On the "March" Prelude in Chopin's Opus 28, part 2

In part 1, I cited Carl Schachter's recent analysis of this Prelude, with its Urlinie from ^3, where ^2 had to be "supplied by the imagination of the listener" (61). I also indicated my priority in this reading of the background, having written about it twice in 1987.

In February, Emily Ahrens Yates presented a paper titled "Surface Motives in Tonal Music and Their Influence on Our Readings of Background Structures" at the TSMT conference in Belton, TX. In the well-established tradition of motive-driven Schenkerian readings, she "show[s] how ascending surface motives of 5̂ to 8̂ are composed out, are evident in the middleground and foreground levels, and are replications of an ascending Urlinie background structure resolving the conflict in readings between motivic parallelisms of rising motives and 'Ursatz parallelisms'" (from the abstract).

Emily shared her analysis with me beforehand. It was entirely convincing, and I now wonder why anyone (including me, you understand) would ever have proposed a background descent from ^3 at all: each of the march's three phrases is wholly occupied with rising stepwise gestures (and the subsequent relaxation from them), the "one-leap-too-far" quality of the Ab 6/4 chord in bar 8 is certainly accentuated/confirmed by its unstable status as a harmony, and the one truly remarkable thing in this musical context is the ending, which is the only one of the three phrases that refuses to drop away from its rising line from ^5 to ^8 (awkwardly chromatic though it is).

Additional comment: "each of the march's three phrases is wholly occupied with rising stepwise gestures (and the subsequent relaxation from them)": note that each rising phase is longer and each relaxation phase is shorter than the last. In the first phrase, ten rising beats are followed by six falling ones (numbers depend on where you place the three beats of E4). In the second phrase, twelve rising beats are countered by four falling beats. And of course in the third phrase, sixteen rising beats are not countered at all. What surely emerges as thematic in this march, then, is the withering away of descent, regardless of the dramatic surge into bar 8.

More than that is the Sisyphian struggle against a chromatic weight that bears down the already heavy diatonic chords in the second and third phrases. I have boxed those passages in the score below:

It is not difficult to "reconstruct" the diatonic version of all this, the state of the march "before" its chromatic deformation, its suppression by a half-step. (The notion of lowering to flat keys as expressive is something we've seen in Schubert, who dropped the "violin keys" of D and A to Db and Ab in his waltzes.) Here is the diatonic bass for the two chromatic passages.

What is truly remarkable -- and dramatic -- then is not the "one-leap-too-far" Ab6/4 chord, but the sudden emergence of the diatonic from the chromatic depths. The staircase down to those depths is also the way back up:

An entire slow movement of a heroic sonata is sketched in this miniature—an invitation perhaps to a skilful improvising pianist to fill it out.

On the "March" Prelude in Chopin's Opus 28

The steadily rising scale figures in each of the three phrases of Chopin's E-major Prelude are emphatic and obvious (so is the sudden drop at the end of the second phrase). In a recently published book The Art of Tonal Analysis: Twelve Lessons in Schenkerian Theory (Oxford University Press, 2016; edited as a labor of love, I suspect, by Joseph Straus), Carl Schachter says that "some people analyze this piece with an Urlinie that rises a fourth: B-C#-D#-E. I think, however, that it is quite possible to hear instead a very subtle and wonderful descending Urlinie, but to do so one has to be quite un-literal in one's use of the theory" (56). [You can read the chapter on two preludes in the Google Books preview window.]

Here is his Example 3.10, which shows the middleground and background shapes of the upper voice:

For the record, I was the first to assert the abstract pitch design by which a primary line descends from ^3 (while a secondary line rises from the lower ^5). I did this in a footnote to a well-known article, "The Ascending Urlinie" (Journal of Music Theory 31/2 (1987); in fn28: "Pieces which appear to use a rising line from ^5 but in fact do not include Chopin, Prelude in E Major, op. 28, no. 9; [instead it is] a three-part Ursatz with line from ^3 above; ^2 implied in the cadence."

In another article published the same year, I provided a graph: from "The Three-Part Ursatz," In Theory Only 10/1-2: 28.

This gives less emphasis to the arpeggios, but my point was to place attention on the inversion of the third G#-B to the sixth B-G#, in line with middleground transformations that I identify in the article. Here is a schematic version of the example below showing this:

Finally, here is a link to a facsimile of my sketch from 1982: holograph sketch of Op28n9.

16th century cadences, part 8: Vecchi, duet n22

Continuing the census of cadences in the duets of Orazio Vecchi, I look at the twenty-second (btw, there are 38 duets in all). Here are 12 cadences, including a closing cadence with a rising line to ^8 (G5 in the Mixolydian mode). I admit, however, to having relaxed my rules (see part 7, yesterday's post) and counted an evaded cadence (n6) and both cadences in a cadence pair (ns 7 & 8). Without those, there are 10 cadences, six of which are 6-8 and four are 3-1.

I suspect the slight bias toward 6-8 in the two duets by Vecchi would be erased in bicinia where the two voices are in the same range. I may take up that question at another time, once I find a suitable repertory. (Lassus's duets aren't good for this work because he emphasizes very long phrases, so that even the lengthy un-texted duets have no more than 2 or 3 cadences.)

16th century cadences, part 7: Vecchi, duet n21

In the same year as Gastoldi, Orazio Vecchi published his own book of instructional duets. I have chosen two of them for the sake of a census of cadence types: n21 in today's post, n22 in tomorrow's. Granted, these pieces are somewhat arbitrary constructions, but I suspect that the numbers in "proper" compositions will be similar.

I tried to focus on clearly articulating phrase-ending cadences. I did not include evaded cadences or brief cadence-like figures that are obviously within longer phrases. On those terms, the duet has 11 cadences, six of which are 6-8, and five are 3-1. Cadence types are distributed more or less evenly throughout. Of particular interest is that every one of the 6-8 cadences is different, something obviously useful for pedagogical illustration.

16th century cadences, part 6: Gastoldi, n12

Following up on yesterday's post about wedge shapes in cadences, here are opposing cadence figures, both for 6-8. The two cadences are at beginning and end of the piece. In the first case, motion is down in both voices and is especially pronounced in the tenor. In the second case, a stream of parallel motion is interrupted in the final few beats as the tenor reaches a high note, E4, and then descends firmly by step.

16th century cadences, part 5: Gastoldi, bicinium n3

Twenty years after the publication of Lassus' two set of duets, Giovanni Gastoldi published his first book of music for two voices. Like most pieces in the category of bicinia, these were most likely intended primarily for instructional purposes, rather than for performance. (The importance of the repertoire of didactic pieces is recognized and provides the pedagogical foundation for Peter Schubert's excellent textbook Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style (Oxford 2007, second edition).)

Among the internal cadences in the third duet are a pair that neatly illustrate my point today. In two of the three pieces by Lassus (from parts 2-4 in this series of posts), the voices largely approached the cadence in the same direction—up, of course, since I was bringing out the historically significant idea of rising cadence gestures.

Contrary motion is entirely possible, too: in the cadence pair below, the 3-1 is approached in a closing wedge, 6-8 in one that opens. Both express broadly basic motion in each of the cadences: 3 closing into 1, 6 opening out to 8.

It is important to note, however, that there is in fact no necessary directional bias in either of the two cadence types, 3-1 and 6-8. Subsequent posts will attempt to make that clear.

16th century cadences, part 4: Lassus, bicinia with text n14

Another texted duet borrows from the Magnificat. "Fecit potentiam . . ." is in KJV "He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts" Luke 1:51. Here a short first phrase ("Fecit potentiam") is without cadence, but the second is very clear (for "in brachio suo"), involving three thirds and two 2-3 bass suspensions.

The conclusion again is the point of interest, however: now familiar rising gestures in connection with a 6-8 cadenza perfetta, but note that the approach in the upper voice is repeated, a less likely option than a more varied, but still mainly stepwise figure.