Martin Chusid on Schubert's Dances

The late Martin Chusid's monograph Schubert's Dances: For Family, Friends, and Posterity was published by Pendragon Press in 2013. An extended introduction by Walburga Litschauer, a familiar figure in these blog pages, was drawn largely from Litschauer and Deutsch (according to a comment by Chusid).

The chapter titles are:

The minuets (for winds, piano, and string quartet)
The ecossaises
The early German dances and ländler
Published waltzes, ländler, and German dances I: for the Carnival seasons of 1822 to 1825
Published waltzes, ländler, and German dances II: for the Carnival seasons of 1826 to 1828
The polonaises and dances for piano duet: Schubert and the Esterhazy family at Zseliz
The dances published after Schubert's death: Diabelli and op. 127 (D. 146); The dances edited by Brahms; The remaining dance publications.

Careful, thorough, traditionally oriented musicological work is welcome, though the volume has the character of a documentation, as it lacks a firmly committed argument to set a context for the work. Instead, one gets the definite impression that the volume is simply meant to fill a gap in Schubert scholarship, to which Chusid had already made distinguished, lifelong contributions. 

Assumptions about the priority of music for performance, rather than for dancing, come through clearly in chapter 1 (on the minuets), as do related preferences for possible cyclic designs and for distinctive harmonic or formal treatments. Thus, for example, D779n13, from the common observation that in "almost every musical aspect there are features . . . not commonly found in Schubert's other works in the genre," one jumps immediately to "the result is a remarkably complex and sophisticated composition," and of course to "perhaps the finest of all his dances" (135). It is also "the most ambitious" of the dances in D779, and one in which "Schubert avoids any sense of monotony."

On the Laendler in D734

Here is another passage from Litschauer and Deutsch (39; trans.):

Among Schubert's dances in triple meter are about 130 Ländler, composed between 1815 and 1826 and by and large preserved in manuscript sources. In contrast to the schottisches, german dances, and waltzes, however, the Ländler do not appear among Schubert's albumleaves or dedication compositions, and thus it is not suprising that these dances are rarely mentioned by the composer's friends and acquaintances. Furthermore, as two journal entries by Franz von Hartmann indicate, Ländler were commonly confused with German dances. (In both instances, the reference is to Schubert's "16 Ländler, opus 67" D734, which were published by Diabelli in December 1826 under the title "Hommage aux belles Viennoises: Wiener-Damen-Ländler.")

17 December 1826 (Sunday): By Spauns, where Gahy played brand-new Schubert German dances (with the title "homage to the belles of Vienna," which made Schubert quite angry).

6 January 1827: We went to Spauns, where we were invited, along with Gahy, to breakfast. . . . then Gahy played two superb sonatas by Schubert and the German dances that had enchanted us so at M on the 17th.

Hartmann probably should have known better, as few collections outside the first dozen or so numbers in D365 and D779 represent the Ländler style more consistently, but in his defense we should remember that Deutscher was not only the genre title for a particular group of dances and their musics, but also the family name for all "waltzing" dances.

Several points can be made about D734, many of them reminders of earlier posts:

(1) the boundary between Ländler and Deutscher was always fuzzy with respect to musical style in the urban dance cultures, being reduced by the 1820s to sweeter/quieter/slower (Ländler) versus formal/louder/faster (Deutscher).

(2) in dancing, the types were often intermingled to fit alternations between couple and group dancing. In D734, for instance, n2 comes as close as any Schubert dance to realizing the type of the rural Ländler in the late 18th century: D major, I and V only, violinistic melody with many third doublings. But n16 is clearly a Deutscher that would accompany the obligatory processional that ended an extended dance/cotillion.

(3) the "sweeter/quieter/slower" criterion is muddied by imitations of the Schnadahüpfl episodes in rural dancing. This alternation is clearly at work in D734n1: the first eight bars of Ländler are interrupted by the same music abruptly transformed into a loud, drone-accompanied Schnadahüpfl, then the Ländler returns. Remember that this is also what happens -- down to the direct mediant key shifts -- in D779n13 and D145n7.

Reference.

Litschauer, Walburga, and Walter Deutsch. Schubert und das Tanzvergnügen. Vienna: Holzhausen, 1997.

Litschauer and Deutsch on the Ländler

Here is a free and partial translation from the section on choreography of the Ländler (48-51):

About the dance performance of the Ländler during the Biedermeier period there remains considerable ambiguity. [Like the Deutscher,] the genre title Ländler represents a category encompassing both the so-called "almeric" (alpine) couple dances ("Steirische," "Wickler" "Schuhplattler") and the "ländlerisch" (rural) group dances. We can say with certainty only that the Ländler is a figure-dance for whose performance a moderate tempo is assumed.

Ernst Hamza has noted that the Ländler originally was a couple dance in which "the individual dance couples...had a large individual space at their disposal." The rich choreography of the almeric dances was (and still is) characterized by a number of figures with embracing movements, so that this Ländler type often appears as a lovers' dance. One can infer from dance illustrations in the Biedermeier period that similar arm figures were also typical of social dance, where in fact they were integrated into not the Ländler but [the urban dance most directly derived from it,] the "Straßburger." [the figures in this blog's logo are illustrations of this dance]

[The Ländler was apparently already being danced in Viennese society as early as 1790.] Around 1818 one can trace several variants of this dance in the repertoire of middle class house balls, where it was often danced in rural costumes. Because of the decorative character of the arm figures, the "Steierische" enjoyed great popularity at these festivities.

In the dance instruction manuals of the early 19th century the Ländler is usually called a "Länderer" and its figures are labeled "Ländern."

Reference.

Litschauer, Walburga, and Walter Deutsch. Schubert und das Tanzvergnügen. Vienna: Holzhausen, 1997.

Dance in Vienna circa 1820, part 2

The waltz, however, was protected by its very fashionableness, by the ubiquity of dancing as an element of evening entertainment in and outside the home, and by its crossing of the lines of class status. Long before 1815, when the Congress of Vienna seems to have been characterized as much by dancing as by diplomacy, the passion for dancing had swept past the occasional complaints and sporadic censorship. Litschauer and Deutsch give some idea of the remarkable extent of activity during this period, in terms of the range and character of venues, the dance's popularity among all social classes, and the intimate connection to the contemporary folkloristic movement (1-17). To the latter, they write that "the first decades of the nineteenth century distinguish themselves through an aesthetic intertwining of social dance and folk dance such as had never happened before in the history of European dance culture. The deutsche, the ländler, the schottisch, the polonaise and the mazurka, the Styrische, the Schwäbische, the Strassburgoise, the Anglaise, the Française, and the waltz are only some of the dance categories that contributed to this folkloristically vibrant era" (11; my translation).

The great public dance halls of Vienna–-especially the Sperl (opened 1807) and the Apollo-saal (1808)–-could often hold a thousand people at a time (an astonishing six thousand in the Apollo-saal if one counts both grounds and dancehalls) and quickly became great gathering places for wealthier middle class citizens and occasionally for members of the aristocracy as well (Aldrich; Hanson, 163-7; Salmen, 98). In addition to the public venues, house balls and a wide array of private gatherings and dance parties were common and quite as important to dance culture as they were to music—as we know, since these latter were the venues that nurtured Schubert.

We do not know if Schubert ever found his way into any of the large halls (friends certainly had the social status to facilitate this, but he is known to have disliked dressing up for social events). We do know, however, that he regularly played (though he did not dance) at house balls and parties (Deutsch, Mem, 121; Hanson, 152; Litschauer and Deutsch, 28, 151). (The great dividing line in Schubert's social life is early 1823, when the first symptoms appeared of the syphilis he had apparently contracted in December 1822. At first because of disfigurement, then due to true ill-health, he avoided social and public gatherings for most of 1823 and early 1824 and was active only sporadically thereafter (Bevan, 245-8, 257-8).)

Schubert was not the only performer for dancing at the balls and dance parties of his friends. Josef von Gahy was an excellent pianist who performed many of Schubert's keyboard works and sometimes substituted for Schubert. Josef von Spaun, in fact, seems to hint that Gahy's playing was esteemed better than the composer's own: "from time to time [Schubert] surprised us dancing enthusiasts with the most beautiful Deutsche Tänze and Écossaises . . . . Gahy had the knack of playing these wonderful dances with such fire that the dancers were quite electrified by them" (Deutsch, Mem, 133). Franz von Schober also recalls that Gahy "used to play the Schubert dances so remarkably on the piano and . . . never tired of playing, in his masterly way, for nights on end at our dances" (Deutsch, Mem, 207). Spaun, similarly, writes that Gahy "often sacrificed himself to the young people's dancing for whole nights at a time, bringing fire and life to the party with the wonderful Schubert dances" (Deutsch, Mem, 358).

These events varied in their programs but were typically constituted as some combination of dance, party, and meal(s). Examples with contemporary descriptions are cited in Litschauer and Deutsch, 23-29. Here is one from Franz von Hartmann's diary: "I went to Spaun's, where there was a big, big Schubertiade ... There was a huge gathering ... When the music was done there was grand eating and then dancing" (Deutsch, Doc, 571-72). If there was no dancing, participants might disperse to taverns or coffee-houses (according to Hartmann's recollections (Deutsch, Mem, 274), where they almost certainly heard music.

Christopher Gibbs describes the Schubertiades as

unpublicized events devoted primarily or exclusively to his music. Usually given by the composer's more well-to-do friends and patrons (although not the high-ranking men that supported Beethoven), they offered an informal, sociable atmosphere that often included recitations, eating, drinking, and dancing. The number of participants at a Schubertiade could range from a handful to over a hundred, and their frequency varied; some years saw weekly gatherings (or more), other years saw none. (74)

All this is not to imply that Schubert's dances were strictly segregated from "concert" music: as Litschauer and Deutsch observe, "From the evidence of various diaries and memoirs [of his friends], we can deduce that [Schubert's dances] were primarily played as functional dance music, but sometimes also as performance pieces [Vortragsstücke]" (150; my translation). Hartmann recalled that, in February 1827, "there was a particularly successful dance at Schober's, when Schubert played his beautiful 'Valses nobles'" (Deutsch, Mem, 276)–-this set is more amenable to performance and less to dancing than any of Schubert's collections other than the posthumous Letzte Walzer. On the other hand, a reminiscence by Ludwig August Frankl describes an occasion where Schubert "had a great triumph. A large company was there, including the Duke of Reichstadt. [Schubert] sang and played his things. They got ready for dancing, whereupon he played and improvised waltzes; they listened, asked him to go on playing, completely forgot the dancing and so it went on till long after midnight. They departed enraptured, he likewise, the triumph had delighted him" (Deutsch, Mem, 265).

Postscript: In Warsaw at the same time–-and to a lesser extent in Paris–-Chopin served a role similar to that of Schubert at salon balls and private parties. Unlike Schubert, however, who according to accounts of several friends never danced, Chopin was a willing and expert dancer (McKee 109, 118).) To complicate matters, McKee observes that "Chopin was not only receptive to the needs of the dancers, but was also able to translate their bodily motions into an artistic musical vision. . . . Only after he left Warsaw in 1830 did Chopin begin consistently to introduce nondance elements. . . . Even so, many of Chopin's Viennese and Parisian waltzes are eminently danceable, and the distinction between functional and stylized was largely a matter of how they were used in their social context" (121).

References:

Aldrich, Elizabeth. "Social Dancing in Schubert's World." In Raymond Erickson, ed. Schubert's Vienna, 119-40. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

Bevan, Peter Gilroy. "Adversity: Schubert's Illnesses and Their Background." In Newbould, Brian, ed. Schubert the Progressive: History, Performance Practice, Analysis, 244-66. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.

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

Deutsch, Otto. Eric Blom, trans. Schubert: A Documentary Biography. London: J. M. Dent, 1946.

Gibbs, Christopher. The Life of Schubert. London: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

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

Litschauer, Walburga, and Walter Deutsch. Schubert und das Tanzvergnügen. Vienna: Holzhausen, 1997.

McKee, Eric. "Dance and the Music of Chopin: The Waltz." In Goldberg, Halina, ed. The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, 106-61. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Salmen, Walter. Tanz im 19. Jahrhundert. Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1989.

Dance in Vienna circa 1820, part 1

This is the first in a series of four posts that reproduce the introduction from what was to have been the Schubert chapter in the book manuscript. The original version of this text was written nearly five years ago; a few of its details have already been updated in previous posts. As it stands, the text has been edited mainly for length.

Introduction. What Schubert found when he began composing waltzes about 1812 was not a simple, innocent country dance, as it is sometimes portrayed in an attempt to put as much distance between mass art and high art as possible. The waltz, and related turning dances, were primarily couple dances with a long history in the southern Germanophone countries. To be sure, they were still associated with rural or village settings in the early eighteenth century (Harris-Warwick) but, thanks to that association, they had appeared in pastoral settings of court theatricals as early as the seventeenth century. For their subsequent history, the decade of the 1760s was a critical juncture: figures based on the waltz were introduced into French contredanses, and it was in this context that the dance rapidly became popular throughout Europe (Nettl, "Waltz" 75). Elizabeth Aldrich attributes the addition of waltzing figures to the French contredanse to Marie Antoinette, who came to Paris in 1770 ("Social Dancing," 130-1). It is entirely possible that her influence enhanced the popularity of the contredanse allemande, but its figures had been in general use for at least five years before that.

By the 1790s, the waltz had thoroughly merged with the already existing middle and lower class dances. In Vienna (and elsewhere in the Austrian empire), this trajectory to a broad popularity at all levels of society was unquestionably aided by the Emperor's opening of halls controlled by him to public dances after 1772 (Litschauer, 19; Aldrich, "Social Dancing" 121). (NB: For obvious reasons, the information given here focuses on the Austrian Empire. For an excellent summary of social dancing and its contexts in Warsaw during the same period, see McKee, 107-17.)

Despite their acceptance in upperclass (including aristocratic) circles, the turning dances were regarded by some as troublesome because they were seen as sexually exciting or lascivious. There are several reasons for this concern.

First, the waltzing dances were path-breaking as the first of a long series of popular nineteenth and early twentieth century partner or couple dances. The most common form of the menuet was also a couple dance but the partners never (or rarely ever) touched one another. Indeed, the opposition of the proper, stately menuet to the "uncivilized" bourgeois waltz was basic to criticism of the latter well into the nineteenth century.

Second, the ländler, with its moderate tempo and often elaborate figures with intertwining arms, had traditionally been regarded as a lovers' dance (Litschauer and Deutsch, 48-9).

Finally, and perhap most importantly, at the more rapid tempos associated with the deutscher, the two dancers needed to hold each other continuously in order to execute the whirling movements, which combined a compact turning figure requiring two bars inside larger circular movements down a linear or spherical line of dance (McKee, 123; Yaraman, 16-19).

One has to wonder whether those who criticized the waltz ever danced it themselves. At any but the slowest tempi, the two partners must keep a certain physical distance in order to execute the steps fluidly and must not look directly at each other or they will rapidly experience vertigo. In 1836, a dancing instructor named Donald Walker wrote "Vertigo is one of the great inconveniences of the waltz" (quoted in Aldrich, Ballroom, 154). It was not just dizziness, however, but specifically the sight of young women fainting or staggering due to vertigo that disturbed some observers and helped to give the waltz its bad reputation.

References:

Aldrich, Elizabeth. "Social Dancing in Schubert's World." In Raymond Erickson, ed. Schubert's Vienna, 119-40. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

Aldrich, Elizabeth. From the Ballroom to Hell: Grace and Folly in Nineteenth-Century Dance. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991.

Harris-Warwick, Rebecca. "Dance (5)." Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy. Accessed 30 July 2004. .

Litschauer, Walburga, and Walter Deutsch. Schubert und das Tanzvergnügen. Vienna: Holzhausen, 1997.

Litschauer, Walburga. "Dances of the Biedermeier." In McKay, Elizabeth Norman, and Nicholas Rast, eds. Schubert durch die Brille [Proceedings of The Oxford Bicentenary Symposium 1997], 19-25. Internationales Franz Schubert Institut--Mitteilungen, no.21. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1998.

McKee, Eric. "Dance and the Music of Chopin: The Waltz." In Goldberg, Halina, ed. The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, 106-61. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Yaraman, Sevin H. Revolving Embrace: The Waltz as Sex, Steps, and Sound. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2002.

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.

Postscript: More to Improvisation

As a postscript to yesterday’s improvisation history, here is an alternate solution that Schubert might easily have come to: a simple sixteen-bar form that resolves the hypermetric peculiarities of its model: see graphic below (NB: this is a thumbnail; click on it for the original). The roughness of its harmonic figures in the second strain is not evidence against it, as there are many precedents in the waltz repertoire for such sudden harmonic turns between the four-bar components of an eight-bar strain.

The key to the changes lies at the beginning: the two-beat (four-eighth-note) pickup has been altered to a clichéd single quarter-beat (as in D365n6), and the harmony begins "in progress," as it were, with the 7-6 suspension over ii6. The fact that this opening is plausible (and closely resembles an existing piece) tends to invalidate Carl Schachter’s claim that "to omit the first two bars [of the A Major Waltz] would be to suppress the opening tonic altogether; [this] would make the whole piece pointless and nonsensical" (72).

The prosaic clarity of the recomposed first strain serves as well as any preceding analysis to highlight the strangeness of Schubert's original, perhaps the last bit of evidence we require in order to affirm that the A Major Waltz is a poor piece of social-dance music and is misplaced in D. 779--perhaps it would have been more successful had it been expanded a bit to act as the trio to a minuet or scherzo.

My crude rewriting barely masks the most obvious metric problems, however. The A Major Waltz, with its repeated second strain, consists of 29 two-bar groups, or the two-bar introduction plus 14 four-bar phrases, or 7 eight-bar strains: a waltz in an 8+8 design has four eight-bar groups, and a waltz in an 8+16 design has six groups.

The fact of an introduction itself is unproblematic; they are not common in Schubert's own dances, but brief introductory figures or flourishes had become familiar to dancers nearly a decade earlier through their use in the "extraordinarily popular" Linzertänze by Michael Pamer, principal predecessor of Lanner (Reeser, 47)--both Strauss, sr., and Lanner had played in Pamer's orchestra. Three other waltzes in the familiar sets by Schubert include two-bar introductions: D146n10; D365n34; and D734n15. (In a performance setting for dancing, such introductory "vamping" was undoubtedly commonplace, as I suggested in yesterday’s post.)

And uneven hypermetric groups do happen, also: three of the Valses nobles, D. 969, have them. Numbers 9 and 12 have an extra four-bar group in the second strain: the former adds up to seven eight-bar groups with the repeat of the second strain, the latter to nine such groups. Number 3, however, wins the prize as the oddest design in the major waltz sets: a four-bar introduction is followed by a repeated strain of 8+8; the second strain consists of four eight-bar groups plus one six-bar group (as 4+2). Thus including the repeat of the second strain, the total is 4 + (8 x 13) + 4, or 14 eight-bar groups altogether.
According to Litschauer and Deutsch (111), D. 969 was very probably meant as a concert cycle, not a functional dance collection, and one has to wonder whether the A Major Waltz would not be better placed as a trio in that set, rather than in D. 779, whose members are otherwise all functional dances not far removed from Schubert's first published collection, D. 365.

References:

Schachter, Carl. "Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Durational Reduction." Music Forum 5 (1980): 197-232. Reprinted as "Durational Reduction" in Schachter 1999a, 54-78. (Schachter, Carl. Joseph Straus, ed. Unfoldings: Essays in Schenkerian Theory and Analysis. New York/London: Oxford University Press, 1999.)

Reeser, Eduard. W. A. G. Doyle-Davidson, tr. The History of the Waltz. Stockholm: Continental Book Company, 1949.

Litschauer, Walburga, and Walter Deutsch. Schubert und das Tanzvergnügen. Vienna: Holzhausen, 1997.

D779n13 originates in improvisation

The Opus 9 (D. 365) collection was published in 1821; as most of the waltzes of D. 779 were probably composed in 1822-23, it is entirely plausible that Schubert might have played a version of D365n6 at some point not long after the publication of Opus 9 and decided to use its distinctive opening formula to improvise a new waltz. The likelihood is increased by the fact that D365n6 was apparently among Schubert's favorites: as Litschauer reports, it is among only six Schubert waltzes that appear three times in different manuscripts and one of only two found in manuscript copies made by one of his friends (Litschauer 1995, 4). The fact that some of these are variants is all the more intriguing. The first of the three manuscript versions (in 9 Deutsche (1819)) is identical to the published version, but the second (in 2 Deutsche (1821)) is striking in that it gives a fully realized Bb minor 6/3 chord in the left hand of bars 1-2, whereas the third (in 4 Deutsche (undated)) combines the first strain of D365n6 with the second strain of No. 7 from the same set (see Litschauer 1989).

Thus, we can imagine the new waltz starting as depicted at (a) in the graphic below: as necessary, vamping to establish the waltz meter and tempo for the dancers (or to gather one's thoughts), then open with a slight rhythmic variant of the figure in D365n6. The voice leading formula (second line in (a)) is varied too from the moment that F# becomes the upper voice (by the end of the first full bar of melody), but that is also where the trouble begins (third line in (a)), also realized as an initial attempt at a complete phrase in (b), which has a rather flat ending that allows the suspensions to drag the upper-voice melody down through ^4 and ^3).

Level (c) shows this ending again with the lead-in to the repetition of the phrase. Here is the first inspired moment in what has so far been a rather dismal effort: the hemiola rhythm of the initial gesture has taken control by now and the "turn" in four eighth notes gracefully (and convincingly) gathers energy that is directed toward the F#. Finishing out this varied repetition of the first strain, Schubert brings the upper voice down from its perch on ^6 and ^5 with a conventional ländler cadence that strikes ^1 but leaves the register of ^3 open. This cadence will also close the second strain of an 8 + 8 recomposition in Example 4.34.) Like the descent to ^3 in the first statement, this cadence seems weak.

At this point, the decision has to be made whether to set the new waltz in a two or three-part form, but for our purpose here, Schubert's choice makes little difference. I will assume that he composes a contrasting second strain (in the manner of D365n5). The dancing continues, and I imagine that Schubert plays a trio (perhaps one of the Ab major waltzes from D. 365 transposed to A major), but the awkwardness of the newly invented waltz bothers him, and he returns to it. This time around, the first phrase and most of the second are as we know them in the published version, but the cover-tone-qua-melody, now much more insistent than in the first attempt, brings about the second inspired moment, the cadence that lifts the upper register to ^8 (see the lower line in (d)).

Having reached the register of ^8 (A5), Schubert decides to stay there, perhaps expecting to use G#5 to initiate a cycle of fifths sequence as in (e'). For reasons unknown (which might include a simple lapse of attention during a long evening of playing), he decides to ground the contrasting middle of a small ternary form in a tonicization of the C# major supporting that G#5. There are a few examples of this design, where the contrasting middle closes in the tonicized key, and the reprise returns to the main key without modulation, but in this case the design will not work because the theme starts on a non-tonic position one half-step above C#.The third and last inspired moment, then, is to take advantage of yet another motion upward to carry the melody into the pianoforte's thin-toned and ethereal upper octave where the reprise begins in the final version.

Schubert chose to keep the A Major Waltz and eventually found it a place in the D. 779 collection, but I fancy it was not because of its odd combination of counterpoint and dance topoi or even its dramatic tonal contrast (something Schubert is known to have liked), but instead for the sake of its charming two-tiered melody. I imagine one of his musically skilled friends, perhaps Josef von Spaun, coming over after hearing several repetitions of the Waltz and whispering, "Schön, zärtlich," while the dance continued.

References:

Litschauer, Walburga. "Franz Schuberts Tänze: Zwischen Improvisation und Werk." Musiktheorie10/1 (1995): 3-9.

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.