Showing posts with label add6. Show all posts
Showing posts with label add6. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Four from the movies (1): Waxman, "Hotel Lobby Waltz"

Franz Waxman wrote the underscore for Rebecca (1940; produced by Selznick, directed by Hitchcock). Early in the film we hear the "Hotel Lobby Waltz." A reduced version of the tune in transcription, along with chord symbols, is given below. Some bars of the reduction have all the notes, others have a principal note only. As the transcription shows, the final cadence rises.


Here is a formal Schenkerian sketch, with annotations that mark action in the film. "Exterior" refers to the exterior of the hotel; "interior" is the cut to the hotel lobby. "He" of course is Laurence Olivier in character as Maxim de Winter. "On reprise" refers to the reprise following a trio: the overall design is waltz (AABA)-trio-waltz.  (The "Hotel Lobby Waltz," by the way, segues directly into the waltzes by Lanner and Strauss used in the breakfast scene.)


The waltz has a trio, which is sketched below.


A middleground/background sketch of the entire cue is here. The striking thing about the piece is certainly the "naturalization" of add6, so that the Urlinie is not ^5-^6-^7-^8 but only ^6-^7-^8.


Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Strauss, Künstlerleben (Artist's Life)

One of the better known waltzes of Johann Strauss, jr., Künstlerleben [Artist’s Life] has a number of features that are similar to those in the even more famous Blue Danube. One of the clearest tonic-with-add6 chords in the Strauss repertoire is in bars 4-5 of waltz 2 (below), and it appears again as the melody line comes back down (bars 12-13). This latter version, with the tonic chord in 6/4 position and acting as a cadential dominant, is more common in Strauss waltzes than the root position version that became the standard in most uses well into the twentieth century.


In the third waltz, the same scalar descending figure has different consequences: a V9 (first box) that resolves directly, a transient Iadd6 that follows, and an ECP (expanded cadential progression) whose ^6 over ii6 participates in the motivation to a very emphatic rising cadence gesture.


The last waltz in the set also makes much of the potential of ^6 for expression and coloration of harmony, starting in the first bar (arrow). Piling things on, Strauss directly resolves V9 (second arrow and bar 6) but with an intervening upper neighbor E6! The tonic as Iadd6 is particularly expressive with its repeated leaps to ^6 (double arrow and bars 6-8). The version of with the tonic chord in 6/4 position appears in bars 12-13. 


After all the above, the second strain is remarkably simple, involving a pair of rising cadences, the second of which even devolves to ^6 over a simple subdominant.