Minor key series, part 8b, addendum (Le Roux)

The G minor suite also contains a movement labeled "Piece sans titre." It is marked "gayement" and to my ear, at least, bears traits of the bourrée and, in some moments, the gavotte, but without maintaining the characteristic figures or even a four-bar phrase unit. Eight phrases are distributed across a small binary form, 1-2 in the A-section, 3-8 in the B-section.

The three-bar first phrase focuses on the upper fourth of the tonic octave, or D5-G5. The latter is the first note of a traditional Urlinie of the mirror form, ^8 down to ^5, then rising again to ^8. I have reproduced a figure from the introduction to this series; the form LeRoux uses for his "Piece sans titre" is boxed. To date, this is the only piece I have found using this Urlinie in the minor key. (It is actually fairly common in the major key.)

At (a) is ^8 of the Urlinie; a line will descend from it in section B. At (b) is the middleground line that covers section A, up to the PAC in the dominant. At (c) is an internal third-line that reaches D5 "early" and helps to expand the phrase to 6 bars.

The upper voice in phrases 3, 4, and 5—the first half of the B section—traverses a fifth-line from a superimposed inner voice at the beginning (A4 becomes A5 in phrase 3) eventually back to ^5 (by the middle of phrase 5).

Phrase 6 takes the line back up from D5 to G5 with a PAC as close. (The harmonies might suggest the F# on beat 1 as ^#7 better than beat 4, as I have it now.)  

But the piece is not finished. A firm, apparently conclusive PAC on the tonic before the end is common in French harpsichord music because of the performance tradition of the petit reprise, in which the final phrase of a piece was repeated, presumably with additional embellishments or textural changes. In several pieces for the 1705 collection, LeRoux takes advantage of this tradition to add new music after the tonic close. In this case, he adds two phrases, the first of which picks up the figure of phrase 2—see phrase 7, where the figure is put into sequence. Phrase 8, then, starts from Bb5 as ^3 and brings the piece to a close with another firm cadence. I am not particularly fond of those Schenkerian readings that only reach their supposedly principal melodic tone near the end, and in this case it would make little sense anyway, as phrases 7 & 8 are in the petit reprise or coda-like region of the piece.

Minor key series, part 8b (Bacquoy-Guedon, LeRoux, Böhm)

Alexis Bacquoy-Guedon published a dance treatise in the 1780s. I have written about his musical examples before, on my dance music blog: link; and also twice on this blog: link, link,

The last of the posts linked to above shows his 4th Menuet in G major, with its trio, which is the item of interest here.

The underlying figure g (simple ascent with ^#6 and i-IV-V-i) is revealed by adding a likely bass below the Urlinie:

I discussed a two-harpsichord gigue and a courante with an added contra partie by Gaspard LeRoux in the continuation post of part 3: link. Here is another piece from the same collection (1705), this time a sarabande with 11 variations. To avoid confusion in case you look at the score yourself, I will follow the numbering Fuller uses, where the sarabande (theme) is called couplet 1, the first variation couplet 2, etc. (The 1705 edition has no labels.)

In one common French design for a published suite, a larger scale piece, usually a chaconne, ends the suite of dances and character pieces. Here the design is almost that: (unmeasured) Prelude, Allemande, Courante, "La Bel-abat," Piece sans titre, Gigue, Sarabande [with variations], Menuet. As elsewhere in the collection, the sarabande itself is provided with an alternative trio arrangement, but the variations are given just a continuo bass. I am uncertain what that signifies for an actual performance option.

The first phrase of the sarabande is reproduced below in Alfred Fuller's edition. I will not cite any more of it in order to respect copyright. In the 1705 edition, however, the left hand part is written in baritone clef (like the bass clef but a third higher), and so I will present the alternate trio version of the theme instead.

The six phrases of the theme are distributed in the common asymmetrical design where A has two and B has the other 4. Section A ends in III, and midway through section B we reach V in a half cadence. What is remarkable is that in the solo version, Le Roux uses the dully repetitive figure of the first treble part in the entire B-section, not the considerably more interesting melody of the second treble part.

Phrases 5 & 6 in couplet 2 (that is, the first variation) are shown below. I have "transposed" the left hand part to the common bass clef. The cadence in the upper register is striking, but from a traditional Schenkerian viewpoint, we have to call the uppermost voice boundary play growing out of two cover tones--see the graph below the score.

Four other couplets use rising lines, three of them at the end, as in couplet 2 above. In couplet 6, almost continuous 16th-note arpeggios in the right hand are all set in the upper octave. In couplets 4 & 10, a clear descending cadence is placed in phrase 5, to which the upper octave in phrase 6 sounds like a coda flourish. The most interesting use of the rising line is the opening, not the end, of couplet 2 -- see below, where phrases 1 & 2 chart the octave from Bb4 to Bb5, step by step. (Note that I have not moved the left hand to bass clef this time.)   Below the score I have marked the sources of all these steps in the trio version of the sarabande theme, demonstrating again Le Roux's quite free attitude toward his theme (these are *not* simple figural variations).

The last example comes from one of the many German composers who imitated French keyboard styles and genres in the 17th and early 18th centuries: Georg Böhm, whose Suite in F minor contains a courante with an ascending Urlinie. Volume 1 of the Sämtliche Werke edition (published in 1952) includes eleven suites, two of them in F minor. This courante is from the second of those suites. Note that it uses the Dorian signature (three flats rather than the four we would expect for F minor).

Here is an analysis showing the background..

Finally, a background/first middleground graph, with the inner voice. I chose to show the bass for i6 with a closed note rather than an open note, but the outline of figure g is still clear.

Minor key series, part 3 continued

Gaspard Le Roux (1660-1707) was a professional keyboardist working in Paris. His Pieces de Clavessin, published in 1705, is a remarkable volume -- not only is the music in each of the seven suites skilled and aesthetically satisfying but each piece (excepting the preludes) is given in an alternate trio version for treble melodic instrument and continuo (where the treble of the keyboard part is realized). By way of an appendix, he adds a gigue in G major for two harpsichords and a contre partie (second part) that renders four pieces from the earlier suites into duos.

The gigue and the duo version of the courante in the seventh suite in G minor are of interest here. We'll start with the latter; here it is in the sequence of the suite. The solo version is at the top, the trio version at the bottom of the page. Note that a firmly descending melodic line in the cadence in the solo version (at "x") is counterpointed by a more complex and partly ascending line in the trio version (at "y").

Here is the page with the contre partie, which adopts the counterpointing line for its own closing cadence.

And here are two analyses of the ending (the notation is from an edition by Alfred Fuller). The original line (above) and its counterpoint (below) create a striking wedge figure (we will see this again in the gigue, below).

Asterisks show the complexity of treatments of scale degree ^6 (a reminder that the key signature is G minor/once-transposed Dorian). From this, the most plausible Urlinie for the contre partie rises from ^5 using the raised ^6 (E5), but this by no means erases the problem of Eb/E natural. A detailed analysis of the several structural levels would be quite an exercise. 

The Gigue for two harpsichords is much simpler by comparison. Here is the opening. Note the wedge shape approaching the cadence in the second phrase.

Le Roux uses the same figure in the interior cadence to the opposite mode and also in the ending, shown here again as an analysis using the notation of Fuller's edition. Although the rising line is shown as the upper voice, performance options—which are so rich in Le Roux's volume—might place the descending line above if the second harpsichordist takes advantage of the direction "en haut si lon veut" (an octave higher ad lib) [see Pierre's Gouin's edition on IMSLP: link]

For a detailed table of contents to Le Roux's Pieces de Clavessin, go to the bottom of the IMSLP page: 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).