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.

A menuet by Mozart, age 9

IMSLP has a facsimile of Mozart's London notebook, digitized by the library of the Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland. The volume contains sketches, many of them complete, from 1764 and 1765. Three menuets are among the last pieces in the book. They are followed by a fourth but incomplete menuet and an incomplete fugue for strings (it breaks off just after the exposition finishes).

The three menuets are in F, Bb, and Eb, respectively. A facsimile of the third one is given below, followed by a digital engraving.

The design is 8 + 8, and a repeat sign should undoubtedly be placed in the middle. This little piece is another case of the sentence design showing up much earlier than it ought to do in the classical narrative (that is, Schoenberg's story, in which Beethoven invents the sentence design as better suited to the 19th century organic unity ideal).

Mozart gives the first idea of the continuation phrase the same inverted-arch shape as those in the presentation. The second idea is a formula cadence where the tonic scale degree (here, Bb) is approached from both below (A-natural) and above (C). The B section recasts the basic idea in form of an ascending sequence based on parallel tenths. The transposition of the continuation phrase (to make a "balanced binary" form of the whole) brings the melodic line up to Eb (over G3), then repeats the ascent in the final perfect authentic cadence.

String Trio, D581, III, Trio to the Menuet

Schubert's Bb Major String Trio, D581, composed in fall 1817, has four movements, all of which meet the topical and design expectations of the time, as one might expect of a 20-year old composer still finding his way. The Menuet has a number of distinctive gestures that confirm its status as a late-style menuet. Its trio would be the ideal place to introduce the texture of the dance trio (two violins and bass) that would have been familiar from dance music played in taverns and restaurants at the time: see the second paragraph of this post for more on that.

Schubert, however, seems to be doing his best to refine the tavern-waltz topic, if we can call it that, although in some respects the result must have seemed komisch to his listeners. The solo role given to the viola is unusual, to say the least, and the sound of the instrument distorts the ensemble sound of the tavern-trio. Not played carefully, the first strain can sound metrically awkward (mainly because of the displaced beginning of the melody -- Schubert fixes it in the reprise (see the third system)). (Here's a link to an audio file with an excellent performance: D581, III & IV. The trio runs from 1:45-3:00.)

Still, with its prominent ^5-^6 play (boxed at the beginning), the first strain is recognizable as a Ländler, and in fact even with its displaced first note it can easily be rewritten to make a perfectly good dance piece (provided the violist can handle the tune): see below

The contrasting middle (first eight bars of the second section), on the other hand, is a stereotypical menuet pattern. Altogether a work that shows the same topical uncertainties (or perhaps topical blending) that lie at the back of D779n13.