Kelvin H. F. Lee

Drawing from the union of psyche and music as its formative datum, Desire in Chromatic Harmony takes a unique approach from the start. Revolving around the libidinal concept of desire, Kenneth M. Smith brings music theory into dialogue with psychodynamics—the branch of psychoanalysis and philosophy in the Freudian tradition—in an effort to account for the psychological faculties of post-Wagnerian tonal music in a novel theory of chromatic harmony. To this end, he turns to the psychodynamic means of Jacques Lacan, supplemented by the works of Sigmund Freud, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard, among others, to create an integrative musico-psychological framework that informs both the music-theoretical formulation of desire and the philosophical discussions of chromatic chord progressions. The foundation of such a model and its dependent music-theoretical apparatus are established in the extensive first chapter, where psychodynamics is deployed to reconcile the ostensibly discordant lines of thought in theories of chromatic… […]