Haydn, part 1

This post begins another series that will provide examples of rising cadence gestures in the later 18th century and early 19th century. In footnotes to my article "The Ascending Urlinie" (Journal of Music Theory 1987), I listed five works by Haydn: the menuets of Symphony 100 and 104, the slow movement of the string quartet Op. 76n2, and movements in two piano sonatas. In this series of posts I will add menuets from three earlier symphonies: nos. 83, 86, and 96.

Let's start with the menuet in Symphony no. 83.

Rising figures appear in both the menuet and its trio. In the former, the first strain suggests the possibility of a rising line (or other figure) that would balance the continual descent in the presentation phrase (bars 1-4), but the continuation phrase doesn't work this out at all clearly.

The reprise is another matter. Although uncertainty still exists about which note in the two-note cells is primary, it is really not all that serious a factor, as one can just build an octave line from G4-G5 if you don't like mine from F#4-F#5 with resolution to G5.

In the trio, B4 in the antecedent phrase starts a very common motion that settles on A4 (as ^2) after touching the upper neighbor C5. In the consequent phrase, C is altered to C# (another common feature) in order to settle on D5 at the end. This is the sort of thing that would be understood as motion to a cover tone, with an interruption (with implied? A4) in Schenkerian analysis.

As in the menuet itself, the reprise of the trio manages the figure a different way, though with no suggestion of an ascending cadence gesture. Here Haydn anticipates many early 18th century waltzes in leaving notes of the dominant chord "hanging" over the final tonic: E5 "might" have gone to D5 [this one is especially important to the waltz], and C5 to B4.