Kenneth M. Smith is Professor of Music Theory at University of Liverpool and serves as Vice President of the Society for Music Analysis. He is the author of Skryabin, Philosophy and the Music of Desire and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis.

• Acknowledgements


• Preface


• Chapter 1: A Linguistic Theory of Chromatic Harmonic Substitution and Progression in the Diatonic Unconscious


• Chapter 2: Romantic Provenance


• Chapter 3: Transcending Root Motion: Productive Death Drives and Cybernetic Cycles in Charles Ives and Aaron Copland


• Chapter 4: Karol Szymanowski's Dominant Drive Model and the Excess of the Cycle


• Chapter 5: Tragedy and the Gaze of the Living Dead: Functional Harmonic Rotation in Strauss's Elektra


• Chapter 6: The Thanatonic and the Hexatonic: Repetition, Mourning, and "Mother" in Suk's Asrael


• Chapter 7: When Octatonic and Hexatonic Collide: Skryabin's Accelerationist Last Piano Sonata


• Epilogue: The Way Forwards (and Backwards)


• Bibliography

In Desire in Chromatic Harmony, Kenneth Smith reveals how composers used chromatic and dissonant chord progressions to mirror the psychological tension and complexity found in the work of psychoanalytic writers.