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.