New publication: Part 5 of the Mozart Form Functions Series

I have published a new essay on Texas Scholar Works. The title is Formal Functions in Menuets by Mozart, Part 5: More to Theoretical Issues: link. Here is the abstract.

This essay considers some theoretical questions raised at the end of Part 4 in this series. William Caplin’s theory of formal functions in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven stipulates that themes are of two primary types (period, sentence) and several secondary types (“hybrids”). These need to be resorted in order to account for eighteenth-century practice more broadly, following from the results of the work in this series, Parts 1-4.

New publication: Part 4 of the Mozart Form Functions Series

I have just published a new essay on Texas Scholar Works: Formal Functions in Menuets by Mozart, Part 4: Older Contemporaries to1770. Link.

Here is the abstract:

This essay charts formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets written during the second half of the eighteenth century. The repertoire includes menuets by Johann Stamitz, Johann Gottfried Müthel, Franz Joseph Haydn, Luigi Boccherini, Maddalena Laura Sirmen, and several other composers, as well as menuets in collections or compilations intended for performance, dancing, or pedagogy.

New essay published

I have published Form Functions in Menuets by Beethoven and Others, 1770-1813:
A Contribution to the History of Design for Dance Musics on the Texas Scholar Works platform: link.

Here is the abstract:

This article adds further documentation for the claim that dance musics in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century were not dominated by the classical symmetrical period but were in fact written in a variety of thematic types and frequently emphasized contrast between ideas (that is, two-bar units). In order to fine-tune descriptions, the terminology for the second phrase in a theme is expanded beyond consequent and continuation (after William Caplin) to include two new categories: contrast and complement.

In addition to two sets of menuets by Beethoven—WoO7 and WoO10—I look at the late menuets of Mozart (K. 461, K. 463, K. 568, K. 585, K. 599, K. 601, K. 604), early menuets by Schubert (D. 41, D. 89), menuets by Friedrich Schwindl (1778), Settree (an English publisher; 1770s?), and Hummel (1807).