Yesterday the number of posts to this blog reached 175. By way of celebration, I have published a
A Gallery of Simple Examples of Extended Rising Melodic Shapes on Texas Scholar Works. Here is the abstract.
Prevailing stereotypes of formal cadences and arch-shaped melodies were especially strong in the eighteenth century, but they did not prevent European musicians from occasionally introducing rising melodic figures into cadences and sometimes connecting those figures abstractly in lines with focal notes earlier in a composition. This essay presents a few of the most direct, cleanly formed rising lines in music from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Here is the table of contents
Introduction
1. Beethoven , 12 German Dances, WoO8n1
2. Mozart, 12 Menuets, K176n1
3. Johann Strauss, sr., Das Leben ein Tanz, oder Der Tanz ein Leben!, Op.49 (1831)
Music for Social Dance
4. Schubert, Wiener-Damen-Ländler, D734n15
5. Schubert, Valses sentimentales, D779n13
6. Schubert, Ländler, D814n4
7. Schubert, Deutscher Tanz, D769n1
8. Johann Strauss, sr., Exotische Pflanzen, Op.109 (1839)
9. Johann Strauss, jr., Künstlerleben, op. 316 (1867)
Minor Key
10. Böhm, Suite in F minor, Courante
11. Schubert, Grazer Walzer, D924n9
12. Brahms, “Über die See”
Additional Examples
13. Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker, March
14. Haydn, String Quartet in D Major, Op76n2, III
15. Haydn, Symphony no. 86, III
