In May of this year, I started a series of posts that discussed compositions mentioned in the notes to my article "The Ascending Urlinie," this being the 30th year since its publication in the Journal of Music Theory. The two introductory posts are here: link; link. A further administrative post appeared in early September: link.
Since the series has necessarily been about Schenkerian analysis, I think it's important to stress here again that the blog is by no means restricted to that method or its issues. Referring to documents published on the Texas Scholar Works platform, I recently wrote "In this and other essays, a broader range of examples was made possible in part because the selection was not so constrained by abstract Schenkerian background models and their idealist voice leading. The result is a much better picture of musical practices over the several centuries separating 16th-century bicinia (two-voice pieces mainly for pedagogical use) from nineteenth century waltzes, polkas, and other instrumental and vocal compositions" (2017, 4). I have sometimes used a traditional Schenkerian method for pieces with clear focal tones that connect plausibly to rising cadence gestures, but equally or more often a freer model of reading lines and their patterns where I thought that provided better information. I have used my proto-background model when register, stable intervals and their transformations are particularly evident, and in the absence of analytic method I have used the simple, familiar model of style statistics and comparison where rising cadence gestures appear but their connections to pitch-design context aren't clear.
As the preceding suggests, although the hunt for rising cadence gestures began thirty years ago in an effort to justify and document the ascending Urlinie, it has evolved into a broader and more consequential historical project. That rising cadence gestures are far more than exceptions to the rule (even in narrowly constrained Schenkerian terms) has been obvious long since, but the historical narrative of these gestures in European and American music-making is a work in progress.
Reference:
Neumeyer, David. 2017. Ascending Cadence Gestures in Waltzes by Joseph Lanner. Link.
