Readings from ^3 -- including Carl Schachter's -- inevitably include a string of parallel sixths underneath the principal line (see this post). In a recent session that included both improvising on right- and left-hand 6/3 passages and playing through a number of Schubert waltzes, especially those I know least well (that is, those written down before 1819), I realized (a) that following a tight fauxbourdon figure in the right hand frequently led to rather dull results; and (b) that, given their obvious utility in structuring the physical path of a dance improvisation, Schubert frequently uses strings of parallels in the right hand but is surprisingly reticent about the line of sixths down from ^3. When he does use the latter, he will find ways to vary it -- as with the truncation in the first strain of D365n9 (below) or the upward extension in D365n5.
I should have made an obvious stylistic point much earlier in this blog: ii6 -- or for that matter any S-type or predominant chord -- is a marker of the German dance, not the Ländler. The latter, as Litschauer documents, is characterized by alternations of tonic and dominant or prolongations of one or the other (see my Music Analysis article, 214-15). The German dance makes use of a range of progressions, including many taken from menuets. On these terms, D779n13 is a perfect marriage of the two dance types: it announces itself as a German dance immediately but is zärtlich like a Ländler -- indeed, one might speculate that the rare expression indication was meant to alert a contemporary player that, although this looks like a deutscher, it should be played more slowly and sweetly. (Virtually the same, btw, can be said of D365n2, the Trauerwalzer.)
In posts sometime next month, I will write about another right-hand figure that is quite common in Schubert's waltzes: the diatonic wedge, or ^7 to ^1 below with ^6 to ^5 above.
Postscript: One of the most direct treatments of parallel sixths in the ^1-^3 space is in the first of the two schottisches that follow the German dances of D783:
Schottisches in the first decades of the nineteenth century are often surprisingly direct, even crude (Beethoven's are good examples). With this one, the minor-key topos and pedal point announce zingarese exoticism but the second strain suddenly turns the motive into a loud march, and the dance ends with horn calls. All this in the space of 16 2/4 bars. The result is a comic portrait of Hungarian soldiers, perhaps an invitation to a parlor game rather than dancing.
