JMT series, part 7-1 (note 32)

n32: The form ^5-^6-(reg.)^7-^8.  In the essay linked below (Ascending Cadence Gestures), I wrote about this form:

This device of undercutting the rise from ^6 to ^7 is discussed in my JMT article and seems to be particularly characteristic of the later 18th century. To speculate: the conventions associated with the dominant Italian style (which we know much better nowadays thanks to important research on the partimenti, evidence of methods of instruction) were so strong that Haydn felt an obligation to observe them in some situations, rather than take full advantage of the rising cadence gesture. In any case, the leap downward from a subdominant to the leading tone is very expressive in and of itself. (Survey, p. 64)

In the note, five compositions are mentioned. I have already written about three of them in the essay Ascending Cadence Gestures: A Historical Survey from the 16th to the Early 19th Century: (link).

Haydn, Piano Sonata in E-flat, Hob. XVI/52, II.  Survey, pp. 76-78.
Haydn, Piano Sonata in A-flat, Hob. XVI/43, Menuet. Comment in the note: "the large-scale structure is obscured somewhat by strong emphasis on ^3 in the Trio."  Survey, pp. 74-76.
Haydn, String Quartet, op. 76, no. 2, II. Survey, pp. 78-83.

The other two are Beethoven, String Quartet, op. 74, IV, and Corelli, Trio Sonata, op. 2, no. 8, Preludio. I'll discuss the latter first, because it affords an easy opportunity to sort some of the issues related to register.

Register transfer in the rising line is worth some comment. Examples (a) - (e) apply octave or seventh registral changes to each successive tone of the rising line from ^5. In (a), the very common change of octave over a stable bass; in (b), the figure used by Bach in BWV 924; in (c), the registral variant I reference in note 32; in (d), the highly violinistic broken figures one frequently finds in Baroque music, where it is a 50-50 chance the final ^8 will be in the lower or upper octave; in (d'), a variant that applies the register change to a neighbor note -- this is a major-key version of the figure in the Corelli prelude to be discussed below; (e) is similar to (a), a simple octave embellishment of ^8.

My comment in note 32 is that "Very occasionally register transfer is applied to other tones [than ^6]: in Corelli, Trio Sonata, op. 2, no. 8, Preludio, the variant ^5-^6-^7-(^8-^7)-^8 has a dramatic octave-leap downward applied to the first ^8." As my parentheses suggest, the register change here is applied to a middleground neighbor note, not to an Urlinie tone.

The reading requires a line from ^5, which is certainly as plausible as one from ^3, even if we were to insist on a descending Urlinie form. In the closing cadence, the first violin takes the line steadily up but breaks at the dramatic #4 diminished chord to place its final notes an octave lower -- and below the persistent descent of the second violin. Here is another notation of the ending, emphasizing the parallel 10ths between bass and first violin and positioning the final notes in their "correct" octave. I just placed "correct" in scare quotes but it doesn't really need them -- the correct, simple, and proper voiceleading of all the parts above this harmony clearly demands that the first violin end in the fifth octave (its obligatory register, in other words).

In the next post I will examine the problem of the "descant" voice in Corelli, as presented in a book chapter by William Rothstein.
In the JMT article, note 32, I also mention Beethoven, String Quartet, op. 74, IV. A subsequent post will discuss that.

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 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.”

New essay published: supplement to British Isles essay

I have published a new essay on Texas Scholar Works: English, Scotch, and Irish Dance and Song: Supplement. Link.

Here is the abstract:

A supplement to the essay English, Scotch, and Irish Dance and Song, which is primarily a documentation of rising cadence figures in dances, fiddle tunes, and songs. Gathered here are another 50 examples found in files downloaded on 2 May 2017. These were the coincidental result of a search for more information on Nathaniel Gow, the son of the famous Scottish fiddler Niel Gow.

JMT series, part 4a-2 (simple rising lines)

In note 28 I wrote "Other pieces that use the simplest form of the rising Urlinie include the following (qualifying comments in parentheses)."

Among the pieces named was Haydn, Symphony no. 104, III. It's not quite as simple as I claimed, however—there is a drop from ^6 down to ^7, which also happens in the menuet of Symphony no. 86 (as discussed in my essay Ascending Cadence Gestures: A Historical Survey from the 16th to the Early 19th Century, published on Texas Scholar Works: link). About Symphony 86 I wrote:

This time [in the reprise] B5 drops to C#5-D5 for the cadence. The end result is a "circle" of sorts, from D5 back to itself, but by means of an octave's worth of a scale. This device of undercutting the rise from ^6 to ^7 is discussed in my JMT article and seems to be particularly characteristic of the later 18th century. To speculate: the conventions associated with the dominant Italian style (which we know better nowadays through research on the partimenti, evidence of methods of instruction) were so strong that Haydn felt an obligation to observe them in some situations, rather than take full advantage of the rising cadence gesture. In any case, the leap downward from a subdominant to the leading tone is very expressive in and of itself.

The key is the same in Symphony no. 104, ^5 is as firmly settled as the tonic pedal note underneath it, and a string of parallel sixths lead the melodic line down to the cadence. Only the sforzando on the last beat of bar 6 suggests anything different: B5 sticks out above, then leaps down to the dominant's C#5 (see the box).


What that sforzando hints at it is the possibility of a rising line from A5, but, as happened in Symphony no. 86, directionality is undermined by curling back to the lower octave instead of rising toward C#6 and D6.

As is well known, Haydn can't seem to leave things alone in a reprise, and the effects can easily be seen even in design features like linear patterns. In the A section, the eight-bar theme is repeated (in different instrumentation). In the reprise, the theme statement makes it through six bars before changes start, the overall result being an extension of the continuation phrase from four bars to eleven, including two bars of grand pause (!), and a clearly profiled stepwise ascent from B4 through C#5 to D5 (see the second system below). The codetta adds a little flourish that gives us C#5-D6 at last.

This condensed version shows just the ^5-^8 progress over the course of the reprise.

JMT series, part 4a-1 (simple rising lines)

Note number 28 is the first in my article "The Ascending Urlinie" (Journal of Music Theory 1987) to contain a list of additional examples. In the article I wrote that motivic foregrounding and layering did not necessarily generate rising background lines. Here is my text for the first example:

n28: The Menuet of Haydn’s Symphony no. 100 is a case in point. In the first period (measures 1-8, which stand for the whole), the initial motion is strongly downward, but the final cadence produces a clear ascent from ^5 to ^8 in the upper-most part.

Thinking of this in Schenkerian terms—as I was in 1987—the rising line is not workable in the theme's first presentation because it doesn't mesh well with the bass, especially in bars 5-6, where one would have to imagine a doubling of bass and soprano, never a good idea. It's much easier to build a line in this way: D5 initiates a fifth-line; to C in bar 4, recapture C in bar 6, B on the last beat of that bar, then A in bar 7, and an implied G in bar 8. The ascending scale in the cadence is boundary play. See this version here:

In the reprise, on the other hand, the chromatic passing tone D# in the bass (from m. 6) is gone, and a string of diatonic figures, all rising, take over the lower parts, directly linking the chromatic scale fragment to the diatonic scale fragment (see the arrows in the figure below). As a result, the rising line from ^5 to ^8 has a clear path and pitch design can be read as well-matched to the important aspects of expression.

The text above comes from my essay Ascending Cadence Gestures: A Historical Survey from the 16th to the Early 19th Century, published on Texas Scholar Works: link.

Subsequent posts will offer more discussion of pieces named in note 28.

Administrative post: updated links to some files

Early next year, Dropbox is changing the public folder to a shared folder. Therefore, I have moved all files that were formerly on Dropbox to Google Drive. Here is an alphabetical list with the new links:

Chopin, Prelude in E Major, op. 28n9: link.

Guide to my blog Hearing Schubert D779n13: link.

Guide to the blog Hearing the Movies: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Ab major, menuet, my graph, page 1: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Ab major, menuet, my graph, page 2: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Ab major, menuet, score: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Eb major, II, my graph, page 1: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Eb major, II, my graph, page 2: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Eb major, II, score, page 1: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Eb major, II, score, page 2: link.

Minor key progressions (table): link.

Neumeyer, handout for 2010 Society of Music Theory presentation: link.

Neumeyer research vita: link.

Schubert dance table: link.

Haydn, part 7b

While pulling out from a PDF file the score of Haydn's String Quartet op76n2, second movement, I noticed for the first time some interesting shapes in the trio of the menuet. In the first strain a pedal tonic eventually allows a frequently repeated ^1 (D5) to rise to ^5 (m. 47) and then an octave higher (A6 in m. 49), where it stays until the cadence while an inner voice moves down from ^3 (m. 49) to ^7 (m. 52 in the second violin; arrow).

These melodic shapes in the first strain set up the possibility of a rising cadence gesture in the reprise, and so it happens here, in the most direct example I've seen in the music of Haydn. Everything points to the conclusion that Haydn was just as familiar with the ländler style as were Mozart and Beethoven at around the same time.

Haydn, part 7a

The last* example from Haydn is the slow movement of the string quartet, op. 76n2. This was also mentioned in a footnote to my "Ascending Urlinie" article, twice in fact. In footnote 29, I included it among pieces that use the "^5-^6-(^8)-^7-^8 model or one of its variants"; in footnote 31 it was "the form ^5-^6-(reg.)^7-^8." These refer to different form sections of the piece. Of these two readings, the first is very clear, but the second I no longer agree with. Details below.

*Actually, there is one more: an "extra" example in the Haydn series is the trio in the third movement of this same quartet -- it will be discussed in tomorrow's post.

The design of the movement is ABA with an extended coda. Section B starts in the tonic minor, but is unstable (the tonic minor lasts only a bar before we settle into its own bVI region, which lasts for about half the section's duration). The reprise is complete except that a fairly lengthy coda is initiated by a deceptive cadence on what should have been the final cadential tonic.

The main theme (A) is a closed small form with repeats. Its treatment of a rising background line is quite clear and straightforward: an apparent ^3 (F#) at the beginning is supplanted by ^5, which looked to be a cover tone at first but before long takes over as the principal register. Note the (^8) that supplies a note for the melody over the cadential dominant's 6/4; and ^7-^8 is doubled in the second violin.

A brief B-section offers an unusual turn by ending firmly on F# minor (iii in D major; iii is generally considered the "weakest" of the diatonic triads, a characterization that extends to its tonal region). The explanation is that Haydn thus allows himself a play on the opening motive A-F#—f#: ^3-^1 turns into D: ^5-^3 without benefit of any transitioning harmonic progression. In this case, note that Haydn could easily have included the cadenza perfetta between first violin and viola but instead doubles the third of the final chord. The third was doubled in the opening statement of the theme, too, and we have to assume that there was something about the sound that appealed to him.

In the reprise of the A section, the Urlinie form is altered to another variant that I discuss in the JMT article: ^5-^6-(^5)-^7-^8. Note that the second violin follows this figure note for note (* and box).

In m. 50 is the deceptive cadence I referred to above. What follows from it is a strongly profiled descent to a dramatic diminished seventh chord and a brief cadenza for the first violin (m. 57).

Here are the immediately following measures (58-62), which finally bring the principal cadence. In footnote 31 of the JMT article, I applied ^5-^6-(reg.)^7-^8 to this movement, meaning by it this ending. The treatment of register, however, is more complicated than it was in the Eb sonata or other pieces where ^6 dropped down to ^7. Here ^6 does drop to ^7 (m. 61), but ^7 also drops to ^8 (or ^1). That, combined with the downward figuration in mm. 60-61, seems to me not just to conceal but effectively to erase the rising-line formula here. Reading this as a rising cadence gesture reminds me of those tortured Schenkerian readings that dip down into inner voices or imply this and that in order to come up with an acceptable line. For this kind of event, I prefer the proto-background model—see the next example.

The figure that *does* make musical sense here is the fifth-frame of the violin's repeated figures in mm. 60-62. The upper end (^5) is never effectively abandoned, and the lower end (^1) moves to its lower neighbor only to fit into the cadential V7. The intervallic frame, then, is as shown at the lower right.

Haydn, part 6b

Repeated from the previous post:

In footnote 32 to my "Ascending Urlinie" article, I included the Haydn Piano Sonatas in Eb and Ab—the slow movement of the former (Hob. XVI/52, II), the menuet of the latter (Hob. XVI/43, II)—among pieces that use one of the variants of the rising line: the form ^5-^6-(reg.)^7-^8.

Yesterday I wrote about the Ab menuet; today, the slow movement of the Eb sonata. And again I am making use of my holograph analytical sketch from 1982. See the entire sketch here: page 1 link; page 2 link. Score links: page 1; page 2.

The opening phrase is more easily read from ^3 than from ^5: the end of the initial tonic prolongation is at the 32nd note topped by G#5. I chose ^5 because of its longer-range implications, specifically in the internal reprise within the A section (more on that below). My sketch of the opening, then, consigns ^3 (as G#5) to a convoluted unfolding pair; I marked it "over" for "overlap" because that's the term that my mentor, Allen Forte, used (see his Schenker textbook co-written with Steven Gilbert).

In the elaborated restatement ending the A section, ^5 (B5 in the second measure) is more obviously a cover tone, but it is the sudden sweep up from it to E6 that is the major expressive event. This radical expansion of the upward leaps from the opening bars starts a chain of leaps: B5 to E6 in the fourth measure and G#5 to C#6 in the fifth measure. The line splits at the first of these (see the two ^5s marked in the score and the branching lines in the sketch), the lower one reaching G#5 and the upper one taking C#6 before both lines drop an octave over the dominant, G#5 to F#4 and C#6 to D#5.

Haydn, part 6a

In footnote 32 to my "Ascending Urlinie" article, I included the Haydn Piano Sonatas in Eb and Ab—the slow movement of the former (Hob. XVI/52, II), the menuet of the latter (Hob. XVI/43, II)—among pieces that use one of the variants of the rising line: the form ^5-^6-(reg.)^7-^8. We've seen this version already in the menuets of Symphony no. 86 and no. 104.

In this post, I will use my holograph sketch of this piece; it's probably from 1982 (when I did most of the initial research on rising lines for the sake of a Schenker seminar). I have placed a facsimile in my public folder on Dropbox: link.

The opening is one of those designed to frighten beginning Schenker students, as it offers ^5, ^8, and ^3 as plausible starting points for an Urlinie. Although ^3 is weak, since it is over vi, not I, the move to ^2 in bar 4 has to be encouraging; and you can almost always read chord support backwards to the beginning if you really want to (true here), so that ^3 is understood to be supported by the initial tonic chord rather than the vi that prolongs that I.

In 1982, however, I read the Urlinie from ^5, not at all disturbed by its cover-tone quality, as ^5 very often sounds like that in its prolongations. The ^3 and its interruption, then, are placed in an alto voice. See the condensed version of my sketch below.

In the second strain's altered reprise, one can certainly be forgiven for wondering about ^3 again—note the prominent C6, then the double neighbor figure—but one is obliged to imply/invent the ^2 in the cadence. A line consisting of ^5-^6-(reg) ^7-^8 is more direct and also more musically satisfying.

Haydn, Part 5

Another piece from footnotes to my "Ascending Urlinie" article: Haydn, Symphony no. 104, menuet. This piece is among those I argued use "the simplest form" of the rising background line (fn28). It's not quite that simple, however—the same drop from ^6 down to ^7 that we found in the menuet of Symphony no. 86 in an earlier post. About that one I wrote:

This time [in the reprise] B5 drops to C#5-D5 for the cadence. The end result is a "circle" of sorts, from D5 back to itself, but by means of an octave's worth of a scale. This device of undercutting the rise from ^6 to ^7 is discussed in my JMT article and seems to be particularly characteristic of the later 18th century. To speculate: the conventions associated with the dominant Italian style (which we know better nowadays through research on the partimenti, evidence of methods of instruction) were so strong that Haydn felt an obligation to observe them in some situations, rather than take full advantage of the rising cadence gesture. In any case, the leap downward from a subdominant to the leading tone is very expressive in and of itself.

The key is the same in Symphony no. 104, ^5 is as firmly settled as the tonic pedal note underneath it, and a string of parallel sixths lead the melodic line down to the cadence. Only the sforzando on the last beat of bar 6 suggests anything different: B5 sticks out above, then leaps down to the dominant's C#5 (see the box).

What that sforzando hints at it is the possibility of a rising line from A5, but, as happened in Symphony no. 86, directionality is undermined by curling back to the lower octave instead of rising toward C#6 and D6.

As we have found more than once already, Haydn can't seem to leave things alone in the reprise, and the effects can easily be seen even in design features like linear patterns. In the A section, the eight-bar theme is repeated (in different instrumentation). In the reprise, the theme statement makes it through six bars before changes start, the overall result being an extension of the continuation phrase from four bars to eleven, including two bars of grand pause (!), and a clearly profiled stepwise ascent from B4 through C#5 to D5 (see the second system below). The codetta adds a little flourish that gives us C#5-D6 at last.

This condensed version shows just the ^5-^8 progress over the course of the reprise.

Haydn, Part 4

 Today, another piece mentioned in footnotes to my article "The Ascending Urlinie" (Journal of Music Theory 1987): the menuet in Haydn's Symphony 100. In the article I wrote that motivic foregrounding and layering did not necessarily generate rising background lines, and in note 28 said this:

The Menuet of Haydn’s Symphony No. 100 is a case in point. In the first period (measures 1-8, which stand for the whole), the initial motion is strongly downward, but the final cadence produces a clear ascent from ^5 to ^8 in the upper-most part.

Thinking of this in Schenkerian terms—as I was in 1987—the rising line is not workable in the theme's first presentation because it doesn't mesh well with the bass, especially in bars 5-6, where one would have to imagine a doubling of bass and soprano, never a good idea. It's much easier to build a line in this way: D5 initiates a fifth-line; to C in bar 4, recapture C in bar 6, B on the last beat of that bar, then A in bar 7, and an implied G in bar 8. The ascending scale in the cadence is boundary play. See this version here:

In the reprise, on the other hand, the chromatic passing tone D# in the bass (from m. 6) is gone, and a string of diatonic figures, all rising, take over the lower parts, directly linking the chromatic scale fragment to the diatonic scale fragment (see the arrows in the figure below). As a result, the rising line from ^5 to ^8 has a clear path and pitch design can be read as well-matched to the important aspects of expression.

Nevertheless, nowadays I think that octave shapes work just as well as lines to describe the frame of this theme. In the first phrase, the ornamented arpeggiation that brings G5 down to G4 is only answered meagerly by the rising chromatic scale in bars 3-4. The second phrase does better, as A5 to A4 is answered by the diatonic scale that brings the close back to G5.

Haydn, Part 3

The menuet of Symphony no. 96 (1791) is a counter-example. Where the rising line was the primary figure in Symphony no. 86, III, as we saw in a previous post, and is eventually connected to a rising cadence gesture, in Symphony no. 96 the promise of same is not realized. In fact, Haydn goes out of his way to undermine (more like demolish) it.

The opening figure is more arpeggio—a "rocket"—than line, but it does establish A5 by the end of the phrase (bar 4). The primary cadence of the first strain, however, drops down the octave to close on B4-A4 (circled notes). (These examples, btw, are from a piano four-hands edition; I couldn't find a two-stave reduction.)

Below is the principal cadence in the reprise: it's down, down, down in all parts but the bass. The codetta, at least, does make a small effort to compensate, but there is nothing unusual about it: an "up and out" flourish in the final seconds is very common in the later 18th and early 19th centuries, so much so as to be a cliché for opera overtures, scenes, and arias (where the orchestra provides the flourish after the singer finishes).

Haydn, part 2: postscript

In yesterday's post about the menuet from Symphony no. 86, I observed that the line from ^1 to ^5 (D5 to A5) in the first strain is pushed "one step too far" to B5 before settling on A5 in the cadence. Here is the example:

This "one-too-far" figure has its roots in 17th century improvised embellishment practices. Here is a simple example adapted from my van Eyck series on this blog: link. The upper staff is the ending of the original tune ("Wel Jan wat drommel"), the lower staff the equivalent place in the first variation. The escape tone diminutions are circled. The last of them is not quite a diminution, as van Eyck actually reorders the notes of the original, but the effect is pretty much the same.

In tonal music of the major-minor system, the most familiar—and probably most influential—figure of this type involves scale degree ^6. In example (a) below, the motion from the consonant A through a passing tone G to a consonant F# is embellished with an escape tone B. This is rather mild business, of course, as the B is consonant with the pedal base D. Even in my rather Brahmsian version, with its third and octave doublings, the effect is sweet rather than dissonant. In example (b1) the underlying voice leading pattern is shown, this time with a change of bass, however. It's this version—embellishment of V rather than I—that is commonly found throughout the century from roughly 1770 to 1870—see example (b2) for the figure with escape tone. Examples (c1) and (c2), then, show two versions with full harmonies.

The escape tone figure was one of the most important enablers of the dominant ninth chord. All it took—as Schubert and others in his generation discovered—was to replace the passing motion with a neighbor figure by resolving ^6 back into ^5 over the chord change. 

Haydn, part 2

As the four-movement symphony model crystallized in the 1770s, the individual movements took on the familiar characteristics we associate with the late 18th century: the first movement an overture, the second an aria, the third a menuet, and the fourth a contredanse (after Leonard Ratner). Of these, the last was the least stable: only in the early to mid-1770s were the contredanses really danceable or recognizable to an audience as programmatic "portrayals" of the dance (I have written about this here: link; others who have written significantly about the two dance movements include Tilden Russell, Sarah Reichart, Wye Allanbrook, and Melanie Lowe). Apart from anomalies (such as fugal movements), by the 1780s finales as dance-finales are perhaps best characterized as overtures utilizing dance topics.

The menuet remained much closer to its dance model. Cast in virtually all instances as a dance with one trio, it was a miniature representation of the actual dance. As many writers have noted, however, the dance itself changed and the music changed with it. In the early part of the century, the menuet of the French court was a couple dance that was meant as a public display of skill and grace. After the death of Louis XIV, it gradually devolved into a perfunctory opening formality for the ball, where it was followed as soon as possible by the lively, very social intercourse of the contredanse, whose musics were almost always gavottes (duple) or jigs (triple).

In Germanophone areas, the formal menuet persisted, but it was joined by a hybrid type that was modeled on the region's "turning" dances (walzen = turning). Haydn was one of the first to exploit this opportunity, and it is no surprise, then, that the violinistic figures of the ländler should find their way into the symphony's third movement, including rising melodic gestures and cadences.

Yesterday we saw one instance of this in the menuet of Symphony no. 83 (1785). Today and in the following several days, we will explore the menuets of later symphonies. In Symphony no. 86 (composed in 1786), Haydn makes the rising gesture the main event, as the line connecting all three of the first strain's four-measure phrases shows (see below). Note that the steady progress from ^1 to ^5 (D5 to A5) is pushed "one step too far" to B5 before settling on A5 in the cadence. That bit of excessive energy has consequences in the reprise.

 As in the opening, the first two phrases of the reprise march upward from D5 to A5, then go through A#5 to B5 in the third phrase. This time, however, B5 drops to C#5-D5 for the cadence. The end result is a "circle" of sorts, from D5 back to itself, but by means of an octave's worth of a scale. This device of undercutting the rise from ^6 to ^7 is discussed in my JMT article and seems to be particularly characteristic of the later 18th century. To speculate: the conventions associated with the dominant Italian style (which we know better nowadays through research on the partimenti, evidence of methods of instruction) were so strong that Haydn felt an obligation to observe them in some situations, rather than take full advantage of the rising cadence gesture. In any case, the leap downward from a subdominant to the leading tone is very expressive in and of itself.

The coda that follows involves some play on the figures we have just heard. The humorous subversion of D5 through C5 (at the fermata) leads the line (fortissimo!) back down to ^5, but then the original cadence is repeated to end, now with a final flourish that gives us ^7 and ^8 in their "correct" register, as C#6 and D6.

Information on French dance practices after the death of Louis XIV came from Richard Semmens, The Bals Publics at The Paris Opera (1716-1763) (Pendragon Press, 2004).

Haydn, part 1

This post begins another series that will provide examples of rising cadence gestures in the later 18th century and early 19th century. In footnotes to my article "The Ascending Urlinie" (Journal of Music Theory 1987), I listed five works by Haydn: the menuets of Symphony 100 and 104, the slow movement of the string quartet Op. 76n2, and movements in two piano sonatas. In this series of posts I will add menuets from three earlier symphonies: nos. 83, 86, and 96.

Let's start with the menuet in Symphony no. 83.

Rising figures appear in both the menuet and its trio. In the former, the first strain suggests the possibility of a rising line (or other figure) that would balance the continual descent in the presentation phrase (bars 1-4), but the continuation phrase doesn't work this out at all clearly.

The reprise is another matter. Although uncertainty still exists about which note in the two-note cells is primary, it is really not all that serious a factor, as one can just build an octave line from G4-G5 if you don't like mine from F#4-F#5 with resolution to G5.

In the trio, B4 in the antecedent phrase starts a very common motion that settles on A4 (as ^2) after touching the upper neighbor C5. In the consequent phrase, C is altered to C# (another common feature) in order to settle on D5 at the end. This is the sort of thing that would be understood as motion to a cover tone, with an interruption (with implied? A4) in Schenkerian analysis.

As in the menuet itself, the reprise of the trio manages the figure a different way, though with no suggestion of an ascending cadence gesture. Here Haydn anticipates many early 18th century waltzes in leaving notes of the dominant chord "hanging" over the final tonic: E5 "might" have gone to D5 [this one is especially important to the waltz], and C5 to B4.