The steadily rising scale figures in each of the three phrases of Chopin's E-major Prelude are emphatic and obvious (so is the sudden drop at the end of the second phrase). In a recently published book
The Art of Tonal Analysis: Twelve Lessons in Schenkerian Theory (Oxford University Press, 2016; edited as a labor of love, I suspect, by Joseph Straus), Carl Schachter says that "some people analyze this piece with an
Urlinie that rises a fourth: B-C#-D#-E. I think, however, that it is quite possible to hear instead a very subtle and wonderful descending
Urlinie, but to do so one has to be quite un-literal in one's use of the theory" (56). [You can read the chapter on two preludes in the Google Books preview window.]
Here is his Example 3.10, which shows the middleground and background shapes of the upper voice:
For the record, I was the first to assert the abstract pitch design by which a primary line descends from ^3 (while a secondary line rises from the lower ^5). I did this in a footnote to a well-known article, "The Ascending Urlinie" (
Journal of Music Theory 31/2 (1987); in fn28: "Pieces which appear to use a rising line from ^5 but in fact do not include Chopin, Prelude in E Major, op. 28, no. 9; [instead it is] a three-part Ursatz with line from ^3 above; ^2 implied in the cadence."
In another article published the same year, I provided a graph: from "The Three-Part
Ursatz,"
In Theory Only 10/1-2: 28.
This gives less emphasis to the arpeggios, but my point was to place attention on the inversion of the third G#-B to the sixth B-G#, in line with middleground transformations that I identify in the article. Here is a schematic version of the example below showing this:
Finally, here is a link to a facsimile of my sketch from 1982:
holograph sketch of Op28n9.
