Franck, Sonata for Violin and Piano, I

In this post from February—link—I looked at the examples for V9 from the standard harmony textbook anthology Music for Analysis: Examples from the Common Practice Period and the Twentieth Century, 8th edition, by Thomas Benjamin, Michael Horvit, Timothy Koozin, and Robert Nelson (2018). They include the opening of Cesar Franck's Sonata for Violin and Piano, first movement (1886), which I characterized as "one of the most striking cases of an extended (prolonged) dominant ninth before 1900" and said that I would post a separate study of it at a later date. Here, seven months later, is that study.

The opening really doesn't need additional commentary:

Here I have reduced/blocked-out the harmonies. Again this isn't really necessary but it does help to bring out in another visual representation the wonderful expansion of the V9 harmony and also makes the pairing of ^6-^5 and ^4-^3 more obvious. Although F#5 is prominent in the violin's first bar, by the end of the phrase we realize that it acts as a cover tone, and the violin's main voiceleading figure is ^4-^3, while the piano takes the long-held F#4 down to E4 in bar 8.

I will restrict myself to the violin version, but I have one comment on the cello arrangement made by Jules Delsart and sanctioned by Franck. Delsart moved the solo line down an octave, with the result that ^6-^5 (in the piano) becomes the upper voice and the solo part's cover tone F# becomes a pleasant touching on the principal voice while its continuing line ^4-^3 becomes an alto part.

The movement is a pastorale, though it has its dramatic moments, to which, of course, the emphasis on ^6 and also on V9 is certainly congenial, by the later 19th century a cliché. The design is that of a very compact sonata movement apparently without transition—what we would call the subordinate theme area begins in bar 9. In the approach to the exposition's structural cadence (the closing tonic in E major is at bar 31 in the example below), the major dominant ninth assumes an even greater (and more nearly continuous) role than is typical.

Here is a harmonic sketch. The progress by key is a shifting of thirds, from A major to C# major to E major, represented in the first instance either by their tonics or their dominant sevenths. The greatly expanded cadence is very traditional, despite its rich surface of dominant ninth harmonies: from ii (as  region) to V to I.

The final moments of the approach to the recapitulation are a play on the minor versus the major dominant ninth: the notes of the minor are given arrows.

And here is the structural cadence of the recapitulation, bars 78-89 being parallel to bars 24-31 (though obviously somewhat expanded).

The first cadence in the coda brings a rising figure from ^5 in the piano part, as the violin touches on ^6 but then dives down to the tonic A3.

Two events are of interest in the final bars. First, the V9 chord is "shortened" to viiø7 and its sonority given considerable attention. (With other evidence, this hints at the possibility that Franck shared the theorists' idea of viiø7 as an incomplete dominant ninth harmony.)  Second, the counterpoint of bars 98-99 is inverted in bars 115-116: the violin closes with its descending line two octaves higher (not A3 but now A5) while the piano part gives one last expression of the minor 9 (though as E# rather than F-natural).