Strauss, Die Fledermaus n16, Act III finale

In Act III, as we saw in the previous post, everyone converges on the jail, for different reasons but mainly to participate in Falke's revelation of his trick on Eisenstein. Since that trick was to induce Eisenstein to flirt with his disguised wife, the main element of the plot now is their reconciliation. Consistent with the farcical nature of the plot, when Eisenstein blames the champagne, Rosalinde promptly forgives him and all ends well.

The finale is brief, compared with those for the first two acts. A polka sets up an explanation of the ruse. Its introduction generates a simple ascent from ^5 to ^8. The theme that follows consists of unfolded intervals; the main voice is the lower one, ^1-^7-^1, with a covering ^5-^4-^3.

When Eisenstein says "Du siehst, nur der Champagner war an allem Schuld!," everyone joins in a reprise of the Prince's toast that opened the Act II finale—and now closes the operetta.

Postscript 2 to "Trinklied": parallel fifths

Postscript to "Trinklied": assuming a dominant-root in the bass, the "fall from the dominant" in the cadence traces a V9 chord, which -- in the major key -- poses the danger of parallel fifths if 9 in one voice descends to 8 (that is, ^6 goes to ^5 in the tonic resolution), and 5 in a second voice descends by step (or ^2 goes to ^1) below the first voice. The problem is easily seen in the figure from my previous post (below): E5 goes to D5, A4 goes to G4.

Musicians obviously found ways to deal with this, as the sound of the V9 chord is a particular feature in 19th century music of all but the most conservative sorts—and it began early, with Schubert's generation. In yesterday's post on The Blue Danube waltzes, we saw Johann Strauss, jr., use the simplest method: resolve 9 to 8 before the tonic chord. Thus one gets the expressive sound of the ninth chord without the voice-leading hassle.

The problem of parallels in certain progressions--and clever devices of detail to overcome them--is far older than the 19th century. In the 16th century, the 5-3 sequence was occasionally used -- see Ex. 1a. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the ubiquitous circle of 5ths sequence avoided parallel octaves and fifths while invoking the sound of a stream of perfect intervals--Examples 1b and 1c.

In Example 2a, I have condensed the "Trinklied" falling figure into a chord. At 2b is the older voice leading for viiø7-I; this assumes that both C5 and A4 resolve to B4, but that means one cannot have a descending cadence melody: ^2 goes to ^3, not ^1. The recommended textbook voice leading for V9 in four parts (Example 2c) conveniently leaves out the fifth (A5 here), erasing the problem of parallels, but still making V9 unusable in closing cadences. Example 2d translates 2c into a cadential form, but that means ^7-^8 in the uppermost voice. Finally, Example 2e overlays 2d on the "Trinklied" melodic figure, which reintroduces ^2 (A5) but doesn't sustain ^6 (E5) throughout the bar, thus barely escaping directly sounding parallels.

In general the orchestral parts reinforce this. For example, one of the horn parts holds D4 throughout the four measures of the cadence phrase. One of the woodwind parts even traces a melodic line through A5 but then is silent during the final bar's tonic chord!

There is an exception, though. While the second violins hold A3 and resolve it directly to G3—

—the second clarinet (which is in C) holds E4, clashing with the F#4 in the second violins' double-stop, and only touches on F#4 for an eighth note before dropping to D4. This is as "barely" as barely escaping fifths can get.

Strauss's generation was the last to try to observe the prohibition against parallel fifths. In the next generation, Debussy and his peers divided parallel intervals/chords and contrary motion into two sets of effects, both equally expressive and usable.

Three from Ball's Musical Cabinet

Ball's Musical Cabinet, or Compleat Pocket Library for the Flute, Flaeolet, [sic] Violin &c. was published about 1820, according to its IMSLP page: link. I have no further information about it, but the date, if broadly taken, is plausible: many such inexpensive collections of well-known dances and songs were published in the first half of the nineteenth century. The evidently poor quality of the paper suggests earlier rather than later.

From this volume, I have extracted three dance-songs, all of which are very well-known. The "Exile of Erin" focuses on ^8, to which its figures continually return. The opening of B1 and B2 offer the "play in a register above" that one commonly finds in these subordinate form sections (not unrelated, in affective and functional terms, to the bridge in the American ballad standard). Here the repetitions of the rising cadence (boxed) carry particular weight, as their last appearance sets "Erin go Bragh."

The main theme phrase expresses a mirror figure, ^8 down to ^5, then up again:

"Kitty of Coleraine" would make an interesting study of the play of registers, but I will confine myself here to the main shapes of lines -- these are neighbor note figure about a constant ^8. In the main cadences—lines four and eight—a line returns to ^8 from below.

"Robin Adair" is a straightforward example of the case where a framing sixth, ^5 below, ^3 above, or A4-F#5 here, generates a wedge figure converging on the tonic note, here D5. I have sorted this out in the graphic below the score.

Pecháček, 12 Laendler (1801)

František Martin Pecháček (1763-1816) was a Bohemian violinist, conductor, and composer who spent his professional career in Vienna, mainly as a conductor in the theaters. He was the father of the violin virtuoso Franz Xaver Pecháček.

A prolific composer, Pecháček senior wrote in all contemporary genres, including music for social dance. His 12 Ländler, written for an ensemble unusual in the waltz repertoire—2 clarinets, 2 horns, and bassoon—were published in 1801.

Like Beethoven's Ländler in WoO11 and WoO15, written about the same time, this set provides an excellent example of the Ländler in its traditional form—as distinct from the later keyboard Ländler of Schubert and many other composers in the 1820s, who strove to make the Ländler congenial and specific to the piano, using less common keys with chromatic twists and pianistic registral play, thus blurring the distinction between music for dance and music for recital. A characteristic that Pecháček's 12 Ländler do share with later Ländler is their repetitiousness, a marker of their primary role as music for dance, not for performance.

The texture is uniform throughout all twelve pieces, with the first clarinet leading, the second clarinet playing a parallel melodic part below, the horns providing consistent quarter-note motion with simple figures (though not often in the familiar oompah-oompah version), and the bassoon playing the bass line. I have gathered the parts for the first strain of number 5 into score as an example. Published parts were downloaded from IMSLP.

Though written for clarinet, the melodies are highly violinistic, another reflection of the historical traditions of the Ländler. As a result, the play of register and the marking out of fifth spaces are prominent features. Here is the first strain of n1:

The fifth C5-G5 is defined as the frame of the basic idea (bars 1-2), and a line descends from G5 in the varied basic idea (bars 3-4). In the consequent phrase, the line again descends toward ^3, which is not sounded but easily imagined (and in all likelihood was sometimes improvised). I have written about such "complex lines" here: link. The same third-line and its repetition with the "imagined" E4 occur in the same places in the second strain. This time, however, the upper voice confirms the highest register of bar 1—that is, C6—with what I call the "primitive" ascending Urlinie ^5-^7-^8. (I am not terribly proud of that label, btw, as it privileges line over interval frame, but I have used it for so long now that I may as well continue to do so.)

In n5, G5 dominates (so to speak) and the first strain expresses two complete rising lines in its two phrases. The second strain reuses the figure of n1, but the final bars are a little more complicated in that *three* lines are expressed: the incomplete ascending line, the third-line from G5 (as in n1), and a secondary third-line E4-D4-C4. The last pitch is imagined in the clarinet -- the complete third-line is played by the first horn.

n10: The basic linear figure in the second strain is that of n5, second strain, with the difference that the descent from ^5 is complete (albeit with an imagined ^1). The first strain, however, exaggerates the registral play to open a 13th from E4 to C6, then continue with the more compact B5-D5. In the consequent phrase we hear the final C5 and imagine (easily) the upper C6.

n9: The uppermost registral figure in n10, first strain, is anticipated in n9, where a simple neighbor figure, C6-B5-C6, dominates the first strain. The contrast is substantial with the second strain, which plods along in repeated short descending lines, and not surprisingly then puts out a ^3-^2-^1 frame overall.

In the context of this set, n12 is an anomaly: its first strain is in the relative minor (the second clarinet even plays G#, the only accidental in the entire set), but the second strain is equally firmly in C major. In the repertoire of Ländler and Deutscher Tanz, however, such pairings are not unusual, if also not common. Examples in Schubert include D145ns 5, 8; D365n22; and D779ns7, 22, 31. Here, as in some instances in Schubert, the second strain is essentially a transposed version of the first, with the important exception that the lower ^1 is missing in the final bar, replaced by the upper C6, so that the framing figure is the primitive Urlinie ^5-^7-^8.