Minor key series, part 14 (Dorian and Aeolian octaves), continued (2)

Here are the third and fourth of four dances from Michael Praetorius's collection Terpsichore. The four are ns104, 147, 148, and 295, and all have been discussed elsewhere on this blog.

(3) Here is my comment on n148 from the earlier blog post:

n148 is in once-transposed Dorian; it has three strains but none is marked with a repeat sign. The final cadence is unusual in the uppermost voices in its string of parallel sixths. These help us to separate the ground notes from the diminutions in the cantus. (link)

The play of "major/minor" (B/Bb) in the first strain is striking (though, I observe once more, not uncommon in the era), and the small clash of E natural/Eb in the cadence is of interest.

(4) Here is my comment on n295 from the earlier blog post:

. . . one of the pieces where the melody is of uncertain authorship. Here is a highly profiled motive with a scalar ascent and an unusual stepwise drop after a falling fourth (circled), something that would be frowned on in a 16th century counterpoint class. It's repeated, transposed, in bar 3, then at the original level in bar 5, and finally the scale is realized as a complete ascending octave. The second strain (not shown) is unusually short: four bars of a repeated chord plus cadence. The final strain "fixes" the motive (circled) with a third rather than a fourth and moving by step within the interval. Even stronger scalar figures follow to end with an unusual, direct [Dorian] ^6-^#7-^8.

To finish this appendix on modes, I return to two more pieces I have written about earlier: the courantes from the D minor suite by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: link 1; link 2. In both pieces we can see the full flowering of minor-key focus (despite the Dorian signature) but at the same time -- in courante n1 -- vestiges of modal chromatic practice in the approach to the final cadence. In the first section of n2 (below), Bb is used strictly throughout, with the only exception a passing B-natural in the left hand in the penultimate bar. In the second strain, the same applies, the exception this time being the "raised" ^6 in the right hand in the final cadence.

In courante n1, the play of Bb/B-natural and C-natural/C# in the final bars reminds one of music from 60 or 70 years earlier. (The two courantes were published in La Guerre's first collection of keyboard pieces, 1687. She was 19 at the time; a prodigy, she was already a decade into her professional career.)

With this, the minor key series is concluded.

Minor key series, part 6a (La Guerre)

See background information on Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre in this previous post: link.  The suite in D minor (with Dorian signature) from 1687 has two courantes, the first of which is discussed here.

The opening is in some ways a mirror of the opening in the second courante, where a slowly ascending, mostly linear figure coupled F4 to F5. Here a fully linear descent from D5 to F4 occupies the first three measures, but the larger figure is an initial ascent from the opening D5 to the first Urlinie tone, F5, in measure 4 -- marked in the score.

In the final measures, ^3, as F4, is clearly heard again in the typical internal cadence to the opposite mode (at "x"), then an insistently rising pattern starting at "y" leads upward through the octave, but—as in the opening—the larger figure goes the opposite direction as the Urlinie descends in an unequivocal way from ^2 to ^1 in the final two bars. The point of interest is "what might have been" -- at "z" natural ^7 gives way directly to ^#7 over the just established V harmony.

The notation here is from Steve Wiberg's edition, available on IMSLP: link.

Minor key series, part 3 (three French composers)

As is well known, the Dorian was the only mode to retain some kind of identity in secular music throughout the 17th century, even if that identity was sometimes nothing more than the lack of a key signature for pieces we would readily accept as being in D minor (or in G minor with one flat rather than two -- or even in C minor with two flats rather than three).

Nevertheless, vestiges of the Dorian octave facilitate rising lines that move fluidly from the lower part of the octave through ^8. I will explore the treatment of the Dorian octave in music from the early part of the 17th century in several posts at the end of this series. Here I am interested in how ^6 and ^7 interact with the three Urlinie figures I showed in the series introduction -- they're reproduced below.

We will start with a menuet by Jean-François Dandrieu (1682-1738) from the collection Trois livres de claveçin de jeunesse, edited by Brigitte Francois-Sappey (Paris, 1975). The pieces in this volume come not from the more familiar three volumes of Pièces de Claveçin but from smaller and earlier collections published between 1704 and 1720: two titled Livre de claveçin and the Pièces de claveçin courtes et faciles. Also unlike the larger volumes, which use the fanciful character titles common in the generation of François Couperin, the three smaller collections use dance and other generic titles.

The menuet in G minor uses the transposed Dorian signature -- see the opening below, where I isolate an unfolded fourth as the central figure. (One can also easily hear the interior third-line Bb4-Bb4-A4-implied G4 -- not marked in the score.)

The ending works its way through this fourth twice, in both cases using what I've marked as the "Dorian ^6."

 The more abstract version below shows the background, which fits the model of figure b above.

Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729) was one of the most prominent French musicians of her generation. A child prodigy, she was a skilled harpsichordist and composer who spent her teenage years in the court at Versailles and later lived and worked in Paris. The first suite in the Pièces de Claveçin of 1687 is in D minor using a Dorian signature and contains two courantes. The second of these opens with a strongly defined ascending gesture that charts a coupling of F4 and F5. (The notation is from an edition by Steve Wiberg published on IMSLP: link.)

 In the close, the coupling is repeated, with a completely filled linear ascent, after which a straightforward background descent ("x") is elaborated with a fairly simple leading-tone third-line ("y"). An interior ascending figure ("z") cuts across these: it is shown as a fourth ^5-^8 but is properly a third A4-C#5 that reaches and connects to the final note of "y."

In a continuation of this post, I will discuss a gigue and courante for two harpsichords by Gaspard Le Roux (1660-1707).