Johann Strauss, jr., a galop (schnell-polka)

After mid-century, the galop (see previous post) was displaced by the faster-tempo polka (the slower-tempo polka was the original type that had become very popular by about 1840). The dance was slightly different from the galop but the music was the same. (The can-can, btw, evolved the same way and at the same time.) The slower-tempo polka became known in Vienna as the polka française, the faster one as the schnell-polka.

Johann Strauss, jr., wrote polkas of both types (though not nearly so prolifically as he did waltzes) and also gave them prominent placement in his stage works.  The Schnell-Polka (Galopp) "So ängstlich sind wir nicht, Op.413" uses motives from the comic operetta "Eine Nacht in Venedig."

The second strain of the trio, below, gives yet another of Strauss's manifold plays on the upper tetrachord of the major key, and on the functions and relationships of ^5, ^6, and ^7. At (a), ^5 is the traditional consonance; at (b), ^6 is possibly the ninth of a V9 but doesn't resolve directly--in fact it doesn't resolve at all as the ^6-inflection is repeated in bar 4. At (c), the string of sixths, rising, lends strength to a focus on ^5 as G4. A crucial moment is in bar 8, where the ^6-inflection occurs over the tonic resolution (arrow). Bars 1-8 are repeated and the ^6-inflection disappears in the cadence, clarifying a straightforward rising fourth line. (Note that this line is confirmed by the strong position of ^5 at (a) and strong-beat placements of each member of the line in the ascent.)

Galops by Johann Strauss, sr.

The galop (galopp, gallopade), a simple dance in duple meter and rapid tempo, undoubtedly had 18th century predecessors, but it was in the 1820s that it quickly became popular in urban ballrooms. Johann Strauss, sr., wrote a large number of them. Here are five.

Erinnerungs-Galopp, Op.27 (1830?)
Sperl-Galopp, Op.42 (1831)
Reise-Galopp, Op.85 (1836)
Cachucha-Galopp, Op.97 (1837)
Furioso-Galopp, Op.114 (1840)

The Erinnerungs-Galopp, Op.27 (1830?), is a musical instantiation of both the simplicity and the speed of the dance. The tendency toward 16-bar themes/strains is clear in the galop; this opening strain is unusual in its twenty bars. The ascent through the octave is one of the most direct I have found anywhere in the repertoire of European traditional tonal music.

The second strain of the Sperl-Galopp, Op.42 (1831) shows the typical violinistic distinction of registers (^5 and ^3 in bars 1-2), but the upper register is definitely the focus. The point of interest for us is the cadence (boxed), in which the wedge figure brings a secondary line up from ^5 (B4). Note that the codetta brings the total number of bars to twenty again and contradicts the preceding by its emphasis on ^7-^8.

The second strain in the trio to the Reise-Galopp, Op.85 (1836), "flips" the wedge as an obvious fifth-line descends but is then suddenly overtaken by a rising line in the cadence.

The second strain of the Cachucha-Galopp, Op.97 (1837) attempts an imitation in 2/4 time of the Spanish cachucha, a mainly theatrical dance from the 1830s that was in 3/4 meter. Another wedge figure.

The opening of the Furioso-Galopp, Op.114 (1840), offers an ascending line as direct as the one in the Erinnerungs-Galopp of a decade earlier, but now running through two-plus octaves (B3 to B4 to B5-C#6-D#6-E6) and with persistent chromatic inflection.

Strauss, Die Fledermaus n9, the "Eins, Zwei, Drei" galop

Before we leave Act II, there is one further number to discuss. The action during n9 is between Rosalinde (disguised as a Hungarian countess) and Eisenstein, who is trying to seduce her using his special chiming pocket watch (which, we learned in Act I, he claims never fails). A brief galop, "Eins, Zwei, Drei," appears three times in the course of the scene. Its melody is about as obvious a rising line as one could want, but it is given a proper harmonization only in its first iterations, not the repetitions.

In the first instance, the repetition of the theme is cut off partway through by a dissonance as Eisenstein reacts to Rosalinde's miscounting:

In the second instance, Eisenstein deliberately miscounts wildly and the final tonic is replaced by another dissonance.

The third instance is at the end of the number, which the two singers bring to a dramatic close, but where the tune only appears once the cadence is finished, over a tonic pedal (circled). Adding insult to cadential injury, the codetta surges past ^8 to ^10 (F#6; see the box) and we hear several V-I's in a row.

Strauss, Die Fledermaus n5, Act I Finale, "Mein schönes, grosses Vogelhaus"

The final two scenes of Act I involve a farewell kiss that Alfred manages to extract from Rosalinde and Alfred's departure, which is initiated by the warden Frank ("Nein, nein, ich zweifle gar nicht mehr") but whose principal tune is his "Mein schönes, grosses Vogelhaus," a comic march:

Eventually all three characters sing the tune together and then close with a 6/8-time coda, whose tune is:

This is repeated, with an elaborate and forceful cadence at the end of which Rosalinde finds her way to a high C:

Here is the line she follows from ^3 (E5) to ^8 (C6), in course of which ^5 substitutes for the scalar ^7, presumably to give even more dramatic weight to the final high note.

Two galops by Johann Strauss, sr.

It is probably not surprising that music for the galop was prone to the same repetitious figures and "square-cut" designs as the contradance (in its 19th century form of the quadrille), although the reasons were different. The latter needed its repeated units and "quadratic syntax" as aural markers of the changes of figures for group dancing. The galop, on the other hand, was a fast couple dance that often amounted to little more than holding onto your partner and skipping/racing down the floor: here it was the sheer speed that demanded simplicity and clarity in the music.

Galops are the second most numerous compositions in the work lists of both Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss, sr., a reflection of the dance's popularity in the 1830s and 1840s. An early galop by Strauss (his op. 8) shows the musical priorities plainly. "Sauf aus!" in the introduction, by the way, means "Drink up!" Both strains are periods. In the first, a measure-long motive is heard three times and then the phrase is distinctively rounded off with a higher flourish. The consequent phrase does the same. The pattern is reversed in the second strain: an opening lower-register flourish is followed by three statements of a one-bar motive. Overall, the form is what I call an "AB design": two strains with largely unrelated materials (in contrast to the traditional small binary form of the 18th century, where there was usually a tight relationship between the two sections). For more on this design, see this post and its link: Lanner.

Appropriately, Strauss's Op. 28 is titled Wettrennen-Galopp, or "Racing Galop." Steady progress upward, aided by the transposition of the consequent up one step, is broken only at the last possible moment to finish the line in the lower octave.

Offenbach's "catalogue" of melodic figures

In correspondence, Jeremy Day-O'Connell asked what I thought of the V9 chord in the theme of the famous can-can (Galop infernale) from Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers [first production 1858]). I took a look and found that, within a few seconds, that great genius of satirical operetta (opéra bouffe) packed in hints or realizations of many of the century's characteristic melodic treatments of scale degrees ^2 and ^6. Here they are:

At (a), a hint of what became the V13 chord (more on that below). At (b1), ^2 colors the tonic with a major second (as 9 in 9-8). At (b2), ^6 colors the tonic triad, a hint of what shortly would become the Iadd6 chord. At (c), ^6 in its classical position as third of the subdominant triad. At (d), a true dominant ninth chord. At (e1) and (e2), the alternation of 9-8 and 6-5 over tonic and dominant, a figure that is a cliché in the early waltz repertoire, as we saw in previous posts on Schubert.

As a postscript, here are bars 1-2 rewritten as an "evolution of the 13th chord." At (a), bars 1-2 showing the ancient escape tone figure I have mentioned in previous posts. The more common version creates a ninth as the escape tone, but this one can be found often in eighteenth-century music as well. At (b), the melody is simplified, the longer note values giving more attention to the dissonance, raising the question (note the ?) of whether this might be a harmony rather than a coincidental dissonance. At (c), then, the V13 has fully arrived as the 13th displaces the 12th altogether.