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.

Post no. 300

It is four years to the day that I started this blog (introductory post), and this post is the 300th in the series. The blog has provided material for over twenty essays published on the Texas ScholarWorks platform (link to my author page).

The focus has been quite narrow throughout: ascending cadence gestures in traditional European tonal music. Though my work on these figures has its roots in Schenkerian analysis—an article I published thirty-one years ago ("The Ascending Urlinie," in Journal of Music Theory)—I use those particular constructions only some of the time, because of problems with the figure of the focal tone (Kopfton), which I see as defined too narrowly to be generally useful. I opt more often (1) for the model of proto-backgrounds (link; see also Neumeyer 2009), (2) for style historical methods in connection with the dominant ninth chord and what I call the “waltz ninth,” (3) for similar methods and speculative modes for improvisatory practices, especially in the later 18th and early 19th centuries, and (4) for historical narratives of music for social dance, of music for the stage through the nineteenth century, and of composition in general in the later decades of that century, both narratives continuing to be relevant in the first half of the 20th century, as well.

The great majority of the traditional tonal music preserved in scores and manuscript makes use of form-defining cadences in which the principal melody line descends the scale to end on the tonic note. A significant minority, however, follow an upward path to end on scale degree eight (^8), a “circling” path around ^8, or a “mirror” path down from ^8 to ^5 and returning. An early surprise in my work was to find a considerably larger than average percentage of rising lines in the country dances preserved in John Playford's Dancing Master (first edition 1651; link to essay), which fact suggested to me that the figures were relatively common in dance-performance practice, including improvisation. It must be remembered that music for social dance was predominantly music for the violin (secondarily, flute) and that the instrument’s fifths mapping made it as easy to rise from the middle of the scale to ^8 as it did to descend to ^1. 

I later found considerable corroborating evidence in Scottish and Irish dances and dance-songs, these coming largely from the later 18th century (link; link; link), and in the Germanophone Laendler, one of the waltz ancestors and especially closely associated with the violin, later in the 18th century with an ensemble of two violins and bass.

In the example below, the four open strings are depicted at the left in (a) and (b). From the open A-string, one moves with the greatest ease down the D-major scale, as in (a), or up the D-major scale, as in (b). In counterpoint, supposing for example, one violin improvises a descant to the other, the work is almost as easy, one of the simplest versions shown in (c). Another version with a bit more melodic complexity is shown in (d). Register play, in other words, offered a simple device to "do something different," specifically to do something different for an ending/articulation that didn’t run afoul of the traditional cadenza, where ^2 goes down to ^1 while ^7 goes up to ^8, making intervals of the major sixth and the octave (or minor third and unison). Not coincidentally, the alternative higher-register cadence offered a sound that was "bright" or "brilliant."

Additional corroboration of early practices came from 17th-century Germany and Austria; these included repertoires across the entire spectrum of genres, excluding only sacred choral music: link to essay.

The history and practice of rising cadence gestures quickly became more complicated in the early 19th century. Broadly, though, cadences can be heard as prominent expressive gestures and a turn toward less common cadences fits nicely with our familiar nostrums about Romantic rebellion against eighteenth-century conventions—and it aligns well with music theorists' recent revelations about a kind of shadow tonality of hexatonic relations that arise from the exploitation of chromatic mediants, early on especially by Schubert, whose Laendler and Deutscher ("German dance," the other ancestor of the waltz) made significant use of rising figures. This is music, incidentally, we know passed back and forth between music for dance and music for performance, not only in Schubert’s case but in the pragmatic circumstances of music publishing and (especially) domestic use. 

Strangely, perhaps, I have found so far that straightforward expressive motivations for rising gestures—exhilaration, release, etc.—seem to have been far less prevalent than generic, topical, or formal-design considerations. The few coincidences of text and cadence, predictably, were found in the 19th century, after the clichéd cadence figures derived from earlier Italian practice had been largely abandoned (or, at least, their authority undermined). Examples: Grieg, Morgenstimmung (the analogy of musical ascent and the rising sun; link); Schubert, "Die Nonne" (the religious-utopian; link); Strauss, jr., Die Fledermaus n2 (increasing energy, demand, insistence: "Hinaus!”; link); Wolf, "Trunken müssen wir alle sein!” (as in Strauss; link).

As I have already noted, the rising cadence gesture was part of the toolkit of the waltz, and from there it went directly to the polka by no later than 1840. When an aria or other song used a waltz topic, the gesture went along with it. The floodgates were opened in French comic opera by no later than 1834 (see my essay on Adolphe Adam's Le Châlet: link), and rising cadences remained a factor in the opera bouffe and operettas of Offenbach, Lecocq, and others before finding a niche in the American operetta (Herbert) and the musical (notably those by Richard Rodgers).

The formal figure of the rising gesture in the coda of an aria or instrumental movement became firmly established in the last quarter of the 18th century. In some pieces, though, the boundary line between the "structural cadence" and coda figures became blurry—a process already underway earlier in the ensemble finales of Galuppi, with their many repetitions of cadential phrases, a dramatic device adopted by many composers, notably Mozart and Rossini. The process accelerated in the 19th century, more vigorously and consequentially in music for the stage than in instrumental concert music.

An important outlier in all this is Beethoven, for whom transcendence, as a philosophical-religious category, could mean striving to move not just to the top of the voice leading, but outside or beyond it. For my only comments on this to date, see my post on Op119n7: link. My plan is to do more with this eventually, engaging work by David Lewin, Robert Fink, and, more recently, Malcolm Miller.

Czerny, Praktische Studien des Generalbasses, Op. 838: ninth chords

Czerny introduces the dominant with a minor ninth relatively early in his harmony exercise book. Much later he has a section titled "Der Nonen-Accord." It consists of one two-page composition, a 43-bar agitato that begins in C minor but ends triumphantly in C major.

With only three exceptions, the ninth chords are again dominants with a minor ninth--as at the first arrow below--and those ninths are resolved within the chord--as at the second arrow. Only over pedal point basses are the ninths allowed to resolve directly. In other words, Czerny's treatment of ninth chords is very conservative for the 1850s.

Two of the three dominants with major ninth are close together--see arrows below--and both resolve their ninths within the chord. (Chords with minor ninth are boxed.)

All this being the case, the primary closing cadence is a surprise: not only does it have a chord with major ninth (boxed) but that chord is treated in the manner I call the "waltz ninth," where 9 moves upward, the result being an emphatic ascending cadence gesture (beamed at (a)).  (At (b) is an example of the minor ninths over a pedal point.) Here it is Beethovenian heroic transcendence we are hearing, definitely not a lilting upward turn to end a waltz or polka.

Strauss, Die Fledermaus n5, Act I Finale, "Herr, was dächten Sie von mir"

Alfred and Rosalinde's duo in the "Trinklied" was the first musical section of the Act 1 finale. In the subsequent section the jailor Frank enters and a comic szena ensues in which Alfred continues to sing phrases of the "Trinklied" while Frank attaches his own meaning to them, in the process mistaking Alfred for Eisenstein. Rosalinde realizes what is happening and, because she is trying to get rid of Alfred, claims he is in fact Eisenstein. Her strophic song "Mein Herr, was dächten Sie von mir" elaborates on this ruse ("How could you imagine I would be here with anyone other than my husband? Etc.). See the opening below. Strauss often uses polkas for happy moods or congeniality, but sometimes for irony or, as here, for a series of comic double entendres. (The polka I am referring to is the original type from the 1840s, known in the second half of the 19th century as the polka française, or a slower tempo polka. The music of the polka schnell, in a fast tempo, is barely distinguishable from a galop.)

Note the very strong emphasis on ^6 (E5) as the ninth in a V9. Also note the tonic with add6 at the end.

Still putting emphasis on ^6, the second half of each strophe switches to a waltz, which consists of a double period (Caplin's 16-measure theme) that is repeated. In the first iteration the melody makes its way through an octave -- see the beam.

In the second iteration, Frank and Alfred join in, making for a bit of contrapuntal play. In the cadence, Rosalinde takes the melody back up to G5.

Here is a reduction of the voice leading for the final bars.

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.