Postscript 3 to Berry

This entry re-examines the results of a look at harmonic options for the second section of D779n13 as reported in an earlier post. The graphic below combines the first staff from that older graphic with the analysis after Berry from the post three days ago; additional annotations are at the bottom.

If A major is certainly stable throughout the first strain, especially as the entire long phrase (after the two-bar introduction) is an expanded cadential progression (Caplin's ECP), there is also -- thanks to style statistics that tell us non-tonic openings are common in early 19th-century waltzes -- at least a momentary possibility of D major, which dissipates once the cadential 6/4 appears.

The second strain is the mirror inverse of the first, as it is highly unstable and multiply suggestive almost throughout -- again, it is only the appearance of the cadential 6/4 that "nails down" an A major ending. If C# major is overly insistent ("Hey, look at me! I'm a stable key! Really!"), it is perhaps because the "proper" key is all too obviously f#, as A: vi. Lurking at the back of C# major's momentary success is the potential for a hexatonic continuation, which would have given us eventually not a B minor triad but its polar opposite: a major triad a tritone away.

The moment of the metric-expressive climax is also the moment at which the five (!)-layer harmonic complexity evaporates. It's not just an accent but a moment of revelation, of coming around a corner, or of walking into the light.

As I noted in yesterday's post, the notion of multiple functional layers (realized or potential) follows not only Berry but also suggests the method outlined in two early articles by Charles J. Smith. This is the place, then, to acknowledge that I have always been an opportunistic (rather than comprehensive) reader, and, although I read several of the articles in Richmond Browne's collection after it was published in 1981, I did not read Smith's. Had I done so, its influence would certainly have been felt in the series of articles I published in 1987 (on the rising Urlinie, the 8-line, and the three-part Ursatz).

References.

Smith, Charles J. "Prolongations and Progressions as Musical Syntax," in Music Theory: Special Topics, ed. Richmond Browne (New York: Academic Press, 1981), 139-174.

Smith, Charles J. "The Functional Extravagance of Chromatic Chords." Music Theory Spectrum 8 (1986): 94-139.