Administrative post, part 2

In an earlier post, I provided links for some of the PDF files I have uploaded to the Texas Digital Repository (TDR). Files most relevant to this blog are listed there. Others appear here. Like those PDF essays in the earlier list, most of these are compilations of posts from my Schubert blog and from a defunct website.

Dance and Dancing in Schubert's Vienna

This file has six parts: the first concerns dancing in Vienna and dance music genres during the brief period between the Congress of Vienna and the July Revolution in France (1815-1830). The second part brings the focus focus down more locally to the Schubert-Kreis and Schubert’s improvisation practice for dancing. Part 3 looks even more closely at some of the mechanics of that practice. Part 4 turns to the extant repertoire of Schubert’s dances. Part 5 explores Robert Schumann’s review of D365 and D783 and turns it back speculatively onto D779. Part 6 offers a short list of links relating to Schubert.

Cotillon after Schubert, with audio

An episode from a cotillon as Franz Schubert might have played it in the 1820s. UT-Austin doctoral student Josh Straub is the pianist in the audio file.

Dance Designs in 18th and Early 19th Century Music

A study of harmony and formal functions in dance music of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The data and analyses are also intended to supplement the form theory presented in William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Classical Form discusses the different movement types one encounters in the Classical sonata, quartet, and symphony, but because of the meticulous attention given to small-scale, theme units, the theory is also very well-suited to style studies of dance musics.

Proto-backgrounds in Traditional Tonal Music

This article uses an analogy between "theme" in literary studies and "background" in linear analysis (or other hierarchical analytic models) for music to find more options for interpretation than are available in traditional Schenkerian analysis. The central construct is the proto-background, or tonic-triad interval that is understood to precede the typical linear background of a Schenkerian or similar hierarchical analysis. Figures typically or potentially found in a background, including the Schenkerian urlinie, are understood to arise through (informal) transformations, or functions, applied to proto-backgrounds.

Section from a chapter of an unpublished book:

On Edward Macdowell's "To a Wild Rose"

Historical and biographical background and analysis of MacDowell's "To a Wild Rose." Critique of Schenkerian analysis.

Nineteenth-century polkas with rising melodic and cadence gestures: a new PDF essay

Title: Nineteenth-century polkas with rising melodic and cadence gestures

 Link: Polkas

Abstract: This essay provides background on dance in the nineteenth century and then focuses on characteristic figures in the polka, especially those linked to rising cadence gestures. The polka became a popular social dance very quickly in the early 1840s. Its music was the first to introduce rising melodic frames and cadence gestures as common features. This essay provides a series of examples with commentary. Most pieces come from the 1840s and early 1850s. Variants of the polka—polka-mazurka, polka française, and polka schnell—are also discussed and illustrated.

Publication on Texas Scholar Works (University of Texas Libraries)