Harmony and form in Grieg's Lyric Pieces: A cadential analysis

A fresh look at harmony and form through Grieg's Lyric Pieces

The ways in which harmony supports musical structure represent an enormous field of study. During the so-called common-practice period, composers operated within tonal paradigms — systems built around harmonies and their syntactic relationships with one another. Beginning in the nineteenth century, composers and theorists began expanding and altering these syntactic bonds in ever more creative ways. Two sets of pieces by Edvard Grieg — his Lyric Pieces — offer vivid examples of how cadences and harmonic progressions can mark a shift away from traditional tonal thinking.

Several analytical tools will help clarify these examples. The discussion draws on functional concepts developed by Daniel Harrison and Moritz Hauptmann. Harrison's plagal cycle and his view of chord components — bass, agent, and associate — let us describe how progressions shape formal cadences.

Harrison's model associates each chord member with a specific voice-leading role, connecting local motion to broader functional relationships. This allows us to approach nontraditional progressions and resolutions from a functional angle. The plagal cycle makes voice-leading relationships explicit, and it also reveals how these progressions relate to more conventional types.

Hauptmann's chord series helps illustrate how chordal functions shift, offering a dualist perspective on the harmonies. When we read functional motion through his lens, strong harmonic divergences from established formal norms become apparent. The chord series presents these shifting relationships in an easy-to-read graphic model.

Look at the final phrase of Op. 47/7, measures 86–97, shown here.

In the following analyses, open note heads indicate middle-ground harmonies while solid note heads capture foreground features. Several different findings emerge from these graphs.

Example 3a focuses on dominant features in the closing measures. The melodic line descends chromatically above pedal harmonies. The first four measures move from tonic harmony to a diminished third. That diminished third completes the motion toward a G minor chord in the next measure. Especially notable is the relationship between F# resolving to G on the downbeat, together with G♯ descending to G in the bass.

This reading reveals the agential activity of the triads. The augmented sonority in the second measure obscures the agent of the tonic harmony. Meanwhile, the A♯ in the augmented chord becomes a stepwise path for the tonic to drop to A, making F♯ the new agent aimed at G. Across these four measures, the original associate member of the chord is transformed into the agent. The G♯ in the bass reinforces the goal of G, creating a two-fold emphasis on the arrival at measure 90. That strong voice leading forcibly redirects the harmony from the tonic region into subdominant territory. The entire progression emphasizes the associate member of the immediate chord — G♯ — along with its resolution to G.

Harrison's plagal cycle illuminates this chromatic melodic descent through the first four bars of the closing phrase. The motion between the harmonies of measures 89 and 90 also mimics an authentic cycle movement — an agent turning into a bass via F♯ resolving to G.

The next section follows the same harmonic pattern as the previous four bars: the root of the G minor chord moves down again by half step. Because the voice leading and harmonic treatment are imitative, we expect an arrival on a diminished third above an E bass. The progression gets cut short, however. The diminished sonority appears a minor third too low, over a C♯ bass, and now it is a full diminished seventh chord rather than the earlier simpler diminished third. This creates dual tendency tones in measures 93–94 that resolve on F♯ in measure 95 — similar to, though not as strong as, the double emphasis in measures 89–90. There, the augmented triad circumvented the agent of the opening chord and shifted the functional weight to the subdominant. Here, too, the agent of G minor is bypassed, the associate rises to become the new agent, and the goal of F♯ is established. Part of the passage's symmetry comes from the pitch D — originally diffused in the tonic after measure 86 — also functioning as a resolution tone for the root of the C♯ half-diminished seventh chord as it resolves to B minor.

The G minor chord in measures 90–92 is spelled enharmonically in a way that retains the leading tone back to the original tonic. On a large scale, the motion goes B–A♯–B, with shifting harmonic activity overlapping and undercutting these pitches. More immediately, the A♯ is an enharmonic pitch that keeps the tendency tone to B minor intact in the notation, even though the entire trajectory moves downward.

The voice leading in this passage readily evokes Arnold Schoenberg's "law of the shortest way": each voice moves only when it must, taking the smallest possible step or leap — just the smallest step that lets the other voices also take small steps. Because of the A♯, these harmonies contain features easily associated with dominant-ness, even though at the formal harmonic articulation points these pitches do not interact.

At the beginning of the final melodic cadence of the piece, a C♯ half-diminished seventh chord appears. This chord shows up at the close of each preceding occurrence of this section as well, but here it resolves to a B minor chord. Paired with this resolution is a very traditional cadential formula in the bass: F♯ appears on the second beat of the C♯ half-diminished seventh chord, then again on the downbeat of measure 95. Because this is the appearance of the dominant pitch in the bass — first in a weak metric position, then reiterated in a direct fifth relationship to the tonic — the cadential activity clearly outlines the motion from V to i. Over the final five bars, this cadential motion helps reestablish the tonic through more traditional means as the bass supplies two dominant-type fifth motions: C♯ to F♯ and F♯ to B. Throughout this, the harmony reestablishes D as the tonic agent — the C♯ resolution to D as the diminished chord yields to B minor. These features exhibit dominant-ness, and here it seemingly fits into a standard cadential role. Yet although the bass association with dominant activity in a cadence carries heavy paradigmatic weight, notably absent from the final cadence point is the leading tone or dominant agent.

The same four measures can be reinterpreted to highlight how subdominant function operates in the progression.

When we view this passage as a composing-out of background harmonies, the skeletal structure features a series of chords from the subdominant region: the background harmonic progression reads as B minor — G minor — C♯ half-diminished seventh — B minor. Many points of tension in these measures can be understood as chromatic voice leading over a stable harmonic background, or as delayed or anticipated harmonic changes that overlap.

The voice leading between the B minor chord in measure 86 and the G minor in measure 90 can be read as a chromatic melodic motion that unfolds a progression of i to III. The shift in active chordal agent discussed above also supports this reading. The D agent in the tonic chord is diffused through the chromatic bass as a surface-level augmented triad appears. The subsequent D augmented chord's F♯ agent is overshadowed by the continued melodic descent to G♯, providing the main chromatic tension before the resolution to G in measure 90. Even though the resolution includes F♯–G from the authentic cycle, this would be analyzed as a secondary emphasis on a subdominant-function chord. The move from B minor to G minor is a mixture of opposing tendencies, but using the associate to root provides the impetus for the harmony shift. In the example this appears through the stemmed G♯ slurring to G in the next measure, and in the score the G♯ is the first arrival point where rhythmic content pauses — highlighting the ♮6–♭6 motion.

In the next three measures (90–92), a similar change happens. The bass of G minor moves down to become the associate member of the chord in measure 92. These two chords are separated by the same kind of augmented chord that appeared in the first four measures. The augmented chord serves the same purpose there: it diffuses the agent of the first chord and transforms the associate into a new agent, imitating the earlier resolution pattern.

The altered scale steps repeat here, though in a more disguised fashion. The E♯ in the bass at measure 92 resolves to the E in the right-hand triad after the C♯ in the bass, producing a ♯4–4 motion that strongly emphasizes the subdominant E minor segment of the half-diminished harmony. In measure 89 the agent resolved to the root of the following chord, and here a similar agent-root resolution occurs — disguised like the ♯4–4 voice leading. The D moves down to C♯, mirroring the large-scale B–A♯–B. That gives reason to hear C♯ as the bass of the next chord, as the expected E arrives late and is superseded by C♯.

The A♯ in measures 90–92 resolves into a very weak member of the succeeding harmony. The B that serves as the focus of resolution for that A♯ in measure 93 is the seventh of the half-diminished chord, a resolution that mimics Harrison's plagal cycle. One of the dominant features visible in example 3a resolves in this plagal manner when interpreted this way, diffusing the dominant resolution's power because it goes to a B that appears as a chordal seventh. The conflicting tendencies and notations illustrate the competing harmonic and voice-leading paradigms in this passage.

Example 4 merges the Harrison and Hauptmann models. The movement between functional regions — i, vi, ii, i — is achieved by diffusing the agential power of the starting chord and transforming that agent into a bass. This emphasis on tonic and subdominant regions arises from voice-leading tendencies belonging not to the plagal cycle but to the authentic cycle (shown earlier in Example 1a). The double voice leading — F♯ and G♯ moving to G in measures 89–90, and D to C♯ in measures 92–93 — represents motion from the third of one chord to the root of the next sonority.

The larger harmonic areas are reinforced by agential motion that belongs to the authentic cycle — what Harrison would call dominant function. Neither chord whose third undergoes this resolution looks obviously dominant, yet the means by which they arrive at and emphasize the functional regions supporting the passage thoroughly mimic dominant function. This creates an intriguing tension between harmony and voice leading as the piece closes.

The final cadence — C♯ half-diminished seventh to B minor — counters the voice-leading tendencies from the preceding measures. Here the fifth of the chord (♮6 in B minor, F♯) resolves downward, serving as a 6–5 resolution from a functionally subdominant harmony to tonic. Additionally, the C♯ resolves two ways: upward by octave to rise to D (root to third motion) and downward by fifth to F♯, which then moves to B. This hints at a secondary dominant to dominant root motion defining the cadence, while the harmony overhead voices the subdominant functional area and the plagal cadential resolution. Earlier passages also cancel authentic-cycle tendencies with plagal alterations.

Example 5 shows the end of the B section of the same piece, where the relationship between F♯ and E and the harmonies they support emerges clearly. There the rising tendency of dominant function is thrust against the opposite behavior of subdominant function; the paradigmatic tonal cadence is elided beneath the high E, and systematically each important dominant chord member is overcome. In Harrison's terms, the agent and bass both lose functional power as they fall — and the music arrives on the subdominant.