Administrative post: updated links to some files

Early next year, Dropbox is changing the public folder to a shared folder. Therefore, I have moved all files that were formerly on Dropbox to Google Drive. Here is an alphabetical list with the new links:

Chopin, Prelude in E Major, op. 28n9: link.

Guide to my blog Hearing Schubert D779n13: link updated 2022-02-03.

Neumeyer, handout for 2010 Society of Music Theory presentation: link.

Neumeyer research vita: link.

Schubert dance table: link.

New essay published

I have published a new essay titled Rising Gestures, Text Expression, and the Background as Theme on Texas Scholar Works: link. Here is the abstract:

Walter Everett's categories for tonal design features in nineteenth-century songs fit the framework of the Classic/Romantic dichotomy: eighteenth-century practice is the benchmark for progressive but conflicted alternatives. These categories are analogous to themes in literary interpretation; so understood, they suggest a broader range of options for the content of the background than the three Schenkerian Urlinien regarded as essentialized universals. The analysis of a Brahms song, "Über die See," Op. 69/7, provides a case study in one type, the rising line, and also the entry point for a critique of Everett's reliance on a self- contradictory attitude toward the Schenkerian historical narrative.

Schachter and the rising Urlinie, Part 6

Carl Schachter's article "Schoenberg's Hat" has the following sections:

Introduction: Schoenberg's Hat (327)

Ascending and Descending Motion Contrasted (328)

Structure and Contour (331)

The Rising Fourth (333)

Conclusion: Lewis Carroll's Trousers (337)

Appendix: The Rising Urlinie (338)

Schachter begins by criticizing Schoenberg's extension of his idea of a unitary musical space (essential to derive and justify the several forms of a 12-tone row, including inversions) to tonal music, where Schachter points to "a functional context in which the tonal motive assumes…meaning…characterised by fixed points of orientation (the tonic note, triadic roots), [and] by important functional differences between rising and falling movement (for instance in the resolution of dissonances)" (328). Schachter is careful to say that notions of high, low, and others relating to space and motion are metaphorical or analogical, but then he goes on to claim that "I do not regard the analogies between musical space and motion on the one hand and physical space and motion on the other as unimportant, inexact though they may be. A significant part of music's ability to reflect our physical and emotional lives comes from just these analogies."

He then spends considerable time exploring text painting in relation to prolongational figures in songs by Schumann ("Die Lotosblume") and Brahms ("Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht"). Under Structure and Contour, the examples are Verdi, from "0 Terra, Addio" from the final duet of Aida; Schubert's "Die junge Nonne"; under the Rising Fourth, Bizet, Carmen's soliloquy in the "Card Trio" of the opera's third act. In the latter section, he also looks at two instrumental compositions: Bach's C-minor Fugue from WTC 1; Chopin's Prelude in E-major. The appendix comments on what Schachter regards as problems in my rising line article and renders his own judgments about analyses that are convincing with rising line Urlinien.

I will make some comments on the analyses and offer responses to the arguments in posts over the next several days.

References:

Schachter, Carl. "Schoenberg's Hat and Lewis Carroll's Trousers: Upward and Downward Motion in Musical Space." In Brenton Broadstock, Naomi Cumming, Denise Erdonmez Grocke, Catherine Falk, Ros McMillan, Kerry Murphy, Suzanne Robinson, and John Stinson, eds. Aflame with Music: 100 Years of Music at the University of Melbourne. Parkville, Victoria: Centre for Studies in Australian Music, 327-41.

Neumeyer, David. "The Ascending Urlinie." Journal of Music Theory 31/2 (1987): 275-303.