Strauss, Die Fledermaus n5, Act I Finale, Trinklied

The finale to Act 1 is not a large-ensemble piece—instead, it is an extended trio scene for Rosalinde, her former singing teacher (and lover) Alfred, and the jail warden Frank.

The units are: (1) Alfred and Rosalinde (Trinklied: "Trinke, Liebchen, trinke schnell"); (2) Frank enters and mistakes Alfred for Eisenstein; (3) Rosalinde, trying to get rid of Alfred, claims he is Eisenstein (Couplets: "Mein Herr, was dächten Sie von mir"); (4) The Farewell Kiss (resigned, Alfred decides to play along) and the Parting (Trio: "Nein, nein, ich zweifle gar nicht mehr").

These will be covered in three posts.

Finding Rosalinde alone, Alfred is hoping to reignite romance and urges her to drink with him. "Trinke, Liebchen" is a dance-song, clearly divided into simple strains of 8 or 10 bars each. It begins as a pastorale with easily heard links to the Ländler; two strains are each 8 bars long. Here are the beginning of A and the end of B. The circled cadence melody is important to the overall design.

The third strain (C) picks up the light staccato common in the Viennese waltzes of Strauss's father, but only in the fourth strain (D) does the contemporary waltz emerge.

Alfred sings one further strain (E, not shown here), before Rosalinde joins him in a repetition of strain D:

The point of interest is of course Alfred's change of direction in the cadence (circled). Rosalinde does not use quite the shape of the cadence from strain B; we hear that in the orchestra instead, which reveals the overall shape of the voice leading:

In the reduction below, see the complex way in which this plays out. The upper voice E5 in bar 7 goes to D5 (Rosalinde's part). Meanwhile, ^7 ascends to ^8, or F#4-G4 (Alfred's part). The orchestra provides ^2-^1 (A5-G5; see the score excerpt for that) and ^4-^3 (C5-B4).

I have written about this and related melodic figures before, calling them collectively the "fall from the dominant," a descending gesture over the dominant, dropping to close on the tonic. See especially this essay on rising cadence figures in waltzes by Johann Strauss, sr.: link.  Here are some examples from one of the younger Strauss's earliest waltz sets: his Opus 7, Die jungen Wiener Walzer. Here is a link to information about the set: link.

The gesture originates in a simple—and very violinistic—flourish, as in the two strains of n2:

Such figures can be developed slightly, as in n1:

Or integrated into a longer line, as in the trio to n3:

And, just occasionally, because of the emphasis on ^5 and ^6 (or even ^7), the figure may not fall but in fact continue to rise into the tonic, as in n5: