Grieg and the rising line

Why Grieg on a Schubert blog? Because the first movement of the Peer Gynt Suite no. 1, Morgenstimmung, is a textbook example of a simple but colorful harmonic plan combined with motivic gestures that match a Schenkerian background line (rising, in this case), all serving the obvious expressive purpose of depicting dawn (thus making for a very easily managed hermeneutic exercise).

I discuss the piece briefly in my JMT article on the ascending Urlinie (1987). Here are the musical examples:

Here is Example 9's material again in the context of the entire opening (piano reduction here, of course, done by Grieg himself):



And here is Example 10 again, in the score context:


The movement's design is three-part, each section marked by the appearance of the theme motive in E (in the last instance over E 6/4).

Here is the entire harmonic plan (thumbnail -- click on it to see the original size graphic). Timings are keyed to a version of Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic posted to YouTube.

Here are the parallel harmonic patterns aligned vertically (thumbnail -- click on it to see the original size graphic): upper system section A, lower system sections A and A'' (up to the structural cadence). The second pattern greatly expands on the I-III-V progression of section A.

A cut above YouTube

Steffan Fahl's website with (re)sampled performances of historical piano music has some remarkable material, most notably a complete set of Haydn piano sonatas whose sound is sampled from Malcolm Bilson playing a period fortepiano. There are just three short Schubert files and they are bizarre enough to be interesting: go to Klassik-resampled. The instrument is identified as an "Orphica," a portable keyboard from 1798 and quite possibly of a type that Schubert never played. The sound, as one would one expect, leaves quite a bit to be desired -- rather thin, especially in the upper register. One wonders why Fahl made this unlikely choice, but at least he did keep the tempo down, a rarity in Schubert dance performances (or almost any music of that period).

The pieces are not identified. They are from D. 783: no. 2, no. 10, and no. 15 (mislabelled as no. 12 on the website).

Rising lines in a Strauss waltz

Still more historical context for D779n13: Exotische Planzen, Op. 109, by Johann Strauss, sr. appeared in 1839. Like most published dance sets after about 1830, it consists of a short introduction, five waltzes, and a long coda. The set is remarkable for its focus on rising melodic gestures, beginning with the introduction, where a perfunctory bit of tonal definition (bars 1-3) promptly gives way to an extended dominant prolongation whose melodic elements keep going up:



The first waltz offers the classic play on ^5 and ^6 in its first strain, carrying the cadence up to ^7 (D#6) before "correcting" the register with an arpeggiated drop to E5. The second strain counters with a strong downward gesture from ^8. The bass in the final cadence is tailor-made for a compensating ascent (so, an overall ^8-^7-^6-^5 || ^5-^6-^7-^8) but Strauss the final notes down instead in an octaves-by-contrary-motion figure that is also a waltz cliché.


Number 2 couldn't make the ascent in the first strain any more obvious. The second strain, however, is clearly focused on G# and the expressive chromatic ascent at the end is a subordinate feature.

Number 3, on the other hand, has perhaps the most strongly emphasized final cadence gesture in the entire set.

The first strain of Number 4 balances ^3 and ^5 nicely, in the manner of many Strauss waltzes. The last phrase of the second strain involves a slightly elaborated rise from ^5.


The final waltz nearly completes the catalogue of Straussian cadence gestures -- here, ^8 is reached a bar early and ^7-^8 repeated over an emphatic V7-I.

The coda, as one would expect, is full of rising gestures because of the cliché coda cadences but also in this case because of the reprises of strains from the waltzes.

The piano edition used here is Belgian (1850?), available on IMSLP.

Updated web pages

[NB 3 July 2016: The files mentioned here have been gathered in the essays Rising Lines in the Tonal Frameworks of Traditional Tonal Music and Table of Compositions with Rising Lines published on the Texas Scholar Works platform. Links: Rising; Table.]       I have reformatted some of the web pages in the rising cadence series, adding illustrations, marking content divisions more clearly, and doing a little editing of content. The "Ascending Lines" page has been separated into two, the first an introduction, the second a historical summary. The front page for the composition tables has some new illustrations.