D924 and dancing

The last two blog entries, which contrasted traditional Urlinie readings with those based on an Ursatz manqué, made an assumption that is typical of these modes of analysis but is questionable, especially for waltzes (or other small-scale pieces, such as songs). Far from being the staid forms that tie the chaos of the foreground to the eternal, these backgrounds are highly contingent -- fragile and easily disrupted. We've met some of the devices before: the stability of its tonal "reference point" -- whether upper voice or bass -- is quickly undermined if it is played as trio to another dance, or enhanced if it is given a trio and a subsequent da capo.

In the double-tonic numbers of D924 there is even another possibility -- that the strains themselves were detached from their companions and played in differing combinations. This is of course speculative -- an extension "backwards" to Schubert's improvisation practice -- but one does find such "floating strains" in Schumann's Papillons, for example, and the topically uniform character of most of D924 makes its both easier and more plausible as well.

I have assembled below a dance-sequence that uses the first strain of n3 as the refrain. More repetition or extension would probably be necessary, but even in this form up to three minutes of dancing would be available. The sequence is n3, a, b, a -- n2, all -- n3, a -- n5, all -- n3, a -- n4, all. The key sequence is c#, E, c# - E - c# - A - c# - A.

D924 and tonality in sets, part 2

This continues yesterday's post on certain numbers in the Gräzer Walzer, D924. Five dances (n3, 6, 7, 9, 11) have minor-key first strains that then modulate in the second strain to the relative major key, all but one ending there and thus creating double-tonic constructions. Here I will look at n6 & n9.

It's much harder to hear n6 in the same way (as n3--see yesterday's post) because C#6, which will become A:^3 in the second strain (circled), is too obviously a cover tone here and lines too obviously move from A5 (see the several circled notes and the added/implied G#5 in red). The second strain is less sharply profiled -- in a word, ambiguous -- but it would seem that A:^3 has priority -- follow circled and added notes -- while covering activity (boundary play) actually gets more attention (boxed notes). The background understood traditionally is not a problem: both A5 and F#3 are middleground prefixes to C#6 and A3, respectively. With more sensitivity to its expressive qualities, the waltz's Ursatz is again non-traditional, and its Urlinie, too: A5-C#6-B5-A5.

The last example is n9, which goes still further, as a reading with a traditional descending line requires a clumsy transgression of the voice leading in the first strain ("crossing" the soprano and alto voices in mm. 7-8 (boxed)). In the second strain, C:^5 is easily read as descending (F5 in m.10, E5 in m.11, D5-C5 in the final bars) but just as easily -- and more effectively -- as rising from ^5 steadily upward to ^8 (the line is boxed).

D924 and tonality in sets

The Gräzer Walzer, with the Valses nobles, represent the late style among Schubert's dances, as they were most likely composed/written down in 1826 or 1827. Of the two sets, the Valses nobles, with their often elongated and asymmetrical forms and leaning toward distinctly pianistic textures and gestures, show much more tension between playing for dancing and playing for listening. The Gräzer Walzer, with the possible exception of the last one (n12), which might have been conceived as the typically extended coda of the set, are all entirely danceable and may in fact easily be strung together to create extended sequences. Many, in fact, have very distinct Ländler characteristics, which seems a bit surprising for such a late period in Schubert's life.

A curiosity of D924 is the large number of minor-key first strains (5), all of which modulate in the second strain to the relative major key. These are n3: c#-E; n6: f#-A; n7: a-C (1st ending), a (second ending); n9: a-C; n11:e-G. All five end in the major key, except for n7, as shown.

In traditional Schenkerian analysis, priority goes to the end, and therefore all but n7 would be read in terms of the ending key, with the opening key situated in the middleground. I'll adopt that view here for sake of discussion, but in general it strikes me that this sort of bald hierarchization misses much of the expressive point of these pieces: their strains and their keys are balanced, two pictures in a locket -- and family pictures at that, as Schubert follows his earlier habit (exemplified in a skewed way in D779n13) of transposing the first strain to serve (with minor emendations) as the second. It seems to me that David Lewin's conception of key change (allied to the double-tonic complex but explicitly transformational) is a much better model.

In D924n3, Schubert plays a simple polyphonic game, flipping the priorities of uppermost and "alto" voice in the right hand. The G#5 (boxed) may sound like a cover tone to ^3 (E5) at first, but the dogged and direct cadence carries the voice leading down from its ^5, not from E. In the second strain the weight is reversed (though of course we have no way of knowing that till the cadence arrives -- but that's often the expressive trajectory of Schubert's waltz strains): B5 does retreat to the cover tone role and the cadence ultimately moves down the G#5 of m. 9 past an incomplete NN (not boxed) A5 through F#5 to E5. Thus the Urlinie design converts c#:^5 to E: ^3, and the c# region becomes a middleground prefix in the bass -- unless you decide that's a bad idea and give the C# bass note the background status it deserves in a double-tonic complex.

I will look at two additional dances, n6 and n9, in tomorrow's post. Both show more extended versions of the same patterns.

Proto-background 9: the fourth ^5-^8

Also see the proto-background introduction.

The last of the proto-backgrounds implausibly demotes the alto voice and gives all the attention to the overall shape of the uppermost voice. Although some interesting insights emerge from this focus on the fourth, still the reading overall seems forced, a deliberate misreading.

Schubert uses the ^5-^6-^7 Leerlauf most blatantly to end the first waltz of the Valses nobles. It can also be found in the first strain cadence of D783n16, and, in more elaborate form, in D734n1, in D924n7, and in the last of theValses sentimentales.

In the graphic below, the second level shows other figures in addition to the basic opposed neighbors, E-E#-E, A-G#-A; these could, alternatively, be described as a WEDGE.

In this version, the second staff shows simple registral shifts generating later-level INV transformations, plus the transposition of E5-A5 to generate the C# major section. The third staff elaborates all of these intervals by means of lines.

This conception of the piece traces the interval/line relationship more abstractly, as a series of Transpositions in the first staff, to which the countermanding (and insinuating) line is added. This latter, nevertheless, traces the same fourth down (A-G#-Gnat-F#-E), and in the end notes also reaches a vertical interval of that fourth again.