new data for themes in dance music

I have added two pages to a set that focuses on theme types as they can be described using William Caplin's terminology. [NB 2 July 2016: The two links below are broken. The material mentioned has been gathered in my essay Dance Designs in 18th and Early 19th Century Music, published on the Texas Scholar Works platform: link to that file]  The first gathers information from the other pages according to theme type: Examples of theme types. The second supplies data for 8 collections by Beethoven, 1 by Czerny, 9 by Hummel, and 1 each by Marschner and Weber: Themes Tables.

D779n13 as genre mash-up

Many posts in the past two months or so have focused on style or genre questions, especially as they relate to dancing practices. From all this, another way of thinking about D779n13 emerges: as a catalogue of common dance-music gestures piled on top of one another.

1. The simple progression using I and V7 (characteristic of the traditional Ländler) is used in the C#-major section.

2. A common way to vary the I,V7 patterns is to introduce a third chord, IV, typically generating a progression either I-IV-V7-I or IV-I-V7-I. A variant of the second of these substitutes ii (especially as ii6) for IV, as in D779n13.

3. Another common way to "enhance" the I,V7 patterns is to introduce suspensions or appoggiaturas (see the Ländler by Hummel in this post for examples). Schubert, of course, makes leisurely two-bar suspension figures the hallmark of D779n13. (If the slow pace seems to hint at the sacred style, then it would be only in jest, given the parallel fifths that underly the progression.)

4. Improbably, the Ländler style is "enforced" by the rare expression mark, "zart," and verified by the Schnadahüpfl episode in the C#-major section.

Although Schubert's friends might very well have enjoyed the piquant sweetness of this waltz's first strain, they might equally have shaken their heads over its stylistic oddities.

Ländler moments in the coda of Hummel's dance sets

Facsimiles of eleven sets of dances by Hummel, arranged for piano by him or by the publisher's staff, may be found on IMSLP. Two of those are particularly interesting, in that they embed sections identified as "Ländler" into extended instrumental codas.

Both sets were written for balls during Carneval 1811: op. 39 for the Apollo-Saal, op. 44 for the "Ste. Catharinen Redoute." The Apollo-Tänze consist of 6 menuets (each with trio) and 4 Deutsche, each with multiple trios (n4 includes a vocal trio and its own short coda section), plus a long coda labeled "The Eruption of Vesuvius" and totaling some 450 measures. The Laendler is the penultimate section; a narrative logic for its placement is obscure, at best -- given that exactly the same placement occurs in the coda of the Catharinen-Tänze, it may simply have been a convention that Viennese audiences expected. (Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.) The characteristic violinistic key (D-major) and figuration, the design in a series of strains played en rondeau, and the Schnadahüpfl episode (section B), here generalized to a soft-loud alternation, are all present. Note, however, that the oom-pah bass shows up only in the third strain (C).

The Catharinen-Tänze consist of 12 Deutsche (each with trio) plus a coda of well over 200 measures. Here again, the Ländler is the penultimate section; plainly, it would be played more slowly than the rest -- see the "Tempo primo" that marks the beginning of the final section of the coda. The design is simpler than in op. 39: characteristic violinistic figuration and ABA form with A played softly and B loudly (Schnadahüpfl episode). In this case, the oom-pah bass is present throughout, simplified as a Leier (hurdy-gurdy) ostinato.

Another milestone: today's entry is the 175th post to this blog.

Forms with refrains

D734n11 is a 16 bar dance with an additional eight-bar segment added onto the second strain. These violinistic "Ländler codas" were a trademark of the genre and of course are very closely related to the yodeling figures placed at the ends of songs (even into the 20th century, these were common -- in the United States, they are probably most familiar from Western songs as performed by Roy Rogers). (Click on the thumbnail to see the file at original size.)

A version of this design is used by Hummel as well for the theme of his Tyroler-Lied mit Variationen, op. 118. The example below shows only the primo part. The repeat of section A (which modulates to the mediant, btw) is written out; the second strain begins with a contrasting middle, but a reprise is replaced by an 8-bar Ländler coda that is repeated rather forcefully.

The "extra" segment is a separate strain specifically identified as "refrain" in the theme for Henri Herz's variation set Nouvelle Tyrolienne, Op. 154. Note also the pedal point bass, which invokes a folk style.

Finally, the somewhat free concatenation of strains suggested by the Ländler coda is still evident in this waltz-style exercise from Friedrich Wieck's Piano Studies. The first two strains give a simple A-BA design. The third strain as it is given sounds like a coda, but performance practice for dancing or listening might also make of it another secondary strain, to be followed by A (even if that's not indicated in the score). The fourth strain is obviously a (short) trio.

Dance in Vienna circa 1820, part 3

Schubert's dance compositions circulated in copies he himself made for friends (Brown, 218), and collections of his dances were published as early as 1821. He also contributed dances to "special Carnival anthologies every year from 1822 through 1828" (Hanson 155). Apart from three sets of dances for four-part strings, written in 1813-1814, Schubert left no orchestral arrangements of his dances, but the evidence that arrangements of his dances were made by others for a public casino ball in Linz in 1826 (Litschauer, 248) suggests that it is by no means impossible his waltzes and schottisches were heard in the great Viennese halls, too, as the thirst for music to accompany all-night dancing must have been extreme. (Josef Kenner, an acquaintance from Schubert's school days, writing in 1858, recalled that Schubert's waltzes were praised in Austria, though "not unanimously," but they became popular in Paris when arranged for strings (Deutsch 86).)

Still, among those generally considered to be major composers of the era, only Hummel left dances specifically identified with their use in the large halls (in his case, the Apollo-saal) (link to a page with scans of the first editions, keyboard versions). Given that the waltz collection, D 365, was the first of his compositions taken up by a commercial publisher, it seems likely that, had he lived into the 1830s, Schubert could have made a very comfortable living as a dance composer, had he chosen to do so; by then a combination of rapidly increasing venues and rising income in the middle classes made such specialized musical entrepeneurship rewarding (Otterbach, 231).

Schubert also heard the waltzes of Michael Pamer and Josef Lanner in taverns in the 1810s and 1820s–-one of Schubert's favorite nighttime haunts, the Café Rebhuhn, was Lanner's base, and Schubert is said to have enjoyed the performances (Deutsch 188). On music and dancing in Viennese restaurants and taverns, see Hanson, 169-76. By contrast, it was the Sperl where, a decade later, Chopin and Wagner heard and admired the waltzes of Johann Strauss, sr.

In a moment of all-too obvious bias towards the "master composers," Paul Nettl says of Schubert that "it was he who actually introduced the Viennese waltz as a gift to the world" (261). There is little if anything in the historical evidence to support such an extravagant claim. Schubert's waltzes may have been dear to his circle of friends (Litschauer), and even known to a limited extent outside that circle, but without any doubt Schubert's contemporary Lanner is the seminal figure in the development of the Viennese waltz as it was later known, not only because of the compositions he created but also because of his influence on Johann Strauss, sr. Once Lanner split his band into two groups (in 1829), with Strauss leading one of them, Strauss's reputation grew very rapidly, and before long he was the widely acknowledged patriarch of the waltz (whose history from that point on unfolded as much in concert–-and in the musical theater–-as in social dance). Strauss's concerts, being more fashionable, also attracted members of the upper-middle class (Weber, 110; Gartenberg, 95).

References:

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

Deutsch, Otto. Rosamond Ley and John Nowell. trans. Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends. London: A. & C. Black, 1958.

Gartenberg, Egon. Johann Strauss: The End of an Era. New York: Da Capo Press, 1979. Original edition published in 1974.

Hanson, Alice. Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna. London: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Litschauer, Walburga. "Unbekannte Dokumente zum Tanz in Schuberts Freundeskreis." Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 42 (1993): 243-249.

Nettl, Paul. The Story of Dance Music. New York: Philosophical Library, 1947.

Otterbach, Friedemann. Die Geschichte der europäischen Tanzmusik. Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichson's, 1980.

Weber, William. Music and the Middle Class: The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna. London: Croom Helm, 1975.