Saturday, November 12, 2016

Minor key essay

I have gathered the posts in the minor key series into an essay that has been published on the Texas Scholar Works platform: Ascending Lines in the Minor Key.

The essay contains all posts from the series, along with a newly written "concluding comment."

Here is the abstract:
The minor key poses obstacles to rising cadence gestures, and the number of compositions with convincing linear ascents is small. This essay assumes a mostly traditional Schenkerian point of view and studies that limited repertoire of pieces, which includes 17th and early 18th century music relying on the Dorian octave, and compositions by a variety of composers from Johann Walther and Thomas Morley, through François Couperin and Beethoven, to Brahms, Hugo Wolf, and Carl Kiefert.