New publication on polkas

I have published the essay Ascending Cadence Gestures, A New Historical Survey, Part 4b: 1780-1860, Polkas on the Texas ScholarWorks platform. Here is the link: polka essay.

Here is the abstract:

This is Part 4b of a multi-part essay gathering compositions with ascending lines and cadence gestures in European and European-influenced music. The repertoire here is polkas published in Europe or the United States between 1840 and 1861. Composers include, among others, Barili, D’Albert, Dodworth, Dressler, Grieg, Grobe, Lumbye, Rziha, Smetana, Johann Strauss, jr., Johann Strauss, sr., Valentini, Viereck, and Zawadzki. An appendix lists polkas mentioned in other publications of mine. A separate file contains data on form design in fifteen published polkas.

Part 4a is the general essay for the time period 1780-1860 -- it will be published at a later date.

New blog: On the Dominant Ninth

The number of blogs I maintain has recently grown to four. Hearing Schubert D779n13 was the first of them: it was (and still is) meant to create rich contexts for that curious A-major waltz that is so out of place in the Valses sentimentales, D. 779 (publ. 1825). As material accumulated on ascending cadence figures (which D. 779n13 offers in the most direct and both structurally and expressively consequential way) and on formal designs in early waltzes and related dances (there also D. 779n13 is an anomaly), two additional blogs emerged as spin-offs, the goal in both being primarily to document occurrences and patterns, primarily in 19th-century music but also in earlier music where relevant. These blogs are the present one and Dance and Dance Music, 1650-1850.

Continuing the derivations, On the Dominant Ninth is a spin-off mainly from this blog, given (1) that it was treatments of scale degree ^6 in the major key that enabled the ascending cadence lines that one finds already in Schubert and then more and more often in others as the 19th century moved on; and (2) that in the majority of cases the chord of the dominant ninth was involved. In the new blog, however, the work is not restricted to cadences or to rising figures. Instead, it "is intended to document [the variety of treatments of scale degree ^6 as the ninth of a dominant ninth chord], especially in the essential 19th century European repertoires of the musical stage and music for dance" (quote from the first post to the blog, 21 June 2018).

The new blog has already inspired two publications on the Texas ScholarWorks platform: most recently Dominant Ninth Harmonies in American Songs around 1900; before that Dominant Ninth Harmonies in the 19th Century. A new series on the blog—documenting presentations of the dominant ninth in theory textbooks and treatises in the 19th century—began with a post today on Catel's Traité d'harmonie.

I have published a new essay on the Texas ScholarWorks platform: link.

Title: Offenbach, Rising Melodic Gestures in La belle Hélène (1864)

Abstract:

Jacques Offenbach’s La belle Hélène (1864) was the successor to Orphée aux Enfers (1858; 1874) in both its send-up of Greek myth and its production triumph. Four other mature and now well-known operettas followed: Barbe-bleue (1866), La Vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867), and La Périchole (1868). All of these—along with La belle Hélène—were composed to libretti by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. 

New historical survey

I have published two sets of files on the Texas ScholarWorks platform for a series Ascending Cadence Gestures, New Historical Survey.  Part 1 is the general introduction: link.  Part 2 surveys European Modal Music (to 1650): link.

The abstract:

This new documentation of traditional European and European-influenced music with ascending lines and cadence gestures includes compositions from the fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The work is gathered in five parts, published separately. Part 1 contains the general introduction and a bibliography. Parts 2a-c cover music to 1650, Part 3 from 1650 to 1780, Part 4 1780 to 1860, and Part 5 1860 to the US copyright barrier, which is currently the end of 1923.        

[Please note: Parts 1-2 are available now. Parts 3-5 will be published as they are completed.] 

Administrative

The introduction to the blog was posted on 17 October 2014. Find it here: link.  An updated description of the blog, its argument, and its methods appeared four years later, on 17 October 2018, on the occasion of the 300th post: link. See also additional commentary in the subsequent post: link.  Further comment on analysis methods and priorities may be found here (post from 30 September 2017): link.

An index to compositions may be found here: Index to the Blog Ascending Cadence Gestures and to Related Publications on the Texas ScholarWorks Platform.  The abstract for this file:

This is an index to musical compositions discussed in essays published on this platform since 2010, through 09 January 2019. Many but not all of the pieces listed were also discussed on my blog Ascending Cadence Gestures in Tonal Music (on Google’s blogspot platform). Taken together, these essays and blog posts document rising cadence figures and some melodic archetypes in a broad range of European music from roughly 1500-1900, including music for social uses (dance and song), for domestic and public performance, and for the musical theater.

I have published more than two dozen essays about ascending cadence gestures on the Texas ScholarWorks platform. Link to my author page.  Among these essays, I would point the reader especially to the "Gallery of Simple Examples" -- link -- and its sequel -- link. These two links are to blog posts that give title, abstract, and table of contents, along with a direct link.

Post no. 301 and a (slight) change of focus

For most of the history of this blog, I have produced a series of posts on a single topic, then gathered those posts into an essay published on the Texas ScholarWorks platform (link).

I am currently working on a large-scale project that traces ascending melodic gestures in the stage works of Jacques Offenbach, as well as some of his predecessors (mainly Adolphe Adam, Donizetti,  and Hervé) and successors (Charles Lecocq, André Messager, possibly also Johann Strauss II). For this multi-part essay series, which is expected to run for a year or more, I will announce each part as it is published on Texas ScholarWorks. A few representative excerpts will probably be posted here as well.

The main goal for this blog going forward, however, is to return to my original conception of it: occasional posts on individual works as I find them and infrequent posts surveying mentions of the rising line in the music theory literature, in connection with or in response to my 1987 JMT article.

Some time ago now (in 2010, in fact) I wrote a series of posts (link to the first) and then gathered those as an essay (link) on Carl Schachter's two extended engagements with the ascending Urlinie. Nowhere else in the literature did my work on this topic merit so much attention, and I remain grateful to him for it, even if I completely disagree with his conclusions (or, really, with the grounds on which those conclusions were reached).

I have written previously about a few articles and books that mention the ascending Urlinie and/or analyses that utilize it (or specifically criticize it):

• Emily Ahrens Yates and Carl Schachter on Chopin, Op. 28n9 (link); (link)
• Michael Buchler, conference paper on Disney (link) and publications (link)
• Charles Burkhart, unpublished analysis of Couperin, Pieces de Clavecin, Ordre 5, "La Flore" (link)
• Suzannah Clark, critique of an analysis by Thomas Denny, from her Analyzing Schubert (link)
• Walter Everett, article on 19th-century songs (link); (link); (link)
• Henry Martin on Miles Davis's "Four" (link); comment by Mark McFarland and response by Martin (link)
• William Rothstein, in an article on implied notes, comment on the ascending Urlinie (link) and analysis of Beethoven, op. 119n7 (link)
• Heinrich Schenker, Bach Prelude in C Major, BWV 924 (and 924a) (link)
• Jeffrey Swinkin, analysis of Scriabin, Op. 11n13 (link)
• Naphtali Wagner on Sgt. Pepper (link)
• Channan Willner, essay on the polyphonic Ursatz (link)
• Jason Yust on Beethoven, Op. 22, III (link)
• Matthew Brown, Explaining Tonality (link)

New Publication: Music from the Notes in Ascending Urlinie (JMT 1987)

I have just published The Ascending Urlinie (Journal of Music Theory, 1987): Studies of Music from the Endnotes on the Texas Scholar Works platform: link.  Here is the abstract:

In the endnotes to an article published thirty years ago, I list about thirty compositions as representative examples of different forms of the ascending Urlinie. This document provides analyses and discussion of all those pieces, as well as additional discussion of two pieces from the article’s main text: Bach, Prelude in C Major, BWV 924 (as compositional exercise); Beethoven, Piano Sonata in Bb major, op. 22, III (rising Urlinie and register).

The essay gathers the posts from this blog and adds to them additional material on BWV 924 & 924a and on Beethoven, String Quartet in Eb major, Op. 74.

JMT series, postscript

In May of this year, I started a series of posts that discussed compositions mentioned in the notes to my article "The Ascending Urlinie," this being the 30th year since its publication in the Journal of Music Theory. The two introductory posts are here: link; link. A further administrative post appeared in early September: link.

Since the series has necessarily been about Schenkerian analysis, I think it's important to stress here again that the blog is by no means restricted to that method or its issues. Referring to documents published on the Texas Scholar Works platform, I recently wrote "In this and other essays, a broader range of examples was made possible in part because the selection was not so constrained by abstract Schenkerian background models and their idealist voice leading. The result is a much better picture of musical practices over the several centuries separating 16th-century bicinia (two-voice pieces mainly for pedagogical use) from nineteenth century waltzes, polkas, and other instrumental and vocal compositions" (2017, 4). I have sometimes used a traditional Schenkerian method for pieces with clear focal tones that connect plausibly to rising cadence gestures, but equally or more often a freer model of reading lines and their patterns where I thought that provided better information. I have used my proto-background model when register, stable intervals and their transformations are particularly evident, and in the absence of analytic method I have used the simple, familiar model of style statistics and comparison where rising cadence gestures appear but their connections to pitch-design context aren't clear.

As the preceding suggests, although the hunt for rising cadence gestures began thirty years ago in an effort to justify and document the ascending Urlinie, it has evolved into a broader and more consequential historical project. That rising cadence gestures are far more than exceptions to the rule (even in narrowly constrained Schenkerian terms) has been obvious long since, but the historical narrative of these gestures in European and American music-making is a work in progress.

Reference:
Neumeyer, David. 2017. Ascending Cadence Gestures in Waltzes by Joseph Lanner. Link.

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.

Gallery of Simple Examples, volume 2

I have posted a sequel to the gallery of simple examples (link to volume 1). The title is A Gallery of Simple Examples of Extended Rising Melodic Shapes, Volume 2: link to volume 2.

Here is the abstract:

This second installment of direct, cleanly formed rising lines offers examples from a variety of sources, ranging from a short early seventeenth century choral piece to Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, and from Scottish fiddle tunes to Victor Herbert operettas.

Here is a combined table of contents for the two volumes, arranged chronologically and with the volume number indicated:

Praetorius, three-voice motet "Preis sei Gott in der Höhe"       -- vol. 2
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Partita ex Vienna, Courante      -- vol. 2
Böhm, Suite in F minor, Courante       -- vol. 1
Anon., Chelsea Stage    -- vol. 2
Anon., The Duchess of Gordon     -- vol. 2
Anon., The Kerry Jig       -- vol. 2
Anon., The Nabob        -- vol. 2
Anon., The Runaway Bride   -- vol. 2
Anon., Shepherds Jigg   -- vol. 2
Anon., Yankey Doodle      -- vol. 2
Mozart, 12 Menuets, K176n1       -- vol. 1
Haydn, String Quartet in D Major, Op76n2, III       -- vol. 1
Haydn, Symphony no. 86, III      -- vol. 1
Beethoven, 12 German Dances, WoO8n1       -- vol. 1
Hummel, from 6 German Dances & 12 Trios, op. 16      -- vol. 2
Schubert, Wiener-Damen-Ländler, D734n15       -- vol. 1
Schubert, Valses sentimentales, D779n13       -- vol. 1
Schubert, Ländler, D814n4       -- vol. 1
Schubert, Deutscher Tanz, D769n1       -- vol. 1
Schubert, Grazer Walzer, D924n9       -- vol. 1
Johann Strauss, sr., “Champagner Galop,” Op. 8      -- vol. 2
Johann Strauss, sr., Das Leben ein Tanz, oder Der Tanz ein Leben!, Op.49       -- vol. 1
Johann Strauss, sr., Exotische Pflanzen, Op.109       -- vol. 1
Johann Strauss, jr., Künstlerleben, op. 316       -- vol. 1
Brahms, “Über die See”       -- vol. 1
Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker, March       -- vol. 1
Herbert,  Sweethearts, n7: "Jeannette and Her Little Wooden Shoes"      -- vol. 2
Herbert, Naughty Marietta, n17: "The Sweet Bye and Bye"      -- vol. 2
Herbert, Babette, n23: Finale III      -- vol. 2
Prokofiev, Classical Symphony, Gavotte      -- vol. 2
Gershwin, Shall We Dance, "Slap That Bass"      -- vol. 2
Waxman, Rebecca, "Hotel Lobby Waltz”      -- vol. 2 

Addendum to the historical survey, index, published

I have published an addendum to the historical survey (link to that document) on Texas Scholar Works: link to the new document.

Here is the abstract:

This is an addendum to the essay Ascending Cadence Gestures: A Historical Survey from the 16th to the Early 19th Century (published on Texas Scholar Works, July 2016), consisting of posts since that date to my blog “Ascending Cadence Gestures” (on Google blogspot). This is also an index to musical compositions discussed in essays published or re-published on this platform since 2010, through 03 March 2017.

Essay on Waltzes by Joseph Lanner Published

I have published an essay titled Ascending Cadence Gestures in Waltzes by Joseph Lanner on the Texas Scholar Works platform: link. Here is the abstract:

Rising melodic figures have a long history in cadences in European music of all genres. This essay documents and analyzes examples from an especially influential repertoire of social dance music, the Viennese waltz in the first half of the 19th century. The two most important figures were both violinists, orchestra leaders, and composers: Josef Lanner (d. 1843) and Johann Strauss, sr. (d. 1849). Lanner is the focus of this essay, with waltz sets ranging from prior to 1827 through 1842.

In addition to the analyses of waltzes from nine sets by Lanner, the reader may be interested in the second section of the introduction, "The Violin and the Cadence: On the Complexity of the Relations of Melodic Figures and Voice-leading" and in the postscript "on the period, double period, AB designs, and quadruple periods."

Minor key essay

I have gathered the posts in the minor key series into an essay that has been published on the Texas Scholar Works platform: Ascending Lines in the Minor Key.

The essay contains all posts from the series, along with a newly written "concluding comment."

Here is the abstract:

The minor key poses obstacles to rising cadence gestures, and the number of compositions with convincing linear ascents is small. This essay assumes a mostly traditional Schenkerian point of view and studies that limited repertoire of pieces, which includes 17th and early 18th century music relying on the Dorian octave, and compositions by a variety of composers from Johann Walther and Thomas Morley, through François Couperin and Beethoven, to Brahms, Hugo Wolf, and Carl Kiefert.

New essay published

My essay Rising Gestures, Text Expression, and the Background as Theme has been published on the Texas Scholar Works platform: link. Here is the abstract:

Walter Everett's categories for tonal design features in nineteenth-century songs fit the framework of the Classic/Romantic dichotomy: eighteenth-century practice is the benchmark for progressive but conflicted alternatives. These categories are analogous to themes in literary interpretation; so understood, they suggest a broader range of options for the content of the background than the three Schenkerian Urlinien regarded as essentialized universals. The analysis of a Brahms song, "Über die See," Op. 69/7, provides a case study in one type, the rising line, and also the entry point for a critique of Everett's reliance on a self- contradictory attitude toward the Schenkerian historical narrative.

Music for dancing, 1650-1700, part 1

This post initiates a series on dances from Playford's English Dancing Master (its first edition, 1651, was the only one called The English Dancing Master). I have already gathered fifty numbers with ascending cadence gestures in a PDF documentation essay published on Texas Scholar Works: Playford rising line file. Material from that essay is also included in my Rising Lines essay.

In this series of posts I will analyze a small number of these melodies for matters of register, line, and cadence.

Here is a simple example of register treatment, apparently in service to the title: Under and Over, which appears initially in the second edition (1652). I am using the text as it stands in the fourth edition, from 1670; according to Jeremy Barlow's annotations, several note changes in the ninth (1695) and later editions reduce the modal turns and emphasize typical tonal figures for G minor. (The second flat in the signature, on the other hand, was added in the fourth edition.)

Three of four phrases immediately establish the octave G4-G5. The first phrase then moves by step through that octave from above. The third phrase drops that octave by a step to F4-F5, while using many of the same notes (see double arrow). The second and fourth phrases drop the lower fifth and hold to the upper fourth instead, with a strong linear motion into the cadence.

Note that, overall, the lower range is extended by a step (from G4 to F4—see *) and the upper limit also by a step (from G5 to A5—see **).


A slightly more complex example: Arcadia, which was added in the seventh edition (1686). Four phrases again, marked (a) through (d), and in all of them lines (based on accented pitches) rather than spaces seem to hold sway: a third overlaps the end of the first phrase, reaching the first note of the second phrase, Bb, which then ascends into the cadence on F5; the third phrase continues from that note to an accented A5, then in the final phrase the march continues upward to close on the remarkably high note Bb5.

(If one insisted on gathering the lines into a middleground-background shape, the options would include (1) Bb: ^3 in bar 1 eventually reaching a primary ^5 in bars 7-8, then ascending in the second strain to ^8; (2) raising the pickup note F5 to background status, and holding it throughout till the final cadence completes the ascent; (3) treating the first phrase as "preliminary" [initial descent] to Bb4, which initiates a rising octave line to Bb5; and (4) reading a line of the sixth beginning with Bb4 in bar 4, ascending to F5 by the end of the strain, then further up to Bb5 in the second strain.)

In this series of posts, basic information about the individual tunes is taken from Jeremy Barlow, ed., The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master, 1651-ca.1728.

Administrative post, part 2

In an earlier post, I provided links for some of the PDF files I have uploaded to the Texas Digital Repository (TDR). Files most relevant to this blog are listed there. Others appear here. Like those PDF essays in the earlier list, most of these are compilations of posts from my Schubert blog and from a defunct website.

Dance and Dancing in Schubert's Vienna

This file has six parts: the first concerns dancing in Vienna and dance music genres during the brief period between the Congress of Vienna and the July Revolution in France (1815-1830). The second part brings the focus focus down more locally to the Schubert-Kreis and Schubert’s improvisation practice for dancing. Part 3 looks even more closely at some of the mechanics of that practice. Part 4 turns to the extant repertoire of Schubert’s dances. Part 5 explores Robert Schumann’s review of D365 and D783 and turns it back speculatively onto D779. Part 6 offers a short list of links relating to Schubert.

Cotillon after Schubert, with audio

An episode from a cotillon as Franz Schubert might have played it in the 1820s. UT-Austin doctoral student Josh Straub is the pianist in the audio file.

Dance Designs in 18th and Early 19th Century Music

A study of harmony and formal functions in dance music of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The data and analyses are also intended to supplement the form theory presented in William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Classical Form discusses the different movement types one encounters in the Classical sonata, quartet, and symphony, but because of the meticulous attention given to small-scale, theme units, the theory is also very well-suited to style studies of dance musics.

Proto-backgrounds in Traditional Tonal Music

This article uses an analogy between "theme" in literary studies and "background" in linear analysis (or other hierarchical analytic models) for music to find more options for interpretation than are available in traditional Schenkerian analysis. The central construct is the proto-background, or tonic-triad interval that is understood to precede the typical linear background of a Schenkerian or similar hierarchical analysis. Figures typically or potentially found in a background, including the Schenkerian urlinie, are understood to arise through (informal) transformations, or functions, applied to proto-backgrounds.

Section from a chapter of an unpublished book:

On Edward Macdowell's "To a Wild Rose"

Historical and biographical background and analysis of MacDowell's "To a Wild Rose." Critique of Schenkerian analysis.

Nineteenth-century polkas with rising melodic and cadence gestures: a new PDF essay

Title: Nineteenth-century polkas with rising melodic and cadence gestures

 Link: Polkas

Abstract: This essay provides background on dance in the nineteenth century and then focuses on characteristic figures in the polka, especially those linked to rising cadence gestures. The polka became a popular social dance very quickly in the early 1840s. Its music was the first to introduce rising melodic frames and cadence gestures as common features. This essay provides a series of examples with commentary. Most pieces come from the 1840s and early 1850s. Variants of the polka—polka-mazurka, polka française, and polka schnell—are also discussed and illustrated.

Publication on Texas Scholar Works (University of Texas Libraries)