A prolific composer, Pecháček senior wrote in all contemporary genres, including music for social dance. His 12 Ländler, written for an ensemble unusual in the waltz repertoire—2 clarinets, 2 horns, and bassoon—were published in 1801.
Like Beethoven's Ländler in WoO11 and WoO15, written about the same time, this set provides an excellent example of the Ländler in its traditional form—as distinct from the later keyboard Ländler of Schubert and many other composers in the 1820s, who strove to make the Ländler congenial and specific to the piano, using less common keys with chromatic twists and pianistic registral play, thus blurring the distinction between music for dance and music for recital. A characteristic that Pecháček's 12 Ländler do share with later Ländler is their repetitiousness, a marker of their primary role as music for dance, not for performance.
The texture is uniform throughout all twelve pieces, with the first clarinet leading, the second clarinet playing a parallel melodic part below, the horns providing consistent quarter-note motion with simple figures (though not often in the familiar oompah-oompah version), and the bassoon playing the bass line. I have gathered the parts for the first strain of number 5 into score as an example. Published parts were downloaded from IMSLP.
Though written for clarinet, the melodies are highly violinistic, another reflection of the historical traditions of the Ländler. As a result, the play of register and the marking out of fifth spaces are prominent features. Here is the first strain of n1:
The fifth C5-G5 is defined as the frame of the basic idea (bars 1-2), and a line descends from G5 in the varied basic idea (bars 3-4). In the consequent phrase, the line again descends toward ^3, which is not sounded but easily imagined (and in all likelihood was sometimes improvised). I have written about such "complex lines" here: link. The same third-line and its repetition with the "imagined" E4 occur in the same places in the second strain. This time, however, the upper voice confirms the highest register of bar 1—that is, C6—with what I call the "primitive" ascending Urlinie ^5-^7-^8. (I am not terribly proud of that label, btw, as it privileges line over interval frame, but I have used it for so long now that I may as well continue to do so.)
In n5, G5 dominates (so to speak) and the first strain expresses two complete rising lines in its two phrases. The second strain reuses the figure of n1, but the final bars are a little more complicated in that *three* lines are expressed: the incomplete ascending line, the third-line from G5 (as in n1), and a secondary third-line E4-D4-C4. The last pitch is imagined in the clarinet -- the complete third-line is played by the first horn.
n10: The basic linear figure in the second strain is that of n5, second strain, with the difference that the descent from ^5 is complete (albeit with an imagined ^1). The first strain, however, exaggerates the registral play to open a 13th from E4 to C6, then continue with the more compact B5-D5. In the consequent phrase we hear the final C5 and imagine (easily) the upper C6.
n9: The uppermost registral figure in n10, first strain, is anticipated in n9, where a simple neighbor figure, C6-B5-C6, dominates the first strain. The contrast is substantial with the second strain, which plods along in repeated short descending lines, and not surprisingly then puts out a ^3-^2-^1 frame overall.
