JMT series, part 7-2 (note 32)

This is the final post on music mentioned in the notes to my article "The Ascending Urlinie" (Journal of Music Theory, 1987). One additional post will return to the main text of the article, in response to a published analysis of the menuet in Beethoven's Piano Sonata, Opus 22.

Note 32 is about the registral variant ^5-^6-(reg.)^7-^8. Here is a link to the first post about this form: link.

In the note I mention Beethoven, String Quartet, op. 74, IV. Comment in the note: "where ^6 is somewhat extended."

In looking at the score of this quartet again, I see that my placement of this movement under the registral variant doesn't make sense. Since it is equally reasonable to hear movements I & III in terms of backgrounds with rising lines, I now suspect "IV" was an error, a typo for either "I" or "III." I intend to examine both earlier movements in the essay I am preparing based on the JMT-series blog posts. Here, however, I will keep attention on IV, whose rising line is prominent indeed.

The fourth movement is not an Allegro molto or Vivace finale, but instead a set of variations on an Allegretto theme. Here is the theme, and as the score and annotations show, there really is no doubt about the status of a focal tone ^5 and an ascending Urlinie at the end.

Five variations follow, plus a extended coda that starts out sounding like another variation. Variations 1-3 & 5 maintain the clarity of the rising line -- variation 2 (below) even gives to the first violin a simple reduction of the line! Variation 4 (not shown here) has a new melody in the first violin; it is centered on and closes on ^3 (G4).

A distinctive feature of the theme that is repeated in the first three variations is the old cadenza perfetta 6-8 figure appearing in both the half-cadence to G that ends the first strain and in the final cadence to the tonic.

The coda-qua-variation-6 (or variation 6 with coda character) can be read with the shapes of the theme in the first violin part, but the bass is strange indeed, so that it's hard to know quite what to make of the upper voice(s). The durations of the theme are maintained: bars 3-10 = theme, bars 1-8;
bars 11-14 = theme, bars 9-12, continuation phrase 1; bars 15-22 = theme, bars 13-20, expanded continuation phrase 2. The coda to this variation (or coda to this coda) runs an additional 53 bars. Within that the gesture of a "structural cadence" does appear in bars 39-42 -- see the bottom of the example below. At this moment, at least, the rising line is gone, but after the theme and five (six?) variations, the gesture seems rather hollow, a formula there because it's expected.

Haydn, part 7b

While pulling out from a PDF file the score of Haydn's String Quartet op76n2, second movement, I noticed for the first time some interesting shapes in the trio of the menuet. In the first strain a pedal tonic eventually allows a frequently repeated ^1 (D5) to rise to ^5 (m. 47) and then an octave higher (A6 in m. 49), where it stays until the cadence while an inner voice moves down from ^3 (m. 49) to ^7 (m. 52 in the second violin; arrow).

These melodic shapes in the first strain set up the possibility of a rising cadence gesture in the reprise, and so it happens here, in the most direct example I've seen in the music of Haydn. Everything points to the conclusion that Haydn was just as familiar with the ländler style as were Mozart and Beethoven at around the same time.

Haydn, part 7a

The last* example from Haydn is the slow movement of the string quartet, op. 76n2. This was also mentioned in a footnote to my "Ascending Urlinie" article, twice in fact. In footnote 29, I included it among pieces that use the "^5-^6-(^8)-^7-^8 model or one of its variants"; in footnote 31 it was "the form ^5-^6-(reg.)^7-^8." These refer to different form sections of the piece. Of these two readings, the first is very clear, but the second I no longer agree with. Details below.

*Actually, there is one more: an "extra" example in the Haydn series is the trio in the third movement of this same quartet -- it will be discussed in tomorrow's post.

The design of the movement is ABA with an extended coda. Section B starts in the tonic minor, but is unstable (the tonic minor lasts only a bar before we settle into its own bVI region, which lasts for about half the section's duration). The reprise is complete except that a fairly lengthy coda is initiated by a deceptive cadence on what should have been the final cadential tonic.

The main theme (A) is a closed small form with repeats. Its treatment of a rising background line is quite clear and straightforward: an apparent ^3 (F#) at the beginning is supplanted by ^5, which looked to be a cover tone at first but before long takes over as the principal register. Note the (^8) that supplies a note for the melody over the cadential dominant's 6/4; and ^7-^8 is doubled in the second violin.

A brief B-section offers an unusual turn by ending firmly on F# minor (iii in D major; iii is generally considered the "weakest" of the diatonic triads, a characterization that extends to its tonal region). The explanation is that Haydn thus allows himself a play on the opening motive A-F#—f#: ^3-^1 turns into D: ^5-^3 without benefit of any transitioning harmonic progression. In this case, note that Haydn could easily have included the cadenza perfetta between first violin and viola but instead doubles the third of the final chord. The third was doubled in the opening statement of the theme, too, and we have to assume that there was something about the sound that appealed to him.

In the reprise of the A section, the Urlinie form is altered to another variant that I discuss in the JMT article: ^5-^6-(^5)-^7-^8. Note that the second violin follows this figure note for note (* and box).

In m. 50 is the deceptive cadence I referred to above. What follows from it is a strongly profiled descent to a dramatic diminished seventh chord and a brief cadenza for the first violin (m. 57).

Here are the immediately following measures (58-62), which finally bring the principal cadence. In footnote 31 of the JMT article, I applied ^5-^6-(reg.)^7-^8 to this movement, meaning by it this ending. The treatment of register, however, is more complicated than it was in the Eb sonata or other pieces where ^6 dropped down to ^7. Here ^6 does drop to ^7 (m. 61), but ^7 also drops to ^8 (or ^1). That, combined with the downward figuration in mm. 60-61, seems to me not just to conceal but effectively to erase the rising-line formula here. Reading this as a rising cadence gesture reminds me of those tortured Schenkerian readings that dip down into inner voices or imply this and that in order to come up with an acceptable line. For this kind of event, I prefer the proto-background model—see the next example.

The figure that *does* make musical sense here is the fifth-frame of the violin's repeated figures in mm. 60-62. The upper end (^5) is never effectively abandoned, and the lower end (^1) moves to its lower neighbor only to fit into the cadential V7. The intervallic frame, then, is as shown at the lower right.