Why do whole-tone scales avoid traditional harmonic resolution?

The whole-tone scale avoids traditional harmonic resolution primarily because of its unique structure, which lacks the semitones necessary to create the tension and release characteristic of the major-minor tonal system.1

In Western art music, traditional harmony relies on specific intervals—such as the leading tone—to establish a sense of key center and drive forward motion toward a resolution. Because the whole-tone scale consists exclusively of whole steps, all of its triads are augmented, and it contains no dominant harmony or leading tones. This absence of semitones removes the harmonic contrasts required for functional resolution.1

For composers like Claude Debussy, the use of whole-tone harmony served as a deliberate tool to suspend or dissolve the perception of traditional tonality. By utilizing this scale, Debussy and his contemporaries could create music that emphasizes melodic color and static harmony, effectively disrupting the forward-moving harmonic progressions associated with Romanticism. In this context, the sense of a key center is maintained not through resolution, but through repetition and melodic emphasis.12