Sunday, August 20, 2017

Menuet survey summary

A longer-term goal of the menuet survey—which still needs entries on J. C. Bach and Mozart—has been a large documentation essay to be published eventually, like others, on the Texas Scholar Works platform. At this mid-point in the series of posts (I plan to examine a large number of menuets by Mozart), a summary of the argument might be useful:
This essay historicizes hybrid themes (after Caplin) in terms of first strains in named menuets and (secondarily) first sections in instrumental movements clearly based on the menuet. The antecedent-continuation theme is renamed "galant theme," and—for the purpose of the dance—the list of eight-bar themes is reduced to four: period, sentence, galant theme, and presentation-consequent. This last I sometimes refer to as the "6+2 theme."