Strauss, Die Fledermaus n4, Trio

Rosalinde bids farewell to Eisenstein, still believing he is going to jail. She sings a sad complaint about being left alone (her maid, Adele, has managed to secure time off to go to the same party Eisenstein will attend). There are three iterations of this, each of them followed by a brief passage in a can-can rhythm; the three singers are whispering an aside "Oh, how this moves me!" [O je, wie rührt mich dies!].

The cadences for the first and second instances are cut off, but the third finishes its emphatic ascent to ^8.

Strauss, Die Fledermaus n3, duo

Complications arise. (These, of course, will all be resolved happily in the Act III finale.) After Rosalinde and the lawyer Blind have left the room, Eisenstein's friend Falke arrives to invite him to a party that evening. Eager to escape, Eisenstein agrees but says that Rosalinde must not know. What Eisenstein himself does not know is that Falke is planning pay-back for a practical joke that left him wandering the city after a ball dressed in a bat costume (hence, the title Fledermaus, of course).

Falke opens the number with his invitation, "Komm' mit mir zum Souper," an Allegretto grazioso in polka rhythms. The design has a dance's clarity, too: introduction (4 bars), strain 1, strain 2, repeat introduction, strain 1, strain 3 (coda; repeated to equal 16 bars). The principal strain balances rising and falling lines beautifully:

The coda strain brings the rising line to the fore through Falke's expansion of it as he presses his invitation and Eisenstein at last agrees:

After some musical banter back and forth, they return to the polka, this time making a simple attempt at closing off the rising line, but the final ^8 is undercut dramatically by the harmony:

The coda follows (in A major), another polka (the polka schnell now: Allegro), in which first Eisenstein, then both, sing in high spirits.

Although the ending offers a ^7-^8 ascent (in the orchestra, a high A5 undoubtedly also chosen by singers in some productions), it is not convincing overall, as the focal tone ^3 (as C#5) is quite firmly established and maintained throughout.

Strauss, Die Fledermaus, n2 Trio

The second musical number in Die Fledermaus is a trio for Rosalinde, Eisenstein, and Blind. It opens with a comic Allegro in 2/4: Eisenstein is about to be jailed for insulting an official, and he berates his lawyer (Blind) for failing to defend him. Eisenstein's wife Rosalinde finally intervenes, telling Blind that he ought to leave. This is the first occasion for a rising cadence gesture, quite emphatic even if the harmonic rug is pulled out from under it in the final chord:

In the introductory post to this series, I wrote that, for each number in Fledermaus, I would ask the question "Why does an ascending melodic figure dominate the cadence(s) and not the clichéd falling version inherited from 18th century practice?" In this case, (1) the focus on the upper edge of the register in the main phrase (bars 1-5 above); (2) the repetitions of the pick-up chromatic ascending figure (bars 9-12), which invite continuation in the same direction (bars 12-13); (3) the more and more peremptory "hinaus" (get out!) (bars 12-13); (4) the exaggerated melodramatic humor in the subverted tonic at the end, as Rosalinde hits and holds her high note.

Rosalinde and Eisenstein discuss the situation (Andante mosso, in the style of accompanied recitative) but then Blind returns and the comic Allegro resumes, shortly turning into catalogue patter as Blind lists all his legal skills (un poco agitato). The music builds in energy till it explodes in a Vivace finale with the three singing over each other. The figure—in Rosalinde's part—is a mirror line from ^8 down to ^5 and back again, here with a dramatic superimposed ^9.

The Vivace is a typical operatic ensemble close, whose simple harmonic progressions and repetitious figures are similar to "one more time" passages in Classical-period instrumental codas. After waltzes and polkas, these ensemble endings are the most frequent source of rising cadence gestures in 19th century music.

Strauss, Die Fledermaus, introduction

With this post I begin a series on the classic Viennese operetta Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss, jr. The series will continue the basic task of this blog—to document rising figures and especially cadence gestures in European and European-influenced music from roughly 1600 to 1950, with somewhat greater attention naturally falling on the 19th century. Now, however, I intend to put more emphasis on the expressive and dramatic functions of ascending cadence gestures in texted works. My method is quite simple: for each song or number I will ask the question, Why does an ascending melodic figure dominate the cadence(s) and not the clichéd falling version inherited from 18th century practice?

First, however, the overture, justly as famous as any of the vocal numbers. The design is one that was well known in the 19th century as the potpourri, but which has more recently been dubbed the "medley overture." That is to say, it doesn't follow the clichéd sonata or sonata-like design inherited from the 18th century and that was still present in many early to even mid-19th century opera overtures, but instead consists of a lively preview of important melodies to be encountered later. This early auditing of the show's tunes makes eminent dramatic sense, and it is hardly a surprise that the "medley overture" had almost completely replaced the old-fashioned sonata overture by 1874, the year that Die Fledermaus premiered.

The sections and their themes:

Allegro vivace 2/2
  --from Act 3, in no. 15, “Ja, ich bins, den Ihr betrogen”
Allegretto  4/4
  --same
. . . .
Allegretto 2/4
  --from Act 3, also in no. 15, “Was sollen diese Fragen hier?”
  --from Act 3, in no.16, “So erklärt mir doch”
Tempo di valse   3/4
  --from Act 2, the final section of no. 11, “Diese Tänzer mögen ruh’n”/"Stellt Euch zum Tanz"  First
    & second strain are recalled in Act 3, no. 13 (melodrama)
. . . .
Andante  3/4
  --from Act 1, no. 4, beginning, “So muß allein ich bleiben”
Allegro moderato  2/4
  --from Act 1, no. 4, “O je, O je, wie rührt mich dies”
Tempo ritenuto   2/4
  --reprise of “So erklärt mir doch”
Tempo di valse   3/4
  --reprise of “Diese Tänzer mögen ruh’n” / "Stellt Euch zum Tanz"
[Allegro moderato  2/4]
Più vivo
  --reprise of “O je, O je, wie rührt mich dies” and “Ja, ich bins, den Ihr betrogen”

Here is the list again, with musical excerpts:

--from Act 3, in no. 15, “Ja, ich bins, den Ihr betrogen”

--from Act 3, also in no. 15, “Was sollen diese Fragen hier?”

--from Act 3, in no.16, “So erklärt mir doch”

 --from Act 2, the final section of no. 11, “Diese Tänzer mögen ruh’n”/"Stellt Euch zum Tanz"

--from Act 1, no. 4, beginning, “So muß allein ich bleiben”

--from Act 1, no. 4, “O je, O je, wie rührt mich dies”

--reprise of “So erklärt mir doch”
--reprise of “Diese Tänzer mögen ruh’n” / "Stellt Euch zum Tanz"
--reprise of “O je, O je, wie rührt mich dies” and “Ja, ich bins, den Ihr betrogen”

There's little point in investigating  ascending cadences in the overture, since all the significant ones will show up again in the vocal numbers, where they are relevant to my concern in this series on gestures and text.

Beethoven, German Dances, WoO8, 6 and 7, orchestral score

In yesterday's post, I wrote about Beethoven, German Dances, WoO8, numbers 6 and 7: link. My comments were based on the keyboard scores, which were published at the same time as the original orchestral versions in 1795.

In n6, I found a proto-background of the triad D5-G5-B5, with a descending line from ^3 in the A section, and a rising line from ^5 in the B section.

The orchestral score complicates that reading. At A1, Beethoven tops the violin melody with ^7-^8 in the oboes. At A2, the oboes repeat the figure but now they are overtopped by the flutes giving the violins' tune an octave higher. The net result, though, is that the descending third-line of my reading remains intact.

In the B section, the violins' accented restatement of triad tones in bars 9-11 (B5 in bar 9, G5 in bar 10, and D6 in bar 11) is undermined by the oboes' definite stepwise ascent from F#5 to B5, which suggests the latter as a goal for the phrase. In the final phrase, however, at C1, C2, C3, the winds' doubling of the violin figure clearly reinforces the sense of the rising line (D5-E5-F#5-G5) as primary.

In WoO8n7, the winds move predominantly stepwise and may be said emphatically to "choose" their candidate for primary voice from among the scales, arpeggiations, and unfoldings. When their input is accepted, there is no other choice but to hear ^3 as the focal tone and a descent to ^1 in both sections.

Beethoven, German Dances, WoO8, numbers 6 and 7

I have used the first number in Beethoven's orchestral dances, WoO8 (1795), multiple times as an exemplar of that turning point—in Viennese dance music, anyway—when the heavily clichéd strictures we associate now with 17th and 18th century figured bass practice and pedagogy begin to be undermined by a richer set of expressive possibilities. Here is the post on this blog: link.

While working on a new, Schenker-related essay project, I realized that two other dances in WoO8 can be heard with ascending background lines. The more direct of the two—and certainly plausible with the usual Schenkerian focal tones—is n7, despite its maze of unfoldings in the beginning. The unfoldings do suggest a role for ^3 as structural alto; through them one can hear an alto-level third-line in bars 1-8 (E5 at the beginning, D4 in bar 7, C4 in bar 8). From that point on, unmistakable lines lead back to ^5 (G5) and then onward to ^8 in the cadence.

Here is standard Schenkerian notation of a reading from ^3. This seems to me to be one case where the "default" reading from ^3 is heavily at odds with the music.

I hear pitch design in n6 as more complex, another case where tonal frames (or proto-backgrounds) help considerably. The boxed triad at the beginning is regained "as is" in bar 12. Note at the beginning that each of the three notes has its moment: ^8 as the first metrically accented note, exaggerated by the sforzando; ^5 with the first linear motion (a neighbor note that receives the second metrical accent); and ^3, whose own neighbor figure is the theme's contrasting idea. In bars 5-8, ^3 is clearly the focus. In bars 9-11, each of the three triad notes appears on the beat (see flagged notes), and the original triad frame is restated in position in the fifth octave. This time ^3 receives the phrase's first metrical accent, ^8 the next one, and ^5 develops and extends its neighbor figure to create a rising line, where its ^6, ^7, and ^8 are all metrically accented. A Schenkerian version of all this is shown below the score.

It would certainly be easy enough to read from ^3 throughout—and far more plausible than it was in n7—but the effect is still musically distant, something that maps an ideal voice-leading that struggles to be expressive or otherwise musically revelatory.