Friday, April 29, 2016

Praetorius, Terpsichore, part 8: ns 148, 265

The Praetorius series of posts began more than a week ago. To close it out, here are two numbers—a courante and a ballet—that share ascending cadence gestures but otherwise are not closely related in design.

n148 is in once-transposed Dorian; it has three strains but none is marked with a repeat sign. The final cadence is unusual in the uppermost voices in its string of parallel sixths. These help us to separate the ground notes from the diminutions in the cantus.


n265 is a three-strain ballet, also without notated repeats. In effect it is really two strains, as the third is a close variation of the second. See below, where the second and third strains are aligned. The point of interest is in the two cadences, the first of which lies (and is somewhat buried) in the lower register, ending on F4, but the second of which is made very prominent by transposition up the octave, ending on the same F5 that started the strain.