Explaining Tonality

Today I'll comment briefly on why I did not make use of Matthew Brown's Explaining Tonality in the MTS article, or at least raise a critique of the book, since it is also concerned with basic features of linear analysis, including prototypes. Simply put, Explaining Tonality hangs entirely on one idea, and if you do not accept that idea, or for some reason do not find it fruitful, then there is nothing to be gained. Brown believes that there is implicit in Schenker's work a fully adequate, rationally demonstrable theory of monotonal functional tonality that models what the expert composer/listener knows. All this precedes the book, which resembles nothing so much as a triumphal run to victory, leaping over all obstacles on the way.

And I would say that "leaping" is precisely the word needed here. As one example among many, here is Brown's treatment of the rising Urlinie notion. These "contradict the law that melodies reach maximum closure when they descend ^3-^2-^1. Since ^8 lines satisfy this and our other laws, it is hard to see how they can be rejected as Neumeyer suggests" (75). Since Brown derives his "laws of tonal motion" in such a way that they conform to Schenker's theory, then of course only melodic shapes descending through ^3-^2-^1 can be accepted. I'm not sure this even rises to the level of circular reasoning, though that is what Catherine Pellegrino calls it:

[Brown] dismisses David Neumeyer’s extensions of Schenkerian theory through a curious bit of circular reasoning. Brown introduces some of Neumeyer’s alternative prototypes, including one in which the Urlinie rises from the fifth scale degree to the tonic, but then dismisses them on the basis that they do not conform to Schenker’s prototypes, which descend to the tonic. If they conformed to Schenker’s prototypes, it would hardly be necessary to propose them as extensions of Schenker’s theory, would it? Oddly enough, Brown accomplishes this logical feat just before dismissing another critic’s charges that Schenker’s own theories involve circular reasoning. (92)

At one point, Brown says that "Schenkerian [harmonic] derivations are simply more accurate than functional explanations" (61). For this, one of his reviewers, Matthew McDonald, takes Brown to task:

Two problems arise here. First, ‘accurate’ is once again an inappropriate description of Brown’s interpretation. His ideas about chord generation rely on what is clearly a heuristic model for harmonic analysis: the notion that harmonies other than the tonic ‘derive’ from melodic motions. Such derivations might well be understood as useful explanatory tools, but they can be considered accurate only if one maintains a mystical belief in Schenker’s theory as a representation of musical reality; and such accuracy could never be demonstrated scientifically (or, to use Brown’s terminology, it is not ‘falsifiable’). Chords are not derived from melodic notes, they are composed by human beings. One can conceptualise such derivations, but this is an interpretative act, not a scientific judgement. (234)

Although I, too, have an interest in what can be called theoretical foundations of linear analysis, the MTS article should make it clear that my goal is to inform interpretation, and, implicitly, that I regard Schenkerian analysis as a mode of interpretation, not a scientific model. "Theory," in my sense, is Bordwell's "semantic field" (post) -- another way of saying an organized mode of discourse -- and my interest is in reconfiguring constructs within that field for the sake of enriching interpretative practice.

With respect at least to the idea of Schenkerian analysis as fruitful interpretative practice, I am firmly in Carl Schachter's camp.

Reviews of Explaining Tonality:

Anson-Cartwright, Mark. Journal of Schenkerian Studies, 2 p141-148. 2007.

Clark, Suzannah. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 132(1) p141-164. 2007.

Drabkin, William M. Music & Letters, 89(2) p252. May, 2008.

McDonald, Matthew. Music Analysis, 26(1-2) p217. Mar-July, 2007. McDonald's review of Explaining Tonality is on the mark, but I think he is rather too harsh on the other book reviewed, by David Beach.

Pellegrino, Catherine. Notes (Music Library Association) 63/1 (2006): 90-93.

References:

Brown, Matthew. Explaining Tonality: Schenkerian Theory and Beyond. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005.

Neumeyer, David. "Thematic Reading, Proto-backgrounds, and Transformations." Music Theory Spectrum 31/2 (2009): 284-324.

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.

D779n13 embedded in D. 365

Instead of imagining performance conditions in which D779n13 might have acted as a trio to n12 (see trio), we can take the opposite tack and construct a new "suite" of waltzes by inserting the simplified 16-bar version into D. 365, to take the place of the waltz of which it may well be a variant.

In the graphic at the end of this post, I have assembled an excerpt from a "false" Opus 9: the actual waltzes, nos. 4 & 5, then the 16-bar recomposition of the A Major Waltz (transposed down to Ab major), then number 6, and the beginning of number 7. The recomposition fits comfortably in the set I am constructing, as all of the Ab major waltzes in D. 365 are in the most basic 8+8 design, with brief (or no) pickups.

The earliest extant manuscript for D365n4 (from 1817) is an incipit in A major, not Ab. The Trauerwalzer (D365n2), also in A, is included in that set of incipits, and it is only in several Albumblatt-style copies from the following year that this waltz is transposed down to Ab (to make it more "traurig," perhaps?); then, a manuscript from later the same year or early in 1819 has D. 365 nos. 1-4, all in Ab, as they were finally published in 1821 (Brown, 228, 230-31, 291-2).

Postscript: After Schott reissued the Trauerwalzer under Beethoven's name and with the title "Sehnsuchtswalzer" (Kinsky, 727), the little piece's fate was sealed, and it was republished any number of times throughout the nineteenth century. As we saw in another post, Schumann knew it in 1835 as Le Désir (it was also called Mon Désir in some editions). 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 WoO11n7, a Ländler that was Americanized as the "Cactus Waltz" (Kinkeldey, 245-46).

In the musical example below, n1=D365n4; n2 = D365n5; n3 = D779n13 (16-bar version in Ab); n4 = D365n6; and n5 = D365n7.

References:

Brown, Maurice. Essays on Schubert. London: Macmillan, 1966.

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.

The A major Waltz as Trio to D779n12

D. 779 is a collection, not a cycle. The designs for functional dance music varied according to the length of the dance: the music might be arranged in a simple chain (ABCDE . . . ), in the five-part design familiar from the contredanse tradition (ABACA), as a dance with multiple trios (ABACADAEA . . . ), in the alternativo manner (ABAB or ABABCDCD), or in some ad hoc design that suited the occasion. We should also note in this connection that dances are sometimes labelled "Trio" in Schubert's manuscripts but not in print (and vice versa) (Litschauer, "Tänze," 3.)

In published works, however, the "standard" Viennese waltz design was already apparent in the 1820s: sets of five to six waltzes, usually without introductions but many with codas of varying length. The key schemes are closed, meaning that the final waltz and the coda are in the key of the first waltz. Key relations are close--the majority of waltzes are in the home key, with diversions restricted to dominant or subdominant.

The manuscript evidence and internal evidence of key sequences suggest that the A major Waltz was intended as a trio to No. 12 (in D major) ((Litschauer, 113-114); this is MS. 45 in Brown's list (Essays 237)). In the holographs, Nos. 12 and 14 appear as Nos. 6 and 8, respectively, of a collection of seventeen German dances. The first eight pieces in that set are clearly arranged in functional dance/trio groups, with the key succession: D, D, A, D, G, D, G, D. In this sequence, our A major Waltz would have taken the place of No. 7 in G major. (216-217). In the graphic at the end of this file, I have combined these three pieces in a dance-with-two-trios design: n12-n13-n12-n14-n12.

If we want to think of this design in Schenkerian terms, the waltz in A Major expresses a prolongation of an interruption on E5, or ^2 of D major (see the graphic below), a reading that resonates with--though it flips the structural priorities of--a statement by Carl Schachter as he seeks to explain the prominence of scale degree ^5 in the A Major Waltz: "A curious feature of the upper line is its beginning on [F#5] . . . A glance at the Waltz that precedes this one helps to explain: . . . No. 12 is in D major with [F#5] as its most prominent melodic tone. The [F#5] forms a link between the two Waltzes; such links occur fairly often in a chain of short pieces" (71).

References:

Litschauer, Walburga. "Franz Schuberts Tänze: Zwischen Improvisation und Werk." Musiktheorie 10/1 (1995): 3-9.
Brown, Maurice. "The Dance-Music Manuscripts." In Maurice Brown. Essays on Schubert, 217-43. London: Macmillan, 1966.
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.
Neumeyer, David. "Synthesis and Association, Structure and Design, in Multi-Movement Compositions." In James M.Baker, David W. Beach, and Jonathan W. Bernard, eds. Music Theory in Concept and Practice, 197-216. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997.
Schachter, Carl. "Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Durational Reduction." Music Forum 5 (1980): 197-232. Reprinted as "Durational Reduction" in Schachter 1999, 54-78.

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The graphics below are thumbnails; click on them to see the original files.