Irving Berlin, "Climbing Up the Scale" (1923)

 Irving Berlin, "Climbing Up the Scale" (1923). I admit this one's a bit embarrassing, but it's nevertheless in good company with "Doe, a Deer" from Sound of Music a few decades later.

van Alstyne, Ypsilanti

 van Alstyine, "Ypsilanti" (1915). Here ^8 is a prominent and expressive cover tone, and the line moves from ^5 in what is ultimately a simple rising line ^5-^8.

Henry Marshall, "Dinah!" (1913)

From March 2026: A post with information and links to galleries of simple ascending lines and to other essays of mine published on the Texas Scholarworks platform: link.

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Henry Marshall, "Dinah!" (1913). At the outset, ^5 is the main inner voice, with ^3 as the upper voice. In the altered repeat ("Dinah!"), ^5 moves up for a while, until the cadence, where it is again in the fourth octave, but as we've seen before, it could easily be shifted up an octave to close a stage performance of the song. As it stands, this is a wedge where the ascending lower voice is set against the upper descent from ^3 (bar 2, returns in bars 10-11), an assumed ^2 with ^3 then substituting in bar 15 before we reach ^1 in bar 16.

C. K. Harris, "Climb a tree with me" (1912)

From March 2026: A post with information and links to galleries of simple ascending lines and to other essays of mine published on the Texas Scholarworks platform: link.

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Charles K. Harris, "Climb a tree with me" (1912). It might not seem very promising to begin a song on climbing with an octave's worth of descending tonic-chord arpeggio, but there is a clue in the answering phrase, "As we climbed long years ago." The lower ^5, as Eb4, goes up to a firmly held ^6, and "all the birds sang" with ^7 suggests going further. In the end, the proto-background interval of the octave (shown with the unfolding in bars 1-4 and again later) maintains Eb5 while its lower element Eb4 closes to Ab4. This is not a wedge--Eb5 stays put and the principal line is the one that proceeds from Eb4.

Given the intervallic frame, it's not surprising that the common expressive ascent in the upper register should be easy to manage. Here is my alternate or second ending, following the model of songs discussed in a previous post: link.

J. R. Europe, "I've got the finest man" (1912)

 James Reese Europe, "I've got the finest man" (1912). A proto-background with repeated shifts between the registers, one of the clearest examples I've seen. Overall a wedge figure with the descending line from ^3 above and the ascent below but occupying all of the final phrase. (In this it is very like van Alstyne's "Why Don't You Try": link to the post.) See at the bottom of this post for traditional Schenkerian notation.

Wedge figure with ^3 (making a V13) subbing for ^2:

van Alstyne, "When I was Twenty One. . ."

From March 2026: A post with information and links to galleries of simple ascending lines and to other essays of mine published on the Texas Scholarworks platform: link.

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Egbert van Alstyne, "When I was twenty one and you were sweet sixteen" (1911).

Harris, "Don't Blame Me"

Charles K. Harris, "Don't Blame Me" (1911). Another instance of a clearly defined proto-background, ^5/^3 here. Note the nicely presented interruption (bars 6–8) where both elements are cleanly positioned in the voice-leading--and there's even a direct resolution of the ninth in V9/V! (See bar 7, last beat, into bar 8.)

I am, however, primarily interested in the final cadence, which is one of those awkward lines that's not a line, as a very strong rising scale figure to begin the final phrase breaks as ^6 goes *down* to ^7. 

The alternate ending I have made below would have been very likely in performance, in the manner I have mentioned a number of times now based on what we know about singers' practices during this era. This song, indeed, really asks for that ending with its long scale followed by the emphatic "Don't blame me."