Post no. 301 and a (slight) change of focus

For most of the history of this blog, I have produced a series of posts on a single topic, then gathered those posts into an essay published on the Texas ScholarWorks platform (link).

I am currently working on a large-scale project that traces ascending melodic gestures in the stage works of Jacques Offenbach, as well as some of his predecessors (mainly Adolphe Adam, Donizetti,  and Hervé) and successors (Charles Lecocq, André Messager, possibly also Johann Strauss II). For this multi-part essay series, which is expected to run for a year or more, I will announce each part as it is published on Texas ScholarWorks. A few representative excerpts will probably be posted here as well.

The main goal for this blog going forward, however, is to return to my original conception of it: occasional posts on individual works as I find them and infrequent posts surveying mentions of the rising line in the music theory literature, in connection with or in response to my 1987 JMT article.

Some time ago now (in 2010, in fact) I wrote a series of posts (link to the first) and then gathered those as an essay (link) on Carl Schachter's two extended engagements with the ascending Urlinie. Nowhere else in the literature did my work on this topic merit so much attention, and I remain grateful to him for it, even if I completely disagree with his conclusions (or, really, with the grounds on which those conclusions were reached).

I have written previously about a few articles and books that mention the ascending Urlinie and/or analyses that utilize it (or specifically criticize it):

• Emily Ahrens Yates and Carl Schachter on Chopin, Op. 28n9 (link); (link)
• Michael Buchler, conference paper on Disney (link) and publications (link)
• Charles Burkhart, unpublished analysis of Couperin, Pieces de Clavecin, Ordre 5, "La Flore" (link)
• Suzannah Clark, critique of an analysis by Thomas Denny, from her Analyzing Schubert (link)
• Walter Everett, article on 19th-century songs (link); (link); (link)
• Henry Martin on Miles Davis's "Four" (link); comment by Mark McFarland and response by Martin (link)
• William Rothstein, in an article on implied notes, comment on the ascending Urlinie (link) and analysis of Beethoven, op. 119n7 (link)
• Heinrich Schenker, Bach Prelude in C Major, BWV 924 (and 924a) (link)
• Jeffrey Swinkin, analysis of Scriabin, Op. 11n13 (link)
• Naphtali Wagner on Sgt. Pepper (link)
• Channan Willner, essay on the polyphonic Ursatz (link)
• Jason Yust on Beethoven, Op. 22, III (link)
• Matthew Brown, Explaining Tonality (link)

Hugo Wolf songs, Part 3

"Komm, Liebchen, komm!”   (Goethe Lieder no. 44). Design is ternary, where A is closed in the tonic key, B is extended and shifts keys several times, and A' is complete, where the voice line is often altered and the piano part is the same until the approach to the final cadence. A full page coda for the piano follows that cadence.

The A section is in two segments, the first closing with a PAC on V--see the cadence chord in bar 9 below. The set of circled notes in the piano, right hand, show steady step-wise progress upward from Eb5 to Ab5 in the cadence that closes the A section.

The voice part works quite differently. I have isolated it below. The Eb5 at (a) is the seventh in an F7 chord, dominant of Bb. It is touched on again and then resolves downward, first to D-nat5, then Db5, and we would expect the line to continue downward to C5, but instead the voice returns to Eb5 at (d) and the piano left hand takes over to resolve the Db (as seventh of Eb7)--see arrow. At (b) an inner voice moves up by step reaching A-nat4, which joins the upper Eb5 in an unfolded diminished fifth -- at (c1). This resolves as expected to a third at (c2); I have shown the upper note as Db5, but to match harmony in the strictest way it would have been D-nat5. In any case, as the upper voice Eb5 is recovered at (d), the lower voice moves on from Bb4 to the lower note of the unfolded fifth Ab4-Eb5 at (e), and cadential closure follows -- with that framing interval, Ab4-Eb5, intact (see final bar). (The two asterisks, btw, point to admittedly obvious register play.)

The detail in the discussion above is of interest because of the way Wolf rewrites the reprise of the A section. The first half, bars 59-67, is shown below. The piano carries its left-hand tenor melody again, and the voice winds its way within the interval frame Eb4-Ab4-Eb5. The cadence, however, is most easily approached from ^3, as shown beginning in bar 64.

The second half of the reprise suggests the possibility of the voice part moving onward from that ^3 (see bar 69) and steadily upward to the cadence on Ab5--see bars 77-79. The piano part goes even further, expanding its right-hand movement from earlier to move step-by-step to overtop the voice at ^3 (as C6).

Hugo Wolf songs, part 2

"Erschaffen und Beleben” (from the Goethe Lieder, no. 33) is in four quatrains, each set differently by Wolf in the voice, but throughout with a consistent left/right quarter-note alternating rhythm in the piano. At the outset, B4 (as written) is established as a focal tone:

The setting of the fourth quatrain recovers and prolongs that B and eventually leads to a ^5-^6-(^8)-^7-^8 ascending Urlinie in the major key.

t

Hugo Wolf songs, part 1

In my rising lines table (link), songs by Hugo Wolf take an unexpectedly prominent place:

“Fussreise.”     (Mörike Lieder)
“Lieber alles.”   (Eichendorff Lieder);
           -- see Everett, Journal of Music Theory 48/1 (2004): 51-4
“Frech und Froh I.”   (Goethe Lieder);
           -- see Everett, Journal of Music Theory 48/1 (2004): 51-4
"Cophtisches Lied II.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Dank des Paria.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Erschaffen und Beleben.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Frech und Froh II.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Komm, Liebchen, komm!”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Nimmer will ich dich verlieren!”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Der Schäfer.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Die Spröde.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"St. Nepomuks Vorabend.”  (Goethe Lieder)
"Trunken müssen wir alle sein!”  (Goethe Lieder) 

From these I have chosen four as the material for a series of posts beginning today. Those are

"Cophtisches Lied II.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Erschaffen und Beleben.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Komm, Liebchen, komm!”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Trunken müssen wir alle sein!”  (Goethe Lieder)

I have already written about "Der Schäfer" (Goethe Lieder no. 22) on the blog: see this post. In this song, the relation of a rising line to text is quite simple: a lazy shepherd suddenly perks up and becomes industrious when a romantic relationship blooms (or possibly when a nagging spouse gets him moving). The rising line -- and closing cadence -- mimics the new energy. Overall, one can hear a rising line from ^5:   -- see the earlier post for details of the reading --

"Trunken müssen wir alle sein!”  (Goethe Lieder no. 35; published in 1889). The poem is in two verses, each of which is six lines long, consisting of three rhymed couplets. An English translation of the first verse is here: link.

Not your average drinking song, this one is more forceful than exuberant and it is predominantly in a minor key, including in the ending. The initial F#5 (as written) is maintained throughout as a focal tone ^8. Its chromatic descent is marked with circles below. The box shows the first instance of a vigorous ascending figure that becomes more and more prominent as time goes on.

The second couplet goes the opposite direction, with a diatonic line upward from C#5 through D5 to close on E5. The piano interrupts with its ascending figure (boxed), here set in a wedge.

The third couplet offers a rare example of a ^5-^6-(^8)-^#7-^8 minor key ascending Urlinie, against which the left hand of the piano part offers another version of its rising octaves (boxed). The coda has still another one of those to end, this time as a simple minor key rising line through an octave.

The first and second couplets of the second verse are set to even more vigorous music, eventually reaching an interval frame E#5-C#5 with a third line at the PAC—end of the example below.

The third and final couplet of the second verse offers an expanded version of the minor-key ascending Urlinie. Note, incidentally, that the two unfolded thirds, D5-F#5, E#5-C#5, expose the minor key problem in an even more obvious way than did the end of the first verse: D5 moves to C#5 and has to be reconceived in order to be heard as moving upward (against the grain of the voice leading) to E#5. A familiar Schenkerian dodge has to be called into play to make this happen: the device Allen Forte called overlapping (and which is one species of upward register transfer or Übergreifen). In a sequence, a note may be obliged to resolve downward, but another voice may overlap it, and still a third overlap that--and the resulting "line" going up may nevertheless be regarded as a unitary figure. In this case, ^6 resolves down to ^5 and is overlapped by ^8, which also moves down. There is no ^9 to overlap again: ^8-^7 just repeats itself.

Here is the entire texture. The piano hammers away at the rising figure -- see the box in bar 2 -- and finally bursts out in an extended chromatic run (boxed in the second and third systems). Both voice and piano, then, provide an ascending line to ^8 in this structural cadence. (The final bars look like they might be a reprise (see at "Wie zu Anfang"), but they are in fact a fairly brief recall acting as a coda.)

Glinka, Mazurka in F major (1833-34)

The second strain of this mazurka is a transposed variant of the first strain. Both are framed by a simple ascending Urlinie from ^5 to ^8. The internal elaboration in the first phrase of each strain is a neighbor note figure that brings considerable expressive emphasis to ^6, presaging its essential role in the cadence. The overall treatment of ^6, then, is very close to Schubert's in D779n13 (link).

Pecháček, 12 Laendler (1801)

František Martin Pecháček (1763-1816) was a Bohemian violinist, conductor, and composer who spent his professional career in Vienna, mainly as a conductor in the theaters. He was the father of the violin virtuoso Franz Xaver Pecháček.

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.

In the context of this set, n12 is an anomaly: its first strain is in the relative minor (the second clarinet even plays G#, the only accidental in the entire set), but the second strain is equally firmly in C major. In the repertoire of Ländler and Deutscher Tanz, however, such pairings are not unusual, if also not common. Examples in Schubert include D145ns 5, 8; D365n22; and D779ns7, 22, 31. Here, as in some instances in Schubert, the second strain is essentially a transposed version of the first, with the important exception that the lower ^1 is missing in the final bar, replaced by the upper C6, so that the framing figure is the primitive Urlinie ^5-^7-^8.

New Publication: Music from the Notes in Ascending Urlinie (JMT 1987)

I have just published The Ascending Urlinie (Journal of Music Theory, 1987): Studies of Music from the Endnotes on the Texas Scholar Works platform: link.  Here is the abstract:

In the endnotes to an article published thirty years ago, I list about thirty compositions as representative examples of different forms of the ascending Urlinie. This document provides analyses and discussion of all those pieces, as well as additional discussion of two pieces from the article’s main text: Bach, Prelude in C Major, BWV 924 (as compositional exercise); Beethoven, Piano Sonata in Bb major, op. 22, III (rising Urlinie and register).

The essay gathers the posts from this blog and adds to them additional material on BWV 924 & 924a and on Beethoven, String Quartet in Eb major, Op. 74.

JMT series, postscript

In May of this year, I started a series of posts that discussed compositions mentioned in the notes to my article "The Ascending Urlinie," this being the 30th year since its publication in the Journal of Music Theory. The two introductory posts are here: link; link. A further administrative post appeared in early September: link.

Since the series has necessarily been about Schenkerian analysis, I think it's important to stress here again that the blog is by no means restricted to that method or its issues. Referring to documents published on the Texas Scholar Works platform, I recently wrote "In this and other essays, a broader range of examples was made possible in part because the selection was not so constrained by abstract Schenkerian background models and their idealist voice leading. The result is a much better picture of musical practices over the several centuries separating 16th-century bicinia (two-voice pieces mainly for pedagogical use) from nineteenth century waltzes, polkas, and other instrumental and vocal compositions" (2017, 4). I have sometimes used a traditional Schenkerian method for pieces with clear focal tones that connect plausibly to rising cadence gestures, but equally or more often a freer model of reading lines and their patterns where I thought that provided better information. I have used my proto-background model when register, stable intervals and their transformations are particularly evident, and in the absence of analytic method I have used the simple, familiar model of style statistics and comparison where rising cadence gestures appear but their connections to pitch-design context aren't clear.

As the preceding suggests, although the hunt for rising cadence gestures began thirty years ago in an effort to justify and document the ascending Urlinie, it has evolved into a broader and more consequential historical project. That rising cadence gestures are far more than exceptions to the rule (even in narrowly constrained Schenkerian terms) has been obvious long since, but the historical narrative of these gestures in European and American music-making is a work in progress.

Reference:
Neumeyer, David. 2017. Ascending Cadence Gestures in Waltzes by Joseph Lanner. Link.

JMT series, part 10 (Beethoven, Op. 22, III)

I intended this originally as a response to an article by Jason Yust; the menuet movement from the Piano Sonata, Op. 22, is the author's main example: link. There is, however, little to be said from the standpoint of traditional Schenkerian analysis, as Yust's goal is to rationalize the orthodox form of the theory, and therefore the analysis of Op, 22, III, assumes a priori Schenker's analysis from Free Composition and seeks to formalize it. Broadly, his position is similar to Matthew Brown's rationalization of Schenkerian theory (2005). Brown rejects the ascending Urlinie with a bit of circular reasoning; Yust doesn't engage it at all. The closest he comes is a critical note on the waltz ninth in this menuet's Urlinie: "Neumeyer (1987) . . . considers G to be an ascending passing tone rather than an upper neighbor. According to his interpretation, the G and A at the end of m. 7 are successive notes in a single voice, even though they both are sustained as part of the dominant ninth harmony over all of mm. 5–7" (2015, n33). More on that at the end of this post.

Yust does mention my article on proto-backgrounds (2009). As I noted above, he belongs among the "rationalizers" of Schenkerian theory (and so do I--in Neumeyer 2009, at least); he summarizes the earlier history very well (in paragraphs 0.1.1 & 0.1.2, and introductory paragraphs to subsequent sections). Although I can hardly claim to have offered a formalized theory in Neumeyer 2009, I did focus on a generative model (that is, building out from the background through transformations), which Yust also favors. Here is a sample, his Example 15; I have removed its analysis of the bass to show only the reading of the treble parts. The specific aim of the work is to portray contrapuntal melody (2 or more part-writing "voices") in a single diagram or figure (which presumably can then be subject to computerized comparisons). Level 0 is the "chord of nature" and is indistinguishable from one of my proto-backgrounds. At Level 1 the passing tone C is represented as a digression from the interval; then a second voice appears--as a hierarchically subordinate voice it is shown below the primary voice. Level 2, so to speak, harmonizes the two voices, drawing them together into a single diagram. The only comparison I can possibly make is to say that, in my view, Level 0 could just as easily have had the fourth F5-Bb5 instead of the third Bb4-D5.

In the details of his analysis, Yust brings out motivic thirds, beginning with the pick-up gesture. In my view, the fourth is more prominent, tying together accented notes at the beginning, F4-Bb4, and then being repeated. Stretched to a fifth -- one can hear the stretching in Enat5 -- the fourth can still be heard as a shadow within the compressed thirds that follow and continue throughout the continuation phrase. This theme, incidentally, is in the antecedent + continuation design, which Caplin regards as a hybrid but which I have found to be fundamental to 18th century galant style and have re-named the "galant theme" (link).

A reading using proto-backgrounds is not kind to my JMT analysis of the theme as using the registral variant, ^5-^6-(reg.) ^7-^8, since the stable interval would strongly imply/imagine ^5 (as F5) at the end. See below.

Thinking of the proto-background more abstractly, the initial fourth could be recovered -- circled notes below -- but the registral variant of the Urlinie would be undercut by this version, as well.

I still do think that a registral variant (link) is not difficult to hear in this theme and in the reprise (below), but it is obviously not compatible with a reading based on proto-backgrounds, which are after all biased in favor of registral definition and stability.

Note on the note: "Neumeyer (1987) . . . considers G to be an ascending passing tone rather than an upper neighbor. According to his interpretation, the G and A at the end of m. 7 are successive notes in a single voice, even though they both are sustained as part of the dominant ninth harmony over all of mm. 5–7" (Yust 2015, n33). I have written about the "waltz ninth" many times by now--here's a (link) to a recent post in this JMT series. Yust's criticism is the same as the one I've just made with respect to proto-backgrounds and does tend to undermine the registral variant. The waltz ninth is another matter. Nineteenth-century practice is broader--more creative and expressive--than eighteenth-century proscriptions. At (a), the ninth as neighbor note; at (b), the directly resolving ninth, a cliché in the waltz repertoire by no later than 1830. Note that the essential Schenkerian melodic note, C, is nowhere to be seen (or heard) -- in four-part writing of ninth chords, one leaves out the fifth. At (c), the figure that applies to all three "extended" chords: keep the seventh below the newly added top note in ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth chords. At (d), the voiceleading for the rising line with waltz ninth, understood as at (e) splitting the ninth in two; the same at (f) in Schenkerian notation.

References:
Brown, Matthew. 2005. Explaining Tonality: Schenkerian Theory and Beyond. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.
Neumeyer, David. 2009. “Thematic Reading, Proto-Backgrounds, and Registral Transformations.” Music Theory Spectrum 31 (2): 284–324.
Yust, Jason. 2015. "Voice-Leading Transformation and Generative Theories of Tonal Structure." Music Theory Online 21/4: link

JMT series, part 6c (note 31, the waltz ninth)

By the mid 1850s, when Jacques Offenbach began his prolific career as a composer of operetta and opera bouffe, rising cadence gestures were already well embedded in musical practice. (See my essay on Adolphe Adam's Le Châlet [1834]: link. The essay was based on posts to this blog; follow the labels for "Adam" or go to the first post in the series: link.)

The composition and production history of Offenbach's final work, Les contes de Hoffmann [The Tales of Hoffmann] is complicated, but there is no ambiguity about its most famous number, the Barcarolle "Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour," number 13 in the four-act version of published French editions from the two decades after the composer's death. A duet for two sopranos, Giuletta, female lead of Act 3, and Nicklausse, Hoffmann's muse (a pants role), the soloists are joined by a chorus in the second half of the piece.

My comment in note 31: "^5 is prominent in the upper octave as a cover tone, also." Alas, here I was a bit optimistic about the status of the rising line. It is a distinctive figure to be sure--in fact, it is Giuletta's cadence line, and therefore ought to be given priority over the orchestra's plodding descent at that same place in the music. The orchestra's role in the gestures and topical expression of this particular number, however, is so strong that nowadays I have to regard the voice and orchestra as equals. That being the case, Giuletta's rising line is an inner voice, a "structural alto" to the orchestra's descending line from ^5. Details below.

I have shown just two systems from the vocal score. In the first, see the prominent A5 (^5), which of course has sounded many times before.

At (a) is the orchestra's descending line in the fifth octave (the keyboard reduction is corroborated by the full orchestral score, btw). At (b): Giuletta's ascending line, with ^6 (*) as the waltz ninth. At (c) Niklausse copies part of the orchestra's descent in the fourth octave. At (d) the curious detail of the second chorus alto repeated ^4-^3.

JMT series, part 8 (note 33)

In note 33 for the 1987 JMT article, I mention the incomplete line ^5-^7-^8. A "textbook" example of this "primitive Urlinie" in tandem with a proto-background ^3/^5 may be found in the ninth number of Schubert's Ecossaisen, D781. See the circled notes in bar 1 -- the pairing is obvious through the first strain; I have traced the voices in the score as they trade positions in the second strain.

The “verlorener Bruder” Trio, D610 (a trio without a menuet), neatly frames ^5 in its basic idea and transposed repetition (bars 1-4), then focuses on movement upward to ^8 in the continuation. In the shortened reprise (the final four bars), there is a bit of a "lost soul" sort of posthorn touch, and the voices are firmly set against one another at the last -- see the boxed notes.

In note 33, I mentioned Schubert, Ländler, D. 681, nos. 1 & 2 (perhaps as ^5-(^8)-^7-^8). Unfortunately, I don't have easy access to these at present. It is perhaps worth noting that these pieces would be nos. 5 & 6 in the complete 12 Ländler, D. 681 (from 1815), but the first four have been lost.

JMT series, part 7-1c_Beethoven Op. 119n7

Yesterday I quoted William Rothstein on the three-part Ursatz and ascending Urlinie. He asserts (though in seemingly tentative tones) that the middle or "alto" voice in a three-part voiceleading web is "hierarchically superior to the ascending one, even when the ascending progression lies above. . . . I suspect that this is consistently true in Corelli's music, and that it remains true in most music by other composers. But there are surely exceptions. To consider an extreme example, if Beethoven's C major Bagatelle Op. 119, No. 7, is not based on an ascending Urlinie, what music is?"

I am, of course, always glad to have support for the rising line as background, although it's hardly needed any more, given the 1000+ examples of ascending cadence gestures I have found (so far) in the repertoire of musics of all kinds, but I am obliged to disagree with Rothstein here, if we are talking in Schenkerian terms. Beethoven is not "fitting a figure in" to an existing system here--he is using that distinctive figure to transcend the system altogether. (David Lewin discusses this idea of transcending the system in terms of patriarchy and women's voices -- see the reference at the bottom of this post. In Beethoven's case, it is almost certainly a philosophical-religious-pantheistic transcendence of the kind one finds elsewhere in his music.)

Here is the title page for the first edition, with the publisher's hopeful marketing note "faciles et agréables."

The bagatelle is an odd little bricolage of musical bits that resembles a cut-and-paste job more than a coherent composition. I have exaggerated the point by "cutting up" the score, separating it into its three components: first, a more or less normal opening phrase of six bars;

. . . then an eight-bar "continuation" whose only connections to the preceding are staccato notes (cf. bar 6) and simple presentations of invertible counterpoint and stretto;

. . . and finally what looks rhetorically like a structural cadence, but (a) offers only a second inversion ii chord; then (b) subverts the dominant by providing the proper bass (eighth note G2 in the second bar) but with Bb, not B-natural. The persistent subdominant -- it's been there since bar 11 -- and the very extended tonic pedal point are both familiar features of Baroque preludes and so are not strange here, given the display of old-fashioned devices that preceded. Nor, even, is the wandering into the instrument's highest register -- recall BWV 924 & 924a and Niedt's recommendation (link) -- but, still, the long ascent combined with an equally extended crescendo does seem a bit much in context. (Yet again, though, as many writers have noted, there is an obvious connection between this little bagatelle and the attention to registral extremes in the variation movement of Op. 111, which must have been written around the same time as this bagatelle.)

In Schenkerian terms, the turn to the subdominant subverts a cadence to the final C in the bass. We are therefore obliged to read an Ursatz that concludes in ten bars with a by no means hidden Urlinie from ^3:

This obligatory reading is clumsy, of course, but given that the music heads off to the subdominant immediately thereafter, it makes sense. Note, of course, that there is no ascending Urlinie -- much as it bludgeons our ears, the ascent over the pedal point in the second half of this bagatelle-prelude is a foreground feature at best.

I am not overly inclined to defend this bagatelle, as you may have guessed, but I am willing to suggest that it is at least possible to draw the final ascending figure into an effective reading based on register, tonal frames, and invertible counterpoint. In the example below, the upper voice pair ^3/^5 in bar 1 is flipped to the sixth ^5/^10 in bar 2 (invertible counterpoint, remember). By bar 5 the ^5/^10 has become ^5/^9 -- or ^5/^2. In the sequence of bars 8 and following, ^2 becomes ^1 and ^5 becomes ^4. In bars 15 and following, ^1 (or ^8) returns by step to ^5, and ^4 drops to ^3, thus recovering, in its original position, the third-pair from bar 1. It's that interval that is looped and threaded through overlappings until it finally makes a direct (if chromatic) ascent to ^8 (as C7).

References:
Lewin, David. [1992] 2006. "Women's Voices and the Fundamental Bass." In his Studies in Music with Text. New York: Oxford University Press, 267-81.
Rothstein, William. 2006. "Transformations of Cadential Formulae in the Music of Corelli and His Successors." In Essays from the Third International Schenker Symposium, edited by Allen Cadwallader, 245-278.

JMT series, part 4a-1 postscript

Work for yesterday's post about the Scherzo in Beethoven's Second Symphony involved examining the orchestral parts. I found that the upper winds "overshot" ^8 in the final cadence, complicating my reading of a simple rising line (those "extra" notes had been deleted from the piano reduction I relied on during research for the 1987 JMT article).

Having found that, I decided to re-examine some of my analyses of Haydn symphony third movements. Symphony 100 produced some interesting results. Here is the original post: link.

In the original post I noted that the inverted arch shape of the opening melody worked against a rising line, but the orchestration in fact plays on a low-then-high registral pairing throughout that supports the rising line at a higher level.

In the A-section, the flute and the first violins begin in the same octave -- circled below -- but in the re-orchestrated repeat (bars 9-16), the flute plays an octave higher -- circled notes in bars 9-10; see also bars 14-16 in the second system below.

The upper winds rejoin the first violins in the B-section -- boxed notes in bars 17 ff above. This holds till the stop on V in bar 28 -- see boxed notes below.  After that an interesting wedge figure brings out the registral differences as the flute moves chromatically down from D6, then returns to it -- circled notes and line --  while the first violins (and first oboe) rise from D5 before likewise returning to where they started.

The reprise is 8 bars rather than 16 and it combines the orchestrations of the two versions from the A-section: brass and timpani play as in bars 1-8 while the strings and winds play as in bars 9-16, except for the addition of the persistent rising figure (boxed) that motivically connects the ends of the first and second phrases and brings particular clarity to the flute's upper-register scale in the structural cadence.

JMT series, part 6b-1 (note 31, the waltz ninth)

In the 1987 JMT article, I introduced the term "waltz ninth," which refers to ^6 treated either as a passing tone between ^5 and ^7 over V7 or as an element of a V9 chord that, despite older rules, moves upward to ^7 rather than resolving down to ^5. Here are two additional examples from Schubert: Valses nobles, D969n1, and Valses sentimentales, D779n13 (first strain only; second strain ends the same way).

In note 31, I mention the scherzos for the first two Beethoven symphonies. Until recently I thought the scherzo in Symphony no. 2 was the simpler of the two cases, and therefore decided to talk about it first here. The problem -- which nevertheless provokes some interesting opportunities for interpretation -- arises from orchestration, register, and arrangements.

Symphony no. 2, Scherzo. Comment in the note: "a very clear case." Here it is (below) as I analyzed it in the 1980s. I didn't specify a focal tone (aka first note of the fundamental line), though obviously I was assuming ^5; the shape of the cadence, however, is unmistakable. Note that ^6 rises to ^7 over the dominant.

My source was the piano reduction made by Otto Singer and published by Peters in 1906. Below is another version published a few years earlier by Ernst Pauer (London: Augener). [These are dates given on IMSLP; whether they represent time of the original publication, I don't know.]

The full orchestral version, however, has the following at the critical moment:

Curiously enough,  Franz Liszt follows the original in his pianistically enhanced reduction:

And, more tellingly, so does Beethoven himself in the trio arrangement published in 1805 (the orchestral original appeared in 1804).

Two other contemporary sources, however, treat the ending in the same way as Singer and Pauer. Hummel made some of the first published piano solo versions of symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Joel Sachs and Mark Kroll say of them that "[Hummel's] extraordinary ability to respond to the needs of the musical market place without sacrificing high musical standards is illustrated by his numerous arrangements. . . . For England [in the 1820s] he arranged symphonies by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, seven piano concertos by Mozart and 24 opera overtures. . . . All proved to be successful and profitable for both publisher and composer" (Oxford Music Online). Hummel's trio version is accurately described on the title page as for piano solo with accompaniment of violin and violoncello. Here is the piano's ending of the scherzo aligned with the violin part.

I've also aligned the two parts in an unattributed manuscript arrangement for piano four-hands from 1820.

What do we glean from all this? That any one of three backgrounds is plausible. Version (a) reads from ^3, with the upper octave as expressive doubling. Version (b) goes further, regarding the upper octave as consequential enough to warrant coupling [the Urlinie descends simultaneously in both octaves]. Version (c) shows my original reading, with ^5 as the focal tone and the simple ascent we have already seen above in several arrangements of the score.

Since (a) & (b) are marginally different in notation, I show only the details of (a) below.

Version (c) is below. I admit that I still prefer this one, despite its weaker claim on a firmly established focal tone at the beginning. In the graph below, note the expression of a neighbor note figure A5-B5 -- at (a) and subsequent places marked.

The weakness of ^5 at the beginning is that it's much easier to hear it as a one-too-far gesture. I've variously called it "one leap too far," "one note too far,"or just "one too far." Note how A5, as one-note-too-far, helps confirm ^3 (F#5), before the latter is undercut by another one-leap-too-far in the fortissimo D6. It's not hard to write off D6 as the emphatic expression of a cover tone, but it's now "two leaps," not one, which suggests a potentially different role for A5.

In the modulating consequent of this 16-bar period, the role of A5 as just described is confirmed: the figure of bar 2 continues upward in bar 4 and that register is maintained in the final phrase. The possibility of E6 as the interrupting ^2 for a focal tone ^3 is undercut by the fact that E6 is now where the undoubted cover tone was in the antecedent. The observation that things can get turned upside down in scherzos is not much of a defense.

The reprise is one of those -- common enough in Beethoven but found in others of his generation also -- that muddles the ending by introducing figures from the "development" (the B-section here). Unlike the scherzo in the first symphony, there is no possibility of hearing a structural cadence before the very end. Thus, the rising figure of the final bars attains considerable significance: not the falling resolutions in the seventh bars of antecedent and consequent above but the emphatically affirming fortissimo that follows.