made, or if this is some pointless ru mination, or if one just has to accept some unknown rule, that is, a unique one, necessary only here, a likeness of a particular inner anima tion, fullness and sonorous density, in itself empty and nontransferable. It would be equally beside the point to want to find a particularly intelli gible cause of the empty combinatorial wealth, of the harmony's basically endless chordal permutations, within the contrapuntality, the wayfaring of the counterpoint.Our definitive emphasis on the inner necessity that explodes, besides
dissonance and tonality, all of