While working on a new, Schenker-related essay project, I realized that two other dances in WoO8 can be heard with ascending background lines. The more direct of the two—and certainly plausible with the usual Schenkerian focal tones—is n7, despite its maze of unfoldings in the beginning. The unfoldings do suggest a role for ^3 as structural alto; through them one can hear an alto-level third-line in bars 1-8 (E5 at the beginning, D4 in bar 7, C4 in bar 8). From that point on, unmistakable lines lead back to ^5 (G5) and then onward to ^8 in the cadence.
Here is standard Schenkerian notation of a reading from ^3. This seems to me to be one case where the "default" reading from ^3 is heavily at odds with the music.
I hear pitch design in n6 as more complex, another case where tonal frames (or proto-backgrounds) help considerably. The boxed triad at the beginning is regained "as is" in bar 12. Note at the beginning that each of the three notes has its moment: ^8 as the first metrically accented note, exaggerated by the sforzando; ^5 with the first linear motion (a neighbor note that receives the second metrical accent); and ^3, whose own neighbor figure is the theme's contrasting idea. In bars 5-8, ^3 is clearly the focus. In bars 9-11, each of the three triad notes appears on the beat (see flagged notes), and the original triad frame is restated in position in the fifth octave. This time ^3 receives the phrase's first metrical accent, ^8 the next one, and ^5 develops and extends its neighbor figure to create a rising line, where its ^6, ^7, and ^8 are all metrically accented. A Schenkerian version of all this is shown below the score.
It would certainly be easy enough to read from ^3 throughout—and far more plausible than it was in n7—but the effect is still musically distant, something that maps an ideal voice-leading that struggles to be expressive or otherwise musically revelatory.
