Henry Martin on Miles Davis's "Four"

Continuing the series of posts based on entries from my internet search on "Ascending Urlinie," I look at an article by Henry Martin and a response by Mark McFarland.

The citation is Henry Martin. 2011b. “Schenker and the Tonal Jazz Repertory.” Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie [Dutch Journal of Music Theory] 16, no. 1: 1–20. I found this through the journal's archive: link. Martin has been a long-time advocate of Schenkerian analysis applied to the jazz repertoire. His publications can be accessed through his personal website: link.

"This paper proposes ways of expanding the three Schenkerian paradigms (Ursätze) to enable more convincing readings of problematic pieces found in the traditional jazz repertory of standards written generally before 1950. . . . I hope to show that background paradigms differing from Schenker’s provide superior readings of these pieces. I also hope that these additional paradigms will suggest yet even further extensions applicable to jazz literature that is less conventionally tonal" (1). Martin takes up this last issue in a detailed list at the end of the article (pp. 16-18). Here I am concerned with the three analyses that provide the case studies: (1) Buster & Bennie Moten, "Moten Swing," A section only; (2) Sy Oliver, "Opus One," cadencing A section; (3) Miles Davis, "Four" (he shows the final eight bars).

(1) Buster & Bennie Moten, "Moten Swing," A section only;

(2) Sy Oliver, "Opus One," cadencing A section;

(3) Miles Davis, "Four" (he shows the final eight bars, that is, all of the continuation). Here is a condensed version of his level c, a middleground 2, showing the elements of the rising line with its pre-figuring in ^6 as neighbor to ^5. Note the interruption symbol in bar 4 -- we have seen this interruption of the rising line at ^6 before, in the recent post on Naphtali Wagner's chapter about "She's Leaving Home."

Here is a lead sheet I downloaded from an online source (there are multiple copies of this out there and so I am assuming that it is acceptable to use). In any case, I have annotated -- in red -- to show at (a) and (b) the strong motivic directionality at the two-bar level of idea [note that "Four" is structured as a sentence], at (c) a hint of movement still further up beyond ^5, then at (d) the turn back down, and at (e) the crucial and decisive move up to ^8. Note there are two chord differences in the continuation: where Martin has EbM7 in the first bar, the lead sheet has G-7, and where Martin has Dm7(b5) and G7 in bar 4, the lead sheet has simply Bb7. Neither of these materially affect the reading.

In the next example, for reference I have fashioned an "obbligato grid" based on the chord symbols in the lead sheet.

Finally, here is my own simplified graph (without interruption and encompassing both statements, with first and second endings):

Thomas Davis, Country Dances (1748)

I have found very little information about Thomas Davis, except that he was apparently a professional musician active between 1740 and 1760, perhaps a flutist (he published a set of sonatas in 1744), and his work was published by Henry Waylett in London, including a volume of Country Dances (1748). Here is the title page:

Of the twenty four dances, a half dozen have interest for us, even if none offers a simple, direct ascending line in the final cadence. These six are:

Glascon Lasses (p.6)
Kitty's Frolick (p.16)
Leister House (p.5)
Merry Hary (p.4)
Pretty Miss's Fancy (p.22)
Westminster Bridge (p.2)

Of these, Merry Hary comes the closest, managing a simple ^5-^8 line to end the first strain. Because the frame of the melody is most easily heard as the octave G4-G5, however, the ascent sounds like a return to the original position of ^8, rather than an ascent out of the prevailing register.



Westminster Bridge. Note, above, that the second strain of Merry Hary uses the 18th-century cliché of a rising figure above unstable harmony just before the fall to a strong cadence. The second strain of Westminster Bridge does the same, but with stronger harmonies. Note also the relatively simple ascent in the first strain.

Glascon Lasses focuses on ^5 (as C5)—see the circled notes—and rises in the cadence but overshoots its mark in service of the Scotch snap figure (bar 8). It then repeats that F-A-F interval outline three times to open the second strain before ending with paired thirds (boxed) descending to an open cadence (that is, ^3 is balanced with ^1, a curious effect of the Scotch snap is that it's like the spondee in poetry: two equally weighted notes, one accented, the second longer).

Pretty Miss's Fancy has two sections in a dance-trio arrangement, where the trio is in the minor. The second strain of the dance has a rising cadence at (b), but the lower register of the beginning gives priority to the lower voice at (a). The close of the trio reverses the relationship, as the upper voice, rising, has priority at (c) and the lower voice is secondary at (d).

Leister House and Kitty's Frolick are more traditional, with prevailing descending lines in the upper voices and ascending lower voices. See (u) [upper] and (l) [lower} in the first strains of both. In the second strain of Kitty's Frolick, one could stretch the focus of G5 from the first strain across to the end, for an ^8-^7-^8 shape overall, but the steady and continually accented descent from ^5 (circled notes) turns the upper register into covering motion.