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):

JMT series, part 5a (notes 29 & 30)

In previous posts for this series I looked at pieces mentioned in my 1987 JMT article, note 28. Here are notes 29 and 30, on Urlinie variants.

n29: ^5-^6-(^8)-^7-^8 model or one of its variants:

Haydn, String Quartet, op. 76, no. 2, II. I have written at length about this piece here: link to post.

Handel, Jephtha, aria “Waft her angels.” Comment in the note: "orchestra in the framing ritornello, not the voice." The voice does participate -- see (d) in the example below -- and rising figures are certainly strong throughout, but in the abstract Schenkerian terms, all these are affect, "text painting," and the like, not structural. Nowadays I'm not so sure "structural" is enough.

The closing cadence in A. The strong ascent at (a) is derived from the opening ritornello, (c), but the closing cadence is a descending formula, at (b).

After the voice finishes, the orchestra doesn't give up on the rising line, managing it twice in just four bars.

Note n30: ^5-^6-(^5)-^7-^8.

Schubert, Drei deutsche Tänze, D973n2. In 1987, I was trying to avoid the primitive Urlinie (^5-^7-^8), but now I think it would work just as well -- mechanically, at least. I prefer the reading that emphasizes ^6 because of the expressive attention given to that note and its supporting harmony.

In tomorrow's post: Winterreise, no. 2, “Die Wetterfahne.”

Channan Willner on the polyphonic Ursatz

This post is not about rising lines (mostly -- see the postscript), but it does belong to the "internet search" series that started on 15 March. In 2007, Channan Willner published an essay on his website titled "The polyphonic Ursatz": link to his publication page. The essay is well-known and thus shows up relatively early on a search for "ascending urlinie" because of a reference to my JMT article on p. 13n4, but except for one highly speculative example it has nothing to do with ascending cadence gestures. Rather, it is a very detailed study of Handel, Suite in D Minor (1720), Allemande, that invokes—but then further develops—my three-part Ursatz construct.

As the title suggests, Willner accepts the three-part Ursatz (enthusiastically, even—I am said to have "blazed an 'obbligato trail' with [the] three-part Ursatz, which allows for the structural descent of both soprano and alto" (2)); but he then expands the options to include the tenor and bass, though not in a consistently maintained voice leading grid (as if a kind of background chorale setting), so "not [an Ursatz] in which all four voices are equal, nor one in which the tenor part embodies a genuine structural voice" (2). The argument becomes a bit tortuous as he then asserts that "the background structure does indeed remain two-voiced at the very deepest level. The obbligato voices realized by the alto and by the tenor unfold a little closer to the surface than the fundamental two voices do. But in practice, as an aural and as an analytical experience, this is a distinction without much of a difference, at least in what concerns the alto" (2-3). I might complain that a distinction without a difference may not warrant a distinction at all.

Still, Willner grounds his adjustments in a compositional device that was especially important to 17th and 18th century practice: "Letting the Ursatz remain in a state of polyphony points to the dependence of all voice leading—from the foreground to the background—on invertible counterpoint" (13). He also makes a revealing comment about style features: "Despite the soprano’s prominence, it’s actually the alto’s descent that usually provides the scaffolding over which the thematicism of the piece rests, at least in the Baroque repertoire" (3). The analysis of the Allemande is guided by this idea throughout.

I will reproduce here only the background graphs from early in the essay, as these reflect the point just made above. The first graph shows a three-part Ursatz with a diversion by the alto into the tenor (arrow). I have added the red circles to bring out the alto, which—following from the comment above—Willner takes to be the primary upper voice.

The second graph demonstrates the source of this unequal pairing: the "obbligato soprano" would be a line of lower thirds under the primary voice, the "structural alto." (It is now also easy to see why invertible counterpoint is a factor.) My circled notes attempt to bring out these underlying thirds: F4-A4, E4-G4, F4-D"4", E4-C#"4",  and D4 unison to close.

Postscript: "Examples [of minor-key ascending Urlinien, despite the odds against them] can be found throughout Bach’s suites, sonatas, and partitas for various instruments. Most movements of the D minor Suite for Violoncello Solo, for instance, close with a motivically charged ascending Urlinie" (14n20). Here I will respond with the same quibbling distinction Willner made about the three-part Ursatz and the background—I'm not at all sure those ascending cadence gestures belong to the largest-scale melodic features in the Bach cello suites, despite their position in the final cadence. I have written so far only about two major-key cello preludes, Eb and G: link; link.