Rising lines in an 18th century contredanse collection

As a follow-up to the recent post on a menuet from the Bacquoy-Guedon treatise (early 1780s), here is a [link to a PDF file] that lists and provides scores for multiple examples of rising lines in contredanses from collections preserved in the Royal Danish library. It is assumed that the dances come from published sources and were gathered into these volumes for court use. The collections are associated with Johan Bülow, court musician in Copenhagen in the late 18th century.

Here is one of the dances. Note that four figures are specified, which means the music will minimally be played twice in alternativo fashion, or ABAB. It's also quite possible that the first strain would be repeated at the end, in coda fashion. Since three couples (not four) are specified, it is possible that the instructions are meant for a long dance rather than a quadrille, meaning that the strains would be repeated multiple times (as often as necessary for all the dancers to complete the figures).

More rising cadence gestures from Bacquoy-Guedon

As an addendum to an earlier post, here are three more pieces from Bacquoy-Guedon that use rising cadence gestures in the second strain. Airs nos. 3 and 4 are menuets in the older style. No. 3 focuses registral play in the second strain on and about ^8  (G5). No. 4 asserts ^5-^8 to begin the second strain but leads the sequence up through that interval from the ^5 (D5). The minor-key trio for Menuet no. 4 starts the second strain firmly from ^5 and then ascends in the second and concluding phrase.

Rising line in a menuet from Bacquoy-Guedon

A [dance treatise] from the early 1780s by Alexis Bacquoy-Guedon offers a brief historical narrative of the menuet and the contredanse. In the first section, six "airs" chart the distance from seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, and Bacquoy-Guedon follows that with six "modern" menuets and trios. The last of these uses the octave register prominently and closes with a rising figure to the ^8.

 Boxes in the copy below highlight the treatment of G5-D5-G4:

And this summary shows how the registers are worked out in terms of tonic/dominant groupings:

Finally, here is the rising line that wends its way up from D5 to the final cadence on G5:

For reference, my table of all the theme types (after Caplin) in Bacquoy-Guedon's examples may be found in Chapter 5 of my PDF essay Dance Designs in 18th and Early 19th Century Music: [link]. Appendix 2 of that same document has a list of direct links to pages with music in some treatises on the Library of Congress site.

Telemann, Partita n2 for Oboe and Continuo, Aria

Telemann published a set of 6 partitas for oboe and continuo in 1716 (facsimile available on IMSLP). Ever practical, he said they could be performed on flute or violin or even on keyboard alone. At first glance, the design of the partitas seems a bit unusual: an opening named movement followed by six "arias." These latter, however, are all small binary-form pieces in familiar types, and so the result is a more or less typical partita/suite design.

The second partita is in G major. Its second aria is a gigue that rewrites its first cadence in order to rise at the end -- see the second graphic below. The form of the rising cadence is one of those that works around the cadential dominant figure's two "suspensions" with a reaching-over (Forte's overlap): D5-E5-drops back to D5 but simultaneously G5 reaches over and completes the cadence with F#5-G5.    -- Click on the graphics for larger images. --

Pot Stick

Another in the "Kidson" series--melodies from Frank Kidson's Old English Country Dances (1890). One more tune of early to mid-18th century origin, according to Kidson, and better known as "Over the Water to Charlie," but with quite a few other names, including "Shambuie," "The Marquis of Granby," "Ligrum Cush," "The Quaker's Wife," and "Wishaw's Delight." The last of these is a strathspey, and the violinistic character of the tune certainly supports that use, while the "pentatonic" cadence gesture suggests that the tune is much older than the 18th century. The second cadence (bars 7-8) mitigates the ^6-^8 gesture with a ^7 that, however, precedes the ^6, The first and third cadences are pure ^5-^6-^8, the older cousin of the ^5-^7-^8 cadence one finds in the later 18th and early 19th century, including in Schubert.

Punch Alive

Another in the "Kidson" series--melodies from Frank Kidson's Old English Country Dances (1890). A curiously heterogeneous tune with a strong ^3-^2-^1 frame in the first phrase, the Romanesca bass in the second (^8-^5-^6-^3), and a simple rising scale in the third. It was published in Playford's edition of 1728, but did not appear in earlier editions. The scale and final cadence suggest an 18th century origin, as an improvising second player would very likely get into trouble playing against the sudden leap to D5 but voice leading through ^7 to ^8.

If All the World were Paper

If All the World were Paper

Another in the "Kidson" series--melodies from Frank Kidson's Old English Country Dances (1890). This is an old melody -- it appeared in John Playford's first edition of the Dancing Master in 1651, and its rhythms and modal shapes suggest that it was very likely at least a half-century or more old by then. With the clarity and simplicity of dance-song, every phrase rises, the first and third subverting the ascent in the last detail but the second and fourth realizing it. In improvised duets, the final phrase is a clichéd invitation to the clausula vera, ^7-^8/^2-^1, exactly what a musician would expect.

The 29th of May

Another in the "Kidson" series--melodies from Frank Kidson's Old English Country Dances (1890). Kidson calls this "an exceedingly fine and marked air of Charles the Second's time." It appears in the 1686 edition of Playford "and is continued through the later editions."

The first phrase has a clearly defined descent pattern, with a marked registral shift in the closing arpeggio (what obviously must be F#5 is actually given as F#4).

In the second section, an single rising line runs through both phrases, but the registral shift is repeated, this time to finish the ascent (B5-C#6-D6 become B4-C#5-D5).

Ge Ho, Dobbin

This is the first in a series of posts on tunes in this collection (available in facsimile on IMSLP):

OLD ENGLISH COUNTRY DANCES GATHERED FROM SCARCE PRINTED COLLECTIONS, AND FROM MANUSCRIPTS, Collected and Edited by FRANK KIDSON. LONDON: WlLI.IAM REEVES, 1890.

According to Kidson's endnotes, "Ge Ho, Dobbin" was a very popular tune, to which many humorous (and probably some bawdy) lyrics were set. It was first published in the mid-18th century. The design is three-part: an A-B binary design, plus a single phrase refrain.

 The emphasis on ^5 and its upper neighbor in the A-section sets the stage for a converging cadence (not marked: from F#5 above and from B4 below). In the B-section, the hint of a sequence that might rise is squelched by a firmly descending line, where the 5/3, 4/2, 3/1 pattern is present but the final ^3 is almost entirely suppressed under the octave Ds.  The refrain, however, takes up the sequence and pushes it up vigorously to ^8, undoubtedly a rousing finish that encouraged laughter among the audience--and maybe a stray "hurrah" or two.

Introduction

This blog is intended as an off-shoot of my Hearing Schubert D779n13. Recently, posts there have had little to do with the generation of the 1810s and 1820s in Vienna, with the waltz, or with modes of music analysis. I have decided to create this blog to accommodate those "errant" posts and to provide a space to add to them.

The topic is cadence gestures in traditional European tonal music. The great majority of these follow an 18th-century formula that favors a stepwise descent from scale degree 3 (or even from scale degree 5) to the tonic note.

A significant minority, however, follow an upward path from ^5 to ^8, or else plot a mirroring path from ^8 down to ^5 and then back up to ^8. The first substantial numbers of these are the country dances preserved in John Playford's Dancing Master (first edition 1651), which fact suggests that the figures were relatively common in dance-performance practice, including improvisation. After largely disappearing in the 18th century, rising lines again show up in dance music in the early 19th century, Schubert's D779n13 being a prominent example.

The floodgates were opened, however, in French comic opera by the early 1830s (Adam, Auber) and rising cadences remained a factor in the opera bouffe and operettas of Offenbach, Leclocq, and others before finding a niche in the American musical (notably those by Richard Rodgers).