Retrospective Time and the Subdominant Past: Tonal Hermeneutics in Contemporary Broadway Megamusicals

Abstract

This paper examines analytic possibilities afforded by understanding exceptional uses of the subdominant as a hermeneutic signal of the past tense in contemporary Broadway megamusicals. While an emerging consensus in studies of pop music holds that the subdominant chord can comprise a variety of functions beyond its traditional predominant role, to suggest as much already betrays an approach that is steeped in the long shadow of common-practice tonality and the expectations that it entails. Rather than trying to develop a separate syntax from its common-practice antecedents, it is more fruitful to engage with common-practice perspectives in the analysis of certain styles of pop music. Through analysis of examples from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard and Boublil and Schönberg's Miss Saigon, I argue that cases wherein the subdominant receives an unconventional (over-)emphasis might be better understood through the hermeneutics of tonal temporality, rather than through attempts to codify them as an entirely new syntax.