Johann Strauss, jr., later waltzes (2b)

This series of posts began with one in September 2019 (link); a section 1 followed immediately, and section 2a shortly thereafter (link); today's post completes section 2 and the series. Here, in addition to music by Strauss, examples from waltzes by his contemporaries Tchaikovsky and Waldteufel are also presented.

The topic of section 2 is "Consonance/dissonance parallelisms and lines (mostly descending)."

Heading: ^8-^6.

In the second number of Strauss's Italienischer Walzer, op. 407 (1882), between the tonic triad with ^8 in bar 1 and the V7 with ^5 on the last beat of bar 8 lies a series of remarkable dissonances: the relatively rare I7 (the arrow in bar 2 points to ^7), an unequivocal Iadd6 in bar 3, a I with #^5 against an "indifferent" accompaniment, and a prolonged V9 where ^6 "relaxes" into ^5 internally but at the last moment.

Italienischer Walzer, op. 407 (1882), no. 2

Adelen-Walzer, op. 424 (1886),  no. 3b. Here is another I7, made all the more prominent by its hypermetric position. The dissonance is less daring than in the previous example, though, because B4 can be heard in retrospect as "passing" to Bb4 on the way to A4 over IV. The circled notes in bar 6 show a V9 where the ninth is internal--textbooks allowed such parallel sixth constructions (here A5-F6 to G5-E6). With the obvious anticipation of the tonic notes, we can fairly call this a direct resolution of V9.

Heading: line ^6 to ^3

Gartenlaube, op. 461 (1895), no. 3. we hear ^6-^5-^4 and briefly ^3 all over V. The register of ^3 (B5) is left open this way and we subsequently hear it over I when the 8-bar consequent starts up. Bar 12 = bar 4, but the register is immediately left open again, and this time it is picked up by the dramatic cadence chord, vii°7/V (circled).

Heading: line ^7-^3

From the beginning (no. 1, first strain) of the Italienischer Walzer, an indirect resolution of 7 (F5) to E5, so close and clear that it's the sort I like to call "almost direct." Note also that the full range of scale degrees over V is given (the bracket)—^7, ^6, ^5, and ^4.

Emile Waldteufel's Myosotis, op. 101 (1867), is a bit earlier than the late Strauss waltzes I have been discussing in this series. I have included it here to show that Strauss wasn't the only one to indulge in a delightful confusion of scale degrees and accompanying harmonies. The V9 resolution is direct (bars 6-7).

Heading: ^4-^1 (or farther)

Again Strauss: Hochzeitsreigen, op. 453 (1893), no. 2. The pre-dominant or subdominant-function harmony is given unusual prominence, and ^6 acts traditionally as a suspension dissonance (G5 in bars 1-2). As the melody continues down, past ^1, the 8-bar antecedent ends with an "almost direct" resolution of the ninth to ^6 in a Iadd6 harmony. Note also the ninth in V9/V as a cadence accent in bar 15 (not marked). As a point of interest—no V9 involved—I have also shown the waltz's final 8-bar consequent with its tonic ending. The overall design is 16 bar antecedent (itself a period--shown below--then 16 bar consequent, of which the final bars (or 25-32) are shown below.

Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker (1892), Waltz of the Flowers. The confusion of scale degrees and their harmonies that we saw in Waldteufel's Myosotis is even greater in the second strain of the Waltz of the Flowers. In the antecedent phrase: the F#5 in bar 1 is fine, but what is C#5 exactly? What is E5? B4? D5? Things are just slightly better in the consequent phrase: G5, D5 and the subsequent quarter notes C#5 and A4, but what about F#5 and E5? A wonderful example of the freedom of treatment of melody in relation to harmony that Jeremy Day-O'Connell points out (in connection with a history of ^6), as also have Peter van der Merwe, Derek Scott, and Norbert Linke (I hope to complete an essay on their work before too much longer).

Heading: ^10-^7

Once again to Strauss: Kaiser-Walzer, op. 437 (1889), no. 3. I have remarked in earlier essays on the tendency to expand theme lengths in waltzes from the most conventional eight bars early in the 19th century (most of Schubert's, for example, but also early Lanner) to sixteen (late Schubert, Strauss, sr.) to thirty-two (Strauss, jr., and contemporaries). The most common design is effectively a 16-bar theme with two endings, where the repetition, with its second ending, is written out--see Hochzeitsreigen, no. 2, above for an example. In the Emperor Waltz, however, Strauss writes what I would call a true 32-bar period, where the two halves of the antecedent, bars 1-8 & 9-16, form a 16-bar sentence or antecedent-contrasting phrase. In that way, the distinctive opening of the antecedent doesn't return until bar 17 and the large design is clearly defined. I marked several things: at (a1) a line down from ^3 to ^7 (E6 to B5); at (a2)--the bracket--the considerable expansion of V with a ninth prominent in both color and position; at (a2)--box--and the arrow, C: V9 becomes G: V9 in the parallel position in the phrase; at (b), the theme closes in a quite conventional way.

Heading: Ascending

And, finally, to Waldteufel, Les Patineurs (1882), no. 1, the Skaters Waltz that is at least as famous as the Waltz of the Flowers and the Emperor Waltz. Here again the freedom of the scale degrees is remarkable, but now the motion is ascending and if anything the confusion of melody and accompaniment is greater. A brief hint of Iadd6 (bar 2) comes from ^6 anticipating its role as 9 in V9 (bars 3-4). The F#4 is still there over V in bar 6, but in the phrase parallelism it actually moves up, not down as we would expect in a resolution. It's not impossible to hear the G#4 as "resolving" to A4, but (1) it's interrupted by an expressive upper neighbor B4, and (2) the resolution is of melodic direction, not harmonic function. At the end, as a point of interest, I have included the second cornet's ascending line that is rarely heard over the melody in performance (F#4-G#4-A4).

Duration and sound, part 1

In the previous post, I wrote: "The ninth above a V7 harmony can be categorized in two ways: (1) in terms of its resolution (and the distinction between what I call internal and external); (2) or in terms of its duration (that is, sound or "color" versus harmonic function)."

Both duration and metric position are represented in an almost direct sequence in types 1.1 through 2.2. These are reproduced below. In 1.1 and in 1.2, a & b, the ninths are eighth notes; in 1.2, c-e, the ninth is a quarter note; in 1.3, the duration is two quarters; and in 2.1 it is two or three quarters.

As I noted  in the previous post in connection with Figure 2.1e, faster tempi for dancing after about 1830 encouraged the writing of 16-bar and eventually 32-bar themes, in which the older basic idea of two bars frequently is four bars instead. A simple example is the famous Skater's Waltz by Emile Waldteufel (1882). The main theme is a very clearly formed 16-bar sentence:

The ninth of V9 is as prominent as it could be (arrows below). Also note that Waldteufel succeeds in stretching out the V harmony over four bars (boxed as bars 2-6) in a way that overlaps the four-bar ideas.

 The second strain is almost as well-known as the first. It is presented here in a "violin direction" score -- these were often used by small ensemble directors instead of the full orchestral score, and they played a substantial role in theatrical and film music performance as well. Note that the disposition of I and V harmonies is the same as in the theme, though the dissonances are missing. The two arrows show 9 as neighbor note, then as direct resolution into the fifth of the tonic chord.

Waldteufel continues the pattern in the first strain of the second waltz, where he reverts to the leap to the ninth familiar from early Laendler -- and even makes use of the "double play" of scale degree as ^6 over I, then ^6 over V, and here ^6 over I again: see the asterisks.

In another very familiar piece—the first strain of the "Waltz of the Flowers" from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker (1892)—there is no V9, though he does bring forward the waltz's typical expressive rise, here to a diminished seventh chord over a tonic pedal. The point of interest, though, is that this is another very clear 16-bar sentence where the basic idea is four bars long, not two. (I've shown only the presentation phase -- that is, the first eight bars.)

The second strain continues the pattern of four-bar ideas -- see the boxes below. Here the dissonances are extraordinary -- and all diatonic!  The C# in bar 1, for example, briefly creates a I7 (that is, with major seventh)--a sonority we already saw in the first strain of the Skaters Waltz, bars 7-8. These kinds of diatonic dissonances had become common in the waltz repertoire by about 1880, so much so that a simple diatonic and consonant melody could be heard as contrast, a device often deployed by Waldteufel in particular.

In the third strain of the "Waltz of the Flowers," we finally hear a dominant ninth -- see the arrow in bar 6. The boxes show a two-bar basic idea this time—though one might well argue that these are really motive-sized chunks in this context, that is, smaller units, not ideas. The eight bars are the sentence phase of a sixteen-bar period.