Syntagmatics and Paradigmatics: Some Implications for the Analysis of Chromaticism in Tonal Music

Theories of tonal music normally describe three types of relations: 1) relations of elements in tonal space, the nontemporal mental structure through which we process tonal music; 2) relations of these tonal elements in event space, the temporally ordered space of actual music; and 3) relations of motivic association. The distinction of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, as developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, provides a striking parallel to the concepts of tonal space and event space in tonal theory. Further elaboration of the syntagmatic/paradigmatic axis by the structuralist critics who followed Saussure offers a similar parallel to motivic relations in music. The present article probes the ramifications of these parallels and argues that they can illuminate certain problematic areas of analysis, notably that of chromaticism in the music of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.