Minor key series, part 2b (Schubert)

In yesterday's post, I looked at two pieces in which Schubert avoids the problem of a minor-key ascent by shifting to the major mode for the closing cadence. Today I will discuss the opposite case--a change from major to minor--and Schubert's poignantly expressive treatment of the natural-^6 in "Frühlingstraum," n11 in Winterreise.

In the introductory post, I remarked on the problem of the natural-^6 as an Urlinie element. Here is the figure I used:

The opening of "Frühlingstraum" finds the poet, in winter, dreaming of spring flowers and bird calls, these latter imitated in the mordents of the cadence (see the box -- these mordents were already heard in the piano introduction). The melodic frame clearly starts from ^3 (m.1) and a descent can be heard in the piano (B4-A4 in the right hand--not marked in the score), but the voice marks out an interior voice that ascends F#-G#-A.

 In the B-section, the assumed, pleasant small birds promptly turn to roosters and crows, and the symbolic play involving minor versus major is in full swing. A closing passage brings a sudden moment of direct address: "You probably laugh at a dreamer who sees flowers in the winter." Much is made of natural-^6 and ^5 -- see the circled notes, ending with a rising line as in figures "x" or "z" above. This ascent is, however, clearly subordinate to the voice's determined descent, as A minor: ^3-^2-^1.

 The full expressive effect of the ascent through natural-^6 is achieved with the repetition of the passage, also the ending of the song. See the box in the graphic below, where the excruciating dissonance sets "Liebchen."

Minor key series, part 2a (Schubert)

In this post, I offer two examples in which Schubert avoids the problem of a minor-key ascent by shifting to the major mode for the closing cadence: "Wetterfahne," n2 in Winterreise, and the ninth number of the Grazer Walzer, D924. In a subsequent post, I will discuss the opposite case--change from major to minor--and Schubert's expressive treatment of the natural-^6 (in "Frühlingstraum," also from Winterreise).

We'll begin with the waltz. I've written about it before, in my Rising Lines essay, p. 72. Minor-key waltzes are very rare; in the few that Schubert did write, there is almost always a turn toward the major key to close, either in the parallel or the relative major. In D924n9, he does a bit of both. In the first strain, a second, quiet phrase in the major answers a first, louder phrase in the minor. The second strain, however, is firmly in the relative major. I can't make any broader claim about tonal design in the fluid contexts of a waltz set (the set is a collection, not a fixed composition; n9 is possibly a trio to n8; the first strain might well be repeated to make an ABA design), but it doesn't matter for my point: Schubert creates a very simple ascending Urlinie in the second strain and changes to the major mode to accomplish it.

 In the first song of Winterreise, the poet stands outside his beloved's house, ready to leave for good. The second song finds him looking at the weather vane (Wetterfahne) and contrasting his sorrows with the interior of a household that knows nothing about them. Here is the opening.

Here is the first version of the conclusion. For "meinen Schmerzen," VI and an augmented sixth chord, but then a harmonically ungrammatical turn to I6 and a cadence in A major, where the melodic frame is a variant of the ascending Urlinie, or ^5-^6-(^5)-^7-^8.

 In the second version of the close, Schubert adds a sequential repetition of the "Schmerzen" idea, thereby driving home a chromatic melodic ascent toward E4/E5, but the result is the same: the cadential formula and rising line are in A major, not minor.

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.

New essay published

My essay Rising Gestures, Text Expression, and the Background as Theme has been published on the Texas Scholar Works platform: link. Here is the abstract:

Walter Everett's categories for tonal design features in nineteenth-century songs fit the framework of the Classic/Romantic dichotomy: eighteenth-century practice is the benchmark for progressive but conflicted alternatives. These categories are analogous to themes in literary interpretation; so understood, they suggest a broader range of options for the content of the background than the three Schenkerian Urlinien regarded as essentialized universals. The analysis of a Brahms song, "Über die See," Op. 69/7, provides a case study in one type, the rising line, and also the entry point for a critique of Everett's reliance on a self- contradictory attitude toward the Schenkerian historical narrative.

Historical survey essay published

I have posted a new essay to Texas Scholar Works: Ascending Cadence Gestures: A Historical Survey from the 16th to the Early 19th Century. Here is the link: essay link. And here is the abstract:

Cadences are formulaic gestures of closure and temporal articulation in music. Although in the minority, rising melodic figures have a long history in cadences in European music of all genres. This essay documents and analyzes characteristic instances of rising cadential lines from the late 16th century through the 1830s.

Almost all of the material for this essay came from posts to this blog over the past several months.

In addition, several of the essays described in this post (admin post) also address historical topics relating to rising lines or cadence gestures. The essays were also published to Texas Scholar Works, most of them in 2014 and 2015.

Hummel, Bagatelles, op107n6

Hummel's op107 consists of six bagatelles, the last of them a spirited Hungarian rondo. Its theme sits clearly on ^3 in the first strain, which descends abruptly to ^1 in the cadence. The second strain starts by doing the same with ^5 but each of its two phrases takes ^5 upward to ^8 instead. I've isolated these motions in the second strain in the figures below the score.

(second strain, first phrase)

(second strain, second phrase)

The second strain in the theme's final statement, which includes the rondo's structural cadence, is shown below. The strain is repeated in its original form at a & b, then embellished at a1 & b1. Note the considerably more emphatic rising line in b1: ^5 in the first bar, ^6-^8 in the second, ^7 in the third), and ^8 in the last, after a direct motion from ^7. The arrow points to a ^6-dropping-to-^7 figure, which could just as easily have been a continuation up, that is A6-B6-C7, rather than A6-B5-C6.

Hummel, Ecossaise, op52n6

Hummel published 6 Pièces très faciles, Op.52, in 1815. The set is structured in such a way that one could assemble a three or four movement sonatina out of its members, complete with a short opening cadenza (n1), a sonata-form Allegro (n2), a Romance (con dolcezza) (n4, the only piece in the set not in C major), and a Rondo (n7).

The Menuet (n3) might substitute for the Romance, or be added to make a four-movement piece, but the ecossaise (n5) is a mystery -- tucked in between the Romance and the Rondo, it is only 24 bars long, hardly weighty enough to count as a movement, but perhaps in the context of informal performance, such departures from form were common enough in Hummel's generation -- or perhaps the young woman playing it would be expected to improvise some variations to augment it.

An opening upward-reaching arpeggio -- at "a" -- is mirrored at "b" and the cadence is clear in its linear contrast, at "c" but is undercut by repetition of "a." In the consequent, that repetition is deleted and the cadence simple and direct. As often happens in dance music, the second strain contrasts sharply with the first: a strong descent from the start -- boxed -- comes down through the octave C6 to C5, and in the continuation phrase there are lines but they go stolidly up from C5 to E5, then down again.