New series of essays published

I have published a seven-part essay series titled Formal Functions in Menuets by Mozart. Part 7 is "Contemporaries and Successors, 1780-1828" and includes discussion of named menuets by Schubert.   Link to Part 7.


Here is the abstract.

This final essay in the Mozart series charts formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets written by other composers during the last ten years of Mozart’s life, 1780-1791, and by three composers active in Vienna thereafter, through the death of Schubert (1828). The repertoire includes menuets by Carl and Anton Stamitz, Franz Joseph Haydn, Luigi Boccherini, Giovanni Viotti, and Adalbert Gyrowetz, and several others. The three later composers are Beethoven, Hummel, and Schubert. Concluding comments return to questions of musical form theory.

Here is a link to Part 1in the series: Formal Functions in Menuets by Mozart, Part 1: Orchestral Works and Independent Sets. And the abstract:

A study of formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets by Mozart, the larger goal being to historicize more fully form-design practices in European music during the second half of the eighteenth century.

Finally, titles for Parts 2-6:

Part 2: Sonatas and Chamber Music.Part 3: A Comparison with Johann Christian Bach.Part 4: His Older Contemporaries, to 1770.Part 5: More to Theoretical Issues.Part 6: Contemporaries, 1771-1780.

Franz Hünten (aka François Hünten) published a Premier Quadrille de contredanses variées, suivi d'un galop as his Opus 63. The date is about 1834; a facsimile is available on IMSLP, as a digital copy of the facsimile published in an anthology by Garland about twenty years ago.

The work contains the usual five numbers of the quadrille as they were standardized in the early 19th century, plus a specific genre dance appended, as was the custom in published quadrilles at least through mid-century. In this case it's a galop; it might also have been a waltz or, after 1840, a polka.

The interesting feature of Hünten's quadrille is that the alternate strains in all five numbers are varied when repeated but the refrain (first strain) is not. The design of each number is ABACABACA. This provides 72 bars of music for the dance, or 8 for the promenade and 64 for the figures. See the graphic below for incipits of the refrain, B, C, and the variants of B & C.

I suspect that the composer is duplicating a common practice of performers (most often pianists) in house balls and similar dancing occasions (as with the post-Schubertiade dancing of Schubert's friends, for example). The unembellished refrain provides a stable guidepost for the design -- and therefore for the dancing -- while the variations on the alternate strains not only provide additional contrast with the refrain but also reflect what a creative (or bored) pianist very probably did in the course of dancing that could go on for a half hour to an hour at a time.

More on Forms with Refrains (3)

This is a follow-up to the post on the contredanse La Griel. I wrote there: "Contredanse folios published by the dancing master La Cuisse and reproduced on the Library of Congress American Memory site contain two remarkable fold-out graphics that collate music, text and graphic descriptions of figures, and drawings of the dancers."

La Griel, of course, is one: La Bionni is the other. Virtually everything said in the earlier post about La Griel applies equally to La Bionni, including the varying lengths of the figures and the grand rond or rond ordinaire danced to the first strain and its repetition. The music as performed (five strains with repeats, in an ABACA design) is reproduced below. (Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.)

From all this, three points may be made. First, it is hard to overemphasize the importance of the more or less formal (or ritualized) frame for the dance (in the rond ordinaire at the beginning and courtesies at the end). Second, it is equally hard to overemphasize the importance of the refrain. Third, although the musician is tempted to say that the refrain "structures" the music, that is only half the story, because a refrain in the music by no means signals a repetition of a figure in the dance.

More on Forms with Refrains (2)

Contredanse folios published by the dancing master La Cuisse and reproduced on the Library of Congress American Memory site contain two remarkable fold-out graphics that collate music, text and graphic descriptions of figures, and drawings of the dancers. For La Griel, I have reproduced the music below, labeled the strains and phrases, and then pulled out and labeled the music as it is shown in the large graphic. Note that the music is played as marked in the score, en rondeau, and dance figures vary in length from 2 bars to 8 (a gap in the music notation corresponds to a new figure in the dance). The greater complexity (compared to the long-dance style) is possible with a smaller group of dancers in the more formal quadrille square-dance structure, which was broadly speaking a compromise between the skilled, formal couple dancing of the menuet and the informal, highly social English long dance.

Music as distributed over the 8 figures of the dance:

La Cuisse published his contredanse folios in the mid-1760s, the French style became popular in Vienna in the early 1770s at the latest, and Bülow's manuscript compilation was made in the early 1780s -- therefore it is reasonable to assume that we are speaking about closely related practices. By Schubert's time, things had changed -- the menuet was often reduced to a comical Grossvater dance, and the formal quadrille had by and large been superseded by the decidedly less formal cotillon, or else adopted the latter's tendency to mix dancing with party games. More than ever, the design of a dance was in the hands of the caller or lead dancer (Vortanzer), and the music was shaped accordingly (and sometimes on the spot). As Schubert was playing for cotillons, then, he would take his cues from the Vortanzer (from the reminiscences, this was usually Josef von Spaun).

In this environment, the reprise was the principal device available for an aural structuring of the dance to complement the sequence of dance figures; the refrain, on the other hand, was a way of extending and enriching a particular sequence. The refrain and musical coda are obviously closely related -- the only real difference being that the coda usually consists of stereotypical cadence gestures mixed with material from the preceding sections , where the refrain is substantially new material. It's entirely possible that the refrain was not danced -- along the lines of the published waltzes of the 1830s and later, an instrumental introduction was likely (whether a prelude in the old manner, a vamp to establish rhythm, or a more elaborate piece) and -- if the Vortanzer directed it -- a final strain not danced was possible. One can, for example, easily imagine the dancers standing and clapping in rhythm to the yodeling refrain of D734n11.

The comments above can be regarded as an addendum to the post on performance designs.

performance designs for dances

It is important to understand that there is no such thing as a single, fixed form for the performance of a series of dances -- indeed, not even a fixed context or environment. This fluidity or variability is reflected in the following (repeated from an earlier post):

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, 265)

All that having been said, here are typical designs for dance performances, all but the first being appropriate either to dancing or listening.

1. the "jewel" -- a single dance performed on its own for listening.

2. dance-trio (ABA). Very common, of course, in sonatas and symphonies. In J. N. Hummel, Tänze, op. 39, Menuets 1, 3-6. Scanned first editions are available through IMSLP. In Schubert: each of the numbers in 20 Menuets, D41; D139; D146nn1, 4-11, 20; D334; D336; D769?

3. alternativo (ABAB). Of his Deutsche Tänze, K. 509, Mozart said: "Each German dance has its trio or rather 'alternativo' - after the 'alternativo' the dance is repeated, then comes the 'alternativo' again; it then goes via the introduction into the next dance." [note 19 June 2017: I adopted Mozart's meaning of alternativo, but have recently discovered that the term was generally used throughout the 18th century to refer to what we call trios nowadays. I like Mozart's use, though, and will continue applying the term specifically to the ABAB performance strategy.]

4. double trio (ABABA or ABACA). In Hummel, Tänze, op. 39, Menuet 2. In Schubert: each of the numbers in D91; D146n3; D335; D380nn1, 2.

5. extended trio design (ABACADA...). In Hummel, Tänze, op. 39, Deutscher 1 (4 trios), 2 (5 trios), 3 (4 trios), 4 (3 trios, the last being a vocal number). In Schubert: any number of these groupings may be embedded in the larger collections (Neumeyer 1997, 2006, and citations there).

6. extended trio design with reprises and also recurrent trios (ABACABA or ABACADABA, etc.). See the note to item 5 above.

7. extended trio design with multiple dance- trio segments (ABACDC . . . or ABACADCEC . . ., etc.). See the note to item 5 above.

8. fixed chain designs, such as the quadrille (ABCDE-[coda] or ABCDEF-[coda]).

9. extended but informal chain designs, such as the Ländler sequence or Lanner/Strauss waltz set (often as introduction-ABCDE-coda or introduction-ABCDEF-coda). In Schubert: possibly the 12 Wiener Deutsche, D128 (because of its introduction and plausible key sequence); also see the note to item 5 above.

10. "free" chains of dances, wholly informal or organized by the dancers as a cotillon. In this case the design of the dance would be under the control of the lead dancer or caller (Vortanzer), but Schubert would still have considerable -- if not complete -- control over the music. See this subsequent post on the topic. Also see the note to item 5 above.

References.

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

Neumeyer, David. "Synthesis and Association, Structure and Design, in Multi-Movement Compositions." In Music Theory in Concept and Practice. Edited by David Beach, James Baker, and Jonathan Bernard. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press: 1997), 197-216.

Neumeyer, David. "Description and Interpretation: Fred Lerdahl's Tonal Pitch Space and Linear Analysis." Review-article. Music Analysis 25/1-2 (2006): 201-30.

D779n13 score

Here is a score for D779n13: this is a thumbnail -- click on it to see a larger image.

Here is a link to the IMSLP page for D779: link.

Lerdahl and Jackendoff comment on the waltz's anomalous design, and Margaret Notley takes its oddities as proof that the A-major waltz is a true character piece, not just another waltz improvised for dancing. I discuss the formal design in detail in the review-article. In a subsequent blog entry, I will show how the striking 10+8+10+10 design can be easily understood as created through improvisation (following comments by Kofi Agawu on composition or recomposition as analysis).

References:

Lerdahl, Fred, and Ray Jackendoff. A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983.

Notley, Margaret. "Schubert's Social Music: The 'Forgotten Genres'." In Gibbs 1997, 138-54. (Gibbs, Christopher H. The Cambridge Companion to Schubert. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Neumeyer, David. "Description and Interpretation: Fred Lerdahl's Tonal Pitch Space and Linear Analysis," review-article, Music Analysis 25/1-2 (2006): 201-30.

Agawu, Kofi. "How We Got Out of Analysis, and How to Get Back in Again." Music Analysis 23/ii-iii (2004): 267-86.