Sectional Tonality and Sectional Centricity in Rock Music

Abstract

Describing a subset of the rock repertory, Walter Everett writes:Some songs alternate between unrelated key areas, each expanded in entire sections, creating a nontonal whole . . . [Other] songs are structurally diatonic and depend on normal tonal chord progressions, and yet no single overriding tonal center can be appointed conclusively because the song's various formal sections revolve around separate tonics . . . and closure is not provided by any overall directed voice leading (Everett 2008, 144-45; emphasis added).I have italicized the words "unrelated" and "nontonal" to raise two issues. First, Everett does not mean "unrelated" in the sense of a pair of keys being related. Pairs of keys in these songs are often related-even closely related. Second, as is evident from the last sentence of the quote, Everett's gauge of tonality is Schenkerian. Scholars including Everett routinely apply other gauges of tonality to the analysis of rock music, such as directional or progressive tonality, so it is reasonable to ask if the songs Everett refers to might be deemed tonal by some other measure (Everett 2004, §14-15;Harrison 2004;Ricci 2000). However, directional tonality accommodates two keys at most and only models songs that start and end in different keys, while the songs Everett describes often feature three or more keys. Further, the two key songs sometimes start and end in the same key. While scholars such as Richard Middleton have noted the tendency of rock songs to pair sections with distinct harmonic languages, and Lori Burns's analysis of a Tori Amos song proceeds from the premise that "each section of the song explores a different harmonic idiom," which prompts her to "avoid an ultimate Ursatz interpretation," the need for a gauge more precise than the catchall category "nontonal" becomes clear (Middleton 1990, 195-96; Burns 2008, 68).Example 1 illustrates the type of song alluded to in Everett's quote. "Good Day Sunshine" presents four sections-A, B, C, and D-and four keys-B major, A major, D major, and C major-all within the span of two minutes. The final chords of sections A and B act as the dominants of the keys of sections B and C but do not support an overriding tonic. Naphtali Wagner's analysis of the song supports this portrayal; he analyzes sections A and B in different keys but does not comment on sections C or D (Wagner 2003, 362-63). Everett views the song in the same way, stating that "a fourth, nonresolving tonal center is heard when [section D] ascends a half-step from B major" (Everett 1999, 59). For Wagner and Everett, a description of the song as nontonal as per Everett's quote is apt.However, I propose that "Good Day Sunshine" is a tonal song. It is an instance of what I term sectional tonality. Let us refer to a section as a distinct part of a song's formal structure, such as an intro, verse, bridge, transition, refrain, pre-chorus, chorus, solo, interlude, ending, or coda (Covach 2005). 1 Then, we can define sectional tonality (hereafter ST) as a type of tonality in which each s...

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