Examining Keyboard Bitonality in the Middle-Period Music of Karol Szymanowski

Abstract

Abstract A characteristic technique of Karol Szymanowski’s middle-period style (1914–18) is “keyboard bitonality”: the juxtaposition of the black-key pentatonic and white-key diatonic scales. To explore Szymanowski’s treatment of keyboard bitonality, I introduce the scalar alignment network, a biscalar landscape of all possible pairings of black- and white-key pitch classes that highlights the effects of a particular alignment, such as the resultant pitch-class pairings and intervallic patterns. To accomplish this, I employ a variety of transformational tools, including diatonic transpositions, Julian Hook’s (2007) interscalar transformations, and what I call SHIFT transformations. Analyzed works include: Masks (1916), Métopes (1915), Myths (1915), Twelve Etudes (Op. 33, 1916), and Violin Concerto No. 1 (1916).