Adam, Le Châlet, part 5 (ns5 & 6: ensemble-aria-ensemble)

Max finishes the aria (n4) in which he affirms his pleasure at returning to the Swiss valley that was his home (and is still for his sister Bettly). Implausibly, Daniel doesn't recognize Max, who, implausibly, doesn't reveal himself, and in fact is later not recognized by Bettly, either (sigh). And with this the plot descends irretrievably into farce—but all eventually ends well after Max pretends to be drunk, inciting Daniel to protect Bettly's honor, whereon she is impressed by Daniel's action and signs the marriage certificate, which she openly calls a ruse because it's not valid without her brother's signature, but of course unbeknownst to her he is there . . . . you see where this is going.

The central ensemble scenes are concerned with the complications created by Max's insistence that his company will stay for a fortnight and by his consequent demand for food and, especially, drink for the evening. Number 5 is a straightforward drinking song, with chorus; at the end, Max promises his own song and n6 opens with it (in the form of couplets); the remainder of n6 is a combination of Max and Bettly's back and forth with the chorus's continuation of the general topic of eating and drinking. (She is increasingly agitated; during the dialogue scene that follows n6, Daniel appears and attempts to defend her.)

The theme of the drinking song allows a good bit of enthusiastic noise with a figure that focuses on ^8, descending from it and returning to it--see below. All we're missing is a "huzzah" or two.  (Here again I am using the German edition of 1835 for examples.)

In a considerably expanded version, one can hear elements of this theme in the final section of n6, including the turn to the submediant vi—see notes in the (several pages of) score below.

Adam, Le Châlet, part 4 (n4: Max's aria)

After Daniel's aria (n2), there follows extended and animated dialogue between Daniel and Bettly, during which (a) he reads a letter in which Bettly says she will marry him; (b) Bettly reveals that the letter is a hoax perpetrated by other young people in the village; (c) that in any case she will not marry him. The third number of Le Châlet,"Dans ce modeste et simple asile," explains why: she is satisfied with her life as it is, doesn't want to give up her freedom, and (rough summary!!) thinks a man would be a nuisance anyway. After Bettly's couplets (n3) finish, another extended round of dialogue has Bettly admitting that Daniel has some fine qualities, but she stands by her decision. Daniel reads from another letter she has received (she cannot read herself, btw), this time from her brother Max, who is to pass through the area with his company of soldiers. Max advises Bettly to marry someone, and in the course of conversation Daniel is obliged to admit that he asked Max for help.

This is where things stand when a group of soldiers approaches, to the martial music of the Allegro theme from the overture. Max enters the chalet with his company and sings "Arrêtons-nous ici!"   (As with the previous post on Daniel's aria, I am drawing the musical examples from the German edition of 1835.)

The design is recitative-Andante in 6/8 (the cavatina)-Moderato in 4/4 (the cabaletta), this last being the bulk of the movement. "Arrêtons-nous ici!" opens the recitative, "Vallons de l'Helvétie" the Andante, and "Chant de nos montagnes" the Moderato.

The theme of the Andante is an 8-bar period with modulating consequent, but as it turns out this theme is also the presentation unit of a 16-measure sentence. The continuation, which is expanded from 8 to 11 bars, contains the first point of interest. Max's energetic exclamations of love for the "Vaterland" bring repeated surges to Eb4 (circled), the space defined being Bb3-Eb4. As the continuation unit moves on, the lower end of the space is expanded downward to G3 (see the arrow in the second system). This persists to the cadence, readily generating another ^7-^2-^1 figure (which we saw in the cabaletta of Daniel's aria in yesterday's post) -- with a firm descent ^3-^2-^1 and an ascending rising line variant complete except in its final note: ^6-^5-^7-(^8).

In the Moderato, a ^3-^5 frame is quite strong in the principal period and expands briefly upward but, in the cadence, again firmly downward, the end result (that is to say, the final interval) being the fifth space ^1-^5.

After a short B-section (14 bars total, with an "old-fashioned" emphasis in V and on ^b3),* a full reprise draws in the figure of the cavatina as a way of intensifying (and expanding) the approach to the cadence -- see circled notes below. All this makes the implication of ^8 above the final tonic all the more convincing.

* I say "old-fashioned" because one can find the mode-shift device already in Baroque-era da capo arias, and the combination of an unstable and therefore dramatically intensified V with lowered ^3 even before Glück's "Che faro" (section C in a five-part rondo).

Adam, Le Châlet, part 3 (n2: Daniel's aria)

The opening chorus (n1) does not follow up on the overture's rising-line figures in the cadence, but the following number does. "Elle est à moi! C'est ma compagne" is labeled an "Air" in the French editions; it is basically a classic two-part Rossinian aria, with cavatina and cabaletta, but these are preceded by an Allegro risoluto that starts out as an aggressive aria, "Elle est à moi," in which Daniel announces that he has claimed the hand of Bettly. (For these examples, I am using the German edition from 1835.)

An eight-measure sentence initiates what looks to be a three-part small form, and it is followed by the expected B-section that focuses on the dominant. The whole thing suddenly unravels, however, with a couple fortissimo chords on V/V (see below), and the introduction to the cavatina begins, Andante non troppo. Note the rising gesture in the cadence (circled).

In the cavatina, "Ô bonheur extrême! Enfin elle m'aime," Daniel enthusiastically invites everyone to a feast for a wedding that, alas, will not occur (at least, not so soon as he thinks). The pattern of the introduction repeats itself -- the high note F#5 clearly dominates and descends by step through E5 to D5 (beamed notes), while an alto voice works its way up from ^5 (circled notes).

In the orchestral score, the first clarinet can be seen to assist with putting emphasis on the descending line from ^3 (circled notes in its part). The first violin, on the other hand, follows the tenor from ^5 to ^6 -- see the beginning of the two boxes, where ^6 is circled in both parts -- but then the violins drop back to ^5 (A4) while the lower strand of the tenor moves upward toward ^8. This split in the progression from ^6 was already clear in the previous example, where the violins are the uppermost notes of the piano reduction.

The structural cadence looks the same in the vocal score (bars 1-5 below), but the orchestral score (second example below) shows some differences: the clarinet is missing, and the flute now takes the ^6 instead of the first violins. The arrow in the flute part points to a tiny but pleasant detail: ^6 is held a beat longer and thus the flute and the tenor harmonize (that is, hold ^6 together), briefly creating a clear dominant ninth sound.

The coda to the cavatina is a very common descent/ascent pattern that one can find already in opera in the 1780s. Only the solo part is shown, with scale degrees (bars 5 ff below). The play on nat-^7 leads easily into the key of the cabaletta (see the last bars of the example).

(orchestral score for the structural cadence)

A full ternary form, the cavatina is the body of the number, whereas the cabaletta—to the same text—acts more like an extended coda than is even usually the case in Rossini. The cabaletta is marked Allegretto in the Tallandier edition, Allegretto moderato in the 1834 full score.

The tonal frame of the whole, then, doesn't line up with these form priorities: G major in the (abandoned) Allegro risoluto, D major in the (long) cavatina, then a return to G major for the (coda-like) cabaletta. On the other hand, there is no particular reason that the two needed to line up—a fluid relation of keys in the sections of a multi-part aria was common, and typically in some relation of tonic, dominant, and subdominant (in addition to parallel minor/major shifts).

The cabaletta theme is a straightforward 16mm period. The ending formula (boxed) can also be found fairly often in the first quarter of the nineteenth century as a dramatic variant of the Baroque era figure in which a rise, usually to ^8, is immediately offset by a quick and firm stepwise descending cadence.

It is possible to hear a line ^5-^7-^8, or what I have called the "primitive" rising line cadence, but with ^8 replaced by ^1 -- see the circled notes below. I think, though, that it is much easier to hear a tonal frame of the octave and fifth, G4-D5-G5, throughout this passage.

 The coda-like character of the cabaletta makes it difficult to pin down just where a structural cadence can be found, but an obvious candidate does emerge, beginning in the third bar of the example below. Several failed attempts to close have preceded it (as in bars 1 to bar 3, beat 1, here), but this one is emphatic and then repeated. A simplified version with main melody notes and bass is at the bottom of this post.

 (simplified version of the structural cadence above)

Adam, Le Châlet, part 2 (overture)

The overture to Le Châlet surprises in its length (greater than one would expect for the introduction to a one-act opera) and in the fact that only one of its melodies (the Allegro, below) appears later on.

The design has the elements of both potpourri and sonata that are typical of French opera overtures throughout this period. A pastoral opening in the tonic key (D major), then the dominant, leads to an Andantino section based on this melody:

An Allegro follows, with this principal theme

. . . and this secondary theme:

An extended and agitated coda to the secondary theme, largely in the dominant key, acts in a manner similar to the symphony development section, and then the principal theme returns in the tonic key. Following from that, another energetic and extended coda brings the overture to a conclusion.

The Allegro theme is a clearly articulated16-measure sentence with an expansion in the final phrase.

The four-measure basic idea sits squarely on ^1; its enlargement of the initial neighbor note (^1-^7-^1) over the entire phrase is memorable, while ^5 establishes itself as an obvious cover tone.

In the expansion of the continuation unit, this pairing of lower scale degree with an upper ^5 suddenly becomes relevant in the cadence, when ^5 sweeps up to ^8 at the last moment.

The structural cadence of the overture (that is, the strongly defined cadence to the tonic that initiates the coda) uses this same ascending figure (circled).

In the piano reduction, the registers are not as clear as they might be. The ottava marking at the beginning of the example reflects the addition of flute and piccolo; the first violins remain in the fifth octave—see the box in the parts extracted from the score below.

Note especially that the first violins do move upward from A5 to D6 in the cadential moment (see the box in the example below). The score, incidentally, was published within a month or two of the premiere, an engraved publication of 260 pages that is another sign of the opera's commercial success. The facsimile, on IMSLP, is a scan made through a collaboration between the libraries of the Royal Conservatory Antwerp and Brigham Young University. More information can be found in the entry on the Internet Archive: link.

Adam, Le Châlet, part 1

Adolphe Adam was a major figure in the opéra comique, the French popular theater with eighteenth century origins that already by the 1830s was becoming a large and somewhat amorphous category. Born in 1803, Adam had decided in his teens that he wanted to compose music for the stage, and he was lucky in that, studying in Paris, he found a mentor in Boieldieu. His practical training included acting as an assistant for the first production of Boieldieu's best known work, La dame blanche (1825, in the Opéra-Comique).

By 1834, Adam himself had several productions at the Opéra-Comique, but his first great success came late in that year with Le Châlet, a one-act piece that achieved a thousand performances over the course of the next forty years. To be fair, although this certainly was a remarkable achievement, it was not that uncommon in this period. As the authors of the Grove Music Online article on the opéra comique put it:

These four decades [1830-1870] saw the premières of some of the most popular operas ever produced, and they remained in virtually continuous repertory in Paris and throughout the world wherever French opera was staged until World War II. Many had more than 1000 performances at the Opéra-Comique alone and were the staples of regional theaters in Germany and Austria as well as francophone countries.

In other words, the opéra comique (and the venue of the Opéra-Comique itself) were the nineteenth-century French analogue to Broadway in the twentieth-century United States.

A couple decades ago, as part of a search for precedents for the unusual concentration of rising line figures in Offenbach's Orfée aux Enfers (1858), I was impressed by Le Châlet, and it became the central character in my historical narrative of the adoption of ascending cadence gestures in the nineteenth century musical stage and in French music more generally. Whether that story is correct I don't know, but the continuing improvement in ready availability of scores thanks to the scanning projects of major libraries and to IMSLP should make it possible to study the question in a much more effective way than I could in the mid-1990s.

In the meantime, Le Châlet remains a striking early source of operatic rising cadences. Clearly, the line of influence that we followed from the dance movements of Haydn to the social dances of Schubert cannot be continued to Adam's opera, even if it did premiere just six years after Schubert's death. The most likely source is in Rossini, where rising cadences are very rare, but the marked tendency toward dramatic endings to arias encouraged figures emphasizing upper registers. It was only a matter of time (and not much of that really, just a decade or two) before the upper register became fixed as an ending position in cadences.

Le Châlet has a simple design, with solos and duets surrounded by a frame of ensembles (nos. 1, 5-6, and 10 in the list below):

 1 Introduction et Chorus "Déjà dans la plaine"
2 Air "Elle est à moi! C'est ma compagne"
3 Couplets "Dans ce modeste et simple asile"
4 Air "Arrêtons-nous ici!"
5 Ensemble "Par cet étroit sentier"
6 Couplets with chorus "Dans le service de l'Autriche"
(cont.) Ensemble "Malgré moi je frissonne"
7 Duo "Prêt à quitter ceux que l'on aime"
8 Duo "Il faut me céder ta maitresse"
9 Romance "Adieu vous que j'ai tant chérie"
10 Trio et Finale "Soutiens mon bras"

This list follows the Tallandier edition (c1900), which also includes text for the dialogue sections: IMSLP link for Le Châlet.

The story is equally simple. The setting is rural Switzerland. A farmer, Daniel, is in love with Bettly, who is attracted to him but refuses marriage. Bettly's brother, Max, a Swiss soldier, appears with his company and joins with Daniel in a series of ruses that eventually bring Bettly around. At the end, a marriage contract is signed (even that originates in a ruse, but Bettly accepts it when the deception is revealed).

In subsequent posts in this series, I will examine design and expression in the several numbers of Le Châlet, beginning with the relatively lengthy Overture, which is not included in the list above.

Sources for biographical and background information:

"Adolphe Adam." Grove Music Online. Elizabeth Forbes.

“Opera comique,” §5. Grove Music Online. M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet with Richard Langham Smith.

"Aria." Grove Music Online. Andrew Clements (with Tim Carter, Thomas Walker, Daniel Heartz, Dennis Libby).

"Adolphe Adam." Wikipedia.

Schubert and the Ländler, part 4

In this final installment of the Schubert series (examples from my PDF essay published on Texas Scholar Works (link)), we look at expressions of ^6 that lead to straightforward rising lines in cadences.

The final number of D 734, the Wiener-Damen Ländler (not Schubert's title—in fact, he specifically objected to it), opens as a ländler but closes more firmly; the second strain very probably would have been used as a promenade to end a session of dancing. At (a), ^6 is an 8th-note escape tone; at (b) ^6 is an accented neighbor note; at (c) an unaccented incomplete neighbor; at (d), the neighbor note opens the second strain, picking up on a motive from the first strain in the same way we saw yesterday in D 779n18; and at (e) the waltz ninth carries ^6 upward to a close on G5.

Much the same happens in D 769n1. The first phrase hangs on a neighbor note figure where ^6 is prominent as part of a rare inverted V9 chord (box).

In the second strain, ^6 is touched on briefly (circled), and the cadence then completes an ascent to ^8 (A5). Note that the first strain was quiet (mit Verschiebung means use the soft pedal) but the rise to the cadence is accompanied by a crescendo (and in performance possibly would have included an acceleration to the end).

In the final dance of D 779, the second strain is heavily preoccupied with ^6. The loud "promenade music" we saw in D 734n15 above features contrast between an upper register and lower register ^6. Repeated versions of ^6-^5 appear throughout till the rise to ^8 that continues and completes the initial fifth-octave gesture (see the arrow).

Finally, D 814n4, in Brahms’s 2-hand transcription of the 4-hand original, reuses the overall pattern of dynamics (from soft to loud), is based on a sharply rising motive (box), and closes with a very direct linear ascent to ^8 (arrow).

Schubert and the Ländler, part 3

This post continues yesterday's emphasis on rising shapes across entire strains, but without the wedge shapes we observed in ländler from D 145 and D 366.

D 814 is a set of four ländler for piano four-hands. A solo version of the first dance also exists (NB: this is by Schubert; Brahms transcribed the other dances in D 814). Here a small-scale ascent growing out of a ^5-^6 neighbor figure in the first strain is magnified considerably in the second strain.

A ninth leap can be a dramatic generating event on its own: see bar 5 in Valses sentimentales, D 799, n16. This one inspires other leaps, but the only return to scale degree ^6 comes as a neighbor note over I6/4 (see bar 14). This time Schubert takes the expressive leap to the highest note on the pianoforte, F7 (in bar 15).

As its dynamic markings and large chords suggest, D 779n16 is a German dance, not a ländler. By contrast, D 779, n18 is one of the simplest ländler in the set: the violinistic melody is not elaborate (at least in the first strain), and the bass-afterbeat pattern of the left hand follows the most stereotyped ländler bass I-I-V-V / I-I-V-I. Our point of interest will be the second strain, but in the first strain two nicely expressive (but, again, simple) instances of ^6 appear: an off-beat leap in bar 3 (circled) and a filling-out or thickening of ^4 in bar 7. The role of that ^4 is clearer in the lower system, where I have pulled out the longer and metrically accented pitches, which describe a double neighbor-note figure around ^3.

In the second strain of D 779, n18, Schubert repeats the figure of bar 7, then follows through with successive leaps that quickly reach C7!

Schubert and the Ländler, part 2

Here are two further examples of rising figures that take advantage of the highest register of Schubert's pianoforte.

In D145n11—still another waltz in Db major, a true V9 in bar 3 hints at the much more dramatic figure of the consequent phrase, where Bb6 is reached. As in the first strain of D 145n9, the implications of these rising figures are realized as a line in the cadence of the second strain, where ^6-^7-^8 is harmonized with the functional SDT progression.

 In D 366n2—this time the key is A major—the same play of octave registers in the antecedent-consequent pair is obvious. B5 and B6 are now ^2, rather than ^6, but the treatment of F# as ^6 in A major is also prominent: see the escape tone in bar 1 (circled) and the neighbor note in bar 4. Still, I would say that the accented pitches strongly emphasize a constrained figure consisting mostly of scale degrees ^1 and ^2—see the lower system in the example below. At the end of the strain, note the doubled octave (in Schenker terms, "coupling").

Schubert and the Ländler, part 1

This new series reproduces some of the examples from my PDF essay Scale degree ^6 in the 19th Century: Ländler and Waltzes from Schubert to Herbert: link. I have written about rising cadence gestures in music by Schubert many times, but that new essay cites the largest number of individual pieces, all of them called Ländler by the composer—or at least published under that label (see the introduction to the essay for more details).

The largest sampling of Schubert's earliest dances—from the period 1816 to 1821—appears in the two published collections, D 145 and D 365. It is worth remembering that Schubert was a skilled violinist, and his waltzes clearly show the strongly violinistic figures associated with the Ländler style. The unusual key of Db major, by the way, is easily explained as a “darkening” or expressive shading of the archetypical Ländler key of D major. In D 145, ns 4-12 are all in Db major. The large number of pieces in Ab major in D 365 and D 779 are accounted for in the same way: Ab as a shading of A major. (A few pieces from D779 were originally written for violin in A major.) D 145n4 may have been transposed down a half step from its "proper" violin key of D major, but there is no mistaking the source as the opening idea (bars 1-2) skates across the fingerboard from right to left.

Note that the very first figure is an expressive leap to an accented ^6, as 9 in V9. The string of similar accented and unaccented leaps that follow encourage a rising gesture in the cadence to the first strain. After such vigorous gestures, Schubert often creates a mirroring pattern in the cadence of the second strain, as he does here: a precipitous descent brings the melody down from the accented ^6 (as Bb6) to close on Db5. The wedge shape thus formed by the two strains is found in other ländler as well (as we will see below).

The voice leading that results from the several leaps is dense and not at all focused on a particular pitch.

Still it is easy to hear a connection between the first accented note, Bb5, its recurrence in bar 5 and a line completed in the cadence. To treat this formally in the Schenkerian manner, however, ^5s must be implied. I find this presence of ^6 with an absent ^5 to be particularly charming.

The ninth dance in D 145 is also in Db major. This time Bb6—the highest Bb on the pianoforte—opens the piece, and then is touched again in the cadence of the second strain. The effect is to draw our attention to the wedge shape, here with the motions dropping first, then rising, the reverse of n4.

Between Haydn and Schubert, part 2

Sophia Dussek was born into the Corri family, Italian musicians resident in Edinburgh, Scotland. By the 1790s, she was in London and spent most of her professional career as a composer, teacher, and music publisher there.

The tune she used for the first of Three Favorite Airs, with Variations for the Harp, book 1 (publication date unknown: could be as early as 1794 or as late as 1825), however, is Welsh and very familiar: "Ar hyd y nos," known in English as "All Through the Night." Three of the four phrases in this simple tune are the same, and each has a perfect authentic cadence. Note the tight frame of tonic chords that results:

The frame goes further, though: the opening gesture is repeated in reverse to close, resulting in a rising cadence gesture (bracket):

In the first variation, Dussek applies ornamenting upper thirds to the G and A—(a) bar 3. In the final iteration of the theme phrase, these reach as far as D5—see the end of (b)—and generate the phantasm of a line from ^3.

Variation 2 reverts to, and strongly foregrounds, the rising line of the theme, in the first statement (a) and in the last (b):

The final variation adopts 16th note figuration. In the first statement (a) the line from G5 through A5 to Bb5 is clear from the accented position of the notes, the upper ornaments having even less effect than they did in variation 1. The final statement (b), however, breaks out of the tune altogether for the sake of a forceful and virtuosic ending. With circle notes, I have marked a conventional descent from ^5 over the bass.