Syntony and Harmonic Transformation in the Music of Dane Rudhyar

Ronald Squibbs, University of Connecticut

Draft version 10/31/06

Scholarly interest in the American modernist composers of the 1920s has been
growing steadily during the last two decades, as evidenced by the appearance of such
important books on the topic as Jonathan Bernards The Music of Edgard Varse (in
1987), Joseph Strauss The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger (in 1995), Judith Ticks
biography of Ruth Crawford Seeger (in 1997), and Carol Ojas historical study, Making
Music Modern (in 2000). In addition to these books, several other books, articles,
dissertations, and conference presentations have treated various aspects of the music from
this period. The composers who are most frequently cited in the literature for their
commitment to a progressive, ultramodern aesthetic in the 1920s includein addition
to Varse and CrawfordHenry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, and Dane Rudhyar. Although he
was quite prominent at the time as a composer, performer, lecturer, and writer on music,
Rudhyar is arguably the least well-known of any these composers today. He is mentioned
in Strauss and Ticks writings as a formative influence on the development of Ruth
Crawfords early style and Oja points out the importance of his writings in giving
ideological support to the aesthetic aims of the ultramodern composers. These references
inspired me to investigate Rudhyars music and ideas further and led to the discovery of a
repertoire and a perspective on musical aesthetics whose interest extends well beyond the
historical and cultural confines of American ultramodernism in the 1920s. Because the
circumstances of Rudhyars compositional and literary activity are not generally well
known, I will include some references to his biography and writings in my presentation in

order to provide a broader context for my discussion of harmonic transformation in his

music.
Dane Rudhyar, whose birth name was Daniel Chennevire, was born in Paris on
March 23, 1895 and died in San Francisco on September 13, 1985. He began to study the
piano at age six and solfge at age eleven. During his teens he audited some classes at the
Paris Conservatoire but never formally enrolled, preferring instead to immerse himself
directly within the rich musical life of Paris at that time. In 1912 he began to review
concerts for La Revue S.I.M. (Review of the International Music Society) and in 1913
Durand published a book he had written on the music of Debussy along with three of his
own piano compositions. That same year he attended the notorious Paris premire of
Stravinskys Le Sacre du printemps. His first commissioned works were written for the
dancer and performance artist Valentine de Saint-Point, who called her multimedia work
La Mtachorie (Beyond the Dance). In late 1916 he traveled to the United States with
Saint-Point for a performance of La Mtachorie at the Metropolitan Opera under the
musical direction of Pierre Monteux. The performance met with mixed reviews, but a
vivid chronicle by dance historian Leslie Satin indicates that it was recognized at the time
as a significant cultural event. (Satin 1990)
The artistic patronage that Saint-Point had tried to find with little success in
wartime Paris proved to be equally elusive in the United States, which was itself entering
into World War I. Disillusioned, Chennevire broke with his colleagues, immersed
himself in the study of Asian music and philosophy at the New York Public Library, and
changed his surname to Rudhyar, a Sanskrit name related to that of the ancient Hindu
deity Rudra. In the winter of 1917-8 Rudhyar relocated to Montreal, where he became

acquainted with the doctrines of Theosophy and with the music of Scriabin. Rudhyars
Canadian contacts put him in touch with Leopold Stokowski, who in turn introduced him
to Philadelphia heiress and Theosophist Christine Stevenson. In 1920, Rudhyar moved to
Hollywood, where he served as musical director for a series of mystery plays that
Stevenson had written on the lives of historically important spiritual figures.
Example 1 shows the opening of a representative composition from this period:
the first movement of Tetragram 1 for piano, entitled The Quest, composed in 1921.

Example 1: Opening of Tetragram 1 The Quest, mvt. 1 (1921)

The stylized rhythm of this example suggests that it may have originated as incidental
music to one of Stevensons mystery plays. Although Rudhyars later music features a
greater degree of rhythmic flexibility and flow, some of the harmonic characteristics of
that music are evident here as well.
Example 2 shows the four tetrachords from Example 1 that are especially
prominent, due a combination of agogic accent (tetrachords A, C, and D) and melodic
contour (tetrachord B, which contains the passages melodic high point).

Example 2: Prominent Tetrachords in Tetragram 1, mvt. 1, mm. 1-3

The pitches in these chords have been distributed between the staves in order to
emphasize their division into fourths and fifths of various qualities. Concerning the
harmonic aspect of his music, Rudhyar made the following comments in a lecture given
in 1972 that are relevant to this example:
Most of my music is more or less based on series of fifths. The fifths of
course are not always perfect fifths. They are modified by sharps and flats,
and so on. But still the fundamental principle can be sensed. The chords,
in order to become harmonized a dissonant kind of harmony do not
depend on tonality, but on the proper spacing of dissonant centers. If
[the notes] are too close together, they begin to rub against each other and
conflicts arise discords instead of a dissonant harmony. Thus you
find in my music extended chords which provide a definite sense of
spacing between notes, notes which are supposed to be in dissonant
relationship. (Rudhyar 1972a)
The tetrachords in Example 2 are voiced mainly in fourths rather than fifths, but the
general harmonic characteristics mentioned by Rudhyar are nonetheless evident in the
excerpt.
Table 1 shows a summary of some of the pertinent structural characteristics of the
tetrachords from Example 2. Reading from left to right across the table, the tetrachords
are first regarded as pitch sets (psets) in order to give explicit recognition to the spatial
distribution of their pitches. A pitch-interval-class roster follows, showing the sizes, but
not the direction, of the intervals contained within the psets. The figured bass (FB) class

shows the ordered pitch-class intervals above the bass notes within each tetrachord. In the
last three columns, the set class, pitch-class contents, and interval-class vectors are
shown.

Table 1: Structural Characteristics of Tetrachords from Tetragram 1, mvt. 1

label
A
B
C
D

pset
{-8 -3 1 7}
{-7 -3 3 11}
{-8 -4 2 7}
{-8 -3 2 7}

pic roster*
[4 5 6 9 10 15]
[4 6 8 10 14 18]
[4 5 6 10 11 15]
[5 5 9 10 10 15]

FB-class*
359
46T
34T
35T

SC
4-27
4-25
4-15
4-23

pc contents
{1479}
{359E}
{2478}
{2479}

ICV
<012111>
<020202>
<111111>
<021030>

*From Robert Morris, Equivalence and Similarity in Pitch and Their Interaction with PCSet Theory,
JMT 39 (1995): 207-43.

Four different set classes are represented, one for each of the tetrachords. The
basis for the harmonic coherence of the passage is to be found, therefore, outside of the
typical set-theoretic criterion of multiple representations of a single set class. The
passage, in fact, illustrates on a small scale a principle that Rudhyar referred to in his
final book on music, The Magic of Tone and the Art of Music, which was published in
1982:
What is communicated [in my music] is a state, or a progression of states,
of consciousness. The [musical] process emerges from a seed tone
that may be either explicit or implicit. This seed-tone is often, but not
necessarily, a chord unfolding its internal potential of resonance into
melodic-harmonic roots, stems, and branches. (Rudhyar 1982)
The psychological and organic metaphors in this passage suggest that, from a technical
point of view, one might expect to find a balance between harmonic variety and structural
coherence in Rudhyars music. The succession of tetrachords in Example 2, as interpreted
in Table 1, demonstrates this balance quite clearly.

Looking first at the interval-class vectors at the right of Table 1and specifically
at instances of interval class 5 it is notable that sets A and C contain one instance each,
while set D contains three and set B, none. Overall, then, the succession of tetrachords
moves away from instances of interval class 5 and then returns to them, concluding with
the set that contains three instances of interval class 5, the highest number possible for a
tetrachord. Moving leftward within the table, the figured-bass classes of the sets also
suggest a pattern of departure and return within the excerpt. Sets A and D share FB
interval classes 3 and 5, while A and B share none. B and C are linked, however, in that
they share interval-classes 4 and T, as are C and D, which share interval-classes 3 and T.
Table 2 presents an additional perspective on this passage. A similarity measure
defined by Robert Morris as PM, for pitch measure, takes into account the number of
common pitches and pitch-interval classes between two pitch sets. Among the tetrachords
in Example 2, the PM is highest between sets A and D, which share three pitches and
four interval classes. The PM is also relatively high for sets A and C, and C and D, but
low between B and the other sets.

Table 2: PM(X,Y) for Tetrachords in Example 2

label A B C D
- 1,3 2,5 3,4
A
0,3 1,1
B
3,3
C
D

In addition to the resumption of his compositional activities once he had settled in

the United States, Rudhyar continued to write and publish articles on the music and
aesthetics of prominent composers of the day. In 1919, Musical Quarterly published two

of his articles, one on Satie and the other on Stravinsky. Among the themes that emerged
in these and in subsequent articles are his concern that the trend toward irony in Parisian
musicwhich he traces to Saties music post-1910combined with the impulse toward
neoclassicism in the music of Les Six and in Stravinsky after Le Sacre du printemps,
represented a decline in the regenerative and future-oriented power of the modernism that
had begun to emerge some years previously. Of the composers who advanced the
regeneration of music to Rudhyars satisfaction, the outstanding examples were Scriabin
and the Stravinsky of Le Sacre. In an article from 1923 entitled Varse and the Music of
Fire, Rudhyar hailed Varse as the American successor to the Stravinsky of Le Sacre.
Varses Amriques, he writes, towers above all the musical productions which have
appeared during the last 10 years, with the exception of the last works of Scriabin.
(Rudhyar 1923) His references to the harmonic aspects of Amriques reveal some of his
own developing thoughts about post-tonal harmony:
Varse bases his music on the so-called duodecuple system, using the
twelve notes of the octave un-trammeled by any feeling of tonality. But he
has perceived unconsciously the only philosophical justification of such a
system and thus appears as an heir to the old Chinese musicians who built
their scales with material derived from an ascending succession of fifths.
(Rudhyar 1923)
A little further on in the article, Rudhyar declares that the hexachord system
comprising the first six members of the circle of fifths is essentially joyous and
represents an impersonal, cosmic, creative force. He rightly points out that the
pitch classes in this hexachord form the basis for both the opening bassoon
melody of Stravinskys Le Sacre and the opening alto flute melody of Varses
Amriques.

The year after this article was published, Rudhyar embarked on one of the most
productive phases of his musical career. Between 1924 and 1929 he traversed the United
States several times, giving lecture-recitals of his music and that of Scriabin, and
participating in concerts sponsored by the New-York-based International Composers
Guild and the California-based New Music Society. During this period he composed
mainly for the piano, but also produced some chamber and orchestral music. The works
from this period give direct musical expression to the aesthetic ideas that he was
developing through his observations and writings about other composers music during
the late teens and early twenties. Chief among these ideas is the notion of dissonant
harmony, giving rise to what Rudhyar termed syntonic music. He gives eloquent
expression to this aesthetic in an article entitled Dissonant Harmony: A New Principle
of Musical and Social Organization. Although this article was not published until 1928,
it refers to principles that are evident in his music from at least as far back as 1924:
[D]issonant music does not solve once for all the problem of
unification, does not resolve dissonances into consonances. It propounds
problems which the hearer must solve for himself subjectively. Music,
as well as life spiritually considered, is not something done, to which we
have but passively to respond. It is something being done.
For the syntonist who deals spiritually with dissonant harmony
there can be no finality, no satisfaction at any point, therefore no physical
plane consonance. Dissonances are synthetized into harmonic resonances
which are relatively consonant on the spiritual plane, i.e., in the subjective
consciousness of the hearer. These higher consonances break again into
higher dissonances. There is no definite finality to the process. It is really
unending, like life itself. (Rudhyar 1928b)
The best-known piano works from this period are Moments, Paeans, and
Granites. The fifteen pieces comprising Moments, composed between 1924 and 1926,
were first published in 1930, then retitled and republished as Pentagrams 1-3 in the
1970s. Paeans and Granites were published in Henry Cowells New Music Quarterly,

and remain the easiest of Rudhyars scores to locate. The Moments (or Pentagrams),
though more difficult to find, are arguably more important historically, since they were
among the first works to establish Rudhyars reputation as a major American composer
andas has been documented by Judith Tick and othersthey exerted a strong influence
on Ruth Crawfords early development as a composer. Because of the historical
importance of the Pentagrams, as well as the aesthetic and structural characteristics of the
pieces they contain, I have chosen to focus the remainder of my remarks on one of the
movements from Pentagram 3.

Example 3: Nine-Note Segment of the Circle of Fifths and Its Structurally

Significant Hexachordal Subsets in Stars

Stars, the fourth movement of Pentagram 3, is possibly Rudhyars most

immediately appealing composition, and was certainly one of the most frequently
performed during his lifetime. In this work the cycle of perfect fifths that Rudhyar
referred to in the article on Varse, cited previously, are particularly evident on the
musical surface, where they lend a quality of openness and serenity to the sound.
Example 3 shows the first nine members of the cycle of ascending fifths beginning on
C2. This set, of set class 9-9, is labeled X for easy reference. Set X serves as the source

for the structurally significant hexachords, A and B, that follow in Example 3. The
pitches in X are shown in open noteheads in order to illustrate more easily the distinction
between the pitch-equivalent subset, A (shown with open noteheads), and the pitch-classequivalent subset, B (shown with filled-in noteheads).
Based on observations of Rudhyars compositional practice, as well as the
intimations of compositional principles given in his writings, it appears that he regarded
subsets of the circle of fifths that consist of adjacent members of the series as being more
stable harmonically than those that contain nonadjacent members. The subset classes and
interval-class vectors of subsets containing only adjacent members of set X are shown in
Table 3. The interval-class vector for each set class in the table shows the maximum
number of instances of interval class 5 for set classes of a given cardinality, a number that
is equivalent to the set classs cardinality minus 1. Set class 4-23, which appears on the
table, is represented at the conclusion of the excerpt from Tetragram 1see Example 2
and Tables 1 and 2where it provides a relatively stable ending to the phrase. Set class
3-9, also in Table 3, appears twice in set A in Example 3, where it partitions an instance
of set class 6-26 into a transpositional combination of set class 3-9 with interval-class 4.

Table 3: Set Classes and Interval-Class Vectors of Subsets Consisting of Adjacent

Members of Set X in Example 3
SC
3-9 [027]
4-23 [0257]
5-35 [02479]
6-32 [024579]

ICV
<010020>
<021030>
<032140>
<143250>

SC
9-9 [01235678T]
8-23 [0123578T]
7-35 [013568T]
-

ICV
<676683>
<465472>
<254361>
-

Sets A and B from Example 3 each feature a gap in the series of fifths, and thus
their set classes fail to exhibit the property of complete adjacency possessed by the set

10

classes in Table 3. Part of the structural drama of Stars results from the filling in of the
missing pitch classes in each hexachord independently. In each case this results in the
completion of a member of the diatonic set class, 7-35, which is among the subset classes
of set X included in Table 3. Set B is the first to reach diatonic completion. This occurs in
mm. 6-9, as shown in the analytical sketch in Example 4a, where set B provides an
ostinato accompaniment to a simple melody that starts on the missing pitch class, E.

Example 4: Diatonic Completion of Set B in Stars and Related Trichordal

Partitions of the Pitch-Class Contents of Sets B and A

The melody is an instance of set class 3-2, which also provides a subtle link
between the two structurally important hexachords in Stars. Set B, of set class 6-25,
partitions into two instances of 3-2 by transposition (shown in Example 4b), while set A,
of set class 6-26, partitions into two instances of 3-2 by inversion (shown in Example 4c).
The structural drama of the diatonic completion of set B is accomplished within
the works first major section, which is the first part of a large ternary design. The
diatonic completion of set A, however, takes longer and necessitates the overcoming of
some harmonic obstacles along the way. Set A is first presented on the downbeat of m. 1
of Stars, as shown in the analytical sketch in Example 5a. The attempted diatonic
completion of set A gets off to an uncertain start, as the pitch-class A that would have
11

completed the seven-note diatonic collection is replaced by A#. This creates a near
miss to the diatonic collection, a septachord that is a member of set class 7-30. A second
attempt at completion introduces the pitch class C# and a new septachord in combination
with set A, of set class 7-14. Finally, a third pitch class, G#, produces a second form of
set class 7-30 in combination with set A.
Following this passage there are some further pitch-class set relationships that
proceed logically from those that are introduced in Example 5a, but the issue of the
diatonic completion of set A is left unresolved at the conclusion of the works first major
section. After a rather turbulent middle section, the diatonic completion of set A is
reserved for the final portion of the works third major section, which presents a modified
repetition of material from the beginning of the piece. An analytical sketch of the works
concluding measures is shown in Example 5b. The example shows that a pitch-class
equivalent instance of set X is formed when set B is superimposed over set A. The
combination of pitch class E with set B (aligned vertically in the sketch) recalls the
diatonic completion of that set that first occurred within the works first major section.
Two more instances of set class 6-25 occur: first, one that is pitch-class equivalent to set
B, and then one that is inversionally related to it (both indicated with brackets above the
sketch).
Set class 7-14, first heard in the works opening measures (see Example 5a), also
reappears in two different forms: one includes the set-class-equivalent repetition of B in
the middle of the sketch and the other results from the combination of set A with C#6.
The latter is a pitch-equivalent repetition of 7-14 from Example 5a and is shown in open
noteheads in Example 5b.

12

The diatonic septachord, set class 7-35, appears three times in Example 5b. The
last of these appearances arrives with the sounding of the works final pitch, A6, which
provides the diatonic completion that set A has been reaching toward since the beginning
of Stars. While the pitch class A appears several times within this passage prior to final
A6, it is not strongly associated with a complete form of pitch set A until the very end. A
detail that is left out of the analytical sketch, but present in the score, is that sustaining
slurs are attached to the pitches in set A and to the final A6, and only to these pitches.
These slurs, as well as the dynamics and rhythmic values that are used in the passage,
indicate that these pitches should be given special emphasis, thereby causing them to
emerge clearly from the resonant background provided by the remaining members of the
works referential form of set class 9-9.

Example 5: Analytical Sketch of Opening and Concluding Measures of

Stars

Rudhyar was a provocative composer and writer whose views on the social
dimensions of modernism provide an enriching supplement to better known, but
generally more technical, contemporary literature on the topic. Moreover, the

13

sophistication of his musics harmonic logicdemonstrated here in only a very partial

and preliminary manner due to time constraintsmay come as something of a surprise,
given the aesthetically perceptive but generally non-technical nature of his writings on
music.
During his lifetime, interest in Rudhyars music rose and fell in cycles, due in part
to his inconsistent efforts in promoting the musical aspects of a wide-ranging career that
also embraced astrology, philosophy, poetry, and painting. Interest in his work may be
growing again, as evidenced by the establishment of an online archive of his writings and
the appearance of several new recordings of his music within the last several years. Some
older LP recordings have also been reissued on CD. It is difficult to tell how long and
how widespread this renewed interest in his music will turn out to be. Whether or not his
music comes to enjoy a more secure place in our musical history and in our current and
future performance practice than it has done in the past, the general issues that Rudhyar
addressed as a musician and as a writer retain their relevance for us today.
Rudhyar gave eloquent expression to these issues in an article written near the end
of his life:
The musical urge to deal with complex tones having meaning and power
in themselves as single, separate entities indeed parallels the intense
emotional desire to operate, and to be valued by others, as an individual
person whose beingness essentially and irrevocably matters. The
development and growth of the potential of being inherent at birth in such
persons turns out to be very important. Likewise in music, the production
of new and rich sounds which may stir, exalt, or shock the individual's
sense of being has also become a matter of supreme significance. The
great issue now is how and when these sounds can be integrated in a music
able to assimilate as significant factors an immense variety of composite
vibrations, because its scope is no longer determined by local conditions,
but has become global and possibly cosmic. It requires the embryonic
growth of a new mind and a consecrated will to psychic and intellectual
transformation a new philosophy of existence, intense enough to

14

assume the character of a new faith, and a new vision of the character and
meaning of being human. (Rudhyar 1984)

15