Teleology

Yesterday's post introduced a series that may continue through the end of this month: additions or corrections to previous posts and analyses. In January, new readings will start again in earnest.

Here is another way to conceive the most sharply teleological readings so far: proto-backgrounds from ^1-^8 and ^3-^8. We might regard everything as a "prefix" to the final chord. This takes the teleological bias to its extreme; the effect is to devalue the "declaratory" quality of the piece's beginning (with its organicist or generative implications) and give the strongest possible emphasis to dramatic "delay," or Schenker's retardation.

Overt harmonic designs of this type are not unknown, especially in later nineteenth century music, and Schubert plays with them in some waltzes by extending V across seven bars of a strain, only arriving at I in bar 8. See the two examples below: first strains of D365n1 and D734n10.

In the case of D779n13, such a reading is encouraged by the strong metric accent given to the non-tonic sonority of bar 3. To create a graph, we could simply reconstruct the prolongations of a traditional background third-line as prefix to the final ^1. The result would be to make the entire waltz into an "initial descent" to the ^1 (Forte and Gilbert, Introduction 181-3). Most linear readings could be similarly reconstructed along extreme teleological lines, although some would certainly suffer considerable damage to their original intentions.

Reference:

Forte, Allen, and Steven Gilbert. Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1982

more to signature transformations

This is actually just an addendum to the post with abstract and publication information for Jay Hook's article on signature transformations. I have finally acquired a copy of Music and Mathematics and want to explain "Neumeyer (forthcoming)" in footnote 1 (159). That was a book project that ultimately ran afoul of reviewers with strongly opposed views (that is, opposed to one another). The nub of chapter 1 is in the MTS article, chapters 2 & 3 will become articles when I get around to it, and chapter 4 has by now migrated in great part to this blog. Jay was generous in writing a section for chapter 4 at my request; I'm glad that the work sparked some serious thought and has not only resulted in a substantial publication for him but also in a construct with real potential for music analysis.

Recomposition after Ravel, Valses nobles et sentimentales

The "recomposition" in Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales is of a different kind and the nostalgia of a different, and far more intense, order. For Ravel never actually quotes a Schubert waltz; he borrows only the title, which in itself suggests nostalgia removed to the point of losing contact with concrete memories. Those memories, in any case, are complex, since they are of the whole era of the waltz, not merely its first flowering in the early nineteenth century. In Ravel's waltzes, one hears more traces of Strauss and Waldteufel than of Schubert.

We are left then to speculate on an appropriate place where the A Major Waltz might have appeared. The eight waltzes are (with form scheme and principal key):

I. Modéré–très franc
ABA; G major

II. Assez lent–avec une expression intense

ABA; G minor

III. Modéré

ABCA; G major

IV. Assez animé

AB; C/Ab major

V. Presque lent–dans un sentiment intime

AA'BA; E major

VI. Vif

AA'A''A; C major

*VII. Moins vif

introABA; A major
* No. VII is the longest piece in the set and approaches the dimensions of a Strauss waltz: unlike the other waltzes, A and B have internal strains here.

VIII. Épilogue–Lent

ABB'coda; G major

Clearly, the keys suggest that the first three waltzes belong together in a symmetrical moderate-slow-moderate design, as do the next three (fast-slow-fast). Number six also begins a gradual winding down of the tempo toward the end of the set: Vif-Moins vif-Lent, the ultimate tonal goal being a return to the G major of the first "set" (this return only happens well into the last waltz–there is a clear tonal transition from the penultimate to the final waltz that we cannot see in the list of key centers).

Rather than extend the duration of the set, I imagine which waltzes might be replaced. The two "trios" seem the obvious candidates (nos. 2 and 5). I rule out number 2, however, because the strong affective contrast in moving from the first waltz, which has the brusque frankness of a deutscher, to the deeply introspective minor-mode trio, would be mostly lost with the A Major Waltz, which if anything strives toward the relaxed elegance one sometimes finds in slow waltzes later in the century (especially in the waltzes of Waldteufel but also in the polka-mazurkas of Strauss). Similarly, replacing number five with the A Major Waltz would provoke an unpleasant contrast between its simple harmonies and the tonal vagaries of the previous waltz, which roll by the ear at a breathtaking pace.

Thus it would seem that the best affective fit would be with number three, a graceful moderate-tempo waltz that is the only movement in the Valses nobles et sentimentales to come anywhere near invoking the ländler:

Since it would be stylistically incompatible as it stands, I have imagined the first few bars of how Ravel might have rewritten the A Major Waltz to fit his vision of the hommage: as he himself put it, "the virtuosity which forms the basis of Gaspard de le nuit gives way to a markedly clearer kind of writing, which crystallizes the harmony and sharpens the profile of the music" (quoted in Nichols and Mawer 260).

Reference:

Nichols, Roger, and Deborah Mawer. "Appendix: Early Reception of Ravel's Music." In Deborah Mawer, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, 100. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Prokofiev's Schubert-Waltz Suite

This is a postscript to yesterday's post about Liszt's Soirées de Vienne. In the early twentieth century, Prokofiev strung together several Schubert waltzes to make a concert encore piece. Although decidedly less imaginative than Liszt's compositions, Prokofiev's suite does reposition and reinterpret (often by changing keys) a total of 15 waltzes: D145,waltzes ns9,10; D146n3, trio I; D365n31; D734ns2,14; D779ns3,10,12; D783n1 (=D790n2); D790ns3,5,6; D969ns5,7.

The formal groupings (represented by dividers in the table below) rely mainly on reprises, but there is also some attention to key relations. Note, finally, that D779n13 is not included in the suite, although it might easily have been inserted at bar 41 or 194 in its original key, or several other places in transposition.

Prokofiev, Waltzes by Schubert

m. #	source	key(s)
1*	D969n5	a-e
25	D969n7, contrasting middle	e
33*	D969n5 -- reprise	a-e (final chord: E)
41	D146n3, trio I	A
75	D734n2	D-A
91*	D969n5 -- reprise	a-e
99	D790n6	g#
123	D790n3	D
155	D790n5	b
179	D790n3 -- reprise	D
187*	D969n5 -- reprise	a-e (final chord: E)
194	D783n1 (=D790n2)	A
218*	D969n5 -- reprise	a-e
226	D145-waltzes,n9	a
258	D365n31	C
278	D779n10	G
304	D779n3	G
330	D734n14	C
346	D145-waltzes,n9 -- reprise	e
362	D365n31 --reprise	C
372*	D969n5 -- reprise	a-e
396	D779n12	C – g#-b-D
436	D145,waltzes n10	b
460	D779n12, second strain	b-D-d-F
476*	D969n5 -- reprise	a-e

Update 2-20-10: Here is a link to a performance file on YouTube: this is Frederic Chiu's recording. I'm not sure why it is on YouTube or how long it will stay.

Recomposition and nostalgia (Liszt)

This post picks up the thread of recomposition, now with concrete evidence rather than my speculative rewriting of D365 or my partitionings of D. 779 into small cycles or dance-trio groups. Relatively early during his tenure in Weimar, in the midst of an enormously fruitful period of composition, but already past the years of avid concertizing, Franz Liszt composed a set of nine pieces titled Soirées de Vienne: Valses-Caprices d'après Franz Schubert (S. 427), a still-popular set of piano compositions Humphrey Searle has praised as "among the most successful things of this kind which Liszt ever did" (62). Liszt himself remained fond of the collection to the end: he played numbers from them in concerts in 1873 and 1886; number six (of interest here) was on the program of his final concert, given days before his death in July 1886 (Williams, 480, 671, 680).

These pieces, which meander about the genres of concert waltz, virtuoso vehicle, and character piece, mine two veins of nostalgia–the concert display piece and Liszt's preoccupation with memories of musical life in Vienna and Paris during the 1830s and early 1840s (a preliminary version of one of them was actually written in 1834, only six years after Schubert's death and only three years after Schumann's Papillons exploited Schubert's dances in a slightly different way).

The sixth valse-caprice is the only one of the set to appear in two versions (the second is close to the first but with more virtuosic elaboration). It is essentially a concert transcription of three waltzes, two from Valses nobles and our A Major Waltz. The logic of the choices may be a matter of good affective contrast, but key center could also have been a factor. The majority–but by now means all–of the waltzes that Liszt cites in Soirées de Vienne are in the original key. It is not difficult to imagine the ninth waltz from Valses nobles attracting Liszt's attention:

A deutscher, it is written in A minor, the minor mode being rare in Viennese waltzes, and it clearly invokes "gypsy" rhythms. Furthermore, this A Minor Deutscher opens like a dramatic scherzo–it is barely a waltz at all–and ends with an eight-bar phrase on a Dudelsack (bagpipe) figure.

To this Mephisto-like apparition, Liszt attaches two lyrical trios. The first is the Deutscher's plausible trio–No. 10 in F major–but for the second trio Liszt ignores the two remaining waltzes in A major from the Valses nobles (nos. 2 and 8) and inserts instead D779n13 (this is the only waltz Liszt takes from D. 779 for the Soirées). Thus, the design of the sixth valse-caprice is A (=nobles 9) B (=nobles 10) A C (=sentimentales 13) coda (consisting of cadenza and a reminiscence of B). According to Edward Waters, the holograph manuscript shows that the piece originally ended with the reminiscence and "a simple chordal cadence," the final flourish of triplet eighths being added later (16).

The A Major Waltz is labelled "dolce teneramente" (the two words have been separated in the published edition), and Liszt was insistent that printers observe his articulation symbols in the right hand–a tenuto with staccato dot for the half notes, but tenuto alone for the following quarters; the effect is to create a slight separation between suspension and resolution, thereby giving a slight accent to the latter and emphasizing the two-against-three "polymeter" (Waters, 16). The "dolce teneramente" is visible in the facsimile of Liszt's holograph (Waters, opposite 17).

In this context, it should not surprise us if strange things happen to the A Major Waltz. The large-scale design, if read in a traditional Schenkerian manner, should prolong ^5 (which is unmistakable in the Deutscher) with mixture in the alto as we pass from minor to major; thus, a natural connection is made to the ^5 that will motivate the rising urlinie at the end of the A Major Waltz. Liszt, however, adds a chromatically charged third strain that drags the line down in the most determined way, through a whole-tone scale no less, to C#5, but ends peaceably with a most direct ^3-^2-^1 figure. The entire "newly composed" A Major Waltz is repeated, with elaborating figuration, and a coda follows. Using Schenkerian models, the whole looks as in the graphic below.

What I have just done is to reinterpret one of the earlier readings (the Schenkerian rising line from ^5) in light of the changes of context that Liszt creates. We might do the same for any and all of the readings already offered; for example, we might compare the shapes that arise throughout this more extended composition under the reading that gives priority to melodic shape and multiple structures; and it would be interesting to rethink the metric/rhythmic readings in light of the fact that the introduction never appears as it did in Schubert's waltz (Liszt expands the two-bar introduction to four bars the first time; when the waltz is repeated, he erases the metric problem by starting the triplet figuration on the first beat of the bar, not the second).

Liszt's recomposition of the A Major Waltz, in other words, sets in motion another series of readings, which I will not take the time to follow through here. Yet it also conjures up (even announces in its title) contexts we could follow, as well, if we chose: the waltz as a cultural category, nostalgia for a musical "golden era" of the 1820s and 1830s, the waltz series as concert or salon piece, Vienna, Paris, the early Romantic genius, the sense of historical distance from that genius, changes in Schubert reception in the fourteen years between Schumann's review and the composition of Liszt's piece, etc.

References:

Searle, Humphrey. The Music of Liszt. 2d ed. New York: Dover, 1966.

Waters, Edward N. "Liszt's Soirées de Vienne." The Library of Congress Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions 6/2 [1949]: 16-20.

Williams, Adrian. Portrait of Liszt: By Himself and his Contemporaries. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Imaginary continuo (after Rothstein)

Is it possible to retain a sense of Schubert's risky improvisations (see posts (1), (2)) in a Schenkerian graph? Only if the graph can be made to reflect the human and fallible, not just the unerring creative instinct of an idealized notion of genius. To attempt this shift, I will start with the continuo grid. William Rothstein (296) uses the construct of the "chordal scale" (derived from Lerdahl) as the repository of tones for the imaginary continuo, his term for what I will call the continuo grid.

The beginning of the first graphic below shows the chordal scale for D779n13 with respect to its tonic triad: all members of the A major triad between the lowest and highest notes struck. Out of this scale emerge the four voices of a standard part-writing progression representing measures 1-10, or the introduction and the first eight measure phrase. The analogy to a continuo keyboard part would be better if the right hand held three voices and the left just one, but I resist that because I want to preserve the textures of this waltz as much as I can.

Resisting the idealization of textures is in fact the basic strategy of this rewriting. Note that one result is the prominent set of parallel fifths. A respect for textures suggests that the pedagogically simplified, chorale-style texture of (a) is not the best solution for this passage, which after all contains several additional voices in the left hand: these are inserted in (b), the end result looking more like the textures in orchestral settings of dances in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Note the octave doublings that have now been added to the parallel fifths. The fullness of this texture contrasts with the three-part reduction that keeps only the two imitative upper voices and the bass (c). It is this latter that Carl Schachter uses in his durational reduction of the Waltz, but Schachter corrects the parallels by texture inversion of the two melodic voices.

Instead of collapsing the texture as Schachter does, I have removed the "non-harmonic" I 6/4 chord in (a) of the next graphic below, leaving a simple ii6-V7-I harmonic progression. Level (b) expands (a) with the closing cadence.

The contents of (b) are reproduced in the lower system of the final graphic (below) and renotated to correspond more closely to my preferred Schenkerian reading, the rising line from ^5 to ^8. The alignment is not meant to suggest an equivalence, but a replacement: if maintaining textures is thematic here, then the lower system takes the place of the upper one.

The continuo grid has a quality of concreteness about it, as if the improviser is looking at the piano keyboard and making choices about register (A major, melody in the fifth octave, accompanying voices in "standard" positions for a waltz in this key). Once the fateful decision is made (at bar 3) to model this waltz on D365n6, the parallel fifths emerge very quickly, and Schubert's decision to maintain the register despite the parallels opens the door for the sublime counter-move to the downward pull of the ancient suspension figures: the sudden lift over V in the final cadence. The graphic suggests further that, having transmuted an error into the sublime, so to speak (the parallel fifths into the rising cadence gesture), Schubert adopts the rising itself as a design in the second strain: tonicizing C# major (rather than treating it as V of vi to start a cycle of fifths sequence), then the peculiar chord progression it leads to, which facilitates another expressive moment associated with upward shifts of register (in measures 31-32--not included in the example).

References:

Rothstein, William. "On Implied Tones." Music Analysis 10/3 (1991): 289-328.

Schachter, Carl. "Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Durational Reduction." Music Forum 5 (1980): 197-232.