Hugo Wolf songs, part 1

In my rising lines table (link), songs by Hugo Wolf take an unexpectedly prominent place:

“Fussreise.”     (Mörike Lieder)
“Lieber alles.”   (Eichendorff Lieder);
           -- see Everett, Journal of Music Theory 48/1 (2004): 51-4
“Frech und Froh I.”   (Goethe Lieder);
           -- see Everett, Journal of Music Theory 48/1 (2004): 51-4
"Cophtisches Lied II.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Dank des Paria.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Erschaffen und Beleben.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Frech und Froh II.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Komm, Liebchen, komm!”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Nimmer will ich dich verlieren!”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Der Schäfer.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Die Spröde.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"St. Nepomuks Vorabend.”  (Goethe Lieder)
"Trunken müssen wir alle sein!”  (Goethe Lieder) 

From these I have chosen four as the material for a series of posts beginning today. Those are

"Cophtisches Lied II.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Erschaffen und Beleben.”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Komm, Liebchen, komm!”   (Goethe Lieder)
"Trunken müssen wir alle sein!”  (Goethe Lieder)

I have already written about "Der Schäfer" (Goethe Lieder no. 22) on the blog: see this post. In this song, the relation of a rising line to text is quite simple: a lazy shepherd suddenly perks up and becomes industrious when a romantic relationship blooms (or possibly when a nagging spouse gets him moving). The rising line -- and closing cadence -- mimics the new energy. Overall, one can hear a rising line from ^5:   -- see the earlier post for details of the reading --

"Trunken müssen wir alle sein!”  (Goethe Lieder no. 35; published in 1889). The poem is in two verses, each of which is six lines long, consisting of three rhymed couplets. An English translation of the first verse is here: link.

Not your average drinking song, this one is more forceful than exuberant and it is predominantly in a minor key, including in the ending. The initial F#5 (as written) is maintained throughout as a focal tone ^8. Its chromatic descent is marked with circles below. The box shows the first instance of a vigorous ascending figure that becomes more and more prominent as time goes on.

The second couplet goes the opposite direction, with a diatonic line upward from C#5 through D5 to close on E5. The piano interrupts with its ascending figure (boxed), here set in a wedge.

The third couplet offers a rare example of a ^5-^6-(^8)-^#7-^8 minor key ascending Urlinie, against which the left hand of the piano part offers another version of its rising octaves (boxed). The coda has still another one of those to end, this time as a simple minor key rising line through an octave.

The first and second couplets of the second verse are set to even more vigorous music, eventually reaching an interval frame E#5-C#5 with a third line at the PAC—end of the example below.

The third and final couplet of the second verse offers an expanded version of the minor-key ascending Urlinie. Note, incidentally, that the two unfolded thirds, D5-F#5, E#5-C#5, expose the minor key problem in an even more obvious way than did the end of the first verse: D5 moves to C#5 and has to be reconceived in order to be heard as moving upward (against the grain of the voice leading) to E#5. A familiar Schenkerian dodge has to be called into play to make this happen: the device Allen Forte called overlapping (and which is one species of upward register transfer or Übergreifen). In a sequence, a note may be obliged to resolve downward, but another voice may overlap it, and still a third overlap that--and the resulting "line" going up may nevertheless be regarded as a unitary figure. In this case, ^6 resolves down to ^5 and is overlapped by ^8, which also moves down. There is no ^9 to overlap again: ^8-^7 just repeats itself.

Here is the entire texture. The piano hammers away at the rising figure -- see the box in bar 2 -- and finally bursts out in an extended chromatic run (boxed in the second and third systems). Both voice and piano, then, provide an ascending line to ^8 in this structural cadence. (The final bars look like they might be a reprise (see at "Wie zu Anfang"), but they are in fact a fairly brief recall acting as a coda.)

Kirnberger, Vivace (1763)

Kirnberger, Vivace (1763). This little keyboard piece is in the 8th installment of the Musikalisches Allerley von verschiedenen Tonkünstlern (Berlin, 1763). Its simple 16-bar small binary design is matched by an equally simple pitch design with a primitive Urlinie in the closing cadence.

Administrative post: updated links to some files

Early next year, Dropbox is changing the public folder to a shared folder. Therefore, I have moved all files that were formerly on Dropbox to Google Drive. Here is an alphabetical list with the new links:

Chopin, Prelude in E Major, op. 28n9: link.

Guide to my blog Hearing Schubert D779n13: link.

Guide to the blog Hearing the Movies: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Ab major, menuet, my graph, page 1: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Ab major, menuet, my graph, page 2: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Ab major, menuet, score: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Eb major, II, my graph, page 1: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Eb major, II, my graph, page 2: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Eb major, II, score, page 1: link.

Haydn, Sonata in Eb major, II, score, page 2: link.

Minor key progressions (table): link.

Neumeyer, handout for 2010 Society of Music Theory presentation: link.

Neumeyer research vita: link.

Schubert dance table: link.

Minor key essay

I have gathered the posts in the minor key series into an essay that has been published on the Texas Scholar Works platform: Ascending Lines in the Minor Key.

The essay contains all posts from the series, along with a newly written "concluding comment."

Here is the abstract:

The minor key poses obstacles to rising cadence gestures, and the number of compositions with convincing linear ascents is small. This essay assumes a mostly traditional Schenkerian point of view and studies that limited repertoire of pieces, which includes 17th and early 18th century music relying on the Dorian octave, and compositions by a variety of composers from Johann Walther and Thomas Morley, through François Couperin and Beethoven, to Brahms, Hugo Wolf, and Carl Kiefert.

Minor key series, part 5 (progressions d-j)

Figures d-j offer some other possibilities for ascending lines with ^#6, including variants of figures b and c and two that introduce natural-^7. In the examples that will follow in later posts, figures e, f, and i are represented but the larger number (5 items) use figure g.

The progression in figure d elaborates a bit on the TSDT pattern, but the result seems to exaggerate a tendency for the minor  to "collapse into the major." I have found no examples in the repertoire so far.

The progression in figure e introduces the natural-^7 into the ascending line, providing room for a substantial amount of attention to the Dorian octave. That being the case, the first of two courantes by Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, from 1687, will be a plausible example in part 6a's entry. The second courante was discussed here: link.

Figure f underpins the Dorian-octave elements with a very tonal third divider and the ubiquitous move i to III, minor tonic to relative major. The example is a very striking, counter-intuitive one, where the surface appearance of the structural cadence is down, not up. I am grateful to Charles Burkhart for sharing his reading with me and for permission to reproduce it. This will be in part 6b of the series.

Figure g is a variant of figure b (link), where ^3 in the bass could support i6 or III. Partimenti by Francesco Durante, the Couperin passacaille that I analyze in my 1987 JMT article, music by three other composers from the later 17th and early to mid-18th century, and a song by Hugo Wolf all make interesting use of this relatively simple design. The posts will be parts 6b through 9.

Figure h is a variant of figure c, where, again, ^3 in the bass might support i6 or III. No examples.

Figure i varies figure g slightly: B substitutes for D in the bass. I will have something to say about the Tristan Prelude in connection with this. (In part 10.)

Figure j is figure h where ^#6 now is given harmonic support. No examples--I suspect that ii rather than the more likely iiø in the minor key is an impediment.

Minor key series, part 3 (three French composers)

As is well known, the Dorian was the only mode to retain some kind of identity in secular music throughout the 17th century, even if that identity was sometimes nothing more than the lack of a key signature for pieces we would readily accept as being in D minor (or in G minor with one flat rather than two -- or even in C minor with two flats rather than three).

Nevertheless, vestiges of the Dorian octave facilitate rising lines that move fluidly from the lower part of the octave through ^8. I will explore the treatment of the Dorian octave in music from the early part of the 17th century in several posts at the end of this series. Here I am interested in how ^6 and ^7 interact with the three Urlinie figures I showed in the series introduction -- they're reproduced below.

We will start with a menuet by Jean-François Dandrieu (1682-1738) from the collection Trois livres de claveçin de jeunesse, edited by Brigitte Francois-Sappey (Paris, 1975). The pieces in this volume come not from the more familiar three volumes of Pièces de Claveçin but from smaller and earlier collections published between 1704 and 1720: two titled Livre de claveçin and the Pièces de claveçin courtes et faciles. Also unlike the larger volumes, which use the fanciful character titles common in the generation of François Couperin, the three smaller collections use dance and other generic titles.

The menuet in G minor uses the transposed Dorian signature -- see the opening below, where I isolate an unfolded fourth as the central figure. (One can also easily hear the interior third-line Bb4-Bb4-A4-implied G4 -- not marked in the score.)

The ending works its way through this fourth twice, in both cases using what I've marked as the "Dorian ^6."

 The more abstract version below shows the background, which fits the model of figure b above.

Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729) was one of the most prominent French musicians of her generation. A child prodigy, she was a skilled harpsichordist and composer who spent her teenage years in the court at Versailles and later lived and worked in Paris. The first suite in the Pièces de Claveçin of 1687 is in D minor using a Dorian signature and contains two courantes. The second of these opens with a strongly defined ascending gesture that charts a coupling of F4 and F5. (The notation is from an edition by Steve Wiberg published on IMSLP: link.)

 In the close, the coupling is repeated, with a completely filled linear ascent, after which a straightforward background descent ("x") is elaborated with a fairly simple leading-tone third-line ("y"). An interior ascending figure ("z") cuts across these: it is shown as a fourth ^5-^8 but is properly a third A4-C#5 that reaches and connects to the final note of "y."

In a continuation of this post, I will discuss a gigue and courante for two harpsichords by Gaspard Le Roux (1660-1707).

Minor key series, part 1--introduction

The minor key poses obstacles to rising cadence gestures. Not surprisingly, then, I have found only a few compositions with convincing linear ascents in the structural close, and even fewer still with an overarching line of the traditional Schenkerian sort.

A series of posts beginning with this one will examine the problem of the minor key from a mostly traditional Schenkerian point of view and in that small repertoire of compositions that includes 17th and early 18th century music relying on the Dorian octave, two remarkable pieces by François Couperin, and two anomalous 19th century compositions by Beethoven and Hugo Wolf.

The ascending Urlinie is most likely from ^5, and what I should perhaps call the "mirror Urlinie" takes the form ^8 down to ^5 then up again to ^8. Here are versions in both major and minor keys:

The simplest ascending form in the minor key uses the raised ^6 and ^7. With I-V-I only, ^#6 is either part of a ^5-^6 figure over I (as in "a" below) or a passing tone over V (as in "c" below). Example "b" shows how S chords can be introduced by elaboration of the version in "a".

An ascending line with the natural-^6 poses obvious problems:

At "x" the augmented second is prominent; although one can find such scale figures in compositions, positioning in a structural cadence is unlikely. At "y" the augmented second is mitigated by one of the variant forms I discuss in my JMT article (1987), but as "z" shows it is very hard to get rid of the sense of the natural ^6 as a neighbor note rather than a scale step rising to ^#7.

A graphic with fourteen ascending figures may be found here: link.  The series will follow the sequence of these figures, with examples from compositions, though I admit that only a few of them are consequential [the majority are hypothetical--I haven't found them in pieces] and in fact the first set will be counter-examples from Schubert. At the end of the series, I will add posts with a couple additional counter-examples (from Beethoven and Offenbach) and other posts with historical context about the Dorian octave, the examples coming mainly from Praetorius and Eyck.