Luigi Fragna, "'O Café chantant"

 Luigi Fragna, "'O Café chantant," was written for the 1901 Piedigrotta Festival in Naples. I have written about songs from this long-running event before, in Part 4 of the survey of dominant ninths chords after c1890 (link).

Reduction. If you want a traditional background, it's marked out at the top: a simple neighbor above ^8. As I remember, Arthur Komar was the first to offer the "stationary" ^8 as background focal tone--see my article in Music Theory Spectrum 2009 for details. More notes but equally simple play of neighbors make a controlling middleground.

Three more from Ball's Musical Cabinet

Ball's Musical Cabinet was published in two volumes. The three pieces discussed yesterday are from volume 1. From volume 2, I have chosen three more: "The Carpet Weaver," "Peggy Ban," and "The Tank." The first two of these are well-known tunes, like those in yesterday's post. About "The Tank," I know nothing more.

"The Carpet Weaver" is unusual in its boundary play, a Schenkerian term for melodic figures above the basic line. Here we would assume through the first phrase that the focal pitch is F#5, but in the second phrase of both theme statements, F#5 disappears, and attention goes entirely to the lower register, the end result being a mirror, ^8 down to ^5 and then back up again.

On the other hand, in the second half F#5 gains considerably, but the usual B-section contrast (at "vow'd") and the melodramatic long note (at deny'd him") are still not enough to displace the octave (that is, D5) as the focal note.

"Peggy Ban" (better known as "Peggy Bawn"). The play of ^3, as F#5, above the focal note ^8 is very similar to "The Carpet Weaver."

I've isolated the interval frame (which I would take to be a proto-background) in this version:

"The Tank" is a curious piece -- no song, it is highly violinistic, which character it promptly announces with the octaves in bars 1-2. I put it down to an eighteenth-century contredanse, perhaps put in by the publisher because there was empty space on the page (I have seen more obvious insertions in other collections of the period). Note that every phrase is different. Thus, each strain is what Caplin calls an antecedent + continuation hybrid. I use the term "galant theme" because this particular hybrid is especially common in virtually all types of instrumental music from roughly 1750-1800. Periods are more likely in contredanses (a fact reflected in the themes of many finales in Classical period sonatas and symphonies), so in another sense, then, "The Tank" is unusual.

The second through fourth phrases are quite distinct from the first: all have interesting—but differing—plays on ^3 and ^5 (as F#5-A5).

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.

Grape Juice Reel

The first track on Frank Ferrell's CD Boston Fiddle: The Dudley Street Tradition (Rounder Records, 1995) is a medley of "Mrs. Hogan's Birthday," "Grape Juice," "Mrs. Hamilton's [Reel]," and "The Wind-up." As of this posting, the CD is still available for purchase in major venues, and the medley can be heard in a youtube audio/video file: link.

It's the second tune that is the topic today. In the liner notes, Ferrell reproduces what I take to be the version he says he "found in one of Tommy [Doucet's] old hand-written dance folios." Two contrasting (that is, motivically largely unrelated) strains of 8 bars each close with PACs in the main key, F major. The first strain is entirely diatonic, whereas the second indulges in some slightly unusual chromaticism: cadence to vi (D minor) in bars 11-12, a fully diminished seventh chord in bar 14, and a chromatic ascent in the cadence.

At (a), the violinistic frame of the fifth is established, at (b) it is expanded in both directions: from C5 to F5 upward and F4 to C4 downwards (arrows). At (c), the common one-too-far gesture reaches A5. At (d), the three unfolded thirds that follow from this. At (e), the consequent phrase begins; at (f), the closing figure: ^8-^7-^9-^8, as F5-E5-G5-F5; at (g) the "boundary play" of the upper thirds.

In the second strain, a "mirror Urlinie" where ^8 descends to ^5 -- line from (a) -- then ascends again to close -- line at (b). In both instances, the chromatic figures sit between ^5 and ^6.

JMT series, part 6b-3

This continues from yesterday's post to examine linear analyses of Beethoven, Symphony no. 1, III, and also to discuss its pervasive figure of the rising fourth.

In the previous post, I noted that Schachter's analysis of tonal structure was "bizarre, in my view radically un-Schenkerian." The sense of this assessment is apparent enough in the background/first middleground (63), which I have reproduced and annotated:

Far more (on traditional terms) mechanically and (in my view) musically plausible readings are shown below.

One can, of course, always read from ^3. This analysis takes the E5 in bar 3 as its focal tone--not unreasonable as it is the endpoint of the tonic prolongation in the opening phrase. The reading positions the "flat-key" area within a dominant prolongation, which matches our expectations about tonal design and formal functions. And the ending is conventional too, though ^2 must be implied (not shown that way, here) if one is taking the first violins, first oboe, and first flute as the line. There is a simple ^3-^2-^1 in the first horn and viola. Details of this reading may be found on my Google Drive page: link.

The traditional reading from ^5 fits the music as well as the one from ^3, with the exception that ^5 appears in the first obviously non-tonic moment (I've whisked that away in the graph, but you can see it in the score -- top of the previous post). This graph also shows more clearly that V in the retransition has been replaced by iii (as iii6/4).

A descending line from ^8 is not possible, but one can hear a stable ^8 -- surrounded by neighbor notes -- if one takes the strongest shape of the opening, the rising fourth motive, and chooses its goal tone as a long range focal tone. Details of this reading may be found on my Google Drive page: link.

The rising fourth motive and the persistent register play make a reading with a proto-background quite convincing. For more on proto-backgrounds, see my essay on Texas Scholar Works: link.

Finally, a reading meant to support the previous two, but I think also quite strong on its own. The fourth motive is stated three times, as three 2 bar ideas, in the first strain. A cadential gesture finishes. In the B section, the motive is continually present, as an obvious inverse, then expanded to a sixth in the approach to the cadence on bII. After that, the original and inverse are combined in the "codetta" to the Db cadence. A distorted version in the retransition is followed by the 14-bar expansion of the main theme in the reprise (bars 45-58), where the motivic idea is heard six times before the cadence formula. In the second half of the coda the rising motive and the falling melodic formula are opposed.

The three main cadences (not counting the one in Db major or bars 67-76) have versions of the same rhythmic figure and falling shape. At (a), the accented bar is on V/V. At (b), it is on the cadential dominant 6/4, but at (c) it is on the tonic -- the cadence came before it this time. It is this motivically driven dramatic plan that allows us to hear the final bars and not the earlier formula as the proper end of this menuetto/scherzo.

References:
Schachter, Carl. 2000. “Playing What the Composer Didn’t Write: Analysis and Rhythmic Aspects of Performance.” In Essays in Honor of Jacob Lateiner, edited by Bruce Brubaker and Jane Gottlieb, 47-68. Pendragon.

JMT series, part 9-1 (note 34, mirror Urlinie)

n34: my note: The double treatment of the fourth ^5 to ^8 occurs also in Saint Saëns, Le Carnival des animaux, “Le cygne.”

The melody is distinguished by an expressive leap at the end of the first long phrase; the scale leads us to expect G, but we hear B instead. The original solo is for 'cello; the violin transcription of this phrase is as follows:

From this, I might read any of three plausible backgrounds for a traditional Schenkerian analysis. Version (a) acknowledges B as ^3; that returns (not shown) in the reprise and descends in the final cadence [I will show details in a moment]. Version (b) is the mirror Urlinie; it takes B as a cover tone and works out a longer descent/ascent pair over the course of the reprise. Version (c) is more radical: it assumes the octave line itself -- or even more broadly the motive of the slightly ornamented scale gesture -- as a first middleground, with the neighbor ^8^7^8 as the background. As with version (a), the ascent and close are concentrated in the final cadence.

Here are details of the three readings, using the 'cello solo part. At the bottom of the post is a chordal reduction of the entire piece, again using tones from the violin part.

The reading from ^3 is clear enough. The registrally correct G4 in the leading-tone third line has to be inferred from the sounding G3.

 The reading of particular interest here -- the mirror Urlinie -- is not really all that much more complicated. In the unfolded third of the opening melody, the lower note is considered primary this time. The descent/ascent pair are presented quite plainly across the space of the final phrase.

Finally, the reading with ^8-^7-^8 and a middleground ascending octave line. The background neighbor-note figure creates a very simple tonal frame. The middleground octave line provides a motivic parallel to the ascending eighth-note line in the melody (see the boxed notes -- these of course also occur in the third bar of the opening melody).

For reference a chordal reduction. The design is a small ternary form: A = 1-8; B = 9-17; A' = 18 to the end. The harmony moves from I to iii in the A-section, then by sequence eventually reaching v or V. The reprise works out a broadly cadential progression.

The other piece mentioned in note 34 as having a mirror Urlinie -- a Telemann aria -- will be examined in tomorrow's post.

JMT series, part 3b (more on BWV 924 & 924a)

The earlier of two published analyses by Schenker is in an issue of Der Tonwille—see references at the bottom of this post. It is the only reading with a rising line in his published work.

A facsimile of the detailed reading is below. This comes from my own copy, given to me by my former Indiana colleague Vernon Kliewer on the occasion of his retirement. You can find a cleaner version in Drabkin and Annibaldi, page 63 (again, see references at the end of this post). I wrote this in my JMT article: Schenker "gives an analysis of the first of J. S. Bach’s Twelve Little Preludes in which the essential motion is the 'composing-out of the space of the fourth from G to C.' He describes this motion as accomplished by ^5-^6-^7-^8 over I, followed by a repetition of ^7-^8 over V and I, respectively. . . . By the standards of the fully developed theory, this analysis is unconvincing, but it is more to the point that Schenker’s essay contains no comment suggesting that the rising Urlinie is in any way problematic. In fact one of his closing comments is, 'After this presentation, who can still doubt that this Prelude, through Urlinie, voice leading, and harmony, develops only the triad, the chord of C?'” (276-77; see note at bottom of this post] I then recount how he changed his mind about rising lines over the course of the next two years. As we will see below, I came up with quite a different reading myself—Urlinie from ^5—but on revisiting the matter over this past week, I find this first reading of the piece the most convincing of them all. It charts the course of the upper voice beautifully and therefore also matches the bass and its implied (partimento) figures.

William Drabkin has an equally interesting reading that retains Schenker's upper-voice shapes but expands on them using my three-part Ursatz device (from another 1987 article). His graph is the lower system below. In the upper system, I have pulled out a pair of unfoldings as a complementary way to relate the two upper voices.

Schenker's later analysis (here in a version from Meeùs, Figure 8) runs from the initial ^3 and shifts a great deal of the earlier-level motion to the pedal-point dominant. Allen Forte and the Forte & Gilbert textbook follow this.

Nicolas Meeùs tries to solve the problem of too much attention to the end by creating a different kind of rising inner voice (the one he labels "Cantizans").

I have an unpublished analysis, probably from the 1980s, in which I read the Prelude from ^5. My octave couplings -- at (a) -- imitate those of the WTC I C Major Prelude. At (b) sixths elaborate from above, starting from a unique C6 cover tone. At (c) I might have unfolded a third from B4 to the open note D5.

References:
Meeùs, Nicolas. "Fundamental Line(s)." Conference paper, 2004. Available from the author's website: link.
Drabkin, William, and Claudio Annibaldi. "'Bisogna leggere Schenker': Sull' analisi dell Preludio in  Do Maggiore BWV 924 di Bach." Rivista Italiana di Musicologia 24/1 (1989): 48-66.
Forte, Allen. "Prelude in C Major." Allen Forte Electronic Archive. University of North Texas. Link.
Forte, Allen, and Steven Gilbert. Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis. New York: Norton, 1982.
Schenker, Heinrich. Der Tonwille: Pamphlets in Witness of the Immutable Laws of Music: Offered to a New Generation of Youth. Translated by William Drabkin. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
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Note: I am embarrassed to say, thirty years later, that I seem to have mischaracterized Schenker's Tonwille background by writing "the graph of the piece shows all six upper-voice tones as large notes (that is, as Urlinie tones) with a subordinate Anstieg leading to the ^5" (277). As you can see from both background and Urlinietafel (foreground) above, this is not the case. Nevertheless, the basic characterization of the Urlinie as consisting of all the labeled notes, except the opening ^3 & ^4, is correct, as it is consistent with Schenker's conception at the time. (He repeatedly refers to "the composing-out of the space of a fourth" in the Tonwille essay.)  If we do read the background strictly according to notation as in Free Composition, then the background is an ^8-^7-^8 neighbor figure: see below (adapted from Drabkin and Annibaldi's example 6). This is Drabkin's reading above without the structural alto.

Costa Nogueras, from 12 Composiciones musicales (1881), continued

In the previous post, I commented on the first three numbers in the 12 Composiciones musicales (1881) by Vicente Costa Nogueras. Today I look at the last three, a Fantasia-Impromptu (n10),  a waltz "Arlequin" (n11), and a March (n12).

The Fantasia-Impromptu is a larger scale piece in a ternary form with a strongly contrasting middle section (Allegro giocoso in the outer sections, Andante Cantabile in the middle one). After a six-bar introduction, the principal theme enters in a double period in which both units end on the dominant. Here is the first:

After a contrasting middle of 19 bars, the theme returns, though now the second unit is entirely new -- but once again ends on the dominant):

Now this unit is repeated, finally closing the A-section in the tonic and introducing a transparent ascent from ^5 to ^8 in the cadence.

All this is repeated at the end of the piece, and a brief rousing coda follows:

Arlequin (n11) is a conventionally designed waltz set with a short introduction, four waltzes, and a coda that quotes the first waltz. It is unusual in the progression of keys: F-Bb-Eb-Ab and a return to F through a quick modulation in the coda.

The first strain of waltz n1 gives a prominent place to ^3 (A5) in the first unit, but the second runs a line directly from ^5 over a typical TSDT functional progression.

The second strain (trio) of n2 leaves little doubt about its attention to ^5, and ^6 as its neighbor.

The March (n12) that closes the collection is a straighforward example of the "mirror Urlinie" from ^8 down to ^5 and then back up again in the cadence.

Theodor Lehmann, Ländliche Suite

Theodor Lehmann was a Norwegian musician whose dates are 1847-1915. I was able to find nothing else about him with a cursory search. His Ländliche Suite for violin and piano, op. 7, was published by Hansen in Copenhagen. Link to the score page on IMSLP: link.

The second movement (of three) is titled "Bauerntanz" and shows some hints of the Hardanger fiddle style. The design is curious -- on the surface a ternary form of the common sort, with A closing in the dominant key, B unstable but moving about and toward the dominant, and a prominent and full reprise in the main key. But B turns out to be nothing but unstable -- it's a longish (re)transition with no tune of its own -- and "the full reprise" turns out to be an entirely new tune, or C.

Here is the first half of A, a sentence with an expanded continuation phrase. The second half (not shown) repeats the theme but reaches a PAC on the dominant for the first ending; it veers off in striking way to the minor subdominant for the second ending.

The B-section takes its time reaching the dominant and then revs up to a scalar rush to the tonic, which opens the reprise.

The "false reprise" or C is a double period (Caplin's 16-measure period), in which the 8-bar antecedent is a sentence:

 Here is the consequent of the double period, with the structural cadence (I have reproduced the coda underneath). It might take a little work to specify the individual tones, but overall the inverted arch is clear enough: ^8-^7-^6-^5-^5-^6-^7-^8.

 Coda with a pedal tonic and a couple quick V-I repetitions. Notice that its principal gestures all run downward, a foil to the strong rush-upward in the cadences of the preceding theme.