New historical survey

I have published two sets of files on the Texas ScholarWorks platform for a series Ascending Cadence Gestures, New Historical Survey.  Part 1 is the general introduction: link.  Part 2 surveys European Modal Music (to 1650): link.

The abstract:

This new documentation of traditional European and European-influenced music with ascending lines and cadence gestures includes compositions from the fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The work is gathered in five parts, published separately. Part 1 contains the general introduction and a bibliography. Parts 2a-c cover music to 1650, Part 3 from 1650 to 1780, Part 4 1780 to 1860, and Part 5 1860 to the US copyright barrier, which is currently the end of 1923.        

[Please note: Parts 1-2 are available now. Parts 3-5 will be published as they are completed.] 

Administrative

The introduction to the blog was posted on 17 October 2014. Find it here: link.  An updated description of the blog, its argument, and its methods appeared four years later, on 17 October 2018, on the occasion of the 300th post: link. See also additional commentary in the subsequent post: link.  Further comment on analysis methods and priorities may be found here (post from 30 September 2017): link.

An index to compositions may be found here: Index to the Blog Ascending Cadence Gestures and to Related Publications on the Texas ScholarWorks Platform.  The abstract for this file:

This is an index to musical compositions discussed in essays published on this platform since 2010, through 09 January 2019. Many but not all of the pieces listed were also discussed on my blog Ascending Cadence Gestures in Tonal Music (on Google’s blogspot platform). Taken together, these essays and blog posts document rising cadence figures and some melodic archetypes in a broad range of European music from roughly 1500-1900, including music for social uses (dance and song), for domestic and public performance, and for the musical theater.

I have published more than two dozen essays about ascending cadence gestures on the Texas ScholarWorks platform. Link to my author page.  Among these essays, I would point the reader especially to the "Gallery of Simple Examples" -- link -- and its sequel -- link. These two links are to blog posts that give title, abstract, and table of contents, along with a direct link.

Delibes, Sylvia, "Pizzicati"

In Léo Delibes's ballet Sylvia (1876), several of the best-remembered numbers occur in the third-act divertissement, which begins with the brief scherzo "Pizzicati." The design is simple: an introduction, 16-bar theme (see below), a five-bar interpolation followed by repetition of the theme's final eight bars (the consequent of its 16-bar period). A trio in the subdominant key follows, at 16 bars, and then the theme's consequent phase is repeated to end.

The two voices represented in the initial tonal space Bb4-Eb5 are easily traced, the close being a rising octave line that fulfills the implications of the bright eighth-note figures in bars 3, 5, etc.

Grieg, Larvikspolka, EG 101 (1858)

Presumably a collected piece of social dance music. Larvik is a city in southern Norway. The design of this polka is the very common ABACA of social dance music, beginning with contredanses in the late 1700s and then spreading to almost all other types. The ABACA can be almost indistinguishable from a small ternary form (ABA) with trio (C) and truncated reprise (A), though the "trio" is only one strain, not the two we usually find in the familiar Classical instrumental repertoire of sonatas, etc. The equally common case used here has A as a single principal strain, B a first "trio" in the subdominant key, and C a second trio in the relative minor. (In the contredanse repertoire C is almost always in the parallel or relative minor, which fact might suggest that Larvikspolka is a traditional tune, not a newly composed one from the 1850s). The modern notation is by "Sigerland" and is available on IMSLP: link.

I hear a primitive rising line in A:

In the first iteration of A, however, an inner voice is pushed above (F4 to F5) and the unfolded B4-F5 closes into C5-E5--see below. We can then trace the voices in the two trios. The C5-E5 interval remains stable in the first trio B, except that E5 moves up to F5. In the second trio C, G4 becomes A4/A5 and C5 remains stable.

A synoptic view, then, is as follows:

Note: I have "collapsed" two aspects into one, as the line ^5-^7-^8 is easily understood based on the proto-background ^5-^8.

Grieg, Lyric Pieces, Op. 68, part 2

The somewhat strange Valse mélancholique is no. 6, the last number, in Grieg's Op. 68. Sounding like a merger of Chopin's well-known melancholy waltz in A minor and the most repetitious of Tchaikovsky's ballet waltzes, the Valse mélancholique is also insistently dissonant, breaks up its harmonic progression oddly on more than one occasion, and includes a decidedly un-melancholic explosion in its structural cadence.

A rising line is a central figure in the opening. A four-introduction is followed by a thirty-two bar period that forms the waltz's first strain. The 16-bar antecedent phase, bars 5-20, brings a line very gradually up from D5 (doubled with D4) but it is broken after the F5 in bar 19 by a surprise harmonic break to a Neapolitan (G minor: an Ab6 chord) in bar 20, after which the consequent phase begins and plods along, becoming more and more insistent and finally pounding out the concluding notes of the rising line.

I hear the more active "alto" as thoroughly meshed with the octaves just discussed above, but it is entirely legitimate to hear the internal voice more or less independently. I have traced it in red below, an extra strand emerging after bar 28 being in green. Regardless of how it begins, however, the dramatic rising trajectory of the octaves takes over in the final bars.

The coda follows directly on the repetition of the fortissimo cadences in the reprise and takes a classic coda form with "reminiscences" over a tonic pedal point. Note that the octaves, having fulfilled their role, are gone, and we hear the alto's tune, still in the middle of the texture.

Grieg, Lyric Pieces, Op. 68, part 1

The ninth of Edvard Grieg's ten sets of highly accessible piano miniatures, the Lyric Pieces, was his Op. 68, written in 1898-99 and published in 1899. The second piece in Op. 68 is titled "Grandmother's Menuet." It is delicate and whimsical, presumably in the familiar mould of humorous "old people's" dances, the best known of that type being the "Großvater Tanz," a traditional tune familiar to everyone even nowadays through its quotation in the "Grandfather's Dance" in Act 1 of The Nutcracker.

The design is ABA'BA', where each version of A is 16 bars (8 + 8 where the second eight repeats the first an octave higher), B is 20 bars, A' is also 16 bars but the second eight form a stuttering repetition of the cadence (to be discussed below), and B, then A', are literally reprised.

The opening is striking -- and is referenced in undergraduate textbooks -- for its secondary dominant ninth chord (V9 or V), a "proper" harmony whose ninth resolves directly into the next chord. (On the dominant ninth chord and its several types, see my blog On the Dominant Ninth Chord.) Despite the positioning of ^3, as B4, over that secondary harmony, a traditional Schenkerian reading would assume a displacement, as if the B4 has been shifted over from its proper place above an implied I on the first beat. In that case, ^2 is first offered in the foreground in bar 2 but then implied in the middleground in bar 4, initiating a leading-tone third-line with G4 in bar 5 and F#4 in bar 7.

I prefer a more literal minded reading, as shown below. The stable note at the opening is ^1/^8, as G4, and we give that preference in the unfolding of G4-B4. The unfolding reverses itself in bar 5 in the sense that the lower note is now subordinate to the higher one, which is again G4. Although I have shown the ending as ^6-^7-^8, I would probably simplify the reading overall to ^8-^7-^8, or G4 in bar 1, F#4 in bar 7, and G4 in bar 8.

Section B, on the other hand, pounds away at B4 and sometimes B5 for all of its twenty bars. Since the texture is quite different from A, is entirely in octaves, as shown in the beginning, and it's clear that the underlying key is E minor, I don't hear this section as promoting B4 in the main section.

The altered reprise of A in its second phase repeats the cadential phrase but stops before the tonic (see the first one-bar grand pause). Single-bar repetitions occur an octave higher, then an octave lower before the tonic concludes. The overall effect, of course, is to give exaggerated attention to the rising cadence figure.

Hamma, Sanctus and Benedictus

Franz Hamma (1835-1915) was an organist, teacher, conservatory administrator, and composer of church music. He was born and was active in his early years in southwest Germany (Swabia), but worked for the last four decades of his life in Metz (Lorraine), moving there shortly after the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine following the Franco-German War.

Hamma's opus 8 is a very compact setting of the mass for four male voices, obviously a composition for practical use. The Sanctus and Benedictus/Osanna both put considerable emphasis on the upper tetrachord, the first tenor in the Sanctus residing entirely there after the opening arpeggio. In the Benedictus, the tenor focuses on ^5, firmly ascending only in the final phrase.

References:
  IMSLP page for this composition: link.
  Biography: link.