Friday, June 3, 2016

Offenbach's "catalogue" of melodic figures

In correspondence, Jeremy Day-O'Connell asked what I thought of the V9 chord in the theme of the famous can-can (Galop infernale) from Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers [first production 1858]). I took a look and found that, within a few seconds, that great genius of satirical operetta (opéra bouffe) packed in hints or realizations of many of the century's characteristic melodic treatments of scale degrees ^2 and ^6. Here they are:


At (a), a hint of what became the V13 chord (more on that below). At (b1), ^2 colors the tonic with a major second (as 9 in 9-8). At (b2), ^6 colors the tonic triad, a hint of what shortly would become the Iadd6 chord. At (c), ^6 in its classical position as third of the subdominant triad. At (d), a true dominant ninth chord. At (e1) and (e2), the alternation of 9-8 and 6-5 over tonic and dominant, a figure that is a cliché in the early waltz repertoire, as we saw in previous posts on Schubert.

As a postscript, here are bars 1-2 rewritten as an "evolution of the 13th chord." At (a), bars 1-2 showing the ancient escape tone figure I have mentioned in previous posts. The more common version creates a ninth as the escape tone, but this one can be found often in eighteenth-century music as well. At (b), the melody is simplified, the longer note values giving more attention to the dissonance, raising the question (note the ?) of whether this might be a harmony rather than a coincidental dissonance. At (c), then, the V13 has fully arrived as the 13th displaces the 12th altogether.