Pause; restatement of goals and priorities

Beginning with some comments in early April on the cadenza perfetta or clausula vera (link) I began one more parsing of the history of rising cadence gestures. Almost daily posts since then have covered the territory from early 17th century Venice to mid-17th century London and late-18th and early-19th century Vienna. Most recently the turn was to Paris in the mid-1830s.

With the arrival of June, however, it's time for a brief pause in the Adam Le Châlet series. I will pick this up again in a week or two. Four numbers remain: three duos—Daniel and Bettly (in n7: "Prêt à quitter ceux que l'on aime"), then Max and Daniel (in n8: "Il faut me céder ta maitresse"), and Daniel and Bettly (in n9: "Adieu vous que j'ai tant chérie")—and the finale (n10). Rising cadence figures occur in all but the first of these.

The goal of this spring's project is to reaffirm and document my claim, developed through a series of score searches begun nearly thirty years ago, that Le Châlet is a milestone in the history of rising cadence gestures and, as such (combined with its popularity), may have been a primary influence on other composers as rising cadence gestures proliferated in operetta, opera bouffe, and eventually the American musical. The authors of the Grove Music Online article note, after all, that some of the contributions of early composers for the Opéra-Comique (that is, in the 1830s), including those of Adam, "held the stage in Paris for over 50 years."

At some point in the future, I will add some more or less immediate context for my Le Châlet narrative through posts on La Dame Blanche (1825; by Boieldieu, Adam's mentor); Adam's three-act opera Le Postillon de Lonjumeau (1836); and Donizetti's La fille du régiment (1840). All three of these operas just named were also produced at the Opéra-Comique and were very successful. Some background for La fille—and more comparison with Le Châlet—will come from a post on Donizetti's Betly (Naples, 1836; two-act version 1837), which uses the same Goethe Singspiel as its source.

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Quote from Grove Music Online: article “Opera comique,” §5. M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet with Richard Langham Smith.

Adam, Le Châlet, part 3 (n2: Daniel's aria)

The opening chorus (n1) does not follow up on the overture's rising-line figures in the cadence, but the following number does. "Elle est à moi! C'est ma compagne" is labeled an "Air" in the French editions; it is basically a classic two-part Rossinian aria, with cavatina and cabaletta, but these are preceded by an Allegro risoluto that starts out as an aggressive aria, "Elle est à moi," in which Daniel announces that he has claimed the hand of Bettly. (For these examples, I am using the German edition from 1835.)

An eight-measure sentence initiates what looks to be a three-part small form, and it is followed by the expected B-section that focuses on the dominant. The whole thing suddenly unravels, however, with a couple fortissimo chords on V/V (see below), and the introduction to the cavatina begins, Andante non troppo. Note the rising gesture in the cadence (circled).

In the cavatina, "Ô bonheur extrême! Enfin elle m'aime," Daniel enthusiastically invites everyone to a feast for a wedding that, alas, will not occur (at least, not so soon as he thinks). The pattern of the introduction repeats itself -- the high note F#5 clearly dominates and descends by step through E5 to D5 (beamed notes), while an alto voice works its way up from ^5 (circled notes).

In the orchestral score, the first clarinet can be seen to assist with putting emphasis on the descending line from ^3 (circled notes in its part). The first violin, on the other hand, follows the tenor from ^5 to ^6 -- see the beginning of the two boxes, where ^6 is circled in both parts -- but then the violins drop back to ^5 (A4) while the lower strand of the tenor moves upward toward ^8. This split in the progression from ^6 was already clear in the previous example, where the violins are the uppermost notes of the piano reduction.

The structural cadence looks the same in the vocal score (bars 1-5 below), but the orchestral score (second example below) shows some differences: the clarinet is missing, and the flute now takes the ^6 instead of the first violins. The arrow in the flute part points to a tiny but pleasant detail: ^6 is held a beat longer and thus the flute and the tenor harmonize (that is, hold ^6 together), briefly creating a clear dominant ninth sound.

The coda to the cavatina is a very common descent/ascent pattern that one can find already in opera in the 1780s. Only the solo part is shown, with scale degrees (bars 5 ff below). The play on nat-^7 leads easily into the key of the cabaletta (see the last bars of the example).

(orchestral score for the structural cadence)

A full ternary form, the cavatina is the body of the number, whereas the cabaletta—to the same text—acts more like an extended coda than is even usually the case in Rossini. The cabaletta is marked Allegretto in the Tallandier edition, Allegretto moderato in the 1834 full score.

The tonal frame of the whole, then, doesn't line up with these form priorities: G major in the (abandoned) Allegro risoluto, D major in the (long) cavatina, then a return to G major for the (coda-like) cabaletta. On the other hand, there is no particular reason that the two needed to line up—a fluid relation of keys in the sections of a multi-part aria was common, and typically in some relation of tonic, dominant, and subdominant (in addition to parallel minor/major shifts).

The cabaletta theme is a straightforward 16mm period. The ending formula (boxed) can also be found fairly often in the first quarter of the nineteenth century as a dramatic variant of the Baroque era figure in which a rise, usually to ^8, is immediately offset by a quick and firm stepwise descending cadence.

It is possible to hear a line ^5-^7-^8, or what I have called the "primitive" rising line cadence, but with ^8 replaced by ^1 -- see the circled notes below. I think, though, that it is much easier to hear a tonal frame of the octave and fifth, G4-D5-G5, throughout this passage.

 The coda-like character of the cabaletta makes it difficult to pin down just where a structural cadence can be found, but an obvious candidate does emerge, beginning in the third bar of the example below. Several failed attempts to close have preceded it (as in bars 1 to bar 3, beat 1, here), but this one is emphatic and then repeated. A simplified version with main melody notes and bass is at the bottom of this post.

 (simplified version of the structural cadence above)