A Curiosity: Czerny, Praktische Studien des Generalbasses, Op. 838

Carl Czerny's Studien zur praktischen Kenntniss aller Accorde des Generalbasses auf dem Pianoforte sowohl in festen als bewegten Finger-Übungen, Op. 838—or simply "Praktische Studien des Generalbasses," as the interior title page has it—was published in Vienna by Spina in the early 1850s.

Czerny's foreword is a short paragraph that immediately suggests his attitude toward the subject:

The study of figured bass can only be of real value to the student if he learns to play all the chords in their many forms on the piano and is able to play them securely. The present work offers a contribution to that goal, in that the first nine numbers present the chords in block-chord form, and the remaining numbers the same chord repertoire in elaborated form, so that the student can be made more familiar with the various harmonic combinations. (my translation)

His footnote to the title of the first section is decidedly more revealing: "The figures in all of these examples must be worked out by the student, who can avail himself if necessary of help from a textbook or a teacher." Thus, Czerny is really offering a practical diatonic and chromatic chord primer, not a figured-bass textbook.

The first example is of interest here. It covers all 24 major and minor triads in a total of 13 bars. The upper most voice covers the distance of an ascending octave, C5-C6.

The pattern of thirds within fifths—C-a-F in bars 1-2—is strictly maintained throughout, and it charts a simple path through the Riemannian Tonnetz. Here is a fragment of a common representation of the Tonnetz, with arrows showing the starting path of Czerny's progression:

And here is the entire sequence, separated out from the diagram:

I should note, incidentally, that is impossible to maintain the close voicing in the right hand with anything other than a rising line. Analogously to suspensions, which tend to force voice leading down, relative (R) and leading-tone (L) relations force voice leading upward.

Chaminade, Lolita, Caprice espagnol, Op. 54

Cécile Chaminade is remembered for solo piano music and songs, and to be sure these genres represent the majority of her published work. But she also composed orchestral music (some of it with piano), wrote a full-length ballet, and chamber music (two piano trios).

Lolita, Caprice espagnol, Op. 54, was published in 1890, three years after the ballet Callirhoë, from which Chaminade derived the Scarf Dance, the frequent recital piece for which she was long best known.

The design is ABA, a very common design for character pieces throughout the nineteenth century, and the form William Caplin calls "large ternary" to distinguish it from smaller designs, especially the one known as the rounded binary form.

In the large ternary form, B is an independent section with its own theme. That is the case here.

1-4 = introduction
5-12 = the main theme (MT), an eight-bar period with transposed consequent
13-20 = MT repeated
21-28 = contrasting middle or cadence extension (codetta)?
29-52 = 13-36; that is, MT-contrasting middle-MT

Here is the main theme:

Note that with a heavy pedal, the entire passage would sit on a tonic pedal point. That makes bar 21 sound at first very much like a contrasting section. Note, however, that it is just eight bars long and it doesn't close but offers a strong lead-in to the reprise of the main theme. It is this ambivalent character that will be of most interest for interpretation.

The melodic frame of the main theme would appear to rest on ^8, as Db6, but a descent from there to ^5 isn't plausible, where the descent from ^5 is unmistakable.

The first large section, A, closes with the repetition of this sturdy descent. A mode shift to the parallel and a new theme announce B. At the end of this section, we hear a quite dramatic expanded version of the lead-in from bars 25-29.

With this, the role of this gesture would seem to be defined, but the last page of Lolita brings a surprise when this lead-in turns into a structural cadence. 

The design of the coda is simple: a version of the main theme plays above A major (bVI in the main key of Db major) and then we hear another huge sweep up to the tonic note, here written as C#7 and played fff.

The final bars then hammer away at "c," a figure from the B section.

The two versions of the main cadence -- the lead-in at bars 27-29 and the structural close at 120-124 -- have the same basis, shown in the figures below. The Ab5 at the beginning of each represents the ^5 from the main theme. The asterisks in the lower figure are to point out the double function (S in the first case, T in the second) for the A major chord. 

I have written about subordinate cadences and their usurpation of the structural position here in connection with Beethoven, Symphony no, 1, III: link. More generally about a typically nineteenth-century "confusion of section and coda" here: link.