RISING LINES IN THE HARMONIC/VOICE-LEADING FRAMEWORKS OF TRADITIONAL TONAL COMPOSITIONS

File updated and reformatted 4 January 2011.

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Schenkerian analysis (Heinrich Schenker, The Masterwork in Music; Free Composition; Five Graphic Music Analyses) is the original form of linear analysis, a collective name for those modes of music analysis that focus on the production of graphic representations of hierarchically organized streams. In Schenkerian analysis, harmony and voice-leading (partwriting; counterpoint) are integrated in a top-down or "chain of being" hierarchy (Lawrence M. Zbikowski, Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis, p.318). The top (most abstract) level of the hierarchy is a fundamental structure or Ursatz that combines a single upper voice (melody) and a bass voice (harmony) in counterpoint (based on a 17th- early 18th century pedagogical construction known now as "strict counterpoint").

The ideal forms of this strict counterpoint are expanded ("prolonged") within a thick harmonic/voice-leading web, William Rothstein's "imaginary continuo" ("Rhythmic Displacement and Rhythmic Normalization," in Allen Cadwallader, ed., Trends in Schenkerian Research, 87-113). Cadwallader and David Gagné also include some commentary on it in their textbook Analysis of Tonal Music: A Schankerian Approach, 2d edition, pp. 62-63. The "imaginary continuo" is very close to -- but still distinct from -- terms used in older literature such as "metric reduction," "chordal reduction," or "harmonic reduction."

(MELODIC DIRECTION). By Schenker's assertion, the upper-voice melody (or Urlinie ) descends by step to ^1. More than twenty years ago, I wrote about a rising form, ^5-^6-^7-^8, and its variants in "The Ascending Urlinie," Journal of Music Theory 31/2 (1987): 275-303. See a list of compositions mentioned in that article here: JMT list. Since October 2009, I have been keeping a Schubert blog that is devoted to one waltz with a rising cadence gesture, D779n13. Discussions of issues related to rising lines inevitably are addressed there from time to time.

(SCHENKERIAN ANALYSIS, HARMONY, AND FORM). Although described by its promoters as an ideal synthesis of the harmonic and melodic, of tonal function and counterpoint, in practice Schenkerian analysis is strongly driven by broad patterns of harmonic hierarchy and progression; as a result, Schenkerian analysts overwhelmingly distribute the fundamental structure across a piece as a single extended and elaborated [prolonged] note, followed by a stepwise descent in the final or most important cadence. Critics of this practice note the mismatch between tonal design and the sectional articulations of musical form (or "inner form" and "outer form"): see especially Charles J. Smith, "Musical Form and Fundamental Structure: An Investigation of Schenker's Formenlehre," Music Analysis 15/2-3 (1996): 191-297, especially 262-67. Smith includes rising figures in his table of revised background shapes (266).

(RISING FIGURES, GENERAL). Rising figures frequently dominate the openings of songs and other musical compositions (see David Huron 1996 for discussion of the arch shapes that traditional melodies commonly take; in a related article, David Carson Berry writes of the special expressive role that the ascending figures take on in the verses of Irving Berlin songs: "Dynamic Introductions: The Affective Role of Melodic Ascents and Other Linear devices in Selected Song Verses of Irving Berlin," Intégral 13 (1999): 1-62.

Rising figures are mechanically possible in the typical harmonic cadences: Cadence figures. It is certainly true that the statistics of structural (that is, principal closing) cadences in European and American musics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries support such a general statement. As the composition lists on this site demonstrate, however, it is both intellectually and ideologically problematic to move from statistical dominance to an essentialist claim about descending figures linked to such metaphors as gravity, release of breath, physical relaxation, ground (or grounding), etc.

As the history of cadential figures shows, the articulating cadential function itself may have remained stable over the centuries, but the musical materials that fulfil that function have changed as stylistic priorities have changed. It seems plain from the evidence that, in the nineteenth century, the erstwhile dominant/subordinate relation of (stereotyped) descending line and boundary play loosened dramatically, resulting in a "democratization" of structural upper-voice relations that was one of the healthier developments of the nineteenth century. All this being the case, it is puzzling and disappointing, to say the least, that even recently Walter Everett would refer to the rising fundamental line as "controversial" -- see "Deep-Level Portrayals. . . ," Journal of Music Theory 48/1 (2004): 51.

(SIMPLE EXAMPLES OF RISING FIGURES). Simple, direct examples of rising cadence figures may be found in "Do, Re, Mi" from The Sound of Music and in "The Beer Barrel Polka," which uses rising cadence gestures in each of its strains. Other simple examples appear in the dances of Schubert: Valses sentimentales, D.779, no. 13; and Valses nobles, D.969, no. 1 (see above). Only slightly veiled figures appear in Wiener-Damen Laendler, D.734, no. 15 (see above); and Valses nobles, D.969, no. 2. Scores of the Schubert dances are readily accessible and may be downloaded from IMSLP. Other works which not only have rising gestures in their final structural cadences but where a rising motivic gesture is deeply embedded in the music include Grieg, Peer Gynt Suite no. 1, Op. 46, "Morgenstimmung" (at left) and Beethoven, Symphony No. 7, second movement (see the theme below).

Compilation and all original material copyright David Neumeyer 2004-11.

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