From Departure to Return: An Interpretive Perspective on Narrative and Tonal Transformation in Classical Western Music

Narrative is more than  a property of verbal stories; it is a fundamental mode through which human beings organize experience over time. The relationship between music and narrative has been a significant topic in musicological discussion, particularly since the 1980s, when scholars began debating whether absolute music can be understood narratively. Although Western classical tonal music does not communicate through explicit verbal language, it can evoke in listeners a sense of movement, tension, and resolution. These qualities suggest that narrative is not only a literary concept but also an important way of understanding how music creates meaning over time. This conceptual study asks how narrative archetypes can help us understand the theoretical structure of Western tonal music.

The presentation conceptualizes  narrative as an interpretive mode through which listeners perceive  musical experience as a sequence of events, tensions, and changes. This argument is illustrated through a harmonic analysis of the first movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata in C major, K. 545, with particular attention to its tonal trajectory. The movement is interpreted through the voyage-and-return archetype, a basic story pattern in which a protagonist departs from an initial state, travels through unfamiliar territory, and eventually returns home.

Rather than equating  music with language or literature, this  presentation explores  how abstract musical structures acquire meaning through listening. It argues that musical narrative emerges neither as a literal story encoded in the musical score nor as an arbitrary narrative imposed by the listener, but through the interaction between musical temporality and human ways of understanding change. The chosen piece demonstrates how change, articulated through clarity and balance, can evoke a sense of journey without dramatic contrasts or programmatic content. By investigating  why absolute music can evoke the experience of a journey, the presentation aligns with the theme “Curiosity and Courage” and challenges the assumption that narrative is exclusive to language and literature.