Administrative

This blog is now closed to new content. In a post in March 2014/updated in October 2014, I wrote that in expanding work beyond my original blog,  Hearing Schubert D779n13, posts relating to dance-music designs (that is, musical forms) would be placed here and that the focus would be on William Caplin's form theory and its literature. (Link to Wikipedia article on Caplin. Link to Caplin's personal website.)

I have also published several essays on formal designs in music for dance and related music for performance and pedagogy. These are on the Texas ScholarWorks platform. Here are links and descriptions. For information on searching that site by author name, see the end of this post.

Cotillon after Schubert, with audio  (2015)

An episode from a cotillon as Franz Schubert might have played it in the 1820s. UT-Austin doctoral student Josh Straub is the pianist in the audio file.

Dance and Dancing in Schubert's Vienna (2015)

This file has six parts: the first concerns dancing in Vienna and dance music genres during the brief period between the Congress of Vienna and the July Revolution in France (1815-1830). The second part brings the focus ...

Dance Designs in 18th and Early 19th Century Music  (2015)

A study of harmony and formal functions in dance music of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The data and analyses are also intended to supplement the form theory presented in William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory ...

Form Functions in Menuets by Beethoven and Others, 1770-1813  (2016)

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 ...

Formal Functions in Menuets by Johann Sebastian Bach  (2017)

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 ...

Formal Functions in Menuets by Mozart, Part 1: Orchestral Works and Independent Sets 

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 ...

Titles of Parts 2-7:

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.
Part 7: Contemporaries and Successors, 1780-1828. 

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SEARCH FOR MY PUBLICATIONS ON TEXAS SCHOLARWORKS 

Go to this index published in December 2022: post --and this post for additional titles published in 2023-2024: post.     

OR use this link, which goes to the "music" department keyword listing under the Faculty research collection. It so happens that all but 4 entries are mine. Unfortunately, a glitch in the system means that searching by my name now only brings up publications since mid-2022.

New publications: Parts 6 & 7 of the Mozart Form Functions Series

I have published two new essays on Texas Scholar Works. These are the final entries in the series Formal Functions in Menuets by Mozart. Part 6 is subtitled "Contemporaries, 1771-1780"; Part 7 is "Contemporaries and Successors, 1780-1828." Link to Part 6. Link to Part 7.

Here are the abstracts.

Part 6:

This essay continues the documentation of formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets from the eighteenth century, as begun in parts 1-4 of this series. In this essay, the focus is on menuets written by other composers during the middle decade of Mozart’s life, 1771-1780. The repertoire includes music by Carl and Anton Stamitz, Franz Joseph Haydn, Luigi Boccherini, and several others, as well as menuets in collections or compilations intended for performance, dancing, or pedagogy.

Part 7:

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.

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 publication: Part 3 of Form Functions in Mozart Menuets

I have just published a new essay on Texas Scholar Works: Formal Functions in Menuets by Mozart, Part 3: A Comparison with Johann Christian Bach. Link.

Here is the abstract:

This essay charts formal functions (after Caplin) in named menuets by Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782) and compares them with menuets by Mozart. Bach is notable for exploiting the “galant theme,” presumably because of its ability to emphasize melody and to maximize contrast, in accordance with aesthetic ideals of the galant style.

The repertoire includes, in chronological order, WC 49-54: Concertos, op. 1 (1763); WB 43-48: Trios (keyboard), op. 2 (1763 or earlier); WA 1-6: 6 Sonatas, op. 5 (1765); WB 2-7: Sonatas with violin, op. 10 ; WC 1-6: 6 Symphonies, op. 3 (1765); WC 55-60: Concertos, op. 7 (1770); WB 51-56: String quartets (1770); WB 57: Flute quartets (year?); WB 70-75: 6 Quintets, op. 11 (1772); WC 17b-18b: 3 Symphonies, op. 9 (1773); WZ_6 Trios (Bach, Abel, and Kammel) (1775-76); WC 62-67: Concertos, op. 13 (1777);WA 21: Sonata 2 pianos (1778); WB 10-15 Sonatas (c. 1780); WB 30-35: Trios (1780); WA 7-12: 6 Sonatas, op. 17 (c. 1780); WA 16-20: Sonatas, op. 18 (year?).

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.

New publication: second supplement to British Dance and Song

English, Scotch, and Irish Dance and Song: Supplement 2 was just published on Texas Scholar Works. Here is the link: supplement 2. And here is the abstract:

Another supplement to the essay English, Scotch, and Irish Dance and Song, which is primarily a documentation of rising cadence figures in dances, fiddle tunes, and songs from late eighteenth and early nineteenth century published sources. Gathered here are an additional 70 examples taken from files downloaded in May and June 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."