Thursday, December 31, 2009

My reply to James Buhler

After my paper in the Notre Dame conference in 1994 (see introduction), James Buhler read a response, which I reproduced in yesterday's post. He also notes in an email message that "as I recall, I was repurposing Roy Bhaskar's arguments (developed in Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation) against [Thomas S.] Kuhn's theory of scientific revolution (which Bhaskar understands as a form of what he calls 'super idealism')."

Here are my own comments:
The Littlefield & Neumeyer article came near the end of the era of deconstruction (in literary theory, anyway), and the radicalisms of which Buhler accuses us certainly inhered in the article's argument. Our claim that "value has 'everything to do with the expertise of the professional interpreter' and nothing to do with the work" is simply a reworking for music of the "empty page" notion of reader response theory, where there is no text until the reader constructs it.

Jim's objections to our position in the article are very similar to objections raised against reader-response theory in the 1980s and early 1990s, and in my view they are consistent with claims I make about self-conscious analytic practice in the MTS article (in that article, I back away a bit from the Littlefield & Neumeyer stance -- see fn10). Whether it's a distinction between "rationalist systems" and "values" (derived from Lewin) or between material and discursive dimensions, the goal is self-conscious practice.

The progress of literary analysis and interpretation across the twentieth century may be charted roughly as the move from author to text to reader to (what we hope is ) a comfortable pluralism of viewpoints and approaches. The nineteenth-century focus on the author, on biography, on history as the deeds of heroic individuals, was still strong in the 1920s. The modernist reaction against that view turned to the text as an organic entity (or, in a different metaphor, an efficient system) -- in effect, the text became independent of the author in the criticism of T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards, William Empson, and the several American New Critics. This view seemed at first to merge nicely with the structuralist/semiotic program in the 1950s and early 1960s, but the latter (especially when it became linked with psychoanalytic theory, mainly through Julia Kristeva, in the late 1960s) turned more and more toward the reader's response rather than the text's effects. By the 1990s, this had played itself out, and approaches such as the New Historicism tried to resuscitate and rethink biographical/contextual studies in the form of an (anti-analytical) "thick description." Textual analysis was either reshaped as "hermeneutics" (analysis sensitive to context) or was linked ever more tightly to political ideologies. And reader response was either limited to contemporary forms of semiotic analysis or shunted off to the empirical sciences as an aspect of human cognition studies.

That's where we are -- or that seems to me to be the current consensus of where we think we are (!). For more on how thematic criticism and musical analytic practice fit into this, see the Conclusion section of the MTS article.

References:
Littlefield, Richard, and David Neumeyer. "Rewriting Schenker–History, Ideology, Narrative." In Adam Krims, , ed. Music/Ideology: Resisting the Aesthetic, 138-146. Amsterdam: G + B Arts International, 1998. Originally published in Music Theory Spectrum 14/1 (1992): 38-65.
Neumeyer, David. "Thematic Reading, Proto-backgrounds, and Transformations." Music Theory Spectrum 31/2: 284-324.
Bhaskar, Roy. Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation. London: Verso, 1987.
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Earlier editions: 2d (1970), 1st (1962).

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

James Buhler's response

After my paper in the Notre Dame conference (see introduction), James Buhler read a response that was aimed specifically at Littlefield & Neumeyer, the article that broached the (now dated) idea of interpretation as activity essentially independent of a text and the practice of multiple analyses. I am posting the response text here, in the author's newly edited version:
Despite my great admiration for this article, it seems to me that it stops at an especially awkward juncture: it exposes the tensions of Neo-Schenkerian orthodoxy, but it doesn’t resolve them, and all the authors can do--and it must be emphasized that this "all" is still quite a lot--is revel in the force-field of these tensions by unleashing stockpiled analytical technology on a seemingly innocuous little piece by Czerny.

The choice of this particular piece supports the authors’ contention that "the so-called intrinsic value of a work of art has little, if anything, to do with its internal relationships, and everything to do with the expertise of the professional interpreter" (52). By choosing music written for a specific pedagogical purpose, analyzing it, and showing that it in fact possesses value that exceeds its pedagogical content, they emphasize the extent to which that value is a product of the analyst and analytical practice rather than the autonomous artwork as a thing-in-itself.

But all this leaves the project vulnerable to charges of ontological relativism. For if value has "everything to do with the expertise of the professional interpreter" and nothing to do with the work, then we may raise two objections, both related to what I take to be an underlying idealism in their position: (1) Are we to take value as merely illusory, a product only of the interpreting subject and not the object? If this is so, how are we to adjudicate competing value claims? (2) Does the material object, the work of art, not form one of the conditions of possibility of its value? If so, are Littlefield and Neumeyer not repeating the mistake they identify in Neo-Schenkerian orthodoxy of neglecting the lesser term that makes the greater term possible?

It is this residue of idealism, inherited from Schenker, that forces an apparently unseemly choice between an arbitrary order imposed dogmatically from on high, on the one hand, and the unbridled chaos of relativism, on the other. The choice that Littlefield and Neumeyer make leaves their virtuosic interpretative practice relatively empty, for if the quality of the material object has "little, if anything" to do with its value, if its use value is identical with its exchange value and nothing more, then what is the purpose of music analysis? Can music analysis mean and produce anything beyond self-revelation if music itself does not have a meaning that transcends what we say it is?

These questions remain insoluble unless we can distinguish the material dimension of the work from our verbal and analytical formulas. On the one hand, the musical work is a material object: every musical work possesses a material dimension, the “stuff” of the object that does not change when our descriptions, interpretations and analyses of it do. On the other hand, the work, once released into the world, is a discursive object: it is not the same work after analysis as it was before -- we embed the object within the discourse of our analysis. What makes this distinction so hard to grasp, despite its seeming simplicity, is that we only have indirect access to the material dimension: we can only speak of music, its materiality, by placing it into discourse.

This distinction between the material and the discursive dimension lies behind Neumeyer's provocative metaphor of the camera filter [in the Notre Dame paper, I compared analytic methods to camera filters]. We may choose a filter, but the image we produce is still dependent on the original object; and even the filters themselves come with material and discursive properties that we cannot ignore [blue filters, red filters, polarizing filters, etc.]. People make music mean, then, but not just the way they want. When we analyze a work, or more generally when we interpret it, what we do with it is not just of our individual choosing. We encounter analytical contraints of all kinds --institutional, technological, political, historical, social, and yes material -- and the analyses we produce are not indifferent to any of those constraints; certainly the analytical practice of Littlefield and Neumeyer is not indifferent to such constraints, which the virtuosity of their practice allows them to effectively expose and surmount. Once we are sensitive to the existence of the material dimension despite the constant displacement it undergoes, we no longer face a choice between absolute order or absolute chaos, epistemological fundamentalism or ontological relativism. We can have instead multiple analyses, an analytical pluralism, without fear of that epistemological relativism devolving into an ontological one.
I'll post my reply in tomorrow's entry.

Reference:
Littlefield, Richard, and David Neumeyer. "Rewriting Schenker–History, Ideology, Narrative." In Adam Krims, , ed. Music/Ideology: Resisting the Aesthetic, 138-146. Amsterdam: G + B Arts International, 1998. Originally published in Music Theory Spectrum 14/1 (1992): 38-65.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The "Riemannian Hand" and Schubert's voicings

This is an update to the post on the "Riemannian hand" and the post on closed-position voicings. I have reconstructed the graphic from that post in two respects below: (1) we now see the hand from the top, as a pianist would see it, not in the "Guidonian position" of the singer putting his palm out in order to remember the sol-fa; and (2) I have charted the two stages of the transformation--the first hand for L that takes A major (A+) to C# minor (C#-) and the second hand for the P that changes minor to major (C#+).

The point of this graphic is to show that the "Hand" isn't stationary. Although L shifts the pinky from A+ to C#-, the subsequent thumb move isn't the thumb's "proper" R (on the first hand), but P (on the second hand). In other words, the abstract LPR hand-group has rotated while the physical hand has not. The separation of these two is something Schubert certainly would have noticed while playing, and that realization would very plausibly have facilitated the notion of modulation rather than "just" chord change (the latter would have led to C# as V/F#-, or V/vi, the move in many of Schubert's dances). The difference is that of harmonic thinking (in the familiar nineteenth-century sense) rather than figured-bass or continuo thinking (eighteenth-century).

Here is further explanation of the rotations. I am grateful to Steve Rings for working this out. The text is his.
It seems that the specific assignment of LPR to the fingers is based on both mode and triadic position/inversion. The table below illustrates:

5/3 6/3 6/4
M LPR PRL RLP
m RPL PLR LRP

The LPR triples here are to be read from left to right in a registral fashion as "low-mid-high," which allows one to apply them to either right or left hand. One toggles back and forth between major and minor by using neo-Riemannian letters that occupy the same registral "slot" in the triples. Thus, for example, if we begin with a major triad in 6/3 position and apply L to it, we will be moving our "highest" finger, as the given triple is PRL. This will then take us to a minor triad in 5/3 position, as it is the only minor entry in the table with L in the rightmost slot. Note the dualist patterning: the neo-R triples for the major triads are all rotational permutations of LPR, while those for the minor triads are rotational permutations of RPL. LPR and RPL are of course retrogrades of each other (a result of Riemann's dualist conceptions of major and minor).
Postscript (1): I can't show the piece for copyright reasons, but there is one instance of a mirror to the A+-C#+ transformation in D779n13: the beginning of the second strain of D980d, a waltz published in January 1828. The main key is C major, where the first strain ends. The second strain drops to A minor and repeats that chord for three bars, followed by an F minor 6/3 in the fourth bar, and G7 in the fifth. The left-hand voicing is an imperfect wedge: E-F-G in the left-hand thumb, A-Ab-G in the pinky. A- to F- is also an LP transformation.

Postscript (2): Guy Capuzzo notes a transformation series that fits the guitarist's hand in relation to the frets (183). The "Guitarist's Hand" and the "Riemannian Hand" are related to, but distinct from, the keyboard topology of Minturn and Jones (the latter according to email correspondence from Neil Minturn, 26 December 2009).

Postscript (3) [added 1-05-10]: a detail from Joseph Kupelwieser's watercolor: see this post for more information:


References:
Capuzzo, Guy. "Neo-Riemannian Theory and the Analysis of Pop-Rock Music." Music Theory Spectrum 26/ 2 (2004):177-199.
Minturn, Neil, and M. Rusty Jones. "Toward a Theory of Keyboard Topology." Paper read at the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory, Montreal, 31 October 2009.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Dance table

This is in part an addendum to the post on dances published during Schubert's lifetime. I have compiled a table that can be accessed here: link. [link updated 7-02-16] The table collates three publications: the old Universal edition that was republished by Kalmus and is available on IMSLP, the Henle Urtext edition, and the relevant volumes in the Neue Schubert Ausgabe.

From the latter's admirable division of the dances into those that exist in Schubert's hand (Bd. 6) and all those published in his lifetime (and those published posthumously but which can be traced back to Schubert) (Bd. 7), one can find support for my rough division of the dances into three groups (before 1821, 1821-23, and 1823-28). In the main, the earlier dances were collected for publication from a number of ms. sources, where the later publications may have been newly composed pieces planned as sets. The first of these "planned sets" seems to be D 734, but D 779 is an anomaly as the ten existing in Schubert's hand were chosen from two different ms. collections, the majority of whose dances went into other publications or remained unpublished till after Schubert's death.

The two graphics below (1) give a view of the relationship between D146, D779, D783, and D973; (2) chart the positions and keys of the ten dances in D779 in their sources (the 9 German dances and 17 German dances). Both graphics are thumbnails; click on them for the original, larger versions.



Sunday, December 27, 2009

Language and the rising line

Here's an oddity relevant to the rising line in the cadences of D779n13: [this link is broken] Language affects a baby's cry. Of course, I would like to believe that this difference between French and German infants accounts for the undeniable fact that rising cadence gestures were used much earlier, and in far greater numbers, by French composers than by Germans in the nineteenth century (see my lists of pieces here -- Table of Compositions with Rising Lines is a PDF file available on the Texas Scholar Works platform). At any rate, one can always wish.

In D779n13, as we have seen, the rising cadence gesture of the first strain has effects that persist throughout the second strain, initially because of the repetitions in the "transposed contrasting middle" and then in the transcendent gesture that opens the reprise.

As to that initial cadence gesture itself, I tend to see it (apart from all other reasons so far offered in earlier posts) as a transformation of the "coda" gesture and the entire first strain as an extremely condensed version of the closes one finds in many instrumental and vocal compositions, particularly those for the stage, in Mozart, Rossini, and other composers between about 1780 and 1830.

In the case of D779n13, the chain of suspensions is itself a cadence -- that is to say, the entire theme is a cadential function (after Caplin). The rising flourish in the coda in this case "can't wait," is superimposed on the structural V7-I, and in so doing itself becomes the cadence melodic figure. Schubert, thus, combines a familiar functional stereotype with the occasional rising or "above-tonic" gestures one finds in the violinistic Ländler repertoire.

Viewed this way, D779n13 could be read in the way that the late Jonathan Kramer read Beethoven's Op. 135 more than thirty years ago -- as a composition that begins with its end. In William Kinderman's summary:
Jonathan Kramer has drawn attention to nonlinear qualities in the first movement of Beethoven's last Quartet in F Major, op. 135. He focuses on the strong tonic cadence heard already in bar 10 of the opening Allegretto, as well as the disconnection of this gesture from the immediate continuation, and he probes the paradoxical implications of an "actual ending" of the piece in "gestural time" heard just as it begins.
Kinderman says that Beethoven's "experimentation" with "temporal multiplicity" had in fact "reached a climax [already] in the trilogy of quartets . . . opp. 132, 130/133, and 131" (281).

References:
Kramer, Jonathan."Multiple and Nonlinear Time in Beethoven's Opus 135," Perspectives of New Music 11 (1973): 122-45.
Kramer, Jonathan. The Time of Music: New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening Strategies. New York: Schirmer, 1988.
Kinderman, William. "Beethoven's Last Quartets: Threshold to a Fourth Creative Period?" In Kinderman, ed. The String Quartets of Beethoven. 279-320. Champaign/Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Hexatonic cycles, after Cohn

The LP transformation that has become a motif in this blog –- because the harmonic progression that expresses it is such a distinctive element in D779n13 -- is a segment from one of the four hexatonic cycles described by Richard Cohn ("Maximally Smooth Cycles")--see the left side of the graphic below.

Though the display of the cycle is neutral (the C# triads could just as well be shown on the right or "clockwise" side (in relation to A major) as on the left or "counterclockwise" side), the order chosen in the figure has substantial historical resonance, as progressions to the lowered sixth degree were common in the early nineteenth century (and later) but progressions to the major mediant were rare. (In "As Wonderful as Star Clusters," Cohn explores Schubert's use of harmonic and tonal progressions based on hexatonic cycles in the late Bb major piano sonata. The work is interesting even if Cohn's reading of the piece is ultimately more elegantly complex than it is convincing.)

We might speculate that D971n2 and D779n13 as published are the remainder of Schubert's experiments at mirroring the common move to the lowered sixth by going in the opposite direction. If he indeed tried this out while his friends danced near him, Schubert would quickly have discovered how awkward the return to A major was in the constrained context of 16 bars. The conventional return from a progression I - bVI was through an alteration that produced an augmented sixth chord, or I - bVI - +6 – V (as happens in the second strain of the Trauerwalzer).

If one attempted the same from III, one would end up on the dominant of bVI--in other words, the progression will always move one position counterclockwise along the cycle, which means that a second progression through an augmented sixth would have been necessary to reach I again. The simpler solution, undoubtedly, would be to close in the secondary key, then simply shift back to the main key--the solution Schubert used in D971n2--but the non-tonic opening of the reprise in D779n13 posed an additional obstacle. Under the circumstances, the solution Schubert used in the published version is the simplest one available.

(The other option would be to convert the tonic of C# major to a dominant seventh chord and use a deceptive resolution, or C#: I – f#: V7 – VI. Unfortunately, this would oblige Schubert to include in the final triad the pitch A (to resolve the seventh), which would greatly hinder the reintroduction of the theme's characteristic suspensions.)

References:

Cohn Richard. "Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late Romantic Triadic Progressions." Music Analysis 15 [1996), 9-40.
Cohn, Richard. "As Wonderful as Star Clusters: Instruments for Gazing at Tonality in Schubert." Nineteenth Century Music 22/3 (1999): 213-32.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Plantinga on Schumann's Schubert

Leon Plantinga writes that "Schumann reacts to Schubert with rare sensitivity and unquestionable sincerity" (220). Among the points by which be elaborates this assessment is a comparison of Beethoven and Schubert as composers for the piano. Here is the Schumann quote:
Particularly as a composer for piano, [Schubert] has something more to offer than others, . . . more even than Beethoven . . . . This superiority consists in his ability to write more idiomatically for the piano, i.e. everything sounds as if drawn from the very depths of the instrument, while with Beethoven we must borrow for tone color, first from the oboe, then the horn, etc.
And Plantinga's comment: "Schubert's music is perfectly suited to the light and sensitive Viennese piano which he (and Schumann) used, while Beethoven's explosive sforzati and orchestral effects, not always successful even on a modern piano, strain the capacities of an early nineteenth-century [instrument]" (221). (Link to a performance of D790n3 apparently played on a period instrument.)

Here is Schumann's general assessment of Schubert, after speaking of "the enchanting fluctuation of feeling, and the wholly new world into which we are transported" (226):
But even then there ever remains a pleasurable feeling like that following an enchanted fairy tale; one senses that the composer was master of his story, and its connections, in time, will also be clear to you.
Plantinga's comment:
This is somehow a melancholy picture: Schumann the revolutionary, the spokesman for the new era, finds ultimate satisfaction only in the music of a composer long since dead. Schubert's . . . music reminded Schumann of his own youth, when he devoured all Schubert's available compositions, of his own early ambitions and optimism. In Schumann's writing about Schubert there are always overtones of misty-eyed nostalgia; he felt a stronger kinship with him than with any other composer.
I should also note that Schumann included a Schubert dance (D783n14) among the fourteen pieces in the Klavierbüchlein he prepared for his daughter Marie in 1848.

References:
Plantinga, Leon. Schumann as Critic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.
Schumann, Robert. Klavierbüchlein für Marie. Faksimile-Ausgabe der Handschrift im Beethoven-Haus Bonn mit einem Kommentar von Bernhard R. Appel. Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, c1998.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Closed-position textures

Although the "trio" texture associated with the oom-pah left hand figures is by far the most common in Schubert's dances, occasionally (and beginning quite early in his career), he uses a closed voicing in the left hand. In these cases, the stabilizing role comes very much to the fore. Here are a few examples, to be discussed in more detail at another time. The first two appear in a manuscript from 1815, D146n15 in a manuscript from 1823.

D146n3, trio, contrasting middle (the reprise begins in the final two bars of the example):

D146n4, trio. A similar example, D820n2, could not be reproduced here for copyright reasons.


D146n15. This and the next example combine closed position and oom-pah texture:


D365n16:

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Schubert holograph

Here is a link to a page with a facsimile of the waltz that follows the Trauerwalzer (and sounds like a variation of it) plus one other dance from D365, both in Schubert's hand (this is a Reinschrift or fair copy, not a sketch). This is the second page of a two-page manuscript -- there are two schottisches and Schubert's signature on p. 1. Alternatively, you can go to the front page of Schubert-Autographe and navigate your way to the dance autographs.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

more on Schumann and the F-major experiments

I originally ended yesterday's post with the following:
One has to wonder if Schumann ever played for dancing, because, despite the party-game context of his review, he had a skewed notion of what Schubert's dances, even in their published forms, represented. It was a small step from mistaking these F-major deutscher for a closed text to the monumentalizing priorities of the Bach Gesamtausgabe. And it really seems unnecessary because the record of Schumann's early music, finished and unfinished, certainly confirms that he had improvisational skills.
In the meantime, I found this in Andreas Boyde's reconstruction of the unfinished set of variations on D365n2:
In 1827 Schumann began "revelling" in the music of Franz Schubert. He heard his songs for the first time, was introduced by Agnes Carus to the four-hand works for piano and fell in love both with "Schubert's Waltzes and her". His diary on 2nd March 1829 mentions a "fruitful improvisation on the Waltz of Longing"; eight months later he requested the music for the complete Schubert Waltzes from Friedrich Wieck and according to Friedrich Täglichsbeck played them "beautifully and whenever he had the chance".
The question of playing for dancing, however, remains open.

Reference:
Robert Schumann. Variations on a Theme by Schubert - Sehnsuchtswalzervariationen,
reconstructed from the manuscripts by Andreas Boyde. Hofheim: F. Hofmeister, c2000.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Schubert's F-major experiments

Quoted from Schumann's review of D 365:
. . . lovely little genii, floating above the earth at about the height of a flower--though I do not much like . . . the last three aesthetic errors [nos. 34-36] which on the whole I cannot forgive their creator.
What did Schumann mean? What was it about these waltzes that was so troublesome? I would suggest that it was exactly the same spontaneous (and thereafter practiced) creativity that expressed itself in the abrupt shift to III in D779n13 but that in other cases found itself confined within the tiny frame of (what "should" have been) a 16-bar binary dance. (Or a simple ternary design with a transposed A-strain as its contrasting middle -- see examples in yesterday's post).

After a long series of waltzes in sharp keys (everything from G major to B major) in ns16-30, a single C-major waltz intervenes before the final five waltzes in F major. No wonder many commentators regard this last group as "tacked on" -- which may very well be true and may have been an element in Schumann's displeasure with ns34-36. The effect is all the greater because the five waltzes do hang together as a set and could easily be played independently of D365 in dance-trio groups, most likely as 32-33-32-34-35-34-36-34. This design would support a dance or a performance of nearly 5 minutes. (The grouping of 32 with 33 is supported by the appearance of this pair in two manuscripts in Schubert's hand from 1821. The grouping of ns34-36, similarly, is found in another manuscript from the same year. See Litschauer.)

The "theme" of this last group is announced immediately in n32: the exploitation of chromaticism. The non-tonic opening does refer back to n31 but retrospectively, after the phrase-aligned cadential progression plays itself out, the G7 is understood as chromatic. Nevertheless, the focus of the chromatic play is, as we would expect, in the contrasting middle of the binary form (beginning of the second strain) or of the small ternary form (the "B" section). As in D779n13, Schubert turns the affects around by making the transposed variant of the theme in the contrasting middle more stable harmonically than the original.

Schubert plays out the idea of diatonic/chromatic contrast in another way in n33. Here what would have been a 16-bar waltz with repeat signs is still 32 bars total but each "repeat" is written out: bars 9-16 = bars 1-8 but the cadence is to bIII, not I; bars 25-32 are a variant of bars 17-24 where the Ab major of the earlier bars shifts directly to the F major of the later ones. The design overall is closely related, in its blocking out of chromatically related key areas, to the ternary forms I discussed in yesterday's post. This is also a waltz that could very easily have arisen in improvisation and repetition, and seems little removed from that state as it stands.

Now, on to the three "errors." In n34, it is easy to imagine a motivic motivation in improvisation for the striking augmented sixth chord that opens the second strain: the chromatic passing tone B-natural5 and its run up to D6 is compressed into a diminished third B-natural4 to Db5 in the second strain. As the eight-bar cadential function unfolds, the bass charts the inverse: Db3-C3-B-natural2.

The extended cadential function with chromaticism and prominent cadential 6/4s sounds a bit old-fashioned and dramatic, as if it belonged to a menuet or a purely instrumental piece -- not much like "little genii" floating just above ground. Given that the first strain abuts four bars of Ländler to four bars of horn calls, perhaps Schumann disliked the topical chaos.


It is more difficult to guess what Schumann objected to in n35--the design is certainly as straightforward as it could be, and the direct chromatic shift to begin the second strain and the "falling fourths" progression that opens it are hardly uncommon in Schubert's dances. Here again, I will guess that the issue was topical dissonance: the lilting violinistic figures of the Ländler style are placed in a rather low register. Where D365n2 (the Trauerwalzer) lifts its figures out of this register to end with clear Ländler figures in the next octave, and so neatly contrasts the chromatic (lower) with the diatonic (higher), here the register is maintained throughout.

In the manuscript that includes the F major waltzes, all are in F# major. These have the earliest date (March 1821; D365 was published in November that year) and are undoubtedly the "originals" -- that is, the keys Schubert would most often have played these dances in. The F# major versions without question lie better under the hands -- some places in the published versions are so awkward as to be nearly unplayable. It's unlikely Schubert himself would have made these kinds of clumsy literal transpositions -- and so perhaps what Schumann was objecting to, unbeknownst to him, was publisher's errors and not Schubert's.

The last waltz uses a texture that is very rare in Schubert's dances: melody with block-chord accompaniment that virtually erases the dance and moves the music toward song instead. These block chord textures, often with the half+quarter rhythms found here, are used occasionally for strains or whole dances that emphasize tonic pedal points (and especially in the minor key).

Note added 12-24-09, cited from Notley, 140: "Schubert entered these five dances as F sharp major "Deutsche Tänze" in his autograph, but they came out as F major waltzes in [D365]. The dances, which bear the date March 8, 1821, play with the possibilities of modal mixture. . . . In each the chromatic inflections underpin his interpretation of the genre's even phrases and divided form."

Reference:
Litschauer, Walburga. Ed. Franz Schubert. Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, Series 7, part 2: Werke für Klavier zu zwei Händen, Band 6: Tänze I. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1989.
Notley, Margaret. "Schubert's Social Music: The 'Forgotten Genres'." In Christopher H. Gibbs, The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, 138-54. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

more to diachrony and synchrony

This is an addition to the post on Timothy Jackson's diachronic/synchronic extension of Schenkerian analysis. There I noted that "It would be possible to use D971n2, the only other published dance that modulates to III, as the synchronic source of D779n13's distorted second half." Let's take a look at that possibility. Here is the score:

Note that the design is very similar to -- but much simpler than -- D779n13: the first strain is a straightforward 8-bar period (though Caplin would call it a hybrid theme because the pedal point tonic precludes cadential definition); the second strain consists of a contrasting middle that is a slight variation of the first strain transposed to III, and a literal and complete reprise of the first strain. All of these are elements that are present in D779n13, too, but in distorted form.

The resemblances are strengthened by the fact that the two dances come from the same time period: D 779 was published in 1825, and three German dances of D971 appeared as Schubert's contribution to a Carneval collection in early 1823.

Ternary form designs with the contrasting-middle-as-transposition may be found throughout Schubert's dances, though by no means in large numbers. In D365, only n32 is a ternary design and it follows the model of D971n2 (see graphic below). In the waltzes of D145, n7 fits the model (Eb-c-Eb); in the ländler, n2 (Eb-Bb-Eb). And so on.


It's very easy to imagine these designs originating in improvisation: one uses the same musical material and maintains the phrase design for the dancers while introducing a note of variety and extending the basic 16-bar form from 32 measures (with repeats) to 48. At the same time, for Schubert, the blocking out of key areas by 8-bar thematic units would give an opportunity to "absorb" the sound of a particular modulatory pairing, both going and coming, so to speak.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Ländler and deutscher, part II

The deutscher Tanz, or just Deutscher, is harder than the Ländler to pin down. It was probably a generic term for German dancing styles in the later 18th century -- Mozart's sets of deutsche Tänze, K. 509, 600, 602, 605, and 606, for example, include music that sounds in some cases like simplified (or metrically unsubtle) menuets, in others like Ländler, and in still others like 3/4-meter versions of contredanses. By Schubert's time, there was very little difference between menuet and deutscher. It was only after Schubert's death that the familiar, stereotyped form of the waltz arose, mostly thanks to the efforts of Lanner and Strauss, sr., in the 1830s and 1840s. It was also during that period that the title deutscher disappeared in favor of Walzer.

From the vantage point of the late 1820s, the "Strauss waltz" is essentially a sped-up Ländler -- very probably it would be most familiar to someone at that time as the "waltz" that typically closed a dance (Litschauer, XI). Before 1830, however, the deutscher was danced in much the same way as the Ländler: a promenade onto and around the room, a series of dance figures for couples, and a concluding "waltz" around the room along a line of dance (Litschauer, X). The only real difference was tempo.

If there is anything like a "typical" deutscher around 1820, D365n31 fits it. Note the rhythmic variety in melodic gestures and accents, the occasional but by no means obligatory use of the oom-pah left hand figure, and the processional "tutti" passages. Also consider how easy it would be to recast this as a menuet in the style of Haydn or Mozart.


In the graphic below, I have rewritten D779n13 as a deutscher. The tempo is marked as faster than the Ländler version in yesterday's post; if an entire dance was to be done in the circular turns we now associate with the waltz, the music would most likely be a deutscher.

Note that the actual D779n13 is neither typical Ländler nor typical deutscher. Perhaps one of the reasons for its distinctive charm--and motivation for either Schubert or the publisher to include it in D 779--is exactly that exquisite balance of types that would still have been familiar to an audience in the early 1820s.

The history sketched in these two posts is sufficient to the purpose here. It should be understood, however, that any history combining music and dance will be complicated, in this case all the more so because social dance fashions changed by the decade throughout the period in question, or roughly 1760-1840. Beyond this caveat, the one point I would like to emphasize is that histories of dance musics can never be written adequately -- or, in my view, with even minimal plausibility -- in isolation from the dance.

Reference:
Litschauer, Walburga, ed. Franz Schubert. Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, Series 7, part 2: Werke für Klavier zu zwei Händen, Band 6: Tänze I. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1989.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Ländler and deutscher, part I

The Ländler can be specifically located as a folk or common dance at least as early as 1700. Its music was strongly violinistic, very simple in its harmonic construction, and relatively slow in tempo (Litschauer, XI). Sometimes used as a wedding dance for couples, it featured figures with intertwining arms (the more sophisticated urban salon version in the "Strassburger" of the late 18th and early 19th centuries is shown in this blog's logo graphic). [added 5-19-10: Walter Deutsch notes that the "Strassburger" was a favorite dance in French cities in the first decades of the 19th century [56].] These figures were so characteristic that they gave the name to the contredanse allemande in the 1760s, not any specific style of music. In the dance manual of Bacquoy-Guidon (1785), for example, two pieces of music are labeled "contredanse allemande": one is in 2/4 meter, the other in 3/8. The meters and tempi are described on p. 47 of the manual.

And the Ländler figures have a deep history--the Ländler number in the film version of Sound of Music shows elegant and romantic uses (though the tempo is a bit fast). As little as five years ago Laura and I learned many of the figures in connection with the Texas two-step, the Cajun jig, and even the slower versions of six-beat swing.

In general, one finds stereotypical early 19th century Ländler styles more often in Schubert's early dances. Here is D365n23:

In the graphic below I have rewritten D779n13 as a Ländler.


The manner of dancing during this time period was flexible, but according to Walburga Litschauer, the most common format was for couples to dance for a while in Ländler-style, then close the dance with a waltz (that is, going about the room along line of dance doing the repetitive turning figures, or walzen, that we associate with the later waltz) (XI). (By this time, practices varied in different cities, but in Vienna the familiar waltz developed by "breaking off" (Litschauer) from its role as ending promenade to become an independent dance.) Among variants: couples might dance for a certain period, then join a larger group for a square or round-dance figure, then break apart again into couples, often with a different partner. Some versions of the dance involved the traditional hopping figures of rustic or pastoral dances, or -- in the cruder versions -- stamping of the feet.

"The Ländler was already taken seriously by Viennese society [in the early 1790s]. By 1818 one can trace several variants of this middle-class dance in the repertoire of upper-class house balls, where it was often danced in rural costumes. Because of the decorative character of the arm figures, the 'Steierische' enjoyed great popularity at these festivities." (Litschauer & Deutsch, 50; my translation).

Here are links to two pages with the scores for characteristic (old-fashioned) Ländler by Beethoven: WoO11; WoO15.

References:
Litschauer, Walburga. Introduction to Franz Schubert. Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, Series 7, part 2: Werke für Klavier zu zwei Händen, Band 6: Tänze I. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1989.
Litschauer, Walburga, and Walter Deutsch. Schubert und das Tanzvergnügen. Vienna: Holzhausen, 1997.
Deutsch, Walter. "Dörfliche Tanzmusik im Biedermeier am Beispiel der Steiermark." In Boisits, Barbara, and Klaus Hubmann. Tanz im Biedermeier: Ausdruck des Lebensgefühls einer Epoche, 51-72. Proceedings from the Symposium Musizierpraxis im Biedermeier: Tanzmusik im ländlichen und städtischen Bereich, Graz, Austria, 26.-27. März 2004. Series: Neue Beiträge zur Aufführungspraxis, vol. 6. Vienna : Mille Tre Verlag Robert Schächter, 2006.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

The 8-to-16-to-32 bar narrative

This expands on (corrects, qualifies) a comment I made in a recomposition post:
Note: The pairing of contrasting strains in these small [16-bar] waltzes is very probably the source of the paired 32-bar strains that had become the typical design by the generation of Johann Strauss, jr.
A number of years ago I constructed an informal narrative of formal designs in nineteenth-century dances and related works. In that narrative, the small forms of most dances, including the great majority of Schubert's waltzes, ecossaises, and galops, evolved gradually from 16 bars (8 + 8) to 32 bars by the middle of the century, the work of the second generation Strausses being representative. A parallel history expanded the 8-bar strain (the 8-bar theme of Caplin) to 16 (following the 16-bar period or sentence of Caplin). My history expanded these all still more to "paired 32-bar strains," the paradigm being the first waltz in The Blue Danube (An der schönen blauen Donau, Op. 314 (1867)).

The eight-bar design of the first strain might fit any of Caplin's types, period, sentence, or hybrid. The second eight-bar strain might develop the same material or be strongly contrasting, and the designs thus range from contrasting middle with cadence to a new period or sentence.

As in Caplin's system, the 16-bar theme weakens the final cadence of an eight-bar theme, permitting an expansion through a developmental continuation or through the repetitive consequent. (Note that there is a very close relationship between the 16-bar period and an 8-bar period enclosed in repeat signs.)

The 32-bar theme, then, goes one step further, weakening the final cadence of the 16-bar theme, thus permitting another level of expansion. (As with the 16-bar period, note that there is a very close relationship between the 32-bar period and a 16-bar period enclosed in repeat signs.)

Alas, such neatly reductive histories are almost always too good to be true. The first waltz of The Blue Danube does open with a 32-bar sentence, which is followed by a 16-bar period enclosed in repeat signs. The contrast is strong, including a key change, so that the two strains really sound more like a dance-trio pair -- but Strauss actually repeats the entire pair, so that the overall design is ABAB, and the key sequence D-A-D-A.

None of the other waltzes in The Blue Danube is constructed this way: nos. 2 & 3 are ternary forms whose A & B are both 16-bar themes; no. 4 also has 16-bar strains but both A & B are repeated; and no. 5 is also like no. 1 in that respect but the two strains are "flipped," -- the first is a repeated 16-bar theme, the second a 32-bar period.

If this hints at variety of design in the individual numbers of the Strauss waltzes, that is a much better characterization than my too-clean developmental history. Here a few other examples:

Morgenblätter, Op. 279 (1864): all five waltzes are in dance-trio designs played as ABA. Nos. 1 & 2 are 32 bars in the first strain, 16 in repeat signs in the second. Nos. 3-5 use 16-bar themes in repeat signs for both strains.

Rosen aus dem Süden, Op. 388 (1880): the first waltz is quite close to the first waltz in The Blue Danube, but the first strain is also enclosed in repeat signs; the second waltz relates to the first waltz in The Blue Danube in a different way--again 32 + 16, but the repetition of the second strain is dropped, for an overall ABA design; no. 3 is ABA, with repeat signs for both 16-bar strains; no. 4 (the last in this set) is in effect a 64-bar theme: the final cadence of a 16-bar theme closes normally but the repetition is written out as a reorchestrated tutti whose own final cadence is a PAC in the dominant key, not the tonic, after which what would otherwise have been a second strain rushes in with its own 32-bar sentence (Strauss even tacks on an 8-bar coda extension).

Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald, op. 325 (1868): no. 1 is similar to the last waltz in Op. 388, but the entire 64-bar complex is repeated; no. 2 has two 16 bar strains in repeat signs set out in ABAB format; no. 3 differs only in its ABA format; no. 4 differs in that the repeat of the second strain is written out due to orchestration changes and the format is simply AB; no. 5 is like no. 3.

Final note: these descriptions are based on the piano solo editions (most Strauss waltzes were first published that way). I have not consulted the orchestral scores.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Waltz publications during Schubert's lifetime

The publication of Schubert's Valses sentimentales was announced in the Wiener Zeitung on 21 November 1825. Opp. 2-4 of Josef Lanner were announced at the same time. For reference, Johann Strauss, sr., began publishing his waltzes in earnest by no later than 1828 (several galops were published in that year, also), and he had reached Op. 41 (the Fra Diavolo Cotillons) by the end of 1830.

Of the roughly 290 extant waltzes, Ländler, and deutsche Tänze, 165 were published during Schubert's lifetime. These include a few scattered individual pieces and seven larger sets: D145, 365, 734, 779, 783, 924, and 969. It is impossible to know how many dances found their way -- in original, revised, or recomposed versions -- into sets published years later, but in general it seems reasonable to regard D145 and 365 as representing Schubert's earlier years (before 1821); D734 and 779 the most active years of socializing and playing for dancing; and D783, 924, and 969 the later years, the period beginning with the first treatments for syphilis early in 1823.

We might note also that it was 1826 when Schubert's Trauerwalzer, D365n2, first appeared under Beethoven's name with the title "Favoritwalzer" and shortly again thereafter as "Sehnsuchtswalzer" (Kinsky 727), After that, the little piece's fate was sealed, and it was republished any number of times throughout the nineteenth century. Already by 1831, it had acquired English words (under the title "The Maid of Elsmere"). By 1870, American publishers had attributed as many as seventy waltzes to Beethoven; a very small number were actually his, including WoO11, no. 7, a Ländler that was Americanized as the "Cactus Waltz" (Kinkeldey 245-46).

References:

Kinkeldey, Otto. "The Beginnings of Beethoven in America." Musical Quarterly 13/2 (1927): 217-48.
Kinsky, Georg. Hans Halm, ed. Das Werk Beethovens: Thematisch-Bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner Sämtlichen Vollendeten Kompositionen. Munich-Duisburg: Henle, 1955.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Seven Types of Ambiguity

Early on, while thinking about ways to "rack up" numbers of readings, I naturally thought of William Empson 's Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930). A brilliant youthful effort by the idiosyncratic literary critic, Seven Types lays out and explores a variety of double meanings in poetry. (On the whole, "double meanings" is a better descriptor than "ambiguity.") Exaggerated claims have been made about the book's influence on the American school of New Criticism, possibly because Empson received long-standing support from I. A. Richards, who was indeed one of the important influences on Cleanth Brooks and other principal New Critics.
[Note added 1-09-10: S. E. Hyman, writing in 1952, does have a point in noting John Crowe Ransom's positive assessments of Empson (297-98), but he overstates things when he claims a substantial influence of Empson on the "Southern school." Hyman says, for example, that Understanding Poetry "makes frequent reference to Empson" (298), but that is certainly not true of the first edition (1938): the only critics mentioned there are F. W. Bateson, L. C. Knights, Chard Powers Smith, Ransom, and I. A. Richards. As Hyman notes, Empson's views on Thomas Gray's Elegy are given a page, but only in the context of a (critical) assignment (Brooks and Warren 1938, 514-515; Hyman, 299). Hyman is apparently referring to a later edition, but I find little if any change in the one I have in hand: the revised "Complete Edition," published in 1950. Most significantly, there is no mention of Empson at all in the newly added essay "Ambiguity, Added Dimension, and Submerged Metaphor" (1950, 571-591). The relationship of Brooks and Empson is probably best described as that of rival disciples of Richards. Hyman himself (who was obviously an Empson advocate) summarizes their jousting in rival reviews (298-99).]
Unfortunately, Empson's categories don't translate easily to music--the distinctions between them can be subtle, requiring the support of the capacities of language, the sorts of distinctions that are either far more difficult to grasp in music or may simply not be there. Sylvia Imeson's attempt at a one-on-one mapping of the seven types onto music fell short; one notes that her work has rarely been cited since in the burgeoning literature on irony, paradox, metaphor, and humor in music.

It may also be true that the highly ritualized manner by which historical European musics are heard (and have been heard for well over 100 years now) has obliterated the kinds of gestural and topical understandings that would be fine enough to enable reading/hearing by means of ambiguity on Empson's terms. Until those understandings are reconstructed (as in the ongoing project of Robert Hatten, for example), it may be impossible to chart them against one another in systems of double meaning.

References:
Empson, William. Seven Types of Ambiguity. London: Chatto and Windus, 1930.
Imeson, Sylvia. "The time gives it proofe": Paradox in the Late Music of Beethoven. New York: Peter Lang, 1996.
Hatten, Robert. Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation.Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Hatten, Robert. Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert Penn Warren. Understanding Poetry: An Anthology for College Students. New York: Henry Holt, 1938.
Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert Penn Warren. Understanding Poetry. Complete Edition. Revised. New York: Henry Holt, 1950.
Hyman, Stanley Edgar. The Armed Vision: A Study in the Methods of Modern Literary Criticism. New York: Knopf, 1952.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Gesellschaftspiel; pianos

Here is a detail from a fanciful painting [watercolor] that depicts the Schubert-Kreis in a combination tableau entertainment and party game similar to Charades. Schubert himself sits in a corner of the room, at the piano. I don't know who the fellow is staring intently in Schubert's direction [one source says "Hartmann" -- that would be either Franz or Fritz von Hartmann] [update 2-20-10: according to Dieckmann, it's one Welser von Hartmann, relation to the brothers unknown (120)], but the visual parallel between Schubert and the dog [the artist Kupelwieser's dog Drago (118)] suggests the amount of (perhaps not always rewarding) work involved in playing for "endless cotillons" (dances that can last an hour at a time). (Diary notations and reminiscences from 1829 through the 1870s contradict one another: in some of them Schubert declares he loves to play for dancing; in others he seems borne down by the tedium of playing for hours and is happy to cede place to his friend Josef von Gahy, who was said to perform Schubert's own waltzes with "fiery spirit.") [Here is a link to a small but good-quality image: CorbisImages.] [edits 12-28-09]

The counter to this interpretation is the truly remarkable fact that Schubert did not have regular access to a piano as he composed. Robert Winter, in the New Grove biographical sketch of Schubert, writes that in late 1824,"on his return to Vienna [from Zseliz] Schubert moved briefly – probably for financial reasons – for one last time into the Schubert family home in the Rossau. To be sure, it was the only place he ever lived in that contained a piano; Schubert never bought, leased or borrowed a piano of his own." Since he composed on a regular basis throughout the morning (one of the few disciplined parts of his life, apparently), this means that great swathes of Schubert's music were written "in his head," that is, without assistance from an instrument, at least not from a keyboard.

[update 2-20-10: I am still trying to trace this history of Schubert's instrumentarium. Given that he was a proficient violinist, it's not unreasonable to assume that he would have owned that instrument, perhaps for most or all of his adult life, but so far I have found no reference in the literature. And, as to the piano, here is a bit of counter-evidence in a drawing by Moritz von Schwind, made in 1821 and called "Schuberts Zimmer."

end update]

This also means that playing for dancing might have been far less onerous than I suggested above, because Schubert might have happily used the time to make "sound experiments," to try out melodies -- or, more likely, progressions or key relations -- that he had already written or wanted to write but might not be able to auralize sufficiently. Maurice Brown's comment about the dances as "notebooks" for larger compositions, then, is on the mark but too text-oriented -- the dances as "sound experiments" would be a better description. [added text 12-19-09: Brown speculates that Schubert used casual dance improvisations "as 'journals' or 'notebooks' in which the composer was able to try out...new ideas and techniques that might later be developed in more substantial pieces" (Brown cited in Brodbeck 32). Brian Newbould follows out this idea by making comparisons between dances and some of Schubert's sonata movements.]

References:
Brodbeck, David. "Dance Music as High Art: Schubert's Twelve Ländler, op. 171 (D. 790)." In Walter Frisch, ed., Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, pp. 31-47. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
[added] Dieckmann, Friedrich. Franz Schubert: eine Annäherung. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1996.
Newbould, Brian. "Cornered in the Middle Eight: Dance Miniaturism vis-à-vis Sonata." In Newbould, ed. Schubert the Progressive: History, Performance Practice, Analysis, 107-116. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Schubert's "Riemannian Hand"

The modulation to C# major is an LP transformation (Hook 139): A major moves to c# minor moves to C# major. Here is that change from the first to second strain, from A major to C# major, as a direct move in the left hand (thanks to Steve Rings for pointing this out):


While thinking about improvisation, about Schubert sitting at the piano playing while his friends danced, I realized that the piano permitted the sound of the waltz that would have been most familiar to people in Vienna about 1800 -- two violins and bass -- to be transferred from tavern or restaurant to the home. The three-layer texture of melody (first violin), bass, and accompanimental chords (second violin) became right hand, left-hand accents, and the offbeat "oompahs", respectively. (Link to D790n3 played apparently on a period instrument: note the timbral differences in the three registers.) In the heat of improvisation, the latter could serve Schubert well as voice leading stabilizers -- and, as in this case, enablers of modulations. Indeed, we might speak of his "Riemannian hand" and visualize it, as below, where a simple shift of thumb, middle finger, or pinky would effect a particular transformation.


Reference:
Julian L. Hook. "Signature Transformations." In Jack Douthett, Martha Hyde, and Charles J. Smith, eds.Music Theory and Mathematics: Chords, Collections, and Transformations, pp. 137-160. University of Rochester Press, 2008. Also see these posts: (1); (2).

Saturday, December 12, 2009

addendum to Lerdahl and Jackendoff

Here are scans of two graphics I produced for a graduate analysis class in the early 1990s. We used Lerdahl and Jackendoff as a textbook. Readers will recall that they reproduce the score of D779n13 with a grouping analysis, but they do not carry out the analyses that would follow: time-span reduction and prolongational reduction.

(Click on the thumbnails for full size images.)



Reference:


Lerdahl, Fred, and Ray Jackendoff. A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Teleology

Yesterday's post introduced a series that may continue through the end of this month: additions or corrections to previous posts and analyses. In January, new readings will start again in earnest.

Here is another way to conceive the most sharply teleological readings so far: proto-backgrounds from ^1-^8 and ^3-^8. We might regard everything as a "prefix" to the final chord. This takes the teleological bias to its extreme; the effect is to devalue the "declaratory" quality of the piece's beginning (with its organicist or generative implications) and give the strongest possible emphasis to dramatic "delay," or Schenker's retardation.

Overt harmonic designs of this type are not unknown, especially in later nineteenth century music, and Schubert plays with them in some waltzes by extending V across seven bars of a strain, only arriving at I in bar 8. See the two examples below: first strains of D365n1 and D734n10.



In the case of D779n13, such a reading is encouraged by the strong metric accent given to the non-tonic sonority of bar 3. To create a graph, we could simply reconstruct the prolongations of a traditional background third-line as prefix to the final ^1. The result would be to make the entire waltz into an "initial descent" to the ^1 (Forte and Gilbert, Introduction 181-3). Most linear readings could be similarly reconstructed along extreme teleological lines, although some would certainly suffer considerable damage to their original intentions.

Reference:
Forte, Allen, and Steven Gilbert. Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1982

Thursday, December 10, 2009

more to signature transformations

This is actually just an addendum to the post with abstract and publication information for Jay Hook's article on signature transformations. I have finally acquired a copy of Music and Mathematics and want to explain "Neumeyer (forthcoming)" in footnote 1 (159). That was a book project that ultimately ran afoul of reviewers with strongly opposed views (that is, opposed to one another). The nub of chapter 1 is in the MTS article, chapters 2 & 3 will become articles when I get around to it, and chapter 4 has by now migrated in great part to this blog. Jay was generous in writing a section for chapter 4 at my request; I'm glad that the work sparked some serious thought and has not only resulted in a substantial publication for him but also in a construct with real potential for music analysis.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Recomposition after Ravel, Valses nobles et sentimentales

The "recomposition" in Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales is of a different kind and the nostalgia of a different, and far more intense, order. For Ravel never actually quotes a Schubert waltz; he borrows only the title, which in itself suggests nostalgia removed to the point of losing contact with concrete memories. Those memories, in any case, are complex, since they are of the whole era of the waltz, not merely its first flowering in the early nineteenth century. In Ravel's waltzes, one hears more traces of Strauss and Waldteufel than of Schubert.

We are left then to speculate on an appropriate place where the A Major Waltz might have appeared. The eight waltzes are (with form scheme and principal key):

I. Modéré–très franc
ABA; G major

II. Assez lent–avec une expression intense
ABA; G minor

III. Modéré
ABCA; G major

IV. Assez animé
AB; C/Ab major

V. Presque lent–dans un sentiment intime
AA'BA; E major

VI. Vif
AA'A''A; C major

*VII. Moins vif
introABA; A major
* No. VII is the longest piece in the set and approaches the dimensions of a Strauss waltz: unlike the other waltzes, A and B have internal strains here.

VIII. Épilogue–Lent
ABB'coda; G major

Clearly, the keys suggest that the first three waltzes belong together in a symmetrical moderate-slow-moderate design, as do the next three (fast-slow-fast). Number six also begins a gradual winding down of the tempo toward the end of the set: Vif-Moins vif-Lent, the ultimate tonal goal being a return to the G major of the first "set" (this return only happens well into the last waltz–there is a clear tonal transition from the penultimate to the final waltz that we cannot see in the list of key centers).

Rather than extend the duration of the set, I imagine which waltzes might be replaced. The two "trios" seem the obvious candidates (nos. 2 and 5). I rule out number 2, however, because the strong affective contrast in moving from the first waltz, which has the brusque frankness of a deutscher, to the deeply introspective minor-mode trio, would be mostly lost with the A Major Waltz, which if anything strives toward the relaxed elegance one sometimes finds in slow waltzes later in the century (especially in the waltzes of Waldteufel but also in the polka-mazurkas of Strauss). Similarly, replacing number five with the A Major Waltz would provoke an unpleasant contrast between its simple harmonies and the tonal vagaries of the previous waltz, which roll by the ear at a breathtaking pace.

Thus it would seem that the best affective fit would be with number three, a graceful moderate-tempo waltz that is the only movement in the Valses nobles et sentimentales to come anywhere near invoking the ländler:


Since it would be stylistically incompatible as it stands, I have imagined the first few bars of how Ravel might have rewritten the A Major Waltz to fit his vision of the hommage: as he himself put it, "the virtuosity which forms the basis of Gaspard de le nuit gives way to a markedly clearer kind of writing, which crystallizes the harmony and sharpens the profile of the music" (quoted in Nichols and Mawer 260).


Reference:
Nichols, Roger, and Deborah Mawer. "Appendix: Early Reception of Ravel's Music." In Deborah Mawer, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, 100. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Prokofiev's Schubert-Waltz Suite

This is a postscript to yesterday's post about Liszt's Soirées de Vienne. In the early twentieth century, Prokofiev strung together several Schubert waltzes to make a concert encore piece. Although decidedly less imaginative than Liszt's compositions, Prokofiev's suite does reposition and reinterpret (often by changing keys) a total of 15 waltzes: D145,waltzes ns9,10; D146n3, trio I; D365n31; D734ns2,14; D779ns3,10,12; D783n1 (=D790n2); D790ns3,5,6; D969ns5,7.

The formal groupings (represented by dividers in the table below) rely mainly on reprises, but there is also some attention to key relations. Note, finally, that D779n13 is not included in the suite, although it might easily have been inserted at bar 41 or 194 in its original key, or several other places in transposition.

Prokofiev, Waltzes by Schubert

m. #

source

key(s)

1*

D969n5

a-e
25 D969n7, contrasting middle e
33* D969n5 -- reprise a-e (final chord: E)
41 D146n3, trio I A
75 D734n2 D-A
91* D969n5 -- reprise a-e


99

D790n6

g#
123 D790n3 D
155
D790n5
b
179
D790n3 -- reprise

D

187*

D969n5 -- reprise

a-e (final chord: E)
194D783n1 (=D790n2)A
218*
D969n5 -- reprise

a-e

226

D145-waltzes,n9

a
258
D365n31
C
278
D779n10
G
304
D779n3
G
330
D734n14
C
346
D145-waltzes,n9 -- reprise
e
362
D365n31 --reprise

C

372*

D969n5 -- reprise

a-e
396
D779n12
C – g#-b-D
436
D145,waltzes n10
b
460
D779n12, second strain
b-D-d-F
476*
D969n5 -- reprise

a-e
Update 2-20-10: Here is a link to a performance file on YouTube: this is Frederic Chiu's recording. I'm not sure why it is on YouTube or how long it will stay.