Cathy's Homecoming and the Other World: Kate Bush's 'Wuthering Heights'

Author(s): Nicky Losseff

Source: Popular Music, Vol. 18, No. 2 (May, 1999), pp. 227-240
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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populQr
Music(1999)Volume 18/2. Copyrightt 1999CambridgeUniversityPress.
Printedin the United Kingdom

Cathy's
homecoming and
Other
world:
Kate
Bush's
'Wuthering Heights'

the

NICKY LOSSEFF

Curiosity value quite possibly accounted for the success of Kate Bush's first single
in 1978. Those who have continued to admire her more particularlyfor her later
musical achievements,l which have surely consolidated her position as one of the
most individual and innovative artists of the 1980s and 1990s, do so possibly in
spite of (ratherthan because of) the impact of 'WutheringHeights'. No other song
of hers has had the same public appeal - it stayed in the Britishchartsfor seventyfive weeks (Rice 1991) - and perhaps the smaller group of admirers who remain
loyal engage more with the intensely personal visions into which her lyrics have
matured, as opposed to that first, more musically zany, original hit.
Nevertheless, I assume qualities of greatness in 'WutheringHeights' which
make me want to write about the song. Some of those qualities of greatness are
interpreted here through an examination of the interaction between meanings
inherent in the music and in the lyrics. I argue that these meanings concern the
duality of the real and the Other world, and that these dualities are explored musically in two particularlypowerful ways: harmonicstructureand vocal timbre.My
suggestion is that the duality of 'tonic'keys in this song, A majorfor the verses and
D bmajorfor the refrain,mirrorthe duality of the two worlds; and that one of these
keys, though it has greaterclaim to be the 'true'tonic, is never really established,a
factor which poignantly echoes the concept of 'home' for Cathy and Heathcliff in
the texts of both Emily Bronteand Kate Bush. Vocal timbretoo reflectsthe division
of real and Other world, and the concept of registralzones is used here as a way
of hearing in which world Cathy is sited.
'WutheringHeights' speaks in the first person with Cathy's voice from the
Other world. In the song, she is addressing Heathcliff,with whom she was of one
soul in the material world. Cathy's soul-locked relationshipwith Heathcliffis distilled into a couple of dozen lines of lyrics:much as the librettistof a Baroqueopera
might have pared down materialfrom a large-scaleliterarywork to create an aria,
which focuses on the drama and emotion inherent in a single moment of time as
opposed to recitative,which takes the narrativeonwards. In Emily Bronte'snovel,2
Cathy'sghost pleads to be let in at the window not to Heathcliff,but to the unfortunate Mr Lockwood, who is sleeping in Cathy's old bedroom (Bronte1994, pp. 367). The incident takes place very near the beginning of the novel, in the 'real time'
of the framing story, which concerns Mr Lockwood's residence at Thrushcross
227

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228

NickyLosseff

Grange.He is forced to spend his first night in Yorkshireunder Heathcliff's roof at

Wuthering Heights, and as yet neither he nor the reader know anything of the
Cathy-Heathcliff tale. Lockwood is troubled by nightmares, and although the
appearanceof Cathy at the window is no dream but a 'real' experienceof a ghost,
the reader has no way yet of interpretingthis scene, and no way of knowing that
it is Heathcliffwith whom Cathyreally wants to communicate- as she does directly
in the song.
Listenersfamiliarwith Emily Bronte'sstory know in any case that this is not
the voice of Cathy on earth but as she is now, in the Other world. Like Bronte,
Kate Bush enjoys playing with tenses in her text, mixing the framing present with
description of the past. Cathy's evocation of her and Heathcliff's roaming on the
moors (or, as she has it, rolling and falling in green) is described not just in the
simple past tense, 'we rolled', but in what we might call the past historic:'we would
roll'. At the moment of Cathy'stapping on the window, she switches to the present:
'It's me, Cathy, come home', so that we understand with hindsight that she has
been rememberingher worldly past at the very moment that she is about to begin
knocking. Through this device, the window episode (to which I shall return later)
becomes the focal point of the Cathy-Heathcliffrelationship,the point of contact
between the real world and the Other, in which their complex relationship is
stripped to the bare essentials. This is Cathy's statement,in a first-personnarrative
of bald simplicity whose exact angle we never hear in the novel, since everything
there is filtered through the voice of the chroniclers,Nelly Dean and Lockwood.By
allowing Cathy in effect to give her own version of the relationshipwith Heathcliff,
Kate Bush can emphasise whichever elements seem importantto her as a readerof
the original text. Thus, she interprets the novel through the lyrics and the music
simulaneously; the lyrics and the music also interpret each other. In effect, she
becomes the interpreterof both what is given and what she herself wants to read
between the lines of the novel - a double mediation of the reader, as it were. Tellingly, she said in a 1978 interview that it had been 'a real challenge to precis the
whole mood [ratherthan the content?]of a book into a single short piece of prose'
(Ellis 1978).In reality, the situation is richer and more intricate,since it is not only
through words that the mood of the whole book is condensed. Perhapsthe web of
meanings which the lyrics and music jointly weave go some way to mitigatingsome
of her interpretations;otherwise, constructionssuch as the image of Heathcliff as
Cathy's 'one dream, [her] only master'seem at best whimsical, at worst immature.
In the novel, after all, Cathy's longest soliloquy concerns her relationship with
Heathcliff,during which she emphasises again and again that they are of one soul:
He is more myself than I am . . . Whateverour souls are made of, his and mine are the same
. . . Nelly, I am Heathcliff!He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure,any more than
I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. (Bronte1994,pp. 80-1)

The changing tenses of the lyrics, from past historicto present,do indeed help
us pin down the exact moment of Cathy's existence which is explored and
expanded by the song; but this is a cerebralprocess, one which relies on the reflection of hindsight and where meaning is located in, and limited by, the form of the
words themselves. Though Kate Bush portraysher version of Cathy's spirit-lifein
language, she also evokes it with immediacy through a signifier that Bartheshas
characterisedas 'the grain of the voice' (1977, p. 294). Kate Bush's vocal qualityunknown to the public at the time of the song's release, and which would seem to

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KateBush's'WutheringHeights'

229

have been the aspect of the song that struck the first-timelistener most forcefullytransmits,at the junctureof language and pure sound, intuitive ratherthan cerebral
meaning.3 Inside her voice, the listener participates in the essentially solipsistic
world of the spirit. What gives her voice its distinctive quality? Many early
reviewers commented on what they heard as an incrediblyhigh tessiturain 'Wuthering Heights',4but this is a misleading impression, since Kate Bush simply uses
the vocal range normal for the average female voice - between e' and e" - going
down to an ab and with a top note of only f #". 'Kite', for instance, has an
(appropriately)much largerrange of two and a half octaves, from g to a swoop up
to c"', and we should not forget that a few years earlier,Minnie Rippertonentered
truly ethereal domains - a full octave above the highest note of 'Wuthering
Heights' - in 'Loving You'.
In reality, the eeriness and Other-worldlinessKate Bush manages to portray
has little to do witli pitch and much to do with timbre. Some early reviewers did
come close to identifying the 'quality' as opposed to the pitch of her voice as the
really unusual factor,but few came close to pinning down exactly how Kate Bush
manipulates her voice to produce so many different types of sound. Clarke (1978)
called it 'a voice not unlike that of a newly-neuteredcat', whereas to Young (1978a),
it was 'either Minnie Mouse or Heavenly Host, depending on your point of view'.
More accurately,Wigg (1978) perceived a 'high-pitched oriental sound'. Usually,
the description 'oriental'would imply a routing of the air through the nose, which
Kate Bush does not do; however, singers of Peking Opera and popular Indian
female vocalists such as LataMangeshkarnarrow the gap at the back of the mouth
by lowering the soft palette to produce a characteristicthinner,more reedy sound,
and it is this technique that Kate Bush exercises here.
If vocal 'grain'is a signifier of meaning, then what does Kate Bush's voice tell
her listener in this song? ElizabethWood (1994)has written on timbre and phonic
environment as a powerful signifier of sexuality, raising issues about what voices
that step outside of normal ranges can mean. Her point of referencewas primarily
the classically trained voice, where pitch and timbre are interrelatedand defined
within recognised boundaries of 'chest' (low), 'middle' and 'head' (high) registers.
The relationship in pop genres between vocal range and timbre would of course
reveal different codes at work, since a singer of popular music pushing her chest
register to the absolute upper limit (a common phenomenon) does not convey the
same message as a classically trained singer doing the same (a very rare
phenomenon); classical singers are trained to move as imperceptibly as possible
over the 'breaks'between registerswhere they naturallyoccur,whereas pop singers
often 'chest' up to more than an octave past their breaks.Thus, for classicalsingers,
only the very top of their total range conveys what we might call thestrainof the
voice:the kind of tension which accumulateswhen the voice is pushed well past its
break to register emotional intensity. We often hear this at relatively low pitches
for popular singers:listen to Tammy Wynette singing 'StandBy Your Man', where
she communicatesa new emotion simply by chesting up to an a'. Classicallytrained
voices, on the other hand, are often valued more if they can seem to float effortlessly
to the top of their register, transmitting 'strain' as little as possible. The issue for
Wood though, and the issue here, is what is signified when well-defined boundaries
Kate Bush's Cathy in effect occupies a timbralspace that had not been
are crossed.
not least because she never really exploits the chest register at all in
before,
heard
this song but sings entirely in middle and head registers, while manipulating her

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230

NickyLosseff

vibrato/soft palette to produce different vocal effects. Just as for the esteemed
classicalsinger who can float up to the vocal stratosphere,there is almost no exploitation of the strain of the voice in this song; the effect is of hovering inside a welldefined space ratherthan pushing against it. This timbralspace is more powerfully
defined by the song's placing within the album The KickInside than when 'Wuthering Heights' is heard singly; it needs a context to achieve its full effect, and on this
album, perhaps more than any other, Kate Bush's explorationof vocal timbre and
range is very wide.5
There are certainly moments in 'WutheringHeights' when changing presentations of sexuality - that of child, then adult; that of love, then jealousy and possession- are differentiatedthrough changes in vocal timbre. The most significant
example of this is her plunge from pouting, flirtatious child on 'how could you
leave me/when I needed to' through the dangerous and anger-flashingmanipulation of 'possess you/I hated you', down to a curiously tender a b on 'I loved [you
too]'. Even so, the tenderness and sensuousness of this moment is accomplished
through use of the lowest range of middle, ratherthan chest, register;it might well
be that vocally, this was a conscious or unconscious technical decision, made to
facilitate the move to the octave above on '[I loved] you too'. In so compressed a
medium as the individual song, though, we ignore such small nuances of meaning
at our peril. For Cathy in this song, the chest register is a forbidden zone, representing perhaps a groundedness in the corporeal;thus, Cathy's unearthlytimbre
is on the larger scale probablynot primarilyan explorationof sexuality, but of the
spirit. In fact, Kate Bush made it clear that she had deliberatelyset out to cultivate
such a thing, explaining that 'I tried to project myself into the role of the book's
heroine and, because she is a ghost, I gave her a high-pitched,wailing voice' (Wigg
1978).This is the voice that wants to grab Heathcliff's soul away - as opposed to
his body? Critically,as the music finally fades out, the housing of this voice within
the human body loses its role to the wail of the electric guitar - as if Cathy no
longer has need of words, or indeed anything associated with the living being, to
sing her song. This is far removed from the dark and passionate, earthy, earthly
Cathy of Emily Bronte,whose speaking voice one imagines as anything but wraithlike and wailing; yet it is utterly right for Kate Bush's spirit-Cathy,removed from
the real world which she wants to access solely in order to take away Heathcliff's
soul. And it is not just Cathy's unearthlyvoice that tells us we are in the realms of
the spirit. Before the singing even starts, we have been taken there by the piano
and celeste, in the two-plus-two bar introductoryphrasewhere the opening motive,
stated in the middle register of the piano, is repeated in the airy, upper regions,
reached via an ethereal sounding celeste glissando. Even though voice and piano
enter for the first verse back in the middle register, somehow in our imaginations
we have still been left in the heavenly one.
Let us turn now to the harmonicworkings of 'WutheringHeights', the other
'site of the spirit' in this song. It might well be true that for most popular music, as
commentatorssuch as McClaryand Walser(1990)have observed,the musical interest lies in factorsother than the organisationof the pitch material.However, 'Wuthering Heights' has a harmonic (and harmonic-rhythmic)structurewhich cries out
to be considered in detail. My purpose here is not to delineate long-term tonal
movement or chord progressions simply for their own sakes, but to suggest that
the relative functionalmeanings of keys and chords also have symbolic meanings:
meanings which illuminate, and are in turn illuminated by, the song's lyrics. One

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Heights'
KateBush's'Wuthering

231

of the factorswhich makes the song interestingfor me is the frictioncaused on the

one hand by obedience to the presuppositionsof conventional tonality, and on the
other, a resistance to that framework.Indeed, the meanings I read depend on the
idea that the harmonicpatternsin 'WutheringHeights', though complex, are essentially situated within fundamentally conventional functional tonality, and thus
work either with or against the 'grammarof expectation'. Some of this analysis
focuses on harmonic rhythm, identifying where metricalunits begin and end, and
thus which beats sound 'strong'and which 'weak'. This factorwill become important to the discussion. Although I argue that this song is primarily tonal, tonality
and modality do to some extent co-exist within the harmonicframework- a model
common enough in pop music, as Allan Moore (1992)and RichardMiddleton (1990,
pp. 201-3) have discussed. Moore's examples, though, utilise the so-called Greekor
old 'church' modes, whereas Kate Bush's modal inflexions do not belong within
this tradition.The mixtureof modal and tonal in 'WutheringHeights' is best understood in the context of Kate Bush's musical upbringing. She learned the violin in
school, since her parents thought a basic musical grounding would be important
(Juby 1988, p. 5), but as crucial to her aural awareness must have been the folk
music with which her family were intimately involved. Modality in this song is a
means of inflexion rather than a true frameworkfor the underlying movement of
tones, as I discuss later.
Example 1 shows the overall shape of the song. Note especially the enharmonic change from C# to Db at the end of system 1, preparing the way for the
modulation from A majorin the verses to D b majorin the refrains.
The song's opening A majortonality is establishedstrongly by a two-plus-two
bar introductoryphrase on the piano, and this key at first seems to be confirmed
when the voice enters - see Example2.
Almost straight away, though, A major is undermined. Far from the usual
confirmationof tonic through the sounding of the dominant, the music passes only
briefly through the fifth degree (E major),via the flattened sixth (Fhmajor),ending
on a majortriad on the mediant (C# major)- see Example3.
Thus, there are two harmonies'foreign'to the key: F majorand C # major(true
VI in A major would be F# minor, true III C # minor). This harmonic scheme is a
vague echo of the opening motive, with its falling thirds and neighbournote. What
is most striking here, though, is less any putative organic relationship between
motive and harmonies than the foreign-ness of the E # within the C # majorchord.6
Had the song reached a chord of C # minor at the end of the first vocal phrase, then
our tonal expectationswould have been confirmed:we could confidently hear the
music in A, moving to C # minor. It is true that a move to E major would have
confirmedA as tonic beyond doubt, but a relatedminor key would have performed
a confirmatoryfunction quite adequately.As it is, that assuranceis not forthcoming,
and we are left in the curiously bright realms of C # major.
The opening sequence of chords is stated three times. On the third statement,
it extends itself: the C # changes enharmonicallyto Db, and this D b then functions
as IV in A b - see Example4.
After this point - at Cathy's 'bad dreams in the night' section - the music
almost loses us in its modulation. After we have reached A b major,there is a progression through the chords Eb minor, then Gb major, and finally F major;this
three-chordsequence, which is then repeated twice, seems to imply resolution to
the dark key of B b minor:

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KateBush's'WutheringHeights'

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4.
Example
E bm - G b - F (stated three times)
implied: iv

- VI - V in Bbm

Thus, early on in the song, Bb minor suggests a brooding presence, the place of
Cathy's nightmares, which is implied though not reached: a threat of darkness,
perhaps, that remains to be realised. This reflectsthe anxiety of the lyrics, in which
Cathy contemplates the imminence of her death. Laterin the song, the threat will
seem to have become real. At this early stage, however, the F major harmony instead of functioning as V in Bb minor - becomes by sleight of hand III in Db; a
resolution effected via the conventional pattern
III - IV F

Gb -

- V

ii

Ebm - Ab - Db

Speaking in terms of conventionaltonality, this is a moment of some importancein

the song. For the first time, a key (D b)has been establishedin the orthodoxmanner,
through the affirmationof its dominant (A b).The A majorof the verse is heard, in
retrospect,as a key only ancillaryto the new, convincinglytrue tonic of D b.Furthermore, as if we needed confirmationthat we are indeed 'home' in Db, it is at the
point of statementof the first D b harmony that Cathy utters the word 'home' - see
Example5.
But the new tonic of Db major is not unproblematic. Rather than being
securely grounded in the comfortof the four-barphrase, the harmonicrhythmtrips
us up here. We hear the moment at which the D b occurs as a downbeat, but this
proves transient, as it is immediately confounded by another'downbeat' and a
return to the harmony of Gb. This destablises the Db, tonic 'downbeat' which we
rehear instead as a curious, extra, weak third beat in the previous bar, a bar that
now seems almost to have been rupturedby the addition - see Example6.
This sub-section does actually have twelve beats, so in theory it would be
possible to continue hearing it in 2/2. Several factors undermine this. First, the
classic backbeatdrum pattern,in which the downbeat of the bar coincides with the
'weak' drum beat, is disrupted;instead of a continuous patternof weak/strong, we
instead get [with O indicating weak and + indicating strong]:

[repeat]

Gb Ebm Ab Ab Db Gb Gb Gb Ab Db Gb Gb [repeat]
Although with this pattern it would be possible to argue that the Db major

didcome on a downbeat, G b comes across as the stronger, 'true' downbeat here.

The reasons for this seem mostly to do with the momentous way Gb is set up at
the beginning of the refrainsection. First,this opening G b harmony is heralded by

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234

NickyLosseff
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the first real entry of percussion - a rolled build-up on cymbal, culminating with
the close of the high-hat;and in equivalent places later in the song, we get a full
drum build up culminating in a cymbal stroke. Second, the instrumentation
increasesdramaticallyin density and dynamic as the refrainbegins on its G bchord;
previously, the only accompanying instrument has been keyboards. Third, this
opening Gb accompanies the first utterance of Heathcliff's name. This is a real
moment of catharsis:partly because Heathcliff has only been referred to as an
unnamed 'you' in the strangely shifting harmoniesof the verse, partly because the
initial weirdness of the song's opening gives way to a familiar and powerful riffdriven groove - probably the characteristicmost responsible for the song's chart
success. Thus, when a G b occurs again in the refrain (which happens with great
frequency, as we shall see), we have alreadyheard it and returnto it, as a harmony
lodged in our consciousness, rather than one encountered afresh. As to the frequency of G bchords in this section, we cannot ignore their sheer quantity.They far
outnumberany other, making up half the total harmonyuntil the returnto A major
in preparationfor the verse:
Gb
Gb
Gb
Gb
Gb
Gb

Ebm
Gb
Gb
Ebm
Gb
Gb

- Ab - Gb -

Ab - Db
Ab - Db

- Ab - Ab - Db
- Gb - Ab - Db
- [A - A]

Four D b (tonic) chords

Six A b (dominant)chords
Two E bm (supertonic)chords
Twelve G b (subdominant)chords
G b is thus the chord which dominates this section; it is the very last heard as the
song fades out, when one can imagine the harmonic sequence circling away to
infinity. Db, the 'home' key, is in contrastvery understatedin the refrain,both in
terms of how much it is heard and where in the bar it occurs. Of course, the point
of tonics is that they do not have to be stated again and again - we know when we
have arrived, and one of the narrativeson which large-scale functional-harmonic

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Kate Bush's 'WutheringHeights'

235

forms (such as sonata form) depend is that of the tonic being stated and then left
while the music moves through the 'adventures' of different keys, secure in the
knowledge that the home key will be reached safely in the end. Nor am I arguing
that the focus on the chord of IV (Gb)in this section is particularlyunusual viewed
in the context of popular music in general. Rather,I suggest that in this song, it can
be read as significantlyadding a layer of meaning to the lyrics. For not only does
the moment of arrival on the Db tonic coincide with Cathy's articulationof the
work 'home', but even more suggestive is the song's leap away from D b almost as
soon as it arrivesthere - like having touched something too hot. Home is unequivocally not a place Cathy can stay. In fact, of course, she cannot even get in. The music
moves immediately away from the Db tonic and on to the nagging, ever-present
G b subdominant. She tries again, saying 'let me in at your window'- the point of
entry to the home;and windowis accompaniedby the second occurrenceof the D b,
or harmonicallyspeaking, 'home'. But the music cannot rest at this sounding of the
tonic either. As before, it jumps away immediately to G b. In trying to get home,
through the window, Cathy has been wrong-footedby the curious placementof the
D b tonic within the bar, and denied the comfortof rest within the 'home' key . The
real world is closed to her forever.
At this point, the C # chord from the verse, where it is foreign to the A major
tonality, becomes significant as the only harmony (enharmonicallyspeaking) that
the two sections - verse and refrain- have in common. Is it too obvious to suggest
that this duality of keys perhaps echoes the two worlds of the song: A for the Other
world where we first meet Cathy - where she is harmonicallysituated - and Db
for the 'real' world she cannot enter, and which Heathcliffstill inhabits?This possibility is strengthenedby the words of the second verse: 'Oh it gets, dark, it gets
lonely, on the other side from you'. As for the first verse, the music moves from A
to C #/D b;as it reaches this harmonicgoal, the words too reach the 'other side'.
Perhaps one of the most interesting factors here is that though the heroine is
literallythe Subjectof the text, speaking as she does in the first person, nevertheless
she identifies, in A major,as harmonicallyOther to the true tonic of D b, and this
would seem to reinforcethe identificationof the hero as male and the objectof the
hero's gaze as female - a constructionthat theorists have suggested is common to
so much narrative.7At first sight, the harmonic, Db major 'Subject'represents
Home, that is, Cathy'sreal Home in the living world. Cathy is now, as an inhabitant
of the Other world, Other more to her old living self than to anotherperson. However, as we have discussed in relation to vocal timbre, genders and sexualities are
not the primary dualities in this song; if we look on to the second verse, we find
Heathcliffidentified more and more closely with Cathy's concept of Home, even if
he never appears ostensibly as the real protagonistof the drama. She speaks of the
Other side as being dark and lonely without him, her one dream and her only
master; on the Other side, she pines for him and finds 'the lot / falls through
without you', going on to declare that she has roamed the night too long and is
coming back to his side, to WutheringHeights 'to put it right'.It seems more appropriate thus to place Home, in Db, as Subject,and both Cathy and Heathcliff in A
majoras Other - and thinking back to Emily Bronte'snovel, this reflectsthe reality
of their situation more accurately. Wuthering Heights never really was Home to
Heathcliff, in the sense of being a place of comfort, rest and ease. It was simply
where he was domiciled. In this instance, Cathy's real Home is with Heathcliff Wuthering Heights, as a real or conceptual Home, being closed to both of them.

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NickyLosseff

This interpretationwould also be reinforcedby another factor, which we should

consider by looking again at the harmonicpatternin the verses. As we have noted,
in the first three phrases the music moves from A majordown through F and E to
the distant C #/D b.With the fourth statementof this pattern,however, the D b acts
as subdominant to the even lower, final harmonic destination of the phrase: Ab
major (see Example4). The effect of this final fall is dramatic:we have reached A
major's most far-removed key of all, that of the flattened tonic, and we feel the
music has sighed to its very depths. In the firstverse, immediatelybefore this point,
Cathy has said to Heathcliff 'I hated you', but at the articulationof the A b chord,
she says 'I loved you too'; in the second verse, this coincides with her utterance
that Heathcliff is her 'only master'. The Ab is poised on the brink of a harmonic
sleight-of-handhere, since it is immediately followed by the strange link passage
between verse and refrainwhich rocksbetween the harmoniesof E bminor, G band
F, and which wants to resolve to Bb minor - but instead brightens into the Db
refrain,the real tonic. D bis of course reachedquite properly through its dominant:
A b (see Example 1, systems 2-3). Thus, the A b,which had previously represented
the final relief or the articulationof a deep sigh ('I loved you too'; 'My only master')
also acts as the harmonicfulcrum to the true home, the key of D b.
Let us return to the question of Bb minor. This key, as I have said, is problematised early on in the song in the bridge between verse and refrain(see Example
1, system 2). The E b minor - G b - F chords suggest resolution onto B b minor, but
this key is withheld; its presence, hinted at but yet unvoiced, is associated with
Cathy's fear that she is 'going to lose the fight' and thus with loss, forebodingand
the presentimentof death.Justafterthe second statementof the refrain,the dreaded
B b minor chord is at last heard (see Example 1, system 4). This is the moment at
which Cathy says she wants to 'have it, to grab [Heathcliff's] soul away'. This
seems to contradicther former craving:does she want to come home or does she
want to take him away to her? When the chord of Bb minor does then finally
appear,it would seem to heraldthe worst, and indeed, the threatis that Heathcliff's
soul will now be carriedoff to the Otherworld. However, a real modulation never
occurs;B b minor turns out not to be a new tonic in a key of darkness at all, since
it resolves in a conventional vi-V-IV-ii-I pattern, through Ab, G b and Eb minor
chords to the Home key of D bmajor- if she grabs his soul away, then it will result
in the promise of having reached Home.
Bbm - Ab - Gb - Ebmvi
- V - IV - ii -

Db
I

Of course, the promise is illusory, since the song ends by fading away into the
endless circlingIV-V-I-IV progressionsof the refrain,with its G bmajorsubdominant still needling away at the harmonicdiscourse and marginalisingall else. In any
case, B b minor is the relative minor of Db major- the two sides of the same coin;
only death can now be Home for Cathy and Heathcliff.We know from the end of
the novel that eventually for Heathcliff, his 'soul's bliss kills [his] body' (Bronte
1994, p. 276) and that in such a way, he and Cathy do come together. But in the
song, that moment of bliss is not reached.Instead,Cathy and Heathcliffare locked
into a cycle of perpetualisolation from each other.
Thus, in 'WutheringHeights', Kate Bush has articulatedsome of the primary
meanings of her text through a sophisticated harmonic framework. And the
relationshipbetween the musical content and meaning in her songs is something

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4WSsb; . - .

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Kate Bush's 'WutheringHeights'

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237

e.

Example7.

of which she herself was quite conscious. In one 1978 article, she was quoted as
saying 'the chords almost dictate what the song should be about because they have
their own moods' (Blake 1978);and in another, 'I just start playing the piano and
the chords start telling me something' (Ellis 1978).
In an early interview, Kate Bush said she associated major keys with happy
events and minor with sad (Blake1978). 'WutheringHeights' does not at first seem
an obvious candidatefor majortonality, replete as it is with the angst of unfulfilled
longing. It is perhaps significant then that in both underlying melodic movement
and harmonic progression, the song's major tonalities of A and Db are each, as I
have said, tempered by underlying non-diatonic scales, and I focus now on the
song's modal permeation. The A major verses, as we have seen, sink from A
through F # and E to C #: a harmonic progression which is mirroredbeautifully at
the end of that phrase by an inflected,mirror-imageflourish in the piano part - see
Example 7.
One could constructa mode from this consisting loosely of minor thirds followed by semitones - or, perhapsmore appropriately,a mode constructedfrom the
(enharmonic)constituents of majorand minor triads on C #, F and A: c Fe-f-g Fa[-c-c #].It is not, as I have said, truly allied to the so-called Greekor 'church'modes,
with their stepwise movement, and which in an era of post-tonality are too easily
perceived as inflected major or minor scales. In the verses, the presence of Kate
Bush's unusual mode, both harmonicallyand in the structureof the melody, permits a comfortablemove from A to D b and back again - since both those keys are
inherentin the mode itself. Perhapsthis modal inflexion is responsiblefor the sense
of organicism which pervades 'WutheringHeights', despite the often unconventional harmonicpatterningand irregularphrase lengths. And thinking about melodic/harmonic movement in this way could also make sense of the curious lack of
real leading note to tonic motion in the melody, because although we do at least
notionally get a gF[a] between the first and second phrases, the g# is of course
part of the foreign C major harmony and not the dominant, E, as more conventional harmonicpatternswould have led us to expect. Melodic motion also contributes to the feeling of opening out into the 'true' Db key centre at the start of the
refrain,since the e-d-c Fe circularmotive ('Out on the wiley') transformsitself into
f-eldlf-eWdWetc.
at 'It's me, Cathy, I've come home'. Significantly,it is the
refrain,with its IV-V-I patterns,whose melody avoids the leading note altogether,
instead weaving in and around the home note of Db by means of an enriched
pentatonic scale. It seems that even here, in the more conventionally 'functionalharmonic'section, Kate Bush preferredto soften the strongerlines of tonality with
a modal brush - see Example8.
At this point, I would like to step sideways: having suggested that Kate Bush

Example8.

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<i>### ^> )
238

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NickyLosseff

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9.
Example
shies away from truly grounded tonality,what of the relationshipbetween melody
and bass? Usually, where these two stratameet, we can expect a mixtureof consonant intervals: thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, and where dominant sevenths occur,
sevenths. In contrast, 'WutheringHeights' pans out like a piece of medieval organum; almost all the underlying structuralpoints of coincidence are fifths, with the
occasional octave or unison, and only one sixth. The lack of structuralthirds is
anothercontributoryfactor to the dominance of the modal, ratherthan the tonal.
To my view, this modality serves to enhance, ratherthan diminish or dilute,
the tonality in which the song is based. Because the lyrics themselves so sparsely
explore the complex and many-layeredrelationshipbetween Cathy and Heathcliff
in Emily Bronte's novel, we are left with a more open field in which to weave
threads of meaning from the words, within and around the events, both simultaneous and unfolding, of what emerges as a staggeringly complex musical structure.
As I have already suggested, 'WutheringHeights' seems in some ways like
an aria from an opera whose librettois based on a novel, with verbiage stripped to
the bare bones and one moment of emotional significanceexpanded in depth. But
in a full opera, Cathy's characterwould be explored little by little as the drama
unfolded; whereas here the whole story is summed up as she taps on the window.
Kate Bush was disarmingly open in early interviews about the inspirationfor the
song: she had turned on the television while a dramatisationof WutheringHeights
was being screened, and had caught the moment where Cathy's wrists are cut on
the broken glass of her window (Blake1978).If we are to take this comment at face
value, then that event was truly fortuitous, since the window is one of the most
potent symbols of the novel: not only at the beginning,when, to Lockwood'shorror,
Cathy taps on the glass to be let into her old bedroom, but also at the end, when
Heathcliffis close to gaining his single wish to join Cathy in death. Here, after he
has almost stopped eating, and has become bright and cheerful, he is observed by
Nelly Dean looking 'eagerly towards the window' (ibid, p. 271), then rising and
going out. Later,he leans against the ledge of an open lattice;Nelly closes all the
casements and eventually, to rouse him, asks 'Must I close this?'(Bronte1994, p.
272). Thereis no doubt in the reader'smind just what lies outside. Nelly notes that
the window of Heathcliff's bedroom is 'wide enough for anybody to get through;
and it struck me that he plotted another midnight excursion' (ibid, p. 273). Just
before she finds him dead, she sees
the master'swindow swinging open, and the rain driving straightin . . . The lattice,flapping

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KateBush's'WutheringHeights'

239

to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill; no blood trickled from the broken
skin, and when I put my fingers to it, I could doubt no more:he was dead and stark!(ibid,
p. 277)

The first thing Nelly does is to hasp the window; only the spirits of the living are
left inside. No wonder the window remained the seminal image for Kate Bush and one which she retained as central to the song, the lens through which all else
is focused as retrospectiveor remembrance.
'WutheringHeights' is not the only song on TheKickInsideto explore extended
tonality, irregular phrase lengths or unusual vocal timbres. Perhaps part of its
power lay, paradoxically,in the fact that within its chart-popcontext it was so well
grounded in more conventional frameworksof harmony, phrase-lengthand vocal
range - the familiarcharacteristicsof the refrainserving to set off the song's more
bizarre aspects in greater relief. Thus, the irregularitieskick harder against those
orthodox conventions. Perhaps the album's title had a musical meaning too.
Endnotes
1 Kruse (1990) concentrates on these later
achievements, with particular reference to
Hounds of Love, in her sociologicaland literary
(as opposed to musical)assessment.
2 Wuthering Heights. All page numbers refer to
the Penguin PopularClassicsedition, 1994.
3 I thank Neil Sorrelland Toni Calam for their
often long and always helpful discussionswith
me on issues of timbreand vocal technique.I
thank RachelCowgill for her insights on sexuality as discussed in this section.
4 See for instance Anon (1978);Doherty (1978);
Nulman (1978).
5 Ellis (1978),Fowler(1978)and Frith(1978)were
among early reviewers who identified not just
an unusual voice but the astonishingvarietyof
sounds KateBush producedon The KickInside.
6 It could be argued that there is also a minor

flavour to this chord, since the piano motive

over the C " harmonypasses through the note
E h directlybefore its E ". However, the motive
returnsto the E " immediatelyafterreachingits
melodic peak on G ", and this seems to confirm
the harmony here as major with a minor
inflexion. Similarly,although the second harmony of this phrase - which I have argued is
the flattened submediant,i.e. the chord of Fis inflected at the end with the voice rising to
the note D, giving it a subdominantflavour(D
minor)at the last moment,we still hearF major
as the basic harmonicsupport here.
7 These concepts,first exploredby Soviet narratologists but brought to the attention of
musicologists perhaps primarily by Susan
McClary,have most recentlybeen critiquedby
Green (1997,see pp. 116-32, especially 119).

References
Anon. 1978. 'Learningto sing and defying conventions',Radio and Record News, February[accessedat
<http://www.gaffa.org/reaching/i78 rrn.html>]
Barthes,R. 1977. 'TheGrainof the Voice', in Image Music Text, ed. S. Heath (London),pp. 179-89
Blake, J. 1978. 'Sexy Kate sings like an angel', Evening News, 18 February [accessed at <http://
www.gaffa.org/reaching/i78 cn.html>]
Bronte,E. 1994. WutheringHeights (Harmondsworth;first published 1847)
Clarke, S. 1978. 'Kate Bush city limits', New Musical Express, 25 March [accessed at <http://
www.gaffa.org/reaching/i78 nme.html>]
Doherty, H. 1978. 'Bush baby', Melody Maker, 8 March [accessedat <http://www.gaffa.org/reaching/
i78 mml.html>]
Ellis, M. 1978.'Kate'sfairy tale', RecordMirror, 25 February[accessedat <http://www.gaffa.org/reaching/i78 rm.html>]
Fowler,M. 1978.'Bushstands alone', Daily Utah Chronicle,3 April [accessedat <http://www.gaffa.org/
reaching/i78 duc.html>]
Frith,S. 1978. 'Theshape of things to come', Creem,July [accessedat <http://www.gaffa.org/reaching/
i78 crm.html>]

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NickyLosseff

Green, L. 1997. Music, Gender,Education (Cambridge)

Juby, K. 1988. Kate Bush: The WholeStory (London)
Kruse, H. 1990. 'In oraise of Kate Bush', in On Record:Pop, Rock and the Written Word, eds S. Frith and
A. Goodwin (London), pp. 45>65
McClary, S. and Walser, R. 1990. 'Start making sense! Musicology wrestles with rock', in On Record:Pop,
Rockand the Written Word,eds S. Frith and A. Goodwin (London), pp. 277-92
Middleton, R. 1990. Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes)
Moore, A. 1992. 'Patterns of harmony', Popular Music, 11, 73-106
Nulman, A. 1978. 'She's how old?', TorontoSunday Express, 18 June [accessed at <http://www.gaffa.org/
reaching/i78 se.html>]
Rice, J. 1991. British Hit Singles (Enfield)
Wigg, D. 1978. 'Wuthering wonderful', Daily Express, 8 March [accessed at <http://www.gaffa.org/
reaching/i78 de.html>]
Wood, E. 1994. 'Sapphonics', in Queering the Pitch, eds P. Brett, E. Wood and G. C. Thomas (New York
and London), pp. 2746
Young, J. 1978. 'What Katie sang next', Daily Express, 7 August [accessed at <http://www.gaffa.org/
reaching/i78 de2.html]

Discography
Kate Bush, 'Wuthering Heights', and 'Kite', The KickInside. EMI Records, CDEMS 1522. 1978
Minnie Ripperton, 'Loving You,' Epic EPC 3121. 1975.

'Wuthering Heights' Words and Music by Kate Bush

(g)) 1977, Reproduced by permission of Kate Bush Music Ltd/EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London WC2H
OEA

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