Chaminade, The Flatterer, Op. 50

Chaminade, La Lisonjera / The Flatterer, Op. 50 (1890). Design is ABA with an extended coda. Section A, below, is literally repeated.

Because this is in the "thumb region" of the right hand, I have removed the left hand's bass clef in order to trace lines. An octave-line runs through the eight-bar antecedent phase of a sixteen-bar period, from Gb4 at the beginning to Gb5 in bar 9. If one hears that as the Schenkerian initial ascent, then what follows in the consequent phase is a mirror Urlinie: down from Gb5 to Db5 and then returning at the end.

Here is the "mirror" again, with the bass restored.

Chaminade, Piece Romantique, Op. 9n1

Chaminade, Piéce Romantique, Op. 9n1 (1880).   The design is ABA, where A is a 16-bar theme closing on V rather than I--see below-- and is then repeated, B is briefly contrasting but turns out to be an 8-bar transition, and A is an altered reprise of the theme with a close on the tonic.

Here is the altered reprise.

Chaminade, Berceuse, Op.6

Chaminade, Berceuse, Op.6 (published c. 1878). The main theme, section A, is a 24-bar double period (12 bars each in the antecedent and consequent). Here is the consequent. The upper note Bb5 reached to begin the second 6-bar phrase might be taken as a focal note.

Section B ends with a partial return -- beginning in the third bar below. Note that the flourish has now been extended upward to Eb6.

Section C is in D major (= Ebb major). A full reprise follows, where only the latter part of the consequent is altered, as below. Here Eb6 has become Eb7 in the flourish, and the figure is now an arpeggio rather than a scale. In the eighth bar of the excerpt, the harmony A 6/5 pulls the close in a different direction. The trills maintain the register of the previous closes: so A-natural4, G-natural4, Ab4, Gb4. Above that, E-natural5, ornamented at first, turns into a sustained half-note, then F5, then Gb to close--suggesting that the prominent Gb5 from the main theme may be the best choice if one is looking for a focal tone overall.

Chaminade, Mazurka, Op. 1n2

Cécile Chaminade, Mazurka, Op. 1n2 (1869). In the multi-strain with reprise design typical of 19th century dances, here as ABACDCAEA, where C, D, and E are in the subdominant. The A strain is shown below. Using Schenker terms and following one of my 1987 articles, I would call this a three-part Ursatz, with soprano descant (^3-^4-^4-^3) and alto Urlinie ^5-^6-^7-^8. Bars 5-8 repeat 1-4.

Reference: Neumeyer, David. "The Three-Part Ursatz." In Theory Only 10/1-2: 3-29.

Cécile Chaminade songs, Part 3

"Bonne Humeur" was published in 1903. The poem is by Amélie de Wailly (Mesureur). An English translation is available here: link. About firm companionship despite obstacles (those are represented by the adverse weather), the song expresses this sense immediately through "Nous marchions," from which the composer takes her cue.

The poem has four verses, using the rhyme scheme 1 1 2 3 3 2. The music for each verse varies, with verse 4 being a varied version of verse 1, thus musically the setting is ABCA'. The point of interest for this blog is in a wedge figure at the end of verse 3. More on that below. Otherwise, Chaminade works with the same ^5-^8 interval as she does in "La fiancée du soldat." Notice at the beginning that the lower element shifts up a step to end the first idea (E4-F#4)—see the arrow—and the upper element moves down a half-step to end the varied repetition (A4-G#4; see the second arrow).

A register change takes the interval to an upper fourth, B4-E5, which turns to a fifth, B4-E4, and then contracts to its original fourth E4-A4.

The wedge is a very prominent and dramatic passage that might have been played for humor (the line in the third bar of the example below has the companion Ninon stamping through mud puddles) but instead is transfigured with octave leaps and long held notes for "elle sourit": "she smiles."

Here are two versions of the voice leading: at (a), a simplification of the piano's chords; at (b), a reduced, registrally compressed four-voice version.

The end of the song could be said to be framed by a descending line—see the scale degree numbers—but the F# substitution for ^2 in the antepenultimate bar (boxed) leaves open an easily imagined E5 and a possible proto-background ^1/^5 as A4-E5 (boxed) in the penultimate bar.

Cécile Chaminade songs, Part 2

"La fiancée du soldat" was included in a two volume edition of songs published by G. Schirmer in New York (1892-93) with translations by several writers. The original French publication was in 1890. This song is in the first volume, which opens with "Ritournelle," still the best known of Chaminade's songs, which were quite popular in her lifetime but by no means to the same extent as her many piano compositions.

The music aptly expresses the woman's alternating moods of happiness and fear with minor/major contrasts between verses, but the expression isn't so simple as that sounds. Note below, for example,  that the shift from minor to major is to the text "Lon lon la, je chante ma peine."  The two segments of the poem, btw, become two verses in the music, each designed as A A ( = repeat) B1 B2 ( = varied repeat of the first phrase of B1). The beginning of the example also shows the importance of the fourth interval C5-F5, and of ^8 (F5) as focal tone.

The second part of B1 consists of a rising line from C5 to F5, followed by the first segment of the descending line from the beginning of B1.

The ending expresses the fourth interval in still another way.

The close of the song—the repetition of B2—varies this ending slightly to draw attention equally to C5 through the chromatic neighbor note Db5.

Cécile Chaminade songs, Part 1

"L'Idéal" was written by the Parnassian poet Sully Prudhomme. Chaminade follows the poem's design in the musical form A1 A2 ( = transposition, varied) B1 B2 A1 A2'. Her mode of expression is both dramatic and emphatic.

In the opening, a chromatic line rises to G4, then moves beyond it to G#4 (over an augmented triad) and A4 as the voice takes up its stolid recitation over ^8 (C4 if tenor, C5 if soprano), ending its phrase on ^9/^2 (D, circled).

The voice in the second phrase transposes its first phrase up a step, changing the ending to close firmly indeed with a ^3-^-2-^1 in C major, while—in an even more determined way (note the marcato accents)—the piano ascends to ^8. Overall then, a wedge figure is created.

In the reprise of the A section, the chromatic keyboard line flows directly out of the PAC that closes B2—see the circled notes below.

In the final phrase A2', both voice and piano reach fortissimo, and the piano overtops the voice (whether soprano or tenor), demanding equal attention to its rising line.

Chaminade, Passacaille, op. 130

Chaminade's Passacaille, op. 130, was published in 1909, shortly after her successful tour to the United States, where the highlight was a performance of her own Concertstück with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The Passacaille belongs to a genre of Baroque keyboard nostalgia, to which composers in several countries contributed but which was especially favored in France. Chaminade's Menuet Galant, op. 129, was published at the same time.

By the title, the composer refers loosely to French Baroque keyboard styles, not to the ground-bass variation form. Her op. 130 is in triple meter, as was traditional for the passacaille, and in rondeau form with theme and couplets, though she treats this design loosely, the overall effect being of a ternary form. The first 48 bars are repeated in toto to close the piece.

The opening 16 bars give strong priority to a proto-background ^3/^5, as the unfolded intervals show. Note especially the line from within reaching up to B5 in bars 15-16.

Bars 17-32 are a contrasting B-section, 33-40 a retransition that points toward ^3, which duly arrives in bar 41. The abbreviated reprise then traces a simple rising line twice and does it emphatically into the cadence.

Chaminade, Lolita, Caprice espagnol, Op. 54

Cécile Chaminade is remembered for solo piano music and songs, and to be sure these genres represent the majority of her published work. But she also composed orchestral music (some of it with piano), wrote a full-length ballet, and chamber music (two piano trios).

Lolita, Caprice espagnol, Op. 54, was published in 1890, three years after the ballet Callirhoë, from which Chaminade derived the Scarf Dance, the frequent recital piece for which she was long best known.

The design is ABA, a very common design for character pieces throughout the nineteenth century, and the form William Caplin calls "large ternary" to distinguish it from smaller designs, especially the one known as the rounded binary form.

In the large ternary form, B is an independent section with its own theme. That is the case here.

1-4 = introduction
5-12 = the main theme (MT), an eight-bar period with transposed consequent
13-20 = MT repeated
21-28 = contrasting middle or cadence extension (codetta)?
29-52 = 13-36; that is, MT-contrasting middle-MT

Here is the main theme:

Note that with a heavy pedal, the entire passage would sit on a tonic pedal point. That makes bar 21 sound at first very much like a contrasting section. Note, however, that it is just eight bars long and it doesn't close but offers a strong lead-in to the reprise of the main theme. It is this ambivalent character that will be of most interest for interpretation.

The melodic frame of the main theme would appear to rest on ^8, as Db6, but a descent from there to ^5 isn't plausible, where the descent from ^5 is unmistakable.

The first large section, A, closes with the repetition of this sturdy descent. A mode shift to the parallel and a new theme announce B. At the end of this section, we hear a quite dramatic expanded version of the lead-in from bars 25-29.

With this, the role of this gesture would seem to be defined, but the last page of Lolita brings a surprise when this lead-in turns into a structural cadence. 

The design of the coda is simple: a version of the main theme plays above A major (bVI in the main key of Db major) and then we hear another huge sweep up to the tonic note, here written as C#7 and played fff.

The final bars then hammer away at "c," a figure from the B section.

The two versions of the main cadence -- the lead-in at bars 27-29 and the structural close at 120-124 -- have the same basis, shown in the figures below. The Ab5 at the beginning of each represents the ^5 from the main theme. The asterisks in the lower figure are to point out the double function (S in the first case, T in the second) for the A major chord. 

I have written about subordinate cadences and their usurpation of the structural position here in connection with Beethoven, Symphony no, 1, III: link. More generally about a typically nineteenth-century "confusion of section and coda" here: link.

Three oddities, part 3

It is probably unfair to characterize a religious vocal composition as an oddity. I include Cecile Chaminade's "Angelus" in this series because of its surprisingly early use of neo-modal harmony.

The duet is in two verses, musically identical; all of the first verse is shown here. At (a) the ^1-^5 frame is established; at (b) it is inverted and ^2 replaces ^1; at (c) the change is repeated, but as an echo in the same register: ^1-^5 -> ^2-^5; at (d) a play between ^2 and ^1, where the second vocal part goes down by step (circled notes) and the first part returns to ^5 to end the phrase. After this the Angelus bell rings the same ^2-^5, but an octave higher [at least, I assume that's correct; this is the only edition I have access to at present; registers may well be more complicated if there is a prior edition in a different instrumentation].

The ringing of the bell prompts a brief Angelus prayer. At (f), the oscillation between notes shifts to A4 and G4 (circled) with F major 5/3 and G minor 6 harmonies. A steady movement upward first reaches Bb4, then -- at (g) -- continues upward to close on F5. Note, however, that the leading tone is missing and the cadential progression is plagal: IV-ii7-I. At (h) a quiet "echoing" coda.

The "oddity" then is the "incomplete" rising line; whether it starts on A4 or its companion at (f), G4, is unclear, but I'll assume A4, and so the line is ^3-^4-^5-^6-^8.