Monday, February 20, 2017

Postscript to the post on 5-6 figures

One of the examples in yesterday's post was from David Damschroder's article: the opening of Schubert's Minona, D.152 (1815). A curiosity in this melodrama's ending is worth a look here. When the protagonist finds her lover, killed by an arrow, she says/intones/sings the following:


Circled notes E5 and F5 are the focal pitches (note they are doubled in the piano in the second system).

She then quickly (plötzlich = suddenly or abruptly) pulls out the arrow and stabs herself ("stösst ihn . . . mit Hast in den Busen") -- boxed notes E5-F#5-Fnat5 -- and sinks down to die (Eb5-D5-C5 and a strongly implied B5). A closing A5 is in the piano coda. It is a bit absurd to be charting focal notes and lines across the ever-changing surface of a melodrama, but on this last page I think it is possible to hear a descent from E5 by step down to A4. a "five-line."

The piano follows the voice -- well, actually, precedes it to F#5 (circled note marked ^#6) -- and then to Fnat5, after which it holds F5, then drops to G#4 -- continued series of circled notes), also closing on A4 in the piano's coda. The simplest voice leading wouldn't follow this sequence in the uppermost notes of the right hand -- at sehr langsam Bb4 would go down to G#4 (the voice does this in the lower half of its register) and F5 would drop the octave to F4, but I think that is misleading here as the F5 is already doubled by F4 on the first beat of the bar (at "Schnee").