New publication: Part 2 of Form Functions in Mozart Menuets

I have just published Formal Functions in Menuets by Mozart, Part 2: Sonatas and Chamber Music on the Texas Scholar Works platform.

Here is the abstract:

Continuation of a study of formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets by Mozart. A table of data and comprehensive musical examples cover the trios, string quartets, string quintets, quartets and quintets with other instrumentation, piano sonatas, and violin sonatas.

For both parts of the study, the principal results are:

(1) An older historical narrative is discredited, according to which 18th century composers used period themes but Beethoven turned toward sentences instead. The menuet designs are remarkably and consistently varied.
(2) The antecedent + continuation theme is so important to the menuet repertoire that I have named it the “galant theme.”
(3) A small but still significant number of presentation + consequent themes appear.
(4) The available theme categories do not account well for some features of an 8-bar theme’s second phrase. In particular, “continuation” is too broad to account for the difference between “development” (as in fragmentation or sequence) and “continuing melody” (as in a new basic idea).

New publication: Form functions in Mozart menuets, Part 1

I have just published Formal Functions in Menuets by Mozart, Part 1: Orchestral Works and Independent Sets on the Texas Scholar works platform: link.

Here is 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, especially emphasizing the importance of the “galant theme” or anticipation + continuation/contrast model. The essay includes a table of data along with comprehensive musical examples drawn from the orchestral compositions and from the independent sets of menuets, many of which are either orchestral or keyboard reductions of ensemble pieces.

New publication: Form functions in Bach menuets

I have just published Formal Functions in Menuets by Johann Sebastian Bach on the Texas Scholar works platform: link.

Here is the abstract:

The menuet entered into upper-class social dance, ballet, and opera no later than the 1660s, thanks largely to Jean Baptiste Lully. This essay charts formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets  by Johann Sebastian Bach, with additional commentary on his contemporaries in Germanophone countries.