Historical survey essay published

I have posted a new essay to Texas Scholar Works: Ascending Cadence Gestures: A Historical Survey from the 16th to the Early 19th Century. Here is the link: essay link. And here is the abstract:

Cadences are formulaic gestures of closure and temporal articulation in music. Although in the minority, rising melodic figures have a long history in cadences in European music of all genres. This essay documents and analyzes characteristic instances of rising cadential lines from the late 16th century through the 1830s.

Almost all of the material for this essay came from posts to this blog over the past several months.

In addition, several of the essays described in this post (admin post) also address historical topics relating to rising lines or cadence gestures. The essays were also published to Texas Scholar Works, most of them in 2014 and 2015.

Hummel, Bagatelles, op107n6

Hummel's op107 consists of six bagatelles, the last of them a spirited Hungarian rondo. Its theme sits clearly on ^3 in the first strain, which descends abruptly to ^1 in the cadence. The second strain starts by doing the same with ^5 but each of its two phrases takes ^5 upward to ^8 instead. I've isolated these motions in the second strain in the figures below the score.

(second strain, first phrase)

(second strain, second phrase)

The second strain in the theme's final statement, which includes the rondo's structural cadence, is shown below. The strain is repeated in its original form at a & b, then embellished at a1 & b1. Note the considerably more emphatic rising line in b1: ^5 in the first bar, ^6-^8 in the second, ^7 in the third), and ^8 in the last, after a direct motion from ^7. The arrow points to a ^6-dropping-to-^7 figure, which could just as easily have been a continuation up, that is A6-B6-C7, rather than A6-B5-C6.

Hummel, Ecossaise, op52n6

Hummel published 6 Pièces très faciles, Op.52, in 1815. The set is structured in such a way that one could assemble a three or four movement sonatina out of its members, complete with a short opening cadenza (n1), a sonata-form Allegro (n2), a Romance (con dolcezza) (n4, the only piece in the set not in C major), and a Rondo (n7).

The Menuet (n3) might substitute for the Romance, or be added to make a four-movement piece, but the ecossaise (n5) is a mystery -- tucked in between the Romance and the Rondo, it is only 24 bars long, hardly weighty enough to count as a movement, but perhaps in the context of informal performance, such departures from form were common enough in Hummel's generation -- or perhaps the young woman playing it would be expected to improvise some variations to augment it.

An opening upward-reaching arpeggio -- at "a" -- is mirrored at "b" and the cadence is clear in its linear contrast, at "c" but is undercut by repetition of "a." In the consequent, that repetition is deleted and the cadence simple and direct. As often happens in dance music, the second strain contrasts sharply with the first: a strong descent from the start -- boxed -- comes down through the octave C6 to C5, and in the continuation phrase there are lines but they go stolidly up from C5 to E5, then down again.

Hummel, Hungarian Dances, op23n7

Hummel published a set of seven Hungarian Dances as his opus 23. The last of them is shown below.

In the first strain, transposition of the basic idea up a fourth to begin the consequent phrase generates overall a scalewise ascent through the octave D5-D6 before a sudden, very direct descent in the cadence. In the "cut-out" below the score, see the underlying pattern of parallel 10ths that propel the figure.

The second strain uses a different motive and by no means so clear a melodic frame but it does succeed in ending with a steadily rising cadence gesture that covers the second phrase.

Ascending gestures in Mozart's late orchestral menuets, part 2

Yesterday I wrote about rising cadence figures in menuets from K 568 and K 585. Here are two additional examples, from K 599 and K 601.

The first strain of K599n4 is a textbook sentence, though one might perhaps count against it the literal repetition of the basic idea, complete with orchestration, in bars 3-4. The continuation phrases brings its fragmenting sequence down by step from D6, circled—note the "mirroring" D6 in the flute at the end of the bar—to C6, then Bb5, the final bar producing still another hanging third, A5. The first flute, however, regains D6 and—resoundingly doubled by the other winds—moves upward D6-Enatural6-F6, as F: ^6-^7-^8. The design of this cadence is quite close to what we saw in K 585n3 yesterday.

The Four Menuets, K601 were composed in early February 1791. Among these, n1 is a curiosity in its complexity and its emphasis on chromaticism. One can imagine a bored Mozart setting himself an interesting challenge just to see what he could make of it. The wedge figure in the antecedent—see the arrows in the two violin parts—is repeated at the dominant level to open the complementary phrase, but with some changes. The lower voice in bar 5 is a third farther away from the upper one: D#5 against A3 to begin bar 3 is now C#4 against A#5, or six half-steps become nine. In bar 6, the counterpoint is effectively inverted at the octave by the doubling of the second violin in the first flute -- boxed at "c" -- and the flute then completes the figure to close -- see the box at "d".

Ascending gestures in Mozart's late orchestral menuets, part 1

This post continues the topic from an earlier one, in which I wrote about n4 in Mozart's Menuets, K. 164: link. I recently published an essay on formal functions in the first strains of menuets from Mozart to Schubert (link to the essay) and along the way noticed ascending gestures in several pieces. Here I will write about some of Mozart's late menuets, those composed between 1788 and 1791. The pieces are K 568ns2 & 11, K 585ns1 & 3, K 599n4, and K601n1.

The 12 Menuets, K. 568n2. It's clear that the primary interval in the melody is the third F5-A5—see the first violins, horns, and oboes in the pickup and first beat of bar 1. The violins trace this interval again in bar 3 before moving decisively by step to G5. The consequent starts over, but the curious thing is that the violins completely abandon this lower third of the triad for the upper one, A5-C6 in bars 7 & 8 (boxed and marked "c").    ---     I've traced the proto-background F5-A5 (as ^1-^3) a different way: starting at "a" with the horns in bar 1 follow the circles and arrows from horns to violins to oboes to horns again. Notice that the rising line in oboe 1 and bassoon 1--boxed at "b"--is an accompanying line in the cadence. We will see Mozart introduce figures like this in subsequent examples.

Here is the proto-background and its transformation, which I call INV (for inversion), isolated in the oboes and horns at beginning and end.

In the same set, n11, despite a decidedly angular melodic line in the antecedent phrase and a strongly contrasting second phrase, is squarely settled on scale degree ^3: B4 in the first phrase, B5 in the second phrase. In bar 7 that B5 turns from G: ^3 into D: ^6 and moves plainly up the scale in flute 1 and bassoon 1 while tracing the same path in the first violins but with register shift. I have argued in the past for this move from ^6 *down* to ^7 as a legitimate variant of the rising line but have occasionally worried about it, too. In instance, there is no doubt whatever about the origin of the first violins' figure in the voice leading of the flutes and bassoons.

In the first of 12 Menuets,  K585, the first violins send a rocket figure through and past the presentation phrase, eventually going one-too-far to B5 (^6) over the subdominant, then settling back to ^5. In the cadence, the violins drop an octave and trace a line up in the sixteenth notes. In this instance again, the flutes move against the violins, but down: ^6-^5-^4-(^3), the last being what I call a hanging third or implicit third: we certainly *ought* to hear it given the shapes that precede bar 8.

In the same set, n3 finally brings the scalewise ascent in the cadence to the uppermost register. A firm ^5 as F5--at "a"--moves up a step in the contrasting idea, circled at "b," is recovered at "c" (bar 6), and moves upward in the first oboe (doubled in the second bassoon). Against the oboe, the first violins at "d" produce another hanging third as C5 moves directly to Bb4 while Eb5 produces a lingering hint of D5.

Dussek, Sonata, Op31n2, II

Jan Dussek's Three Sonatas, Op. 31 (1812) are an odd lot of a piano solo sonata sandwiched between two piano trios. The slow movement of the solo sonata opens with a rising figure that traces a line from ^5 to ^8, a figure repeated directly to close (see mm. 7-8).

After a contrasting middle that turns to the minor mode, a complete reprise of the opening introduces a bit of intensifying variation in the closing phrase.

The Heartz and the rising line

John A. Rice has proposed an addition to the repertory of Galant schemata. He calls it the "Heartz," after his mentor Daniel Heartz, a renowned Mozart scholar who first commented on the figure.

The Heartz is associated with a pastoral topic and with emotion. As Rice puts it, "It is no accident that all three of the opera arias cited by Heartz contain the word core (also spelled cor). Eighteenth-century opera composers associated the sonic sweetness of the subdominant chord over a tonic pedal with the tender emotions of the human heart." (315)

The article has many examples, to which I will add three more. The trio of the last number in Beethoven's 12 menuets, WoO7, provides a simple instance of the Heartz figure. Note the ^5-^6-^5 with lower thirds and the descent ^5-^4-^3 (So-Fa-Mi) that follows. In this case, a cadence takes the line all the way down to ^1 for an unusual PAC to end the first phrase.

The contrasting middle in Mozart's theme for the first movement variations in K. 331 also uses the Heartz, but without the so-fa-mi. Although the many linear analyses of this piece show a descending line from ^5 down to ^2 in the half cadence, the voiceleading is tiered and Mozart repeats the Heartz figure a third lower (see ^3-^4-^3 below ^5). He maintains this design very clearly throughout all the variations except the last. (The example is from a facsimile of the first edition, downloaded from IMSLP.)

The strength of stereotyped patterns in the cadence apparently prevented musicians from reversing the direction of the so-fa-mi to la-ti-do. Schubert, however, does manage it nicely in D779n13, even adding some intensifying suspensions in an inner voice. He does change the underlying harmonies so that the entire pattern Heartz + la-ti-do runs above a cadence.

Reference: John A. Rice, "The Heartz: A Galant Schema from Corelli to Mozart." Music Theory Spectrum 36/2 (2014): 315-332.

Guide to the Schubert blog

I have put together a guide to the 200+ entries in my blog Hearing Schubert D779n13: link to the Guide; link to the blog. Among its sections are several that are also relevant, directly or indirectly, to this blog, particularly Topics 3 & 4 and Appendices 5 & 7. Here is the table of contents:

Introduction 

Topics 1: Analyses of Schubert, Valses sentimentales, n13, Waltz in A Major
Topics 2: Schubert, Playing for Dance, Dance in Vienna 1815-1830
Topics 3: Formal Design and Functions in Music for Social Dance
Topics 4: Responses to Criticism of the Ascending Urlinie 

Appendix 1: Complete list of blog posts, with links
Appendix 2: Complete list of tags (“Labels”)
Appendix 3: Tally of the analyses of D779n13
Appendix 4: Bibliography (that is, an alphabetical list of all literature citations)
Appendix 5: Blog Ascending Cadence Gestures in Tonal Music, complete list of posts, with links
Appendix 6: Blog Dance and Dance Music, 1650-1850, complete list of posts, with links
Appendix 7: Blogs Ascending Cadence Gestures in Tonal Music and Dance and Dance Music, 1650-1850, complete list of tags (“Labels”)