Michael Buchler (from the Search: "Ascending Urlinie")

Yesterday I started a series of posts based on an internet search for "Ascending Urlinie." Among the entries on the first page was my post giving title and abstract for Michael Buchler's SMT conference paper from 2015: link. As I noted, I have no idea why that particular post should appear so early, but if it gives attention to Michael's work, I am pleased with that. Later in the listings, at nos. 23 & 26, respectively, are a PDF of the handout for that paper (from the SMT website: link) and his C.V. from his Florida State University website. A separate list of his publications is here: link.

The majority of Michael's published articles are on aspects of atonal theory and critiques of transformational theory, but he has also published work on American popular music. The three below are available in PDF format through links on his list-of-publications page.

1. "Modulation as a Dramatic Agent in Frank Loesser's Broadway Songs." Music Theory Spectrum, vol 30, no. 1, 2008: 35-60.

The article focuses on “direct stepwise modulation” using “two analytical models. . . : one represents a coloristic or purely dramatic tonal ascent, while the other represents a more profound sense of melodic ascent that reassigns scale-degree function to a different pitch class” (35, abstract). The title song from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961) demonstrates both. “How to Succeed” sets the table of contents of a (supposed) self-help book, and thus “pitch height can be understood as depicting building height [the singer is a window washer], which in turn corresponds to positional status (that old ‘corporate ladder’)” (44). Buchler’s Example 12 (p.49) succinctly shows the ascent across the entire song; it’s not a line in the usual sense but a repositioning of scale degree ^5 in successive keys. As he puts it, “I hear linear motion, but I never sense that a different scale degree is being prolonged” (48).

Ascending gestures are not a factor in items 2 & 3 below, but the same sense of a methodologically flexible, hermeneutically charged analysis of pitch design is present.

2. "Every Love but True Love: Unstable Relationships in Cole Porter's 'Love for Sale'." In PopMusicology, edited by Christian Bielefeldt and Rolf Grossmann, Lüneberg, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2008: 184-200. A revised version of this article appears in A Cole Porter Companion, edited by Don M. Randel, Matthew Shaftel, and Susan Forscher Weiss (University of Illinois Press, 2016). Link to the Press’s page for this book: link.

Buchler examines the unusual (and for its time risqué) song, which “can be thought of as an anti-love song. Though the primary topic of the song and one of its most frequent lyrics is, in fact, ‘love,’ this song is more about the absence of love . . . in a . . . real and disturbing sense. This . . . gave Porter license, and perhaps even a mandate, to confront some of the tonal and contrapuntal norms of this genre” (185). In addition to form-design peculiarities, the principal issue is tonal ambiguity, where much of each phrase is in the orbit of Eb major but the close (and of course the song as a whole) is in Bb. Connecting this to the song’s text, Buchler offers the memorable observation that Eb “perhaps functions more as a hotel room than a residence” (192).

3. "'Laura' and the Essential Ninth: Were They Only a Dream?" Em Pauta, vol. 17, 2006: 5-25 (published March 2007).

As he puts it, this is mainly a “structural and hermeneutical analytical reading of the song” “Laura” from the film of the same title. The vantage point is Schenkerian; the author compares alternative readings and discusses the problem of what is the proper tonic key. Along the way, he necessarily parses and re-evaluates Schenkerian (and earlier) views on the status of ninth chords. By conceiving the song’s dissonances as “non-essential,” he arrives at a reading in which “the primary melodic tones at the beginning of the tune can . . . be understood as dissonant projections onto a stable harmonic plane. The majority of apparently stable melodic notes point to notes that are not actually there,” (17) an allusion to the female lead, who is absent from the film’s first act.

Rising lines do figure prominently in the paper referenced earlier: "When You Wish Upon A Star Your Melody Ascends: Aspirational and Celebrational Disney Songs and the Ascending Urlinie" (Society for Music Theory national meeting, October 2015).

A repertoire list of common-practice-era upper-tetrachord Disney songs is included in the handout, with titles placed under the following categories:

1. 5-8 or 5-(6-7)-8 ascents with weak Urlinie support. -- 18 items.

2. Ascending Urlinie Songs. -- 16 items.

3. Gradually higher ascending Urlinie songs. -- 8 items.

4. Upper-tetrachord songs that begin and end on 8.  -- 5 items.

5. Upper-tetrachord songs that end on 5. -- 3 items.

6. “False Alarms:” songs with standard descending Urlinien, but which have appended material that ends high. -- 6 items.

Examples in the handout; I have condensed the graphics to show only the largest structural features.

Sketch 1. Ned Washington (lyrics) and Leigh Harline (music), "When You Wish Upon A Star" (1940). The rising line ^5-^8 is motivic in this song, but note that a greater ascent comes with substitutions in the final cadence.

Sketch 2. Richard Sherman and Robert Sherman, "The Age Of Not Believing" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). An interesting comparison, as each close of the A phrase is different, the first suggesting an ascending Urlinie, the second contradicting it, and the third finally achieving it.

Sketch 3. Mack David, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston, "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes" from Cinderella (1950). We have seen quite a few of these already in the blog posts: a three-part Ursatz with both soprano and alto voices. As the notation shows, Buchler hears the balance as tipped in favor of the alto voice.