Conversation

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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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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