New publication: more music before 1650

I have published a new essay on the Texas ScholarWorks platform: link. This includes seventy compositions I found after the Part 2 essay was published in May of this year: link to Parts 2a-d.

Ascending Cadence Gestures, A New Historical Survey, Part 2e: to 1650, addendum

Abstract:

This is Part 2e of a multi-part essay gathering compositions with ascending lines and cadence gestures in European and European-influenced music. Compositions include psalm settings by Le Jeune and Schütz, sacred songs by Henry and William Lawes, music from Felipe Pedrell’s historical anthology of Spanish organ music, keyboard music by Trabaci, instrumental ensemble music by Buonamente, Merula, and Turini.

Castillon, Valses humoristiques (1871)

Alexis de Castillon followed one of the familiar trajectories for a 19th century musician. From an aristocratic family, he was intended for law or the military but resisted and went into music instead. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Massé and Franck; among his friends was Saint-Saëns. Generally in poor health, he died young.

In de Castillon's 6 Valses humoristiques (1871) the first number is of interest. Its principal strain offers the rising line from ^5 in stark simplicity, including V9:

(Note that the second strain drills in the upper tetrachord, now with a descending scale figure--boxed.)

The design is ABCDAE, where E is a coda whose final phrase is recalls the opening with the melody in the left hand:

New blog: On the Dominant Ninth

The number of blogs I maintain has recently grown to four. Hearing Schubert D779n13 was the first of them: it was (and still is) meant to create rich contexts for that curious A-major waltz that is so out of place in the Valses sentimentales, D. 779 (publ. 1825). As material accumulated on ascending cadence figures (which D. 779n13 offers in the most direct and both structurally and expressively consequential way) and on formal designs in early waltzes and related dances (there also D. 779n13 is an anomaly), two additional blogs emerged as spin-offs, the goal in both being primarily to document occurrences and patterns, primarily in 19th-century music but also in earlier music where relevant. These blogs are the present one and Dance and Dance Music, 1650-1850.

Continuing the derivations, On the Dominant Ninth is a spin-off mainly from this blog, given (1) that it was treatments of scale degree ^6 in the major key that enabled the ascending cadence lines that one finds already in Schubert and then more and more often in others as the 19th century moved on; and (2) that in the majority of cases the chord of the dominant ninth was involved. In the new blog, however, the work is not restricted to cadences or to rising figures. Instead, it "is intended to document [the variety of treatments of scale degree ^6 as the ninth of a dominant ninth chord], especially in the essential 19th century European repertoires of the musical stage and music for dance" (quote from the first post to the blog, 21 June 2018).

The new blog has already inspired two publications on the Texas ScholarWorks platform: most recently Dominant Ninth Harmonies in American Songs around 1900; before that Dominant Ninth Harmonies in the 19th Century. A new series on the blog—documenting presentations of the dominant ninth in theory textbooks and treatises in the 19th century—began with a post today on Catel's Traité d'harmonie.

I have published a new essay on the Texas ScholarWorks platform: link.

Title: Offenbach, Rising Melodic Gestures in La belle Hélène (1864)

Abstract:

Jacques Offenbach’s La belle Hélène (1864) was the successor to Orphée aux Enfers (1858; 1874) in both its send-up of Greek myth and its production triumph. Four other mature and now well-known operettas followed: Barbe-bleue (1866), La Vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867), and La Périchole (1868). All of these—along with La belle Hélène—were composed to libretti by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. 

A choral fugue by Handel

Given the strong conventions enforced by Italian style in the eighteenth century, it always feels like a surprise to find an obvious ascending gesture in a structural cadence in music from this period. But here is one: from Handel’s oratorio Solomon (1748), no. 6 “Throughout the land Jehovah’s praise.” This number holds to conventional formulas for a choral fugue but at the same time manages an especially striking ending. In the examples below, I have shown the opening of the chorus with the first three entries of the subject, then the ending, soprano part only with Dr. John Clarke’s keyboard reduction. Note the cadenza perfetta (6-8), the grand pause (boxed), and the final cadence with rising line in the soprano (also boxed).

Beginning:

Ending (soprano and keyboard reduction only):

New historical survey

I have published two sets of files on the Texas ScholarWorks platform for a series Ascending Cadence Gestures, New Historical Survey.  Part 1 is the general introduction: link.  Part 2 surveys European Modal Music (to 1650): link.

The abstract:

This new documentation of traditional European and European-influenced music with ascending lines and cadence gestures includes compositions from the fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The work is gathered in five parts, published separately. Part 1 contains the general introduction and a bibliography. Parts 2a-c cover music to 1650, Part 3 from 1650 to 1780, Part 4 1780 to 1860, and Part 5 1860 to the US copyright barrier, which is currently the end of 1923.        

[Please note: Parts 1-2 are available now. Parts 3-5 will be published as they are completed.] 

Administrative

The introduction to the blog was posted on 17 October 2014. Find it here: link.  An updated description of the blog, its argument, and its methods appeared four years later, on 17 October 2018, on the occasion of the 300th post: link. See also additional commentary in the subsequent post: link.  Further comment on analysis methods and priorities may be found here (post from 30 September 2017): link.

An index to compositions may be found here: Index to the Blog Ascending Cadence Gestures and to Related Publications on the Texas ScholarWorks Platform.  The abstract for this file:

This is an index to musical compositions discussed in essays published on this platform since 2010, through 09 January 2019. Many but not all of the pieces listed were also discussed on my blog Ascending Cadence Gestures in Tonal Music (on Google’s blogspot platform). Taken together, these essays and blog posts document rising cadence figures and some melodic archetypes in a broad range of European music from roughly 1500-1900, including music for social uses (dance and song), for domestic and public performance, and for the musical theater.

I have published more than two dozen essays about ascending cadence gestures on the Texas ScholarWorks platform. Link to my author page.  Among these essays, I would point the reader especially to the "Gallery of Simple Examples" -- link -- and its sequel -- link. These two links are to blog posts that give title, abstract, and table of contents, along with a direct link.

Delibes, Sylvia, "Pizzicati"

In Léo Delibes's ballet Sylvia (1876), several of the best-remembered numbers occur in the third-act divertissement, which begins with the brief scherzo "Pizzicati." The design is simple: an introduction, 16-bar theme (see below), a five-bar interpolation followed by repetition of the theme's final eight bars (the consequent of its 16-bar period). A trio in the subdominant key follows, at 16 bars, and then the theme's consequent phase is repeated to end.

The two voices represented in the initial tonal space Bb4-Eb5 are easily traced, the close being a rising octave line that fulfills the implications of the bright eighth-note figures in bars 3, 5, etc.

Grieg, Larvikspolka, EG 101 (1858)

Presumably a collected piece of social dance music. Larvik is a city in southern Norway. The design of this polka is the very common ABACA of social dance music, beginning with contredanses in the late 1700s and then spreading to almost all other types. The ABACA can be almost indistinguishable from a small ternary form (ABA) with trio (C) and truncated reprise (A), though the "trio" is only one strain, not the two we usually find in the familiar Classical instrumental repertoire of sonatas, etc. The equally common case used here has A as a single principal strain, B a first "trio" in the subdominant key, and C a second trio in the relative minor. (In the contredanse repertoire C is almost always in the parallel or relative minor, which fact might suggest that Larvikspolka is a traditional tune, not a newly composed one from the 1850s). The modern notation is by "Sigerland" and is available on IMSLP: link.

I hear a primitive rising line in A:

In the first iteration of A, however, an inner voice is pushed above (F4 to F5) and the unfolded B4-F5 closes into C5-E5--see below. We can then trace the voices in the two trios. The C5-E5 interval remains stable in the first trio B, except that E5 moves up to F5. In the second trio C, G4 becomes A4/A5 and C5 remains stable.

A synoptic view, then, is as follows:

Note: I have "collapsed" two aspects into one, as the line ^5-^7-^8 is easily understood based on the proto-background ^5-^8.

Grieg, Lyric Pieces, Op. 68, part 2

The somewhat strange Valse mélancholique is no. 6, the last number, in Grieg's Op. 68. Sounding like a merger of Chopin's well-known melancholy waltz in A minor and the most repetitious of Tchaikovsky's ballet waltzes, the Valse mélancholique is also insistently dissonant, breaks up its harmonic progression oddly on more than one occasion, and includes a decidedly un-melancholic explosion in its structural cadence.

A rising line is a central figure in the opening. A four-introduction is followed by a thirty-two bar period that forms the waltz's first strain. The 16-bar antecedent phase, bars 5-20, brings a line very gradually up from D5 (doubled with D4) but it is broken after the F5 in bar 19 by a surprise harmonic break to a Neapolitan (G minor: an Ab6 chord) in bar 20, after which the consequent phase begins and plods along, becoming more and more insistent and finally pounding out the concluding notes of the rising line.

I hear the more active "alto" as thoroughly meshed with the octaves just discussed above, but it is entirely legitimate to hear the internal voice more or less independently. I have traced it in red below, an extra strand emerging after bar 28 being in green. Regardless of how it begins, however, the dramatic rising trajectory of the octaves takes over in the final bars.

The coda follows directly on the repetition of the fortissimo cadences in the reprise and takes a classic coda form with "reminiscences" over a tonic pedal point. Note that the octaves, having fulfilled their role, are gone, and we hear the alto's tune, still in the middle of the texture.

Grieg, Lyric Pieces, Op. 68, part 1

The ninth of Edvard Grieg's ten sets of highly accessible piano miniatures, the Lyric Pieces, was his Op. 68, written in 1898-99 and published in 1899. The second piece in Op. 68 is titled "Grandmother's Menuet." It is delicate and whimsical, presumably in the familiar mould of humorous "old people's" dances, the best known of that type being the "Großvater Tanz," a traditional tune familiar to everyone even nowadays through its quotation in the "Grandfather's Dance" in Act 1 of The Nutcracker.

The design is ABA'BA', where each version of A is 16 bars (8 + 8 where the second eight repeats the first an octave higher), B is 20 bars, A' is also 16 bars but the second eight form a stuttering repetition of the cadence (to be discussed below), and B, then A', are literally reprised.

The opening is striking -- and is referenced in undergraduate textbooks -- for its secondary dominant ninth chord (V9 or V), a "proper" harmony whose ninth resolves directly into the next chord. (On the dominant ninth chord and its several types, see my blog On the Dominant Ninth Chord.) Despite the positioning of ^3, as B4, over that secondary harmony, a traditional Schenkerian reading would assume a displacement, as if the B4 has been shifted over from its proper place above an implied I on the first beat. In that case, ^2 is first offered in the foreground in bar 2 but then implied in the middleground in bar 4, initiating a leading-tone third-line with G4 in bar 5 and F#4 in bar 7.

I prefer a more literal minded reading, as shown below. The stable note at the opening is ^1/^8, as G4, and we give that preference in the unfolding of G4-B4. The unfolding reverses itself in bar 5 in the sense that the lower note is now subordinate to the higher one, which is again G4. Although I have shown the ending as ^6-^7-^8, I would probably simplify the reading overall to ^8-^7-^8, or G4 in bar 1, F#4 in bar 7, and G4 in bar 8.

Section B, on the other hand, pounds away at B4 and sometimes B5 for all of its twenty bars. Since the texture is quite different from A, is entirely in octaves, as shown in the beginning, and it's clear that the underlying key is E minor, I don't hear this section as promoting B4 in the main section.

The altered reprise of A in its second phase repeats the cadential phrase but stops before the tonic (see the first one-bar grand pause). Single-bar repetitions occur an octave higher, then an octave lower before the tonic concludes. The overall effect, of course, is to give exaggerated attention to the rising cadence figure.

Hamma, Sanctus and Benedictus

Franz Hamma (1835-1915) was an organist, teacher, conservatory administrator, and composer of church music. He was born and was active in his early years in southwest Germany (Swabia), but worked for the last four decades of his life in Metz (Lorraine), moving there shortly after the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine following the Franco-German War.

Hamma's opus 8 is a very compact setting of the mass for four male voices, obviously a composition for practical use. The Sanctus and Benedictus/Osanna both put considerable emphasis on the upper tetrachord, the first tenor in the Sanctus residing entirely there after the opening arpeggio. In the Benedictus, the tenor focuses on ^5, firmly ascending only in the final phrase.

References:
  IMSLP page for this composition: link.
  Biography: link.

Two hymns from an 18th century service manual

"Das Grab ist leer, der Held erwacht" is an Easter hymn published in the Landshuter Gesangbuch in 1777. The editors of the volume were presumably responsible for the unsigned music and text: Norbert Hauner and Franz Seraph von Kohlbrenner. This hymn became quite popular and remained so through the nineteenth century. The version below is a duple meter variant published in 1874. The opening of the original triple-meter version is reproduced at the bottom of this post.

The design of the opening holds for the entire verse, in melodic shape a proto-background ^3-^8, as shown below (though possibly ^3-^5-^8, as suggested by the ^5 in parentheses), the line being a neighbor ^8-^7-^8, which might possibly be heard as a double neighbor figure depending on the details of a particular harmonization.

Below: The opening of the 1777 version, which clearly combines the heroic and pastoral topics. The F#5 in bar 6 is a hint of what follows (not shown), where I would find ^3 to be plausible focal tone.

Reference: Wikipedia page for "Das Grab ist leer": link.

Lehar, The Merry Widow, Act 1 Ball-music

Franz Lehar, Die lustige Witwe / The Merry Widow (1905), Act 1 Ball-music. This single waltz strain is to be played offscreen under conversation, but also ad libitum, meaning it can be left out (the same music appears later in the score -- a recording I listened to recently included the first statement but dropped the second one). The design is a 32-bar period (common in waltzes after about 1860, but also found regularly later on in marches, one-steps, and rags). The first 16-bar phase is one of those awkward units where period or sentence might apply equally well, depending on how you take the identical rhythms but different melodic shapes.

A triadic interval frame is established quite clearly -- circled at the beginning below -- and is returned to at the end of the first 16-bar phase -- circled at the beginning of the second system. In the second 16-bar unit, the triad is shifted upward -- circled across the second and third systems -- and overlaps with a simple scalar progress through the octave, with a registral drop on ^3. See the next example.

Here is a schematic of the triad frame (as proto-background) and a parsing of the octave line in the final six bars.

Brahms, Liebeslieder-Walzer, op. 52, n3

The third number in Brahms's opus 52 is brief, a duo for tenor and bass, for whom the slightly obnoxious text offers that a fellow would have become a monk if it were not for the charms of women.

Here is the piece in a piano reduction (not by Brahms but obviously based very closely on his piano four-hands version). All in all, a simple rising line from ^5 in the first strain, repeated to end the second.

Here is the texted version with solo piano accompaniment. The tenor might be said to trace a line from ^3 downward, so long as one is willing to understand ^7 in the penultimate bar as a substitution for ^2--not unreasonable. It is, however, telling that Brahms—far from emphasizing the voice parts in his own piano versions of the piece—dropped them.

Hummel, German Dance, op. 45n4

Hummel's Opus 45 (1812) is a set of dances meant for performance in the Apollo Saal, one of the largest of such entertainment centers in Vienna, with multiple rooms in which one could dance, talk, eat, or gamble (link to German Wikipedia). As a published collection in piano arrangement, Op. 45 consists of a march introduction, six menuets with trios, six German dances with trios, and a lengthy coda.

The fourth German dance is easily heard with a simple rising line in the first strain and an extended ^8 with double neighbors in the second strain. Performance practice would dictate the likelihood that the first strain would be repeated after the second. An interesting point about the first strain is that the first phrase gives us half-note length Urlinie notes on the strong beat—D5 in bar 2, E5 in bar 4—where the second phrase does the reverse, giving us F#5 immediately in bar 5 and G5 in bar 7. The symmetry makes for an elegant theme.

Alternatively, one might decide to take the initial ^8—which I have called a cover tone above—and regard that as the focal tone, a reading that makes sense given the figures of the second strain, as described above. If so, the result is an ^8-^7-^8 Urlinie with a middleground ascent connecting to ^7 in the second phrase (see ^5 and ^6 in parentheses in the first phrase).

Still another alternative would be to wait till the middle of the second strain to reach ^3, as B5. An initial ascent is easy enough to hear, as is a descent in the cadence. Whether such an expressive toppling of the formal design is justified, whether it makes much musical or artistic sense, is a matter of opinion. Such late placements of the initial focal tone are not uncommon in traditional Schenkerian analysis but are rarely very convincing. Here, of course, if we take performance practice for dance music into account, this reading could only be sustained in the case of AB or ABAB, not if the first strain is repeated to end, ABA or ABABA.

E. F. Richter, "Frühlingsglaube"

Ernst Friedrich Richter is known mainly as a very successful theory and composition textbook author. In the mid-nineteenth century, he taught at the newly founded Leipzig Conservatory.  He was also a composer. "Frühlingsglaube," the first of two choral pieces for soprano voices on poems by Ludwig Uhland, is striking in its treatment of an ascending cadence gesture, a parallelism with a descending cadence formula, and the artistically sensitive expression of text achieved through the cadence parallelism.

The poem is in two verses of nearly equal length (7 lines in the first, 8 in the second), its parallelisms made clear by repetition of the final line, "Nun muss sich alles, alles wenden" ("Now everything, everything must change"). In the usual mode of Romantic irony, the poem lauds the pleasures and new life of spring—but as an escape from pain and suffering. (It's easy to make light of that now, but in an era when death was likely by the age of 50, and not uncommon by 40, and where the worst urban diseases, small pox, tuberculosis, and syphilis, were still largely not understood, such oppositions were serious and had considerable immediacy.)

The music for the two verses is very similar, the first half (with a cadence to the dominant) being essentially identical, the second half altered in the second verse as it approaches the cadence. The first phrase of this second half emphasizes ^4 over a progression that extends the dominant, and then resolves to ^3, but over C# minor harmony. After that, repeatedly rising figures considerably expand the setting of "Nun muss sich alles, alles wenden" but a cadence does finally arrive in the lower register, not the upper.

The parallel place in the second verse expands the setting even further, reaching E5 a third time (circled in the second system below).

The original cadence phrase then starts up but its rise to ^5 is continued onward to ^8 this time. Note the common substitution of ^2 (or ^9) through a voice exchange with the alto.

The expansions of the two verse endings develop the material nicely as a way to express "everything must change" but their insistence also throws off the symmetry of the verse halves and the pairing of pleasant spring imagery against what amounts to a half-despairing cry, not "Everything is changing" but "Everything must change."