Was studying a vocal arrangement to get how its harmony works, felt like I was following, then—bam! Are there good frameworks for understanding tone clusters like these? Like: why every diatonic *except* G# on the first cluster? Should we see the second as an elaborate V of ii?
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(from this remarkable arrangement of Bon Iver's 715 - CRΣΣKS: youtu.be/tffl66nJPWY?t=; see discussion from arranger here: youtu.be/G4u84zaAHPk?t=)
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Honestly (just on piano here), the first tone cluster doesn't seem that different with vs without the G#. Maybe it was just that they ran out of voices—only had ~10 singers for those 7 notes and the arranger wanted more people on the melody, F#->E.
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Oh, OK, the arranger sort of answers me! This description suggests he sees the second cluster as a second inversion E9 (i.e. inverting the first chord of that measure), plus "anguish." (heh)
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i fucking love this arrangement of 715 - CRΣΣKS so one sec i'm gonna try to answer this question despite not knowing anything about harmony really
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okay so played around with this on piano a bit and i think the bare chord progression here with no embellishment is D - A - E, so IV - I - V. so in the first cluster, aside from the B you could argue in terms of voice leading that it’s just notes held from the D
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He's a miraculous alien.
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functional harmony sees everything as a I, ii, or V. If you look at it this way, something that presents this much dissonance relative to its surrounding sounds would be classified as having a dominant function.
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Sounds like the melody in an octave spread from F# to E, while the inner harmony goes from D to a close-voiced inversion of Bm9. It’s a very E Mixolydian vibe.
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