Music in 17th century Vienna, part 4

Here is the sarabande from what is either a ballet or other stage piece: Fechtschule (Fencing School). The numbers are Aria I, Aria 2, Sarabande, Courente, Fechtschule, Bader Aria.

Typical features are the well-defined initial tonal space ^5-^8 (circled), and the continuation from ^5. The second strain is unusual, not only for Schmelzer but for the repertoire of music with ascending cadence gestures, in the expansion of ^7. Note the unfoldings that help justify this reading. Whether an Urlinie would be a primitive ^5-^7-^8 or ^8-^7-^8 depends on which note in the initial tonal space you take as the focal note for the whole dance.

Chambonnieres, Pieces de Clavecin (1670), lines to ^9

Continuing by topic through examples of rising figures in the two books of Chambonnieres's Pieces de Clavecin, we look now at lines that "overshoot" ^8 in the first strain to end on ^9 as fifth of the dominant harmony. (The two previous posts concerned PACs that end a strain.)

A gigue from book 1, suite 3. One might perhaps expand the figure back to E4 to hear a unidirectional figure through the octave.

The sarabande from book 2, suite 3 is very similar in its cadence to the first strain but the line is longer and direct (by step throughout from F#4 to E5).

Chambonnieres, Pieces de Clavecin (1670), long lines

The first group of examples (two previous posts) showed simple rising lines. This second—and much larger—group reveals longer lines, from a sixth to an octave. Most of these are not so easily situated in comprehensive figures as were lines from ^5 to ^8, either because focal notes aren't clear or because the line would need to be divided in some way.

The two books of suites each have one pavane and one galliard, though not paired as was routine at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the galliard often was written as an elaborate variation of the pavane. This (see score below) is the galliard from book 2, shown in its beginning and ending. Note the long descending octave line in the opening. By now this shouldn't be surprising: recall that, in the first post in this series, I commented on "a characteristic—and very strong—tendency to shape melodic units of 3 to 5 measures or more in entirely or mostly unidirectional lines."

In the B-section, a line ascends from ^3 (as E4) to ^8, then promptly descends again, note by note. The close is still another line, an octave ascent from C4 to C5. Overall, then, C5 is readily heard as the focal note, and it is eventually regained by lines from below.

Another unusual time signature for a sarabande, 6/4 (not the 3/2 signature familiar from eighteenth century sarabandes like those by Handel). This sarabande closes the third suite in book 2. A focal note ^8 (as D5) at the beginning is eventually recovered in the ending of the piece by means of a sixth line that's not quite diatonic (note G#, not G-natural) and where ^8 is gained early (third bar from the end). This "wandering about ^8" is as common in the final cadence as the unidirectional melodic shapes are elsewhere (or, I should say, everywhere).

Book 2, suite 4, second courante: similar to the sarabande above in that an initial focal note—the F5 at the top of an interval frame this time (see boxed notes and circle in the beginning)—is recovered by means of a long line at the end of the piece. Here ^8 truly doesn't arrive till the final tonic, and the beginning of the line is not coordinated with harmony, a fact that suggests we would have to divide it in some way if we were carrying out a detailed, hierarchical linear analysis.

Chambonnieres, Pieces de Clavecin (1670), simple lines (1)

The fifth suite of the first book has two sarabandes; this is the opening of the second one. An emphasis on arpeggio rather than line in the first three bars turns into a pair of linear progressions that would not be out of place a century later: a linear descent from ^5 to ^2, at which point another line ascends through a PAC to V. The one bit not so likely in 1770 is the cadenza perfetta shape at the end: interval sequence 6-8: E3/C#5 to D3/D5.

A courante in suite 1 closes its first strain with a simple rising line over III (circled), but this is clearly subordinate to a stretched-out descending line from E5 (a: ^5 at the beginning, then C: ^3 in bar 5 to ^2 to begin bar 6 and ^1 in bar 7).

This canaris (alt: canarie, a close relative of the gigue) closes the fifth suite. The melodic shapes are similar to the courante above, in that a simple rising line to the cadence is an internal voice, and both ^3 and ^2 are stretched out across the previous measures. The close is now in the tonic key.

Book 1, suite 2: A curious sarabande whose notation is atypical—a mixture of 3/4 and 6/4 (the consistent 3/4 meter of the first example above is much more common until late century)—but whose design is less odd than it looks at first: a small binary form with written out, slightly varied repeats. Section B in its first statement ends with the PAC in bars 21-22. Boxes identify a parallel place in the first statement and the varied repeat. Angled lines show the rising line repeated several times over the course of the section. In every case it is probably another inner line like the ones above, but the presumed focal tone, E5, although certainly clear enough in its registral position, is not at all well-supported harmonically. At x, it must contend with a marked dissonance in the bass; at y, the triad is not in root position. However, if one must have a focal note, I don't see a better alternative.

Minor key series, part 8b (Bacquoy-Guedon, LeRoux, Böhm)

Alexis Bacquoy-Guedon published a dance treatise in the 1780s. I have written about his musical examples before, on my dance music blog: link; and also twice on this blog: link, link,

The last of the posts linked to above shows his 4th Menuet in G major, with its trio, which is the item of interest here.

The underlying figure g (simple ascent with ^#6 and i-IV-V-i) is revealed by adding a likely bass below the Urlinie:

I discussed a two-harpsichord gigue and a courante with an added contra partie by Gaspard LeRoux in the continuation post of part 3: link. Here is another piece from the same collection (1705), this time a sarabande with 11 variations. To avoid confusion in case you look at the score yourself, I will follow the numbering Fuller uses, where the sarabande (theme) is called couplet 1, the first variation couplet 2, etc. (The 1705 edition has no labels.)

In one common French design for a published suite, a larger scale piece, usually a chaconne, ends the suite of dances and character pieces. Here the design is almost that: (unmeasured) Prelude, Allemande, Courante, "La Bel-abat," Piece sans titre, Gigue, Sarabande [with variations], Menuet. As elsewhere in the collection, the sarabande itself is provided with an alternative trio arrangement, but the variations are given just a continuo bass. I am uncertain what that signifies for an actual performance option.

The first phrase of the sarabande is reproduced below in Alfred Fuller's edition. I will not cite any more of it in order to respect copyright. In the 1705 edition, however, the left hand part is written in baritone clef (like the bass clef but a third higher), and so I will present the alternate trio version of the theme instead.

The six phrases of the theme are distributed in the common asymmetrical design where A has two and B has the other 4. Section A ends in III, and midway through section B we reach V in a half cadence. What is remarkable is that in the solo version, Le Roux uses the dully repetitive figure of the first treble part in the entire B-section, not the considerably more interesting melody of the second treble part.

Phrases 5 & 6 in couplet 2 (that is, the first variation) are shown below. I have "transposed" the left hand part to the common bass clef. The cadence in the upper register is striking, but from a traditional Schenkerian viewpoint, we have to call the uppermost voice boundary play growing out of two cover tones--see the graph below the score.

Four other couplets use rising lines, three of them at the end, as in couplet 2 above. In couplet 6, almost continuous 16th-note arpeggios in the right hand are all set in the upper octave. In couplets 4 & 10, a clear descending cadence is placed in phrase 5, to which the upper octave in phrase 6 sounds like a coda flourish. The most interesting use of the rising line is the opening, not the end, of couplet 2 -- see below, where phrases 1 & 2 chart the octave from Bb4 to Bb5, step by step. (Note that I have not moved the left hand to bass clef this time.)   Below the score I have marked the sources of all these steps in the trio version of the sarabande theme, demonstrating again Le Roux's quite free attitude toward his theme (these are *not* simple figural variations).

The last example comes from one of the many German composers who imitated French keyboard styles and genres in the 17th and early 18th centuries: Georg Böhm, whose Suite in F minor contains a courante with an ascending Urlinie. Volume 1 of the Sämtliche Werke edition (published in 1952) includes eleven suites, two of them in F minor. This courante is from the second of those suites. Note that it uses the Dorian signature (three flats rather than the four we would expect for F minor).

Here is an analysis showing the background..

Finally, a background/first middleground graph, with the inner voice. I chose to show the bass for i6 with a closed note rather than an open note, but the outline of figure g is still clear.