Hummel, German Dance, op. 45n4

Hummel's Opus 45 (1812) is a set of dances meant for performance in the Apollo Saal, one of the largest of such entertainment centers in Vienna, with multiple rooms in which one could dance, talk, eat, or gamble (link to German Wikipedia). As a published collection in piano arrangement, Op. 45 consists of a march introduction, six menuets with trios, six German dances with trios, and a lengthy coda.

The fourth German dance is easily heard with a simple rising line in the first strain and an extended ^8 with double neighbors in the second strain. Performance practice would dictate the likelihood that the first strain would be repeated after the second. An interesting point about the first strain is that the first phrase gives us half-note length Urlinie notes on the strong beat—D5 in bar 2, E5 in bar 4—where the second phrase does the reverse, giving us F#5 immediately in bar 5 and G5 in bar 7. The symmetry makes for an elegant theme.

Alternatively, one might decide to take the initial ^8—which I have called a cover tone above—and regard that as the focal tone, a reading that makes sense given the figures of the second strain, as described above. If so, the result is an ^8-^7-^8 Urlinie with a middleground ascent connecting to ^7 in the second phrase (see ^5 and ^6 in parentheses in the first phrase).

Still another alternative would be to wait till the middle of the second strain to reach ^3, as B5. An initial ascent is easy enough to hear, as is a descent in the cadence. Whether such an expressive toppling of the formal design is justified, whether it makes much musical or artistic sense, is a matter of opinion. Such late placements of the initial focal tone are not uncommon in traditional Schenkerian analysis but are rarely very convincing. Here, of course, if we take performance practice for dance music into account, this reading could only be sustained in the case of AB or ABAB, not if the first strain is repeated to end, ABA or ABABA.

E. F. Richter, "Frühlingsglaube"

Ernst Friedrich Richter is known mainly as a very successful theory and composition textbook author. In the mid-nineteenth century, he taught at the newly founded Leipzig Conservatory.  He was also a composer. "Frühlingsglaube," the first of two choral pieces for soprano voices on poems by Ludwig Uhland, is striking in its treatment of an ascending cadence gesture, a parallelism with a descending cadence formula, and the artistically sensitive expression of text achieved through the cadence parallelism.

The poem is in two verses of nearly equal length (7 lines in the first, 8 in the second), its parallelisms made clear by repetition of the final line, "Nun muss sich alles, alles wenden" ("Now everything, everything must change"). In the usual mode of Romantic irony, the poem lauds the pleasures and new life of spring—but as an escape from pain and suffering. (It's easy to make light of that now, but in an era when death was likely by the age of 50, and not uncommon by 40, and where the worst urban diseases, small pox, tuberculosis, and syphilis, were still largely not understood, such oppositions were serious and had considerable immediacy.)

The music for the two verses is very similar, the first half (with a cadence to the dominant) being essentially identical, the second half altered in the second verse as it approaches the cadence. The first phrase of this second half emphasizes ^4 over a progression that extends the dominant, and then resolves to ^3, but over C# minor harmony. After that, repeatedly rising figures considerably expand the setting of "Nun muss sich alles, alles wenden" but a cadence does finally arrive in the lower register, not the upper.

The parallel place in the second verse expands the setting even further, reaching E5 a third time (circled in the second system below).

The original cadence phrase then starts up but its rise to ^5 is continued onward to ^8 this time. Note the common substitution of ^2 (or ^9) through a voice exchange with the alto.

The expansions of the two verse endings develop the material nicely as a way to express "everything must change" but their insistence also throws off the symmetry of the verse halves and the pairing of pleasant spring imagery against what amounts to a half-despairing cry, not "Everything is changing" but "Everything must change."

New publication: operettas by Offenbach

I have published a new essay on the Texas Scholar Works platform: Offenbach, two one-act operettas: Les deux aveugles (1855) and Pomme d’Api (1873). Link.

Here is the abstract:

Ascending cadence gestures are common in the repertoire of the operetta and in some early opéras comiques. Composers altered traditional dramatic cadence figures beginning in the mid-1830s, but it was multiple instances in Jacques Offenbach’s one- act stage pieces in the mid-1850s that popularized them and turned them into clichés of the musical theater. Les deux aveugles (1855) was the composer’s first undisputed success. Offenbach returned to the one-act format much later in his career with Pomme d’Api (1873). An afterword provides a table of theatrical cadences that bring attention to the upper register.

New Publication: Rounds, Canons, and Catches

I have published a new essay on the Texas Scholar Works platform: Rounds, Catches and Canons: Interval Frames and Ascending Figures. Link.

Here is the abstract:

The play of register in the compact designs of vocal rounds sets up a structure that is quite amenable to rising cadence figures. Repertoire presented here comes from two general groups of sources: (1) nineteenth-century amateur and school collections, which include both traditional and contemporary rounds; (2) seventeenth-century publications by Thomas Ravenscroft, John Hilton, and Henry Purcell.

Andrea Bocelli, My Christmas (Verve, 2009)

Andrea Bocelli, My Christmas / Mi Navidad (Verve, 2009; re-release re-mastered, 2015). David Foster, producer and arranger; William Ross, arranger. Link on Amazon; Barnes & Noble; Verve. I was introduced to this five years ago (December 2013), when we took a weekend vacation on Siesta Key, near Sarasota, and ate dinner at City Pizza Bar and Italian Grill. The endings caught my attention, I asked the waiter, and he replied that this recording was the owner's seasonal favorite.

Disc list: 15 tracks. The eight upper-register endings are indicated with an asterisk (*).

  *1. "White Christmas"/"Bianco Natale." A line goes down, as in the original melody, in the first verse. Bocelli then turns it upward in the closing cadence -- and holds the final ^8 cleanly for a nearly impossible length of time.

  *2. "Angels We Have Heard On High." Two halves: straightforward presentation by him, then choir enters -- two (or three?) half-step key slides -- he joins and completes with the same closing figure: essentially ^5-^8 leap with quick ^6 & ^7 -- but these are clearly articulated; it's not a gliss.

  *3. "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town." With children's chorus. At one point he sings a descant to their melody. Later it's reversed. Twice he closes by lifting ^2-^1 to ^9-^8.

  *4. "The Christmas Song" with Nathalie Cole. He's doing Sinatra/Crosby in this one. So is the arranger (slow 1950s? ballad style and chord changes). He lifts the final notes up to ^8-^9-^8. He even goes a third higher in the coda.

  5. "The Lord's Prayer" - with The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Sounds like you would expect it to.

  6. "What Child Is This" - with Mary J. Blige. Gospel-tinged soprano. They go back and forth. She seems too constrained by the arrangement to be convincing. The Italian band interlude doesn't help.

  7. "Adeste Fidelis." With full orchestra and trumpets and timpani, and a somewhat subdued chorus; sounds like a Baroque/high Classical orchestra. He substitutes a prolonged ^5 for ^2 in the final cadence.

  8. "O Tannenbaum." Pastoral setting with drones, later a flute solo, guitar, four horns. He sings in three languages. No rising line or leaping figure at the end.

  *9. "Jingle Bells" - featuring The Muppets. Obvious but still funny opposition of a (too) slow lyrical tenor and the upbeat Muppets (he joins them). Simple inversion of melodic direction in the cadence:

  *10. "Silent Night." Children (?) in intro, wordless -- most movie-music-like sound on the album. They reappear between verses and at the end. After a deceptive cadence (vi rather than I on the final chord), he repeats the phrase and goes up in a leisurely ^6-^7-^8. One of the easiest to manage in terms of voice leading -- same as in "Jingle Bells":

  11. "Blue Christmas" - with Reba McIntire. Similar to "The Christmas Song" but without the '40s-'50s tones.

  12. "Cantique De Noel." Consistent sound of a tenor aria throughout. Even a little ornament on the final dominant.

  13. "Caro Gesu Bambino." Perhaps simplest of the lot; song, not aria. Relatively low tessitura for him; almost baritone sound.

  *14. "I Believe" - with Katherine Jenkins. Very movie-ish duet, mostly string orchestra behind. A key shift halfway through. At the end she is on ^3, he is on ^5, then leaps cleanly up to ^8.

  *15. "God Bless Us Everyone." Full-throated version of a song from Disney, A Christmas Carol, by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard. The tune itself ends in the upper register (see this page: link; click on the "piano" image for a readable view of a full verse). At the end (coda): he manages to overtop with a ^10-^9-^8. Here is the beginning of the song (a clear fifth frame is boxed) and the verse ending in the upper octave:

Chaminade, The Flatterer, Op. 50

Chaminade, La Lisonjera / The Flatterer, Op. 50 (1890). Design is ABA with an extended coda. Section A, below, is literally repeated.

Because this is in the "thumb region" of the right hand, I have removed the left hand's bass clef in order to trace lines. An octave-line runs through the eight-bar antecedent phase of a sixteen-bar period, from Gb4 at the beginning to Gb5 in bar 9. If one hears that as the Schenkerian initial ascent, then what follows in the consequent phase is a mirror Urlinie: down from Gb5 to Db5 and then returning at the end.

Here is the "mirror" again, with the bass restored.

Chaminade, Piece Romantique, Op. 9n1

Chaminade, Piéce Romantique, Op. 9n1 (1880).   The design is ABA, where A is a 16-bar theme closing on V rather than I--see below-- and is then repeated, B is briefly contrasting but turns out to be an 8-bar transition, and A is an altered reprise of the theme with a close on the tonic.

Here is the altered reprise.