Enharmonicism and the omnibus progression in classical-era music

Music Theory Spectrum

Volumn 20, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 242-279

  Telesco, Paula J ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 64949191469     PISSN: 01956167     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/746049     Document Type: Review

References (56)

1. Victor Fell Yellin, "The Omnibus Idea," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, Dallas, 1972
2. Robert Wason, Viennese Harmonic Theory from Albrechtsberger to Schenker and Schoenberg (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985), 15-19. I would like to thank Professor Yellin for providing me with a copy of his paper
3. Yellin, "The Omnibus Idea."
4. 6/ii
5. The passage in Example 6 occurs at the end of the second A section in a concerto-rondo, constituting the transition to the development section
6. This passage appears at the beginning of the development section. The music has been in D major, the dominant, but has just modulated to Bmusic flat sign major by way of a deceptive cadence
7. Richard Hudson, Passacaglia and Ciaconna: from Guitar Music to Italian Keyboard Variations in the Seventeenth Century (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981). Hudson writes, "The first music for both Ciaconna and Passacaglio appears in 1606 in Montesardo's Nuova inventione d'intavolatura per sonare li balletti sopra la chitarra spagniuola, published in Florence" (17)
8. Thomas Christensen points out that rasgueado playing was considered by some to be vulgar and coarse. He quotes Sebastián de Covarrubias, lamenting in 1611 that "now the guitar is no more than a cowbell, so easy to play, especially in the strummed style, that there is no stable boy who is not a musician on the guitar." Thomas Christensen, "The Spanish Baroque Guitar and Seventeenth-Century Triadic Theory," Journal of Music Theory 36/1 (1992): 3, note 5
9. Richard Hudson, The Folia, the Sarabande, the Passacaglia and the Chaconne, Musicological Sources and Documents 35/3 (American Institute of Musicology, 1982), xvi-xvii, 18-26
10. Of course, not all pieces based on descending tetrachords were called passacaglias
11. Hudson, Passacaglio and Ciaconna, 271
12. Many examples of early passacaglias and ciaconnas appear in Hudson's The Folia and Passacaglio and Ciaconna
13. Frescobaldi's Partite sopra passacagli is included in Hudson, The Folia, 32
14. Sweelinck's Fantasia Chromatica is included in K Marie Stolba, The Development of Western Music, vol. 1 (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1991), 257
15. 6. Secondary dominants also appear with ascending chromatic basslines: Andrea Falconiero, Passacalle (1650), p. 69, Var. 23
16. Ellen Rosand states that "Il Fasolo" is almost certainly a pseudonym for Francesco Manelli. See Ellen Rosand, "Lamento," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 6th ed
17. Leonard Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 218
18. According to Rosand ("Lamento"), this was the most influential lament of the early seventeenth century, "confirmed by the publication of monodic Ariadne laments by Severo Bonini (1613), Possenti (1623), and F. A. Costa (1626) and most conclusively by Monteverdi's own reworking of this piece as a madrigal (1614), the publication of the monodic version (1623) and his adaptation of the madrigal to a sacred text (1640)."
19. 6-V) to suggest the newer harmonic system. See Linda Ciacchi, "The Rhythm of the Nymph: Long Range Motion and Coherence in Monteverdi's 'Lament,'" paper delivered at the fifth annual meeting of Music Theory Southeast, 16 March 1996
20. Rosand, "The Descending Tetrachord," 353
21. Rosand, "Lamento," 413
22. Rosand, "The Descending Tetrachord," 353-54
23. Raymond Leppard, in his piano-vocal arrangement, realizes the chord first as a French sixth, then as an Italian sixth. See Francesco Cavelli, L'Egisto (London: Faber Music, 1977), 93, mm. 71, 79
24. Ian Bent, "Analysis," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 6th ed
25. 7)
26. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, trans. and ed. William J. Mitchell (New York: Norton, 1949), 216, 238
27. For more on the règle de l'octave, see especially Joel Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 72-74
28. and Thomas Christensen, "The Règle de l' Octave in Thorough-Bass Theory and Practice," Acta Musicologica 64/2 (1991): 91-117
29. The passage appears in the recapitulation of the second theme area of this sonata-form movement
30. Wason, Viennese Harmonic Theory, 18
31. For the cycle given in Example 18a, the potential keys are A, B, C, D, Emusic flat sign, F, Fmusic sharp sign, or Gmusic sharp sign, all major and minor
32. Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler (1749-1814), Handbuch zur Harmonielehre und fuer den Generalbass nach den Grundsatzen der Mannheimer Tonschule (1802), 133ff. and Table XII
33. Kuhrpfälzische Tonschule (1778), Table XXX
34. The transpositions are shown descending through the octave, although composers also used them in their ascending form
35. C. P. E. Bach, Rondo I in A Major, W. 58/1, Clavier-Sonaten und Freye Fantasien nebst einigen Rondos fürs Fortepiano für Kenner und Liebhaber, Vierte Sammlung, 1783 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, n.d.). The excerpt appears in the developmental C section of this rondo
36. C. P. E. Bach, Rondo II in C Minor, W. 59/4, Clavier-Sonaten und Freye Fantasien, Fünfte Sammlung, 1785. This excerpt is in the final A section of this seven-part rondo
37. 7-I
38. o6/V -V-i
39. This is one of the two passages Rameau cited most often in his own writings on enharmonicism, especially in Génération harmonique (Paris: Prault Fils, 1737)
40. and Démonstration du principe de l'harmonie (Paris: Durand, 1750)
41. All of Rameau's writings are available in The Complete Theoretical Writings of Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), 6 vols., ed. Erwin R. Jacobi (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1967-72)
42. Both the Génération harmonique and the Démonstration du principe de l'harmonie are in vol. 3. English translations of each of these treatises appear in Deborah Hayes, "Rameau's Theory of Harmonic Generation; an Annotated Translation and Commentary of Génération harmonique by Jean-Philippe Rameau" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1968)
43. and Roger Briscoe, "Rameau's Démonstration du principe de l'harmonie and Nouvelles réflexions de M. Rameau sur sa Démonstration du principe de l'harmonie: an Annotated Translation of Two Treatises by Jean-Philippe Rameau" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1975)
44. The other famous passage cited by Rameau is "Quelle soudaine horreur," sung by the Trio de Parques, in the second act of Hipolyte et Aricie (1733). The enharmonicism of this passage is also sequential, but does not involve an omnibus. For more on these two passages, and on eighteenth-century enharmonicism in general, see my diss., "Enharmonicism in Theory and Practice in 18th-century Music" (Ph.D. diss., The Ohio State University, 1993)
45. C. P. E. Bach, Die neue Litanei, W. 204/2 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: Hänssler-Verlag, 1980)
46. C. P. E. Bach, Fantasia in A Major, W. 58/7, Clavier-Sonaten und Freye Fantasien, Vierte Sammlung, 1783. This passage appears near the beginning of the piece; a simlar instance appears near the end of the piece
47. C. P. E. Bach, Rondo III in A Minor, W. 56/5, Clavier-Sonaten und Freye Fantasien, Zweite Sammlung, 1780. This excerpt appears in the final A section of the rondo. Complete cycles through an entire octave are far less common than single statements of an omnibus, or several overlapped statements. The other contemporaneous example I am aware of is by Vogler, shown in Example 38. Two later examples of complete cycles appear in Hummel's Piano Sonata in Fmusic sharp sign Minor, op. 81 (1819), first movement, mm. 118-23; and Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony in B Minor, op. 74 ("Pathétique," 1893), first movement, mm. 259-62
48. Piano Concerto No. 26 in D. K. 537, third movement (" Coronation"). This excerpt appears in the closing section (and thus the dominant key area) of the B part of this concerto-rondo form
49. This is without doubt an unusual key to tonicize within a section in A major (i.e.. music natural signVII)
50. This is also the case in the C. P. E. Bach Fantasia shown in Example 30
51. Yellin cites many nineteenth- and even twentieth-century examples, including: the Finale to Weber's Der Freischütz; the Overture to Rossini's William Tell; the first movement of Schumann's Third Symphony and the third movement of his Second Symphony; the first movement of Brahms's Second Symphony; the Finale of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony and the first movement of his Sixth; excerpts from Wagner's Rienzi, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal; Debussy's Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum; Schoenberg's Gurrelieder and Kammersymphonie; Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat; and Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
52. Gregory Proctor, "Technical Bases of Nineteenth-Century Chromatic Tonality: A Study in Chromaticism" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1978), 140-42
53. Prelude XII, Georg Joseph Vogler, Pièces de Clavecin (1798) and Zwei und Dreisig Präludien (1806), ed. Floyd K. Grave (Madison, Wisc: A-R Editions, Inc., 1986), 79-80
54. The analysis appears in Vogler's Zwei und dreisig Präludien für die Orgel und für das Fortepiano, nebst einer Zergliederung in ästhetischer, rhetorischer und harmonischer Rücksicht, mit praktischem Bezug auf das Handbuch der Tonlehre vom Abt Vogler (Munich, 1806), 33-34. I would like to thank Professor Grave for making this available to me
55. Floyd K. Grave and Margaret G. Grave, In Praise of Harmony (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 55-61
56. Grave, In Praise of Harmony, 64