Sunday, December 29, 2013

The cliché of the rising line in theater and film music

The examples here are from a book of photoplay music for piano. J. S. Zamecnik was a theater music director in Cleveland. He published several volumes of music to accompany silent films, three of which are available on IMSLP (but please note the copyright restrictions). The two pieces below are from the "weekly" section of volume 2 (published in 1913); that is, music intended for particular kinds of events shown in newsreels. Part 5 is for races of various sorts; part 6 is for exhibitions. The ending of the second strain of Part 5, especially, should sound familiar: an expanded rising-line flourish to bring the music and the scene to a close.



Sunday, December 22, 2013

A contredanse by Dittersdorf

Music for dancing was the foremost source for the rising cadence gestures that became important expressive figures in nineteenth-century European music. Here is a contredanse from 1795 composed by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf. It is the fourth trio to an anglaise (the term sometimes used in the later 1700s and early 1800s for a contredanse in 2/4 time). Here is the complete score on IMSLP. For this trio, I have removed the brass parts from the first strain, and both brass and woodwind parts from the second strain. As you can see, the dance consists of three statements of a ^5-^6-^7-^8 line (mm. 1-4, 5-8, 13-16) with the simplest of contrasting middles, figures over a drone V, in mm. 9-12. I am especially fond of the flutes' and oboes' reduction of the melodic line in mm. 5-8, but note also the second bassoon's invocation of the clausula vera as it goes down ^2-^1 while the first flute has ^7-^8.



Saturday, December 21, 2013

Beethoven Werke score for WoO85

An addendum to a previous post. Here is the engraved score for the waltz singleton from 1825: WoO85.


Beethoven, Waltz, WoO 85 autograph

The Beethoven-Haus Bonn has an exceptional digital archive, from which I drew the graphic below. It is the composer's manuscript fair copy of one of his last compositions, a waltz in D major that is an isolated piece. I am particularly fond of the iconography that reinforces the notion of rising cadence gestures as out of the ordinary (in this case, beyond the staff). Click on the thumbnail to see the full-size graphic.

Beethoven gave the piece the generic name of "Walzer" (see the beginning, at the left of the treble staff), but the violin-key of D major and the broken interval figures mark it clearly as a Laendler. So do the abrupt dynamic changes (imitations of rural dance practice) that undercut the atmosphere of what otherwise sounds like a keyboard transcription of a delicate Laendler for two violins.