there are few, if any, possible successions of diatonic chords that can fail to find a functional definition. More to the point is the relationship of a given function to a real repertoire or tradition. For example, it is a commonplace in music theory that a "classical" repertoire work using only three triads, I, IV, V will use the following network of progressions: I -> V, I ->IV, IV->V, IV->I, and V->I but not V->IV. There is, indeed, non-classical repertoire that uses the forbidden V->IV progression. Is that repertoire therefore "non-functional"? I find it difficult to accept that notion, and therefore prefer a "non-traditional" or "non-classical" label as being more accurate.
Daniel Wolf
The most obvious and prominent repertoire featuring the V-IV retrogression is the blues, where it is fact mandatory at the beginning of the tenth of twelve bars. But is this functional? Is it even proper to assign the numbers I, V, and IV to the three chords used in the blues?
Try this experiment: Instead of a "dominant" seventh chord, replace each of the blues chords w. a four or five note chromatic cluster built on the notes C, F, and G respectively. Now play those clusters in the 12-bar blues pattern while singing your favorite blues melody over it. The result is still the blues, with exactly the same pattern of tension and release (maximum tension in bar 10). Why? because blues harmony works by taking a single sonority, establishing it at a certain pitch level, then moving it up a chunk, then back, then up further, back to the middle setting, then back to the rest state. For this to work it does not matter one bit what the sonority is. It could even be musique concrete, or indefinite-pitch percussion: it would still work.
This cannot by any means be construed as functional harmony because there is in fact no harmonic change--just a shift in pitch level. Just because the traditional blues chords look like dominant 7th chords does not mean that they *are* dominant seventh chords. They just do not function as such. That is why there is no voice-leading in the blues: the 7ths have no need to resolve--because they are not functional.
Somebody is going to say "aha! your experiment retains a tonal basis because your tone-clusters are built on the tonic, subdominant, and dominant of an identifiable scale." I reject this reasoning (which would define large swaths of unquestionably atonal music as tonal), but just for the argument, build the tone clusters on C, F#, and G# (or better yet, G a quartertone flat) instead. This will be atonal by any definition--but it will still do most (admittedly not quite all) of the work of a traditional blues progression.
-- Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press
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