Music theorist finds chord’s ‘third nature’ in composition suppressed during Soviet era

LAWRENCE — Music theorists have previously described how certain chords contain the possibility of flowing smoothly into other similar-sounding chords, which they refer to as the chord’s “second nature.”

Now, a University of Kansas professor of music theory has published a paper in MusMat, the Brazilian Journal of Music and Mathematics, that sets out the “third nature” of a chord. In “A Chord’s Third Nature, and How it Models and Generalizes Omnibus Progressions,” Scott Murphy demonstrates how this third nature allows composers to move their lines by means of “contrary motion” — when melodies move simultaneously in opposite directions — among other compositional benefits.

Murphy said he was pleased, as well, to find and cite as an example of this third nature a composition by Ukrainian composer Dmitri Klebanov that has only recently come to light after being suppressed during the Soviet era.

Murphy said he has come to believe that certain chords’ first and second natures “are just a subset of a much greater array of capabilities that these sweet-sounding chords have. And so I am sharing another one with the world, another kind of capability. It comes back to that contrary motion, having lines go in opposite directions. Because if that is also something that composers want to achieve, this third nature that I revealed shows that these very sweet-sounding chords also have that capability of spreading apart — not only having the lines move very smoothly, but actually continuing that smooth motion, and then at some point, achieving the same level of harmonic beauty that you began with. And then you can continue to another stopping point that is just as euphonious, and so on.”

Murphy described this pattern as having the virtue of “going somewhere,” or resolving something musically, rather than simply moving back and forth between two prevailing pitches.

He cited Klebanov’s String Quartet No. 4 as having this pattern. Klebanov dedicated the quartet to his mentor, Mykola Leontovych, (1877-1921) who transformed the Ukrainian folk song “Shchedryk” into an arrangement better known in the West as the Christmastime classic “Carol of the Bells.” 

Leontovych was murdered by a Soviet agent, and Klebanov, too, became persona non grata after World War II for, among other things, his sympathies with Jewish Holocaust victims.

Thus, Klebanov’s fourth string quartet was never recorded until 2021. Murphy said it begins with a callback to “Shchedryk/Carol of the Bells.” 

“Then Klebanov starts riffing on the material, and so takes it in different directions,” Murphy said. “And one of those directions he takes, so I argue, takes advantage of a chord’s third nature.”