Minor key series, part 14 (Dorian and Aeolian octaves), continued (2)

Here are the third and fourth of four dances from Michael Praetorius's collection Terpsichore. The four are ns104, 147, 148, and 295, and all have been discussed elsewhere on this blog.

(3) Here is my comment on n148 from the earlier blog post:

n148 is in once-transposed Dorian; it has three strains but none is marked with a repeat sign. The final cadence is unusual in the uppermost voices in its string of parallel sixths. These help us to separate the ground notes from the diminutions in the cantus. (link)

The play of "major/minor" (B/Bb) in the first strain is striking (though, I observe once more, not uncommon in the era), and the small clash of E natural/Eb in the cadence is of interest.

(4) Here is my comment on n295 from the earlier blog post:

. . . one of the pieces where the melody is of uncertain authorship. Here is a highly profiled motive with a scalar ascent and an unusual stepwise drop after a falling fourth (circled), something that would be frowned on in a 16th century counterpoint class. It's repeated, transposed, in bar 3, then at the original level in bar 5, and finally the scale is realized as a complete ascending octave. The second strain (not shown) is unusually short: four bars of a repeated chord plus cadence. The final strain "fixes" the motive (circled) with a third rather than a fourth and moving by step within the interval. Even stronger scalar figures follow to end with an unusual, direct [Dorian] ^6-^#7-^8.

To finish this appendix on modes, I return to two more pieces I have written about earlier: the courantes from the D minor suite by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: link 1; link 2. In both pieces we can see the full flowering of minor-key focus (despite the Dorian signature) but at the same time -- in courante n1 -- vestiges of modal chromatic practice in the approach to the final cadence. In the first section of n2 (below), Bb is used strictly throughout, with the only exception a passing B-natural in the left hand in the penultimate bar. In the second strain, the same applies, the exception this time being the "raised" ^6 in the right hand in the final cadence.

In courante n1, the play of Bb/B-natural and C-natural/C# in the final bars reminds one of music from 60 or 70 years earlier. (The two courantes were published in La Guerre's first collection of keyboard pieces, 1687. She was 19 at the time; a prodigy, she was already a decade into her professional career.)

With this, the minor key series is concluded.