(eastman Studies In Music) Scott Murphy (editor) - Brahms And The Shaping Of Time-university Of Rochester Press (2018)

b r ahms and th e

shaping of

t ime Edited by Scott Murphy

Brahms and the Shaping of Time

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Eastman Studies in Music Ralph P. Locke, Senior Editor Eastman School of Music Additional Titles of Interest Bach to Brahms: Essays on Musical Design and Structure Edited by David Beach and Yosef Goldenberg The Dawn of Music Semiology: Essays in Honor of Jean-Jacques Nattiez Edited by Jonathan Dunsby and Jonathan Goldman Explorations in Schenkerian Analysis Edited by David Beach and Su Yin Mak Formal Functions in Perspective: Essays on Musical Form from Haydn to Adorno Edited by Steven Vande Moortele, Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers, and Nathan John Martin Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism and the Hungarian-Gypsy Tradition Shay Loya The Music of Luigi Dallapiccola Raymond Fearn Of Poetry and Song: Approaches to the Nineteenth-Century Lied Edited by Jürgen Thym Performative Analysis: Reimagining Music Theory for Performance Jeffrey Swinkin Rethinking Hanslick: Music, Formalism, and Expression Edited by Nicole Grimes, Siobhán Donovan, and Wolfgang Marx Schubert in the European Imagination Volumes 1 and 2 Scott Messing A complete list of titles in the Eastman Studies in Music series may be found on the University of Rochester Press website, www.urpress.com

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Brahms and the Shaping of Time

Edited by Scott Murphy

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The University of Rochester Press gratefully acknowledges the American Brahms Society for generous support of this publication. Copyright © 2018 by the Editor and Contributors All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2018 University of Rochester Press 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.urpress.com and Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-597-7 ISSN: 1071-9989 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Murphy, Scott (Musicologist), editor. Title: Brahms and the shaping of time / edited by Scott Murphy. Other titles: Eastman studies in music ; v. 144. Description: Rochester : University of Rochester Press, 2018. | Series: Eastman studies in music, ISSN 1071-9989 ; v. 144 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018001039 | ISBN 9781580465977 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Brahms, Johannes, 1833–1897—Criticism and interpretation. | Musical meter and rhythm. | Time in music. Classification: LCC ML410.B8 B655 2018 | DDC 780.92—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001039 This publication is printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America.

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Contents Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction: Brahms, Analysis, and Time Scott Murphy

1

Part One: Setting Texts 1

Expressive Declamation in the Songs of Johannes Brahms Harald Krebs

2

Temporal Disruptions and Shifting Levels of Discourse in Brahms’s Lieder Heather Platt

13

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Part Two: Measuring Phrases 3

4

Phrase Rhythm and the Expression of Longing in Brahms’s “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” Op. 91, No. 1 Jan Miyake On the Oddness of Brahms’s Five-Measure Phrases Samuel Ng

83

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Part Three: Recasting Hemiolas

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Hemiola as Agent of Metric Resolution in the Music of Brahms Ryan McClelland

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Brahms at Twenty: Hemiolic Varietals and Metric Malleability in an Early Sonata Richard Cohn

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Containment and Wave: Temporal Experiment in Brahms’s Opus 2 Frank Samarotto

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Rhythmic Displacement in the Fugue of Brahms’s Handel Variations: The Refashioning of a Traditional Device Eytan Agmon

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Durational Enharmonicism and the Opening of Brahms’s “Double Concerto” Scott Murphy

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List of Contributors

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Index

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Acknowledgments In 2009, at a meeting of the Haydn Society of North America in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Heather Platt, the president of the American Brahms Society at the time, shared with me her observation of a need for the concerted publication of more contemporary analytical studies of the music of Brahms. I am grateful to her both for this idea and her trust in me to carry it out. I am indebted to my fellow authors for their terrific contributions and their patience. I appreciate Rick Cohn’s suggestion to reprint Eytan Agmon’s 1991 analytical study of the Handel Variations, which, at least before 2018, was not as electronically accessible as many other articles of comparable scope and value. Matthew Ferrandino typeset examples for the second and eighth chapters. Lastly, I thank Sonia Kane, Julia Cook, Tracey Engel, and Ralph Locke for their steady guidance and judicious assistance throughout the editing and publication processes.

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Introduction Brahms, Analysis, and Time Scott Murphy

This book brings together nine essays authored by leading music scholars, each of which analyzes some music of Brahms with a particular focus on the music’s temporality. Publications under such a rubric have the potential for both corroboration and innovation. With regards to corroboration, both Brahms studies and music-analytical studies are thriving well in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Moreover, the prosperity of each has significantly contributed to the prosperity of the other. For example, in article titles of the last fifteen years from the esteemed British journal Music Analysis, the name of Brahms has appeared more often than the name of any other composer. From this point of view, the nine essays in this volume are in good company. With regards to innovation, sophisticated theories of rhythm and meter do currently flourish in contemporary musical scholarship. However, less bountiful—or at least less conspicuous—is scholarship whose primary goal is the close reading of musical works and whose primary analytical perspective is more time-based, rather than pitch-based. From this point of view, these nine essays provide a welcome complement to the current state of the field. These essays also complement each other well: the analytical subjects range from a few measures to an entire multi-movement work, from music written in the 1850s to music written in the 1890s, and from many of the genres within which Brahms composed. Before progressing to a summary of each essay, the first two parts of this introduction locate the collective contribution of these essays within current scholarly practice, building upon the aforementioned binary framework of corroboration and innovation.

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The Tradition of Analyzing Brahms What is it about the music of Brahms that, to echo words of Kevin Korsyn, compels us to adopt an analytical attitude?1 Perhaps this compulsion stems from an abstract consanguinity between Brahms and today’s music analyst. In a recently published essay called “The Composer as Critic,” Edward T. Cone makes the case that the line separating composition from criticism, an activity inherently enmeshed with analytical goings-on, “is never so distinct as we imagine.”2 Brahms has earned enough honorifics over the years—“the Classicist,” “the Progressive,” “the Ambivalent,” “the Subversive,” and so on—that one more would do no harm: Brahms the Analyst. Those familiar with the composer’s biography know this epithet to be appropriate for many reasons. To cite just one: Brahms’s sizable compilation of instances of parallel octaves and perfect fifths in the music of his predecessors, and the apparent grouping of these instances into six categories, brings to mind a modern corpus study. It also indicates a penchant for a certain kind of focused musical collecting that numerous present-day analysts share.3 Those familiar with the composer’s music also recognize the suitability of this appellation. Among the multiple rewards for listening to one of Brahms’s variation sets is free access to the equivalent of a brilliant scholarly article analyzing the theme, inscribed not in words but in tones.4 More generally, Brahms’s compositional acts and the kind of analytical acts that begin in earnest in the nineteenth century both have an intense awareness of the entangled relationship between Self and Other. In both endeavors, the work is party to other works that have come before it, simultaneously adding to, but also subtracting from, a significant portion of its meaning and identity. In the 1820s Gottfried Weber entertained the first viola note in Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet as a G♯ instead of the notated A♭; in the 1850s “jeder Esel” entertained the beginning of Brahms’s op. 1 as the beginning of Beethoven’s op. 106: these two different modes of response nonetheless share a common source.5 Yet, while the nineteenth century midwifed modern analysis along with the concept of the work and the anxiety of the composer, the twentieth century nurtured a kind of analysis that is curiously compositional. Not only do certain compositions evince aspects of analysis, but also certain analyses evince aspects of composition. An obvious example of this is recomposition, a powerful and efficient analytical tool that can communicate the relationship between token and type, between deviation and norm, between what is and what may have been (or what could also be).6 Each of the nine essays in this collection capitalizes upon this particular approach. Indeed, a composer’s own recompositions can afford analytical insight into both the antecedent and consequent works. From this perspective, Brahms’s recompositions belong to a class in themselves.7 (Cone’s first example in the aforementioned “Composer as Critic”

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comes in the form of a substantial comparative analysis of the two versions of Brahms’s first piano trio.) An analysis can also be composerly, but more notionally so, through imposing a novel and distinctive organization upon a musical work, analogous to how the composer imposes a novel and distinctive organization upon the raw materials of sound. This organization is not necessarily theoretical and regulative, for it does not have to apply beyond the measures at hand to other parts of the work or other works. Nor is this organization necessarily hermeneutical and expressive, for it does not have to apply beyond the measures at hand to some extra-musical domain. Rather, it is the creative discernment of some distinctive technique of “intelligent design,” even if the original designer did not intend such a technique. Perhaps not coincidentally, early exemplars of this kind of analysis orbit around Princeton University, where the disciplinary boundary between musical-academic pursuits and compositional endeavors has traditionally been more porous than at other institutions. Cone identified imitation by diminution in the opening measures of Beethoven’s first piano sonata.8 Milton Babbitt identified a quasi-serial melodic inversion in the opening measures of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.9 David Lewin, the Princeton student of Cone’s and Babbitt’s who has arguably influenced contemporary music theory and analysis the most, refined and propagated this kind of analysis, into which the music of Brahms figured prominently.10 This kind of analysis that straddles “prescription and description”11 shares the analytical market of the early twenty-first century with several other approaches. Nonetheless, it exerts a significant influence that cannot be easily ignored. Furthermore, alongside that influence slips in a predilection for the type of composition often associated with Brahms: music without a prescribed program, and music that epitomizes intricacy. Such unfixed complexity, while undeniably reified as a “work,” also yields itself as a particularly rich substrate for further organization. As long as there are “critics as composers”—that is, formers of satisfying patterns and wholes—the music of Brahms will likely continue to figure prominently in music-analytical enterprises.

The Need for Time-Based Analysis Historiography has paid heed to how distinctively Brahms manipulates musical time. Moreover, in the context of Western art music, in which the music of Brahms and metric/rhythmic complexities are two of many components, university music students infer from their books, if not already from their lessons, that these two components are more mutually implicative than many other pairs of this sort. Music history survey texts typically deliver this message in short, unobjectionable bursts: Brahms’s music makes “considerable use of

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Example I.1. Intermezzo op. 116, no. 6, mm. 43–64. Hollow dots and solid dots of the same size propose duple and triple divisions, respectively, of the same durational span.

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cross-rhythms,”12 “frequently using syncopated rhythms,”13 and abounds in “rhythmic intricacies, shifting metric accents, [and] triplets against duplets.”14 If a student were asked to analyze the metrical complexity of the page of music shown in example I.1 and to identify its composer, many would probably guess Brahms as a composer, through their identification of one or more hemiolas. While this is an important start, analysis has the potential to show much more, as a closer look at these survey texts suggests. Two texts in particular stand out in how they depart from the standard manner of describing Brahms’s especial temporal constructions. In his contribution to this textbook genre, Douglass Seaton devotes four paragraphs to Brahms; the last of the four, cited below, begins with sentences like those above, but then delivers a bold conclusion: Brahms’s treatment of rhythm possesses special interest. Taking up hints from Schumann, he frequently used hemiola, in which triple rhythmic beat groupings shift from one metric level to another. With Brahms such shifts came to be more than momentary effects; they become structurally significant, making the rhythm in his works of greater importance as a determinant of structure than in any music since the fifteenth century.15

This claim becomes even bolder when placed beside what Richard Taruskin has to say about Brahms’s rhythmic practice in the chapter devoted to the composer in his multi-volume Oxford History of Western Music—which is nothing at all. Perhaps this absence arises from the peripheral role that rhythmic complexity plays in the historical narratives upon which Taruskin focuses: Brahms and Wagner contending for Beethoven’s mantle, Brahms’s appropriation of allusion in service of high art, the prolonged and difficult gestation of the First Symphony, and so forth. Or perhaps its role in these narratives is more central than peripheral, as Seaton’s claim would imply through its sheer weight. However, the theoretical frameworks and analytical strategies needed to observe this more central role either have not been developed yet or have been developed but await promulgation in more widely read publications and university course offerings, perhaps even during entry-level musicianship training.16

Contents This volume’s nine chapters are grouped thematically into an aksak rhythm of 2 + 2 + 2 + 3: three topical pairs precede a trio of essays sharing a more covert affiliation. The first pair examines, and then makes significant generalizations about, aspects of rhythm and meter in Brahms’s lieder. Each essay continues a particular line of inquiry left open by Yonatan Malin’s recent

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and important study on temporal processes in German art song.17 In his chapter, Harald Krebs applies his analytical notion of BRD, or “basic rhythm of declamation”—which he earlier fashioned to elicit insight into the songs of Schumann—to Brahms’s song output. This method supplies evidence that Brahms’s atypical declamations fall into certain categories, and they often singularly symbolize aspects of the poetic text. While Malin explored the relationship between the song’s expression and the metric dissonances Krebs designated as grouping and displacement a decade earlier, Heather Platt’s chapter recognizes another type of temporal alteration outside of Krebs’s purview that helps to elucidate meaning in some of Brahms’s lieder. Serendipitous is Krebs’s and Platt’s mutual interest in op. 72, no. 3, “O kühler Wald,” a compact étude of text-rhythm networking. In his landmark 1989 text Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music, William Rothstein focuses on the music of certain composers: Haydn, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Wagner. But he also suggests in his introduction how a future study on phrase rhythm might explore the music of other composers, including Brahms, who missed this first cut.18 The two essays that form the second pair in this book pick up the mantle from Rothstein among others and contribute to such a study, while also pivoting the book’s focus from vocal to instrumental music. Jan Miyake argues of the first song from Brahms’s opus 91 that a progression from obscurity to clarity of phrase lengths matches the progression of the poem’s dramatic structure. Her systemization of the concept of phrase “stretching,” while especially pertinent to this lied, contributes to ongoing explorations of phrase rhythm. Samuel Ng’s chapter, somewhat conversely, contends that certain five-measure phrases in Brahms’s music are better considered as optimizations of this length rather than, by default, as “stretched” or otherwise modified appearances of a four-measure norm. His systemization of the concept of phrase “irreducibility” or “inevitability,” while especially pertinent to the opening themes of Brahms upon which he dwells, certainly applies beyond Brahms and beyond counts of five measures. As aforementioned, historiography has situated the device of hemiola among the features at the core of Brahms’s compositional identity. However, one of the consequences of such a centrality is its presumed equivalence with thorough comprehension, which is not a certainty. Each of the chapters of the third topical pair cross-examine, and essentially expand, our understanding of the hemiola, but do so from complementary angles. Ryan McClelland’s essay, while focusing on a few select moments in Brahms, ultimately unveils a broad and notable principle: hemiola has the ability to restore, as well as perturb, metrical stability. Richard Cohn’s essay, while cultivating a number of rhizomatic extensions of the hemiola that expand conceptual, geographic, and chronological domains, ultimately offers a penetrating analysis of the first movement of Brahms’s Piano Sonata op. 5.

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The concluding trio of essays continues the focus on the analysis of the temporal aspects of individual works. While no obvious common subject unites them, they each promote minority hearings that encourage the reader to breach the confines of the score’s metric notation. Within an essay on another of the early piano sonatas, Frank Samarotto explores the tensions between the architectonic structures of metrical and tonal containers, and the energetic actions of metrical and tonal waves, tensions that interact and unfold in particularly overt and instructive ways in Brahms’s opus 2. Eytan Agmon’s chapter extends this interest in tonal and metric interactions and robustly supports a metric malleability for the subject of Brahms’s fugue from his Handel Variations, a manipulability that in turn enables both the fugue’s overall form as well as the composer’s distinctive dialogue with a compositional tradition. My contribution adds to the growing list of pitch-time analogies—dissonance, modulation, tonicization—the concept of durational enharmonicism, and suggests its suitability for the instrumental recitative that opens the “Double” Concerto.19 These essays constitute a tributary that, as suggested earlier, feeds into a vigorous early twenty-first-century stream of music-analytical scholarship concerned with the music of Brahms. But they may also contribute to another kind of flow. In reviewing Carl Schachter’s trio of influential articles on meter and rhythm in 1992, Krebs states without reservation that “we have now entered a new phase of the history of rhythmic theory: the explorers have been succeeded by pioneering settlers who have dug deep and have laid solid foundations on which they and others will be able to build.”20 His metaphor of post-Manifest-Destiny homesteading is consistent not only with Kuhnian “normal science” in general but also with twentieth-century music theory’s stabilization of the twin paradigms of Schenker and set theory in particular. And yet, in the two decades since Krebs’s review, there continue to be just as many explorers as settlers in the vast territory of rhythm and meter studies, explorers not only wielding navigational tools borrowed from the aforementioned paradigms but also from philosophy, psychology, history, mathematics, and so forth.21 To mix this metaphor with that from Samarotto’s essay, music-theoretic research in rhythm and meter continues to have as many waves as it does containers. To be sure, the neatness and constancy of a container is prerequisite to any “normal-scientific” research that could successfully back up Seaton’s claim or complement Taruskin’s pitch-based narrative. But not all ideas must confine themselves to containers. In fact, looking back in time through music theory’s history reveals how scholarly ideas about musical time—in contrast to some of those about musical pitch, but like the substances that make up musical time itself—have generally flown into one another as much as they have accreted with one another, each generation’s perspective reflected in how it views the nature of rhythm and meter in music. This collection of essays exemplifies this duality, and it is my hope that both its energy and stability will be of value to

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succeeding generations of those who treasure the music of Brahms and who think about musical time.

Notes 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

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Kevin Korsyn, “Brahms Research and Aesthetic Ideology,” Music Analysis 12, no. 1 (1993): 89–103. Edward T. Cone, Hearing and Knowing Music: The Unpublished Essays of Edward T. Cone, edited and with an introduction by Robert P. Morgan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 123. Margaret Notley, Lateness in Brahms: Music and Culture in the Twilight of Viennese Liberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 119ff. Jeffrey Swinkin, “Variation as Thematic Actualisation: The Case of Brahms’s Op. 9,” Music Analysis 31, no. 1 (2012): 37–89. Gottfried Weber, “A Particularly Remarkable Passage in a String Quartet in C by Mozart [K465 (‘Dissonance’)]: Attempt at a Systematic Theory of Musical Composition,” in Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst zum Selbstunterricht, mit Anmerkungen für Gelehrtere (Mainz, 1817–21), reprinted in Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1, Fugue, Form, and Style, ed. Ian Bent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 157–83. A well-known source for Brahms’s “jeder Esel” quote is Arnold Schoenberg’s essay “Brahms the Progressive,” in Style and Idea: Selected Writings, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 398–441. In Brahms among Friends: Listening, Performance, and the Rhetoric of Allusion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), Paul Berry considers how Brahms’s compositional borrowings “might have addressed and manipulated the musical experiences and interpretative attitudes characteristic of specific, historically situated listeners” (26). Matt L. Bailey Shea’s article “Filleted Mignon: A New Recipe for Analysis and Recomposition” (Music Theory Online 13, no. 4 (2007)) seeks to examine and expand the role of recomposition in analysis. In his chapter “Brahms’s Missa canonica and its Recomposition in his Motet ‘Warum’ Op. 74 No. 1” (Brahms 2: Biographical, Documentary, and Analytical Studies, ed. Michael Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 111–36), Robert Pascall suggests, for example, that Brahms’s Missa canonica into his motet “Warum ist das Licht gegeben” “offers yet another fascinating glimpse into Brahms’s compositional process, and the evolution of the old into the new is itself original, highly subtle, and deeply, powerfully expressive” (36). Edward T. Cone, Musical Form and Musical Performance (New York: W.  W. Norton, 1968), 75–76. Babbitt’s observation was first reported without attribution by Cone in “Analysis Today,” Musical Quarterly 46, no. 2 (1960): 172–88 (see in particular 172–74); Cone later revealed Babbitt’s identity in “Yet Once More, O Ye Laurels,” Perspectives of New Music 14, no. 2 and 15, no. 1 (1976): 294–307.

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10. Lewin’s article “On Harmony and Meter in Brahms’s Op. 76, No. 8” (19thCentury Music 4, no. 3 (1981): 261–65) catalyzed multiple subsequent ideas regarding Brahms and time, including Richard Cohn’s “Complex Hemiolas, Ski-Hill Graphs, and Metric Spaces,” Music Analysis 20, no. 3 (2001): 295–326, and my “On Metre in the Rondo of Brahms’s Op. 25,” Music Analysis 26, no. 3 (2007): 323–53. Lewin assumed a dialectic stance on the first movement of the Quartet op. 51, no. 1, in “Brahms, His Past, and Modes of Music Theory,” in Brahms Studies: Analytical and Historical Perspectives, ed. George S. Bozarth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 13–27. His book Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987) offers analytical insights into the opening of the Rhapsody op. 76 no. 2 and the last movement of the op. 40 Horn Trio. His essay “Die Schwestern,” on the op. 61 no. 1 duet, was published posthumously in Studies in Music with Text (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 233–63. 11. Cone, “Analysis Today.” 12. Donald Jay Grout and Claude V. Palisca, A History of Western Music, 6th ed. (New York: Norton, 2001), 586. 13. Ibid., 598. 14. K. Marie Stolba, The Development of Western Music, 3rd ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1998), 517. 15. Douglass Seaton, Ideas and Styles in the Western Musical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press), 368. 16. In his keynote address to the 2015 meeting of Music Theory Midwest entitled “Why We Don’t Teach Meter, and Why We Should,” Richard Cohn imagined what a core Music Theory curriculum might look like if meter received at least as much attention as tonality (May 9, 2015; Rochester, MI). 17. Yonatan Malin, Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 18. William Rothstein, Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music (New York: Schirmer, 1989), viii. 19. In Fantasy Pieces: Metric Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), Harald Krebs recognizes Hector Berlioz as the first to use the expression “metric dissonance” (13). An early, perhaps the earliest, use of “metric modulation” occurs in Richard Franko Goldman, “Current Chronicle,” Musical Quarterly 37, no. 1 (1951): 87. As a turn of phrase, “metric tonicization” appears occasionally, as in Peter Smith’s “Brahms and the Shifting Barline: Metric Displacement and Formal Processes in the Trios with Wind Instruments,” Brahms Studies 3, ed. David Brodbeck (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 197; as a modern concept, it owes much to studies by Krebs and Lewin; as a theory, it is explored in my “On Metre in the Rondo of Brahms’s Op. 25.” 20. Harald Krebs, review of “Rhythm and Linear Analysis: A Preliminary Study,” “Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Durational Reduction,” and “Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Aspects of Meter,” by Carl Schachter, and Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music by William Rothstein, Music Theory Spectrum 14, no. 1 (1992): 82.

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21. See for example Christopher Hasty, Meter as Rhythm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Justin London, Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Danuta Mirka, Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart: Chamber Music for Strings, 1787–1791 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Godfried Toussaint, The Geometry of Musical Rhythm: What Makes a “Good” Rhythm Good? (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013).

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Part One

Setting Texts

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Chapter One

Expressive Declamation in the Songs of Johannes Brahms Harald Krebs Introduction There has been extensive discussion of declamation in the songs of Johannes Brahms, much of it critical in tone. Even Brahms’s best friends occasionally questioned his text underlay: Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, for instance, asked him for permission to move syllables around in the duet “Walpurgisnacht.”1 As Heather Platt points out,2 severe criticisms originated with proponents of the Wagnerian aesthetic (notably Hugo Wolf, Wilhelm Kienzl, and Ernest Newman).3 A considerable number of recent writings about Brahms’s songs have reiterated and elaborated on these early criticisms, accusing Brahms of bypassing or ignoring the text.4 There is substantial evidence to counter the claims that Brahms was inattentive to his poetic texts in general, and to declamation specifically. For example, (1) he advised young composers to read poems that they wished to set to music aloud many times, paying close attention to the declamation,5 and to lay the poem out across a grid of measures in accordance with the stresses;6 (2) samples of his own scansions of song texts exist in his notebooks;7 and (3) there are instances of multiple settings of the same text, which show Brahms wrestling with the appropriate metrical alignment of the syllables.8 Some early critics realized that the prevalent opinion of Brahms’s declamation was inaccurate. Wilhelm Kienzl, though he quibbled with specific aspects of Brahms’s text-setting, admitted that “Brahms is, on the whole, a good

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declaimer; that is, he makes no glaring errors.”9 Hugo Riemann also defended Brahms against the accusation by “less penetrating listeners, readers and singers” that he “often commits errors in declamation,”10 and argued that many of Brahms’s apparent infractions of accentuation stem from a metrical flexibility akin to that of early seventeenth-century music. Several recent authors have similarly offered defenses and justifications of Brahms’s manner of declamation. George Bozarth, analyzing “Beim Abschied,” op. 95, no. 3 (for which Brahms’s scansion is preserved), shows that the composer responded in a logical manner to the poetic stresses via accents other than metrical downbeats.11 Deborah Rohr finds that many studies have erred by inspecting Brahms’s declamation in isolation, and that it makes sense if viewed in conjunction with other factors.12 Yonatan Malin shows that the vocal rhythms of Brahms’s songs are often based on perfectly regular declamatory schemas, and assesses deviations from normal declamation not as “failure[s] of compositional insight,” but rather as instances of Brahms’s “interest in rhythmic motives and metric disturbance” taking priority over “declamatory realism.”13 The present study continues this tradition of vindication. Brahms’s songs undeniably contain puzzling instances of the elongation or metric accentuation of weak syllables. But many such examples can be explained à la Riemann by the presence of an unnotated metrical layer to which the poetic stresses do conform. At the beginning of the well-known song “Wir wandelten,” op. 96, no. 2, for instance (ex. 1.1a), the stressed second syllable of “zusammen” (m. 8) appears on a third beat in common time, whereas the weak third syllable falls on a downbeat (m. 9). This apparent problem is mitigated by the implicit 23 meter, which originates in the piano introduction and is continued in measures 7–8 by the durational and registral accents at “wandelten” and on “zusammen.” In this 23 meter (shown in ex. 1.1b), the final syllable of “zusammen” is a weak rather than a strong beat. The situation in the second vocal phrase is similar (ex. 1.1c). One might ask why, in the statement “ich war so still und du so stille,” the first word (“ich”—m. 10) should fall on a third beat, and the complementary “du” on a downbeat (m. 12). If one rethinks the phrase in the three-two meter implied by the durational and registral accents (see ex. 1.1d), both “ich” and “du” fall on downbeats. Another mitigating factor that is frequently operative in Brahms’s placement of weak syllables on strong beats is the fact that the given strong beats are hypermetrically weak: on a higher level of meter, Brahms is faithful to the poetic stresses. For example, in “Erinnerung,” op. 63, no. 2 (ex. 1.2), the final weak syllable of the word “Lieblichste” appears on the downbeat of measure 6. The infelicity of this metrical placement disappears when one realizes that this downbeat is the second hyperbeat of a four-measure hypermeasure; a perceptive singer would avoid undue stress on the syllable “-ste” for this reason.

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+ { + { { ' ' ( A AA { A A A A A A A A A AA{ A A A A A A A A A A AA{ A A A A A A ' '  A A   '  

Example 1.1a. “Wir wandelten,” op. 96, mm. 1–9

' ' AN {{ + @ AN {{ +  ' ' ' N{ A A -AA ' N { A A A

5

A{ A  A A

N A A

A

@ K

Wir wan - del - ten, wir zwei zu - sam - men,

Example 1.1b. “Wir wandelten,” op. 96, opening of introduction and opening of vocal line, notated in 23 meter

+ { + { ' '  A AA { A A A A A A A A A AA{ A A A A A A A A A A '  A A '  '  '' ' ' '

A{

A A 

7

A Wir

wan - del - ten,

A

A

wir

zwei

N

A

zu - sam

A -

@

men,

Example 1.1c. “Wir wandelten,” op. 96, mm. 10–13

A{ A A A A ' A   ' ''' ( @ @

10

ich

war so still und

A{ A A A 

du

so stil

-

A @ K le;

Example 1.1d. “Wir wandelten,” op. 96, mm. 10–13, notated in 23 meter

A{ '  ' ''' 

A A 

ich

war

A

A

A

so

still

und

A{

A A 

du

so

stil

A

A

-

le;

@

Example 1.2. “Erinnerung,” op. 63, no. 2, mm. 1–8, hypermetric analysis

  A N

1

A

N

2

A

N

3

A A A A N 4

1

A N

Ihr wun - der - schö - nen Au - gen - bli - cke, die Lieb - lich - ste

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A N

3

A N

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Example 1.3a “Gunhilde,” WoO 32, no. 10, mm. 5–6 (first strophe)

   A

5

bis

A 

A 

Beich - ti

- ger

A A A 

A 

sie

ihr

A A A 

I

ver - führt,

Example 1.3b. “Wach auf mein Hort,” WoO 33, no. 13, mm. 12–13 (second strophe)

   A

12

werd

+ A A

A

mir

freund - lich

+ A

zu

A{

Wil

A -

I

len.

Example 1.3c. “Nur ein Gesicht auf Erden lebt,” WoO 33, no. 19, mm. 12–13 (first strophe)

+   A a

A

A

ber

der

13

-

A

A

A 

Seel

groß

Another possible explanation for Brahms’s apparent lapses in declamation is the influence of folk song, in which he was more deeply immersed than any other nineteenth-century lied composer. Placement of weak syllables on downbeats is common in the folk songs that Brahms arranged (ex. 1.3 shows only a few of the many instances; italics in the text highlight the counterintuitive declamation). It is not surprising that the unusual declamation typical of these folk songs became a component of his song style. Most important for my investigation, however, is the notion broached by Deborah Rohr, Heather Platt, and Yonatan Malin that Brahms’s “awkward declamation,” rather than resulting from carelessness and inattentiveness to the poetic text, is an expressive device.14 It is the primary aim of my chapter to provide additional evidence that Brahms’s deviations from an accurate musical representation of the poetic rhythm were often motivated by expressive considerations: while deviating from and disrupting the poetic rhythm, he was faithful to another, and ultimately more important aspect of the poem—its meaning.

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The Basic Rhythm of Declamation (BRD) Before proceeding to discussions of examples, I introduce some analytical tools that I use throughout this chapter. My investigation is based on the assumption that most nineteenth-century German lyric poems possess a recognizable “basic rhythm of declamation” (BRD), which functions as the foundation for readings of the poems as well as for musical settings.15 Such an assumption would be problematic if a) one were overly rigid and specific in identifying the BRD of a poem and b) if one further assumed that good song composers were obligated to adhere to the BRD in their musical settings.16 I conceive of the BRD as an abstract entity, to which few recitations of the poem, and few musical settings, will correspond precisely. But a distinction can be made between deviations from the BRD that preserve its essential features, and those that result in its distortion. Settings that exhibit the former class of deviations are based on some variant of the simple form of the BRD, and can be considered BRD-conformant. Song composers frequently indulge, however, in more drastic and distortive deviations from the BRD. I fully support, even celebrate the right of composers to do so—provided that the distortion, rather than constituting a wanton destruction of the meticulously crafted poetic rhythm, occurs for a good reason. Below, I elaborate on the characteristics of the BRD, using some of Brahms’s lieder as examples. A significant component of the BRD is stress, which exists on more than one level. In German lyric poetry, the surface level of the BRD, which corresponds to what we usually call the “meter” of the poem, features regularly recurring stresses and a regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. But the BRD has a deeper level. Not all stresses in a poetic line are equivalent in weight; each line usually contains one or two especially strong stresses, which may or may not be regularly spaced.17 Aside from the component of stress, the BRD has a durational component, which, in pre-twentieth-century German lyric poetry, is normally based on regularity. The poetic feet are approximately equivalent in duration. Silences at the ends of lines (if present—they are not obligatory) are often of the same duration as the feet. Larger-scale durational units, determined by the lines, couplets, and stanzas, are, like the surface-level durational units, approximately equivalent in duration. Generating and notating the BRD of a song text, and thereby becoming aware of the stresses and durational regularities of the poem, is a useful first step in the analysis of the declamation of a song. To generate the BRD, one labels the stresses in the poem; in the diagram below, the stresses in Felix Schumann’s poem “Wenn um den Hollunder” are shown with asterisks; double asterisks show the strongest stresses.18

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* * * * * Wenn um den Holunder der Abendwind kost * * * * * * Und der Falter um den Jasminenstrauch, * * * * * * Dann kos ich mit meinem Liebchen auch * * * * * * Auf der Steinbank schattig und weich bemoost. The next step is to translate the BRD into musical notation.19 Musical durations, as nearly equivalent as possible, are assigned to the syllables to produce the simplest form of the BRD (ex. 1.4a). Here, I have used mainly quarternotes because those are relevant to Brahms’s setting of the poem. Some of the strongly stressed syllables can only be read with elongation: although the stresses recur in a regular fashion, and the foot lengths are equivalent, a few iambs are interspersed with the amphibrachs, resulting in occasional long syllables. It is therefore necessary to employ some half-note durations in the transcription of the BRD. The BRD (its strong stresses in particular) invariably suggests one or more musical meters; here, with 43 or 46 obvious choices (ex. 1.4b). Selection of a durational unit other than the quarter-note would result in a different, but related meter. Having notated the BRD, one can add the melodic pitches of the composer’s setting to arrive at a hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line (ex. 1.4c). Comparison of this hypothetical melody with the composer’s actual vocal line is useful in gauging the amount of unexpected declamation in the given setting. Some analytical notation clarifies aspects of the poetic rhythm and its musical treatment, both in hypothetical and actual settings. Aside from asterisks to show poetic stress, I use square brackets below the poem to delineate the feet, and numbers below those brackets to show the durations of the feet (measured in terms of a unit that is indicated at the top left of the example). In later examples, there is occasion to use additional notation to designate the treatment of silences after poetic lines: numbers in square brackets show the durations of those silences, and numbers in square brackets with strokes through them indicate omission of expected rests.20

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Example 1.4a. Felix Schumann, “Junge Lieder II,” BRD in musical notation * *

* *

 A A A A A A A A A A A A A N *

*

**

 A A A N *

* *

A N

*

*

* *

A A A A N *

* *

A A A A N

A N

* *

A A A A N *

A

*

A N

@

*

Example 1.4b. Felix Schumann, “Junge Lieder II,” BRD in musical notation with meter

  A A A A A A A A A A A A A N *

* *

*

* *

* *

 A A A N

A N

*

* *

*

* *

A A A A N *

* *

A A A A N *

* *

A A A A N *

A N

A

*

A N

@

*

Example 1.4c. Brahms, “Junge Lieder II,” op. 63, no. 6, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line (based on Brahms’s melody) 1=/

    A

* *

A A A A A A *

*

A A

A* A A * A A A

A A A A

*

*

Wenn um den Ho - lun - der der A - bend - wind kost und der 3

3

 N  * *

mi

A -

*

*

Fal

3

3

A

* *

'A

-A

A

dann

kos

ich

mit

@

nen - strauch,

3

 *   'N

A

3

-

ter um den Jas 3

N*

A

mei

-

nem

3 etc.

A

A* A A

Lieb - chen auch auf der

-N* *

A A* A 'A

* *

N

Stein - bank schat - tig und weich

A

* N{

be - moost,

In my hypothetical, or the composer’s actual BRD-conformant vocal lines, the musical meter aligns with and reinforces the stresses of the poetry, and regular foot durations and expected pauses at line ends are reproduced in the music. In settings that deviate from or distort the BRD, on the other hand, some combination of the following attributes will be present: strong stresses (shown by double asterisks) that do not coincide with metrical strong beats; a

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Example 1.4d. Brahms, “Junge Lieder II,” mm. 3–11, vocal line

    A

3

A{ A A A A A  *

*

Wenn um den Ho - lun - der der 3

3

 N 

7

* *

mi

A -

*

*  A N   'A { -A * *

Lieb - chen auch

A A

A* A A * A A A

A A A A

*

*

A - bend - wind kost und der

Fal

3

3

3

A

'A {

dann

kos

@

nen - strauch,

3 9

A

* *

* *

-A 

ich

-

ter um den Jas 3

N*

A mit

A

mei

-

nem

etc.

3

A A   auf der

-N * *

A A* A 'A

* *

N

Stein - bank schat - tig und weich

A

* N{

be - moost,

significant disparity among foot durations; omissions of expected rests at line ends; and rests occurring unexpectedly at points other than line ends. Notice that example 1.4c possesses the characteristics of a BRD-conformant setting; double asterisks coincide with downbeats, and foot durations are equivalent. Comparing Brahms’s vocal line for “Wenn um den Hollunder” (ex. 1.4d) with our hypothetical BRD-conformant setting, we notice that his vocal line is almost identical to the hypothetical one, and is therefore BRD-conformant. Brahms adds dots at times, and occasionally speeds up the poetic upbeats to eighth-notes (e.g., at “auf der” in m. 9), but none of these techniques results in significant deviations from or distortions of the basic rhythm shown in examples 1.4a and 1.4b. Brahms’s minor deviations from the BRD demonstrate that the simplest form of the BRD cannot rigidly be applied as a benchmark in the analysis of declamation. Although his vocal rhythm does not correspond to the simple BRD, it is based on one of the many available variants of that simple form. Other BRD-conformant variants would have been possible; Brahms could, for instance, have elongated a larger number of stressed syllables, as shown in example 1.4e. A look at another song by Brahms that consistently conforms to the BRD— his setting of Hans Schmidt’s “Sommerabend,” op. 84, no. 1—will serve to clarify the notion of BRD and its variants (and the associated analytical notation). A hypothetical vocal line adhering to the simplest form of the BRD is shown in example 1.5a. Example 1.5b is a variant in which the strong stresses at the ends of odd-numbered lines are elongated for special emphasis. Although this elongation results in surface-level irregularity of foot duration (and in the omission of expected rests between the lines of the couplets), there is an underlying

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21

Example 1.4e. Brahms, “Junge Lieder II,” beginning, hypothetical BRDconformant vocal line with elongation of stressed syllables

    A

N

Wenn

* + A A N

*

der der A

den Ho - lun -

um

- bend - wind kost

3

3

3

* + + A A N

*

A A N  

*

3

Example 1.5a. “Sommerabend,” op. 84, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line 1= /

 ' 

A A

A

Geh

A A

schla - fen,

A A

@

1

[1]

Toch - ter, schla - fen! 2

2

' @

* *

*

*

A

A A

und

wen die

2

A A

Trop - fen

*

'A A

A

'A A

Schon fällt der 2

@

A A

Tau

A

2

A A

A A

weint bald die

@

aufs Gras,

2

A

tra - fen,

* *

*

Au - gen

etc. [2]

N

nass,

Example 1.5b. “Sommerabend,” op. 84, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line with elongation of strongly stressed syllables

 '  A

* *

N

*

*

A A

A A

*

* *

*

A A 'A A 'A A

N

Geh schla - fen, Toch - ter, schla - fen! Schon fällt der Tau aufs Gras, 2

2

3

' A A

Trop - fen

N tra

1 4 etc.

4

A A

A A

2

2

3

@ A etc. [1]

A A

und wen die

[1] /

A A

N

- fen, weint bald die Au - gen nass,

@ A

A A

A A

N

weint bald die Au - gen nass!

sense of regularity, as shown by the lower brackets in the example. This variant of the BRD underlies Brahms’s entire setting (ex. 1.5c). Brahms’s use of dotted rhythms introduces minor irregularities—deviations by .5 units, in either direction, from the basic foot duration of two quarter-notes. The basic BRDconformance of his setting is, however, readily perceptible.

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Example 1.5c. “Sommerabend,” op. 84, mm. 1–19, Brahms’s vocal line

 '  I A+ A { A+ A { A+ N *

*

* *

A A 'A { A+ 'A { + N A *

*

* *

@ A A A

Geh schla - fen, Toch - ter, schla - fen! Schon fällt der Tau aufs Gras, 1.5

10

1.5

' A A N Trop - fen

etc.

2.5

1

[1] /

2.5

A A A{ A+ A{ A+ N

tra - fen, weint bald die Au - gen nass,

2

@

2.5

und wen die [1]

2

2

+ + A A{ A A{ A N

weint bald die Au - gen nass!

[1] /

Occasional Deviation from the BRD in Primarily BRD-Conformant Contexts Using the BRD concept, I now proceed to investigate deviations from the BRD in Brahms’s songs—that is, situations of surprising and unpredictable declamation. While relatively few of Brahms’s songs are consistently BRD-conformant, many largely conform to the BRD, with only occasional deviations in the form of substantial, unpredictable elongations of particular syllables. These elongations are not haphazard distortions of the poetic rhythm: they usually have an expressive function, suggesting a silent reader’s lingering over or savoring of significant words,21 or, in some cases, a protagonist’s emphatic utterance of a word that is especially meaningful to her or him. Brahms’s setting of Heine’s “Mondenschein” (op. 85, no. 2) provides an illustration. A hypothetical BRD-conformant setting of the first two lines is shown in example 1.6a (I have included Brahms’s repetition of Heine’s second line). Brahms’s setting (ex. 1.6b) is very similar, except that he elongates the final words of the second line (“müde Glieder”—weary limbs). At a corresponding later point (mm. 17–19), he similarly elongates the words “nächt’ge Grauen” (nocturnal dread). These elongations constitute an appropriate lingering on poignant words, rather than a haphazard deviation from the BRD. Another example of expressive elongation within an otherwise BRDconformant context occurs at the beginning of “Der Jäger,” op. 95, no. 4. A BRD-conformant setting of Friedrich Halm’s poem is shown in example 1.7a. Brahms’s setting (ex. 1.7b) is very similar, but he stretches the first syllable of the word “Jäger” in all three strophes. Clearly, the elongation of this word (and no other) is intended to suggest the speaker’s intense pride in the métier of her beloved—a deliciously comical effect.

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Example 1.6a. “Mondenschein”, op. 85, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line

' *{  ' ( 'A 1= /

* A A{ 

*

Nacht

liegt

' * ' A{

-

+ * A A

* *

frem

den

-

de Glie - der,

kran

* *

den We - gen,

A {

'A

A A{  -

kran

-

und

mü

A A 

-

A 

kes Herz

'A {

A 

kes Herz

* A 'A { 

A{

A I 

etc.

2

+ * 'A A

*

mü

auf

2

A{

A 

und

A

de Glie - der;

Example 1.6b. “Mondenschein”, op. 85, mm. 1–8, Brahms’s vocal line

' *{  ' ( 'A

* A A{ 

*

Nacht

liegt

auf

2

A{

+ * A A

* *

A 

frem

den 2

A{

* A 'A { 

* *

A I 

- den We - gen,

kran

A 

- kes Herz

und

2 etc.

* A** { ' A* { + * ' 'A A 'A 

* A 'N { 

* A A{ 

4

*

mü - de Glie der, kran - kes Herz und

mü

2

-

A

3*

de

Glie

4

A @ K

-

der;

5

Example 1.7a. “Der Jäger,” op. 95, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line 1= /

 '  A

*

A

Mein Lieb

A

ist

A*

A ein

A

Jä - ger,

3

A

und

3

A *

A

A A

A

grün

ist

sein

Kleid

A

*

@

3

3

Example 1.7b. “Der Jäger,” op. 95, mm. 4–9, Brahms’s vocal line

 '  A

5

A A A *

Mein Lieb ist ein 3

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N* {

Jä

6

A @ A

ger,

A A A A A A @ *

und grün ist 3

*

sein

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In some of Brahms’s surprising elongations, we sense not the voice of an anonymous silent reader or that of the protagonist of the poem, but the voice of the composer—that is, it appears that Brahms elongates a word of the poem that is especially meaningful for him. In his setting of Heine’s “Es schauen die Blumen,” op. 96, no. 3, for example, Brahms begins in a BRD-conformant manner (see ex. 1.8a): stressed syllables appear on strong beats, and there are only minor deviations from consistent foot duration (resulting in part from irregularities in Heine’s poem). Brahms follows the rhythm of the poem throughout his setting of the first stanza. In the second stanza, however, where “Lieder alle” (all of the songs) are mentioned (ex. 1.8b), he doubles the duration of the word “alle” from the earlier half-measure (cf. ex. 1.8a, m. 2) to an entire measure, and then repeats the word to boot (thereby avoiding an expected pause after a line). Clearly, and understandably, the phrase “all of the songs” means more to him than the earlier “all of the flowers” and “all of the streams,” which he passes over without emphasis. The final reference to songs (“ye melancholy and dark songs”) includes even more significant elongation (ex. 1.8c).

Larger-Scale Deviations from the Regularity of the BRD The departures from expected declamation that we have investigated so far are conspicuous but brief events within songs that are primarily BRD-conformant. In many of his songs, Brahms deviates more drastically and extensively from the regular BRD of the poetry. These larger-scale deviations take three main forms: 1) setting a poem that is regular in rhythm to variegated, albeit BRDconformant vocal rhythms; 2) setting a poem that is regular in rhythm to an irregular non-BRD-conformant vocal rhythm; and 3) setting a poem in a meter that conflicts with the implications of the BRD. As I describe examples of these types below, I attempt to demonstrate the expressive motivations for Brahms’s deviations from the regularity of the BRD. Brahms frequently switches from one BRD-conformant vocal rhythm to another when setting poems that remain rhythmically consistent. In Yonatan Malin’s terms, Brahms switches the “declamatory schema.”22 Especially frequent in Brahms’s songs are significant changes in the rate of declamation (while conformance with the BRD is maintained); these changes can usually be explained by some text-expressive impulse. In the early song “Der Frühling,” op. 6, no. 2, for instance, Brahms consistently reflects the iambic meter of the poem in his vocal rhythm, but imaginatively varies the specific musical rendition of the iambs. He begins with relatively slow declamation (ex. 1.9a); most of the iambic feet at the opening of the vocal line (mm. 8–24) occupy six eighthnote pulses. (Some of the iambs occupy only four eighths, because of welcome minor deviations from the opening rhythm, e.g., the use in measure 11

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Example 1.8a. “Es schauen die Blumen,” op. 96, mm. 6–10, Brahms’s vocal line 1= 4

* * * * A A+ I A+ A A A A A A A  A ! ! ! !

  + A* A A A*   A  ! !  A 7

Es schau - en die Blu - men al - le 5

4 =5

5

zur

@

leuch - ten - den Son - ne hin - auf;

[2] [1]

5

5

4

Example 1.8b. “Es schauen die Blumen,” op. 96, mm. 14–19, Brahms’s vocal line

  0 * A A A* A* A A A* A A A A* A A* A A! A* @ A A   !  A A ! !    ! !   15

Es flat - tern die Lie - der al 4

-

5

le,

al

-

8

le zu mei-nem leuch-ten-den Lieb. 5

7

4

4

[2] /

Example 1.8c. “Es schauen die Blumen,” op. 96, mm. 25–31, Brahms’s vocal line

    A

ihr

26

A *

* A A+ A 

Lie - der weh - mü 8

14

A

A

A

-

tig

und

A*

A

N

A

@

trüb! 24

of a dotted quarter-note instead of an eighth-note for the word “den.”) At the halfway point of the song, the vocal rhythm remains BRD-conformant, the stressed syllables of the iambs still falling on strong beats—but the rate of declamation abruptly doubles, the feet now occupying three eighth-note durations (ex. 1.9b). Given the unaltered poetic rhythm, Brahms could easily have continued the opening vocal rhythm, as shown in example 1.9c. The change can be accounted for partly by Brahms’s desire to avoid a paralyzing monotony, but his response to the more active imagery at the point of the change is another possible motivating factor: the gentle images of rustling trees and breezes during the first three lines of the stanzas are replaced by those of turning energetically (“frisch”) to the golden light of the sun, of the awakening of the flowers, and of the fluttering of the heart as it searches for the right companion. Brahms bridges between the static and more active declamation by replacing the initial halting rendition of the iambs (separated with rests) with a more continuous, sustained version (in ex. 1.9a, cf. mm. 8–14 and mm. 17–20). Spring arrives gradually, rather than abruptly! In “Botschaft,” op. 47, no. 1 (ex. 1.10a), the change in the rate of declamation proceeds in the opposite direction. Brahms begins this song by setting

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Example 1.9a. “Der Frühling,” op. 6, mm. 9–20, Brahms’s vocal line 1= )

* * + *  A{ A{     A+ A { @ A A { @ A

* * + * A { @ A A { @ A A { @ A

9

Es lockt

und säu

  A* { A{  6

-

selt um

6

* A I @{

15

4

@{

Schlaf und Traum,

wach auf

aus dei

-

nem

* * * @ A A { A A A { A A -A { A I   [2]

6

der Win

[8]

6

4

Baum:

den

-

6

ter

6

ist

6

zer - ron - nen.

6

4

Example 1.9b. “Der Frühling,” op. 6, mm. 25–27, Brahms’s vocal line

 +     A

26

+ A

*

-A

Da Da Flieg

schlägt wer auch,

'A *

er den mein

3

frisch al Herz,

+ A

-A

den le und

Blick Blu flat

3

+ A

*

3

-

'A *

em - por, men wach, tre fort, 3

Example 1.9c. “Der Frühling,” op. 6, mm. 25–27, hypothetical vocal line

 +     A Da

-A {

@

*

schlägt 6

+ A er

'A {

@

*

frisch 6

etc.

the trochees of the poem with alternating three- and six eighth-note durations. The alternation is not suggested by the BRD of the poem, but given its regularity, it does not give the impression of distorting the poetic rhythm. The first statement of the words “eile nicht” (“do not rush [to fly away]”—an admonition addressed to the breezes that play with the beloved’s curls) occurs within this relatively quick declamation (mm. 13–14). Immediately thereafter, however, the declamation slows drastically (at the words “to fly away,” and for the subsequent repetitions of “do not rush”). The vocal rhythm remains BRD-conformant, stressed syllables still being metrically emphasized and elongated—but most of the feet now occupy nine eighth-note pulses. Since the poetic rhythm remains constant, Brahms could have maintained the initial declamatory pacing (see ex. 1.10b). It appears that he slows the declamation for expressive reasons; his pulling back dramatizes the breezes’ lingering in

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27

Example 1.10a. “Botschaft,” op. 47, mm. 11–22, Brahms’s vocal line 1= ) * * * A A* A -A* { A 'A* A * { '' * I A A{ @ A{ A{ A { A{ A{ @ { @ { '  ' '  -A ) A{ A    12

spie - le

*

zart

6

3

17

ei

-

le

ei - le nicht

in ih - rer Lo - cke,

{ * ' ' *A{ A { A A{ @{ @{ ' ' ' 3

*

N{ *

ei - le

nicht,

9

9

hin - weg

zu

fliehn,

* *{ * * A { A A{ A { A{ A { A { A I @ { @ { 3

6

9

nicht

9

9

9

hin - weg 9

zu

fliehn!

9

9+

Example 1.10b. “Botschaft,” op. 47, mm. 11–15, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line

* * A A* A -A** { A 'A* A * + A* A * { { '' * A{ A ' I A  ' A ) A{ A A  '   A{ @ @  spie - le 3

zart

in ih - rer Lo - cke,

6

3

6

ei - le 3

nicht

6

hin-weg zu fliehn! 3

3

the beloved’s locks, so as eventually to whisper a message in her ear. The subsequent return of the opening melody with its quick declamation coincides with the uttering of the lover’s passionate message (m. 40), and the final reappearance of slow pacing (m. 51) corresponds to the mention of the beloved’s thinking about the lover, suggesting that the thinking is intense and lingering rather than fleeting—or at least that the lover wishes her thinking of him to be of that nature. In the fourth song of the same collection, “O liebliche Wangen,” op. 47, no. 4, the declamatory pacing again shifts from slow to fast. The consistent amphibrachs of Paul Flemming’s poem initially occupy six eighth-note pulses (ex. 1.11a). At measure 13 (ex. 1.11b), as the poet launches into a list of the amorous actions to be performed on the “liebliche Wangen” (lovely cheeks), Brahms accelerates the central stressed syllable of the amphibrachs from a dotted quarter to an eighth-note, while still adhering to a six eighth-note foot duration; three eighth-note rests follow the accelerated amphibrachs so as to fill the duration. As the listed actions become more “physical,” the rests fall by the wayside, so that each amphibrach occupies only three eighth-notes—onehalf of the original duration. The mounting excitement of the obsessed lover is perfectly captured by this declamatory strategy. Another striking example of accelerating BRD-conformant declamation is Brahms’s setting of Hebbel’s “Vorüber,” op. 58, no. 7. The poem is again

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Example 1.11a. “O liebliche Wangen,” op. 47, no. 4, mm. 1–8, Brahms’s vocal line

A* {

1= )

 +    A O

lieb

A -

+ A

li - che

* *

 *   A{ ro

A

-

te,

A

A{

Wan - gen,

6 5

+ A

dies

A{

* *

wei

-

A

ihr macht

6

+ A

A* {

A** {

A 

mir

Ver - lan -

A

+ A

gen,

dies

6 etc.

A

+ A

A{

sse,

zu

schau

A

*

-

en

A 

mit

* A{ *

Flei

A -

sse.

Example 1.11b. “O liebliche Wangen,” mm. 12–16, Brahms’s vocal line * * * *+ * *A  + * A A A A* A A * +    A+ A A I I I A A A I I I A  A A       A A 13

zu schauen, 6

zu grüssen, 6

zu rüh- ren, zu kü - ssen, ihr macht mir Ver - lan-gen 3

3

3

3

dominated by amphibrachic meter. This poetic meter lends itself to triple time (ex. 1.12a), but Brahms opts for common time, the “extra” beat arising from his elongation of the stressed syllables (ex. 1.12b). This variant of the BRD is more appropriate in relation to the initial mood of the poem than a triple-meter setting would have been: the consistent elongations lend Brahms’s setting a languorous, dreamlike affect that perfectly matches the somnolent subject material of the first strophe. Brahms maintains this slow declamation in the greater part of the song—but, significantly, at the words “Denn nun ich erwache” (Now that I wake up; ex. 1.12c), he doubles the pace of the declamation—an apt representation of a rude awakening and a reluctant return to reality. Additional beautiful examples of expressive shifts from slow to fast BRDconformant rhythms occur in “Dämmrung senkte sich von oben,” op. 59, no. 1, at the moment when the “schwarzvertiefte Finsternisse” (deep black darknesses) begin to be dispelled by the light of the moon (mm. 46–47); at the points in “Vom Strande,” op. 69, no. 6 where fast motion of various kinds is described (mm. 10ff and mm. 48ff); and at the passages in “Steig auf, geliebter Schatten,” op. 94, no. 2, where the poem refers to the energizing, rejuvenating powers of the shade of a departed beloved (at “deiner Nähe Macht” in mm. 9–12, and at “mach mich wieder jung” in the final four measures of the vocal line).

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29

Example 1.12a. “Vorüber,” op. 58, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line in triple meter 1= /

* * A* A A N  '  A A A A Ich

A N*

A A* A A A * N

*

A N

leg - te mich un - ter den Lin - den- baum, in dem 3 3 3 3 3

@

die Nach - ti - gall schlug; 3 3

Example 1.12b. “Vorüber,” op. 58, mm. 2–9, Brahms’s vocal line

 '( A Ich

3

+ A A

* A{ leg

-

te

A

* A{

mich

un

4 6

' K

@

A A  4

A in

N{ *

A

dem

die

A* { Nach

4

ter

A* {

A den

Lin

A A  -

-

*

A

ti - gall

den - baum, 1.5

2.5

A A 

@

N

@

schlug; 3

4

Example 1.12c. “Vorüber,” op. 58, mm. 22–23, Brahms’s vocal line 22

 '( @

I

A A* 

Denn nun 2

A A  

ich

A*

A

@

er - wa - che, 2.5

As mentioned earlier, in many of Brahms’s songs the BRD is abandoned rather than merely being rendered in a variety of manners. In some songs, the vocal rhythm is in part BRD-conformant, but an irregular, non-conformant rhythm appears at intervals. In other songs, the vocal line is dominated by irregular rhythms that have little to do with the regular rhythm of the poetry. Both strategies can be explained with reference to Brahms’s effort to express the meaning of the given poems. “Herbstgefühl,” op. 48, no. 7, demonstrates the former strategy: the contrast between BRD-conformant and non-conformant rhythms is used for expressive effect. The vocal line begins with a quarter-half rhythm that is almost perfectly attuned to the iambic meter of the poem, the stressed syllables being elongated

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(ex. 1.13a, mm. 4–14).23 As the song proceeds, the vocal rhythm becomes irregular (while the poetic rhythm continues unchanged). At measure 18, Brahms inserts a surprising gap between the words “gelb” (yellow) and “und rötlich” (and ruddy)—surprising because the two adjectives belong together grammatically. This hesitation in the vocal rhythm initiates the crumbling of the rhythmic regularity that has reigned so far. The next line, “ein einzles Blatt im Windhauch schwankt” (a single leaf sways in the breeze), which would occupy four measures if the earlier BRD-conformant quarter-half rhythm were maintained (see ex. 1.13b), is stretched over three times that duration by drastic elongations of feet as well as by the repetition of “ein einzles Blatt” (see ex. 1.13a, mm. 21–34). The following line, “so schauert über mein Leben” (thus there shudders over my life), by contrast, occupies only three measures; Brahms sets it almost syllabically.24 Brahms briefly reverts to the initial declamatory schema at “ein nächtig trüber” (mm. 38–40), then elongates the first syllable of “kalter” (cold). Similar alternations of quarter-half declamation and substantial elongations occur in the setting of the next few lines as well. The progressive destruction of the initial BRD-conformant vocal rhythm and the shift into unpredictable declamation of this primarily regular poem aptly suggests the similarly progressive decay of the beauty of summer, as described at the beginning of the poem. “Meerfahrt,” op. 96, no. 4, is a further example of a strikingly irregular setting of a fairly regular text. Heine’s poem, as is so often the case in his works, is not perfectly regular; the poetic meter fluctuates between amphibrachs, dactyls and trochees. Nevertheless, there is a sense of regularly recurring stresses in the poem, which is entirely absent in Brahms’s setting. Given the marked divergence of Brahms’s vocal rhythm from the BRD, it is difficult to construct a hypothetical BRD-conformant setting using his melody, but I have made an attempt to do so in example 1.14a. Compare Brahms’s actual melody (ex. 1.14b): Brahms places all stressed syllables on the dotted-quarter beats of his 6—but he rarely assigns extra prominence to the primary stresses, often lend8 ing more emphasis to less strongly stressed syllables. For example, the strongly stressed second syllable of “beisammen” is placed on the second dotted-quarter beat of a measure, whereas the weaker first syllables of “trau-lich” and “leichten” are placed on downbeats and elongated. The result is that the main stresses, spaced equally in Heine’s poem, are almost randomly distributed in Brahms’s setting. Furthermore, Brahms does not consistently present the pauses between lines that Heine’s poem clearly implies (see the crossed-out numbers in example 1.14b).25 The irregular vocal rhythm strongly suggests that something is not right with the lovers who are snuggled up by night in a boat. It is only at the end of the song that this suggestion is confirmed: in the final line (which Brahms emphasizes by copious repetition), the poet describes the lovers as “trostlos” (comfortless, despairing). The unexpected vocal rhythm

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Example 1.13a. “Herbstgefühl,” op. 48, mm. 4–43, Brahms’s vocal line 1= /

*     A N

* A N

5

* A N

* A N

<

A

*  *  N A N

 *   N{

22

[3]

N

A N

*

@

ein

  A A A

31

*

 A 'A* A A  @ @

@ @ A

ein

A* A A

näch - tig

trü

3

-

1

zles Blatt

A A A

im

Wind -

*

8

A -A 'A

A -A A -A A @

*

*

*

schau - ert

ü - ber mein Le - ben

3

3

3

N

*

ber

ein

N{

A -A A ' A A -A

kal

3

@ @ A [2]

4

so

38

[3]

-

[4]

3+

3

A A A *N {

ein

hauch schwankt,

A

und röt - lich,

6

A @ @

N{

*

A N

6

* @ @ A N{

[3]

3

nur, gelb

3

zles Blatt,

6

-

3

3

3

@ @

*

*

und hier und da

3

-

des Som - mers letz - te [5]

1

*

Blü - te krankt, 3

3

@ @ @ A N -A N A N {

13

ein

3

3

A

*

*

Wie wenn im frost - gen Wind - hauch töt - lich 3

A N

@ @ A N

-

-

@

*

ter

Tag. 3

6

Example 1.13b. “Herbstgefühl,” op. 48, mm. 21–25, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line

    A

ein

N *

ein

A

-

zles

*

A

Blatt

im

N

3

3

*

N

@

N *

A

Wind - hauch schwankt, 3

3

Example 1.14a. “Meerfahrt,” op. 96, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line

 **

*  *          
1= 

Mein Lieb-chen, wir sa-ssen bei - sam - men 3

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3

3

[4]

*
*  *
    *




trau -lich im leich - ten Kahn. 3

3

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Example 1.14b. “Meerfahrt,” op. 96, mm. 14–29, Brahms’s vocal line * + * A A A{ A * + A A* A A A A* { A-A A *A { A{ A @ I A       A A A   A A A   15

*

*

Mein Lieb - chen, wir sa -ssen bei- sam - men trau - lich im leich - ten Kahn. [4] 4 9 6 3 6 / 5

21

 A *

+ A A

Nacht 4

 A {

25

*

war

A{

bahn,

A 

A A + A*   A  *

*

still und wir schwam - men auf [3] 5 3 /

A @

A A A{ *

auf 9?

A A  

wei 7

A{

*

wei 6

A A -

+ * A A { *

ter

* *

Was 6

Die

[3]

+ A A A -

A A A A A A A A A I @    A *

-

ter,

*

ser -

I

wei - ter Was - ser - bahn. 3 3 3

throughout the song subtly mars the gentle, serenade-like mood and foreshadows the negative tone of the ending. “Abenddämmerung,” op. 49, no. 5, is another song in which the vocal rhythm is irregular, in sharp contradistinction to the regular BRD. The trochaic meter of the poem suggests a setting in 42 or 44 time (ex. 1.15a), but BRDconformant variants in triple meter would also be feasible (ex. 1.15b). Brahms does use 43 meter, but by no means in a BRD-conformant manner (ex. 1.15c). The third word of the poem, “Zwielichtstunde,” is declaimed in an unexpected manner, the stressed syllables “Zwie-” and “stunde” placed on weak beats of adjacent measures.26 Thereafter, the stressed first syllable of “al len” appears on a second beat, the stressed word “lieb” is displaced by an eighth-note from the downbeat, and the stressed first syllable of “jede,” set to a hasty eighthnote, appears on a third beat. It is not only the placement of the stresses that is unexpected, but also the foot duration; the regularity of the poetic rhythm is obscured by Brahms’s unpredictable durations. Brahms concludes the setting of the first stanza by using a slow BRD-conformant triple-time variant of the BRD (compare mm. 15–17 in ex. 1.15c with ex. 1.15b); both stresses and foot durations become predictable. The first stanza’s progression from volatile, unpredictable declamation to slow BRD-conformant declamation is appropriate in relation to the poem’s reference to the comfort and assuagement of pain that twilight brings; Brahms causes us to feel the gradual calming effect of eventide. The final stanza is set to the same music; here, the progression from irregular declamation toward BRDconformance suggests the “sinking down of blessed peace” upon the slumberer.

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33

Example 1.15a. “Abenddämmerung,” op. 49, beginning, hypothetical BRDconformant vocal line in common time 1= )

*  * A* + * +     A A  A -A A A A

Sei will - kommen, Zwie -licht - stun - de! 2

* * * * A A A A+ A A A A A   

Dich vor

al - len

lieb

ich

längst,

2 etc.

2

Example 1.15b. “Abenddämmerung,” op. 49, beginning, hypothetical BRDconformant vocal line in triple time

 *     N

* A N

Sei

* A -N

A N

A N

*

A N

*

*

will - kom - men, Zwie - licht - stun - de! Dich vor 3

3

* A * A A{ A A N{

al - len

lieb

ich

längst,

3 etc.

Example 1.15c. “Abenddämmerung,” op. 49, mm. 7–17, Brahms’s vocal line *  * A*     A A A -A 8

A A A* A  

Sei will - kom - men, Zwie - licht - stun - de! 1

2

2

A A A A  

*

2

*

Dich vor al - len 1

* I A A A -A lieb

* * * * A*  * A * A{ A A N*    A I I A+ A+ A A  A A A  A  A

12

die du, lin -dernd je - de Wun- de, uns - re See - le

längst, 1

[1]

1

2

1

2

1

ich

2.5

2.5

3

*

A A

@ @

um - fängst.

mild 3

1

“Abenddämmerung” demonstrates not only the setting of a regular poem with sections of irregular (and “infelicitous”) declamation, but also Brahms’s choice of a musical meter that seems alien to the poem—another type of largescale non-conformance with the BRD. The frequent irregularities in declamation, in fact, can largely be ascribed to Brahms’s manner of using triple meter. As is mentioned above, the poem suggests duple meter (as in ex. 1.15a), or, with regular elongation of stressed syllables, triple meter (ex. 1.15b). Brahms, however, uncompromisingly forces the duple-metered poem into a triple meter devoid of regularity of elongation. Interestingly, he begins the vocal line with a hemiola, thus suggesting the duple meter that governs the poem (see the duple durations shown by brackets at the beginning of ex. 1.15c). The prevailing dissonance between the poetic and musical rhythm as well as the

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metrical dissonance of the hemiola create a subtle tension that is surely linked to the various negative aspects that the poet ascribes to the day: wounds (mm. 13–14), garish brightness (m. 26), and loudness (m. 27)—all of which are dispelled by the evening. The use of a musical meter that does not emerge naturally from the poetic rhythm is common in Brahms’s songs. In most cases, the situation is as in “Abenddämmerung”—a duple-meter poem is set in triple meter.27 A song that has often been criticized for its declamation, “Wie bist du meine Königin,” op. 32, no. 9, provides another illustration. The poem suggests duple meter (see ex. 1.16a),28 or, with elongation of stressed syllables, a regular triple-meter setting of the type shown in example 1.16b. Brahms sets the poem in 83 time, but avoids regular elongation and correspondence between stress and metrical accent, such that the musical meter and the poetic rhythm are almost always at odds (ex. 1.16c). The weak initial syllable “Wie” is strongly marked in Brahms’s setting as the first vocal downbeat. The first syllable of “mei-,” not strongly stressed in a normal declamation of the poem, is emphasized by downbeat placement as well as elongation. The initial two syllables of the significant word “Königin” (queen) are, surprisingly, squeezed into the last beat of a measure, whereas the unstressed final syllable appears on a downbeat. The first statement of the word “wonnevoll” is treated in the same manner. The important word “Lenzdüfte” (spring breezes) flits by during the last three sixteenth-notes of a measure, its stressed first syllable being placed on a weak sixteenth-note pulse. The foot durations, unlike those in my hypothetical vocal lines (exx. 1.16a and 1.16b), are irregular and unpredictable. Despite these oddities, there are indications that Brahms was not simply riding roughshod over the poetic rhythm. For example, at the passage in the second strophe that is parallel to “Güte wonnevoll” (mm. 10–11), he deviates from the vocal rhythm of the first strophe, thereby avoiding an infelicitous placement of the unstressed last syllable of “deinigen” on the downbeat of measure 30 (compare the hypothetical setting in example 1.16d to Brahms’s actual setting in example 1.16e).29 We can assume that he gave the poem equally careful consideration throughout, and that he had good reasons for all of his choices. Although I see no large-scale poetic motivation for Brahms’s idiosyncratic three-eight setting, the unexpected declamation that results from his application of this meter can often be explained with reference to the sense of individual words. The emphasis on “mei-” (my) in measure 7, for instance, suggests the reveling in the possession of the beloved, a common theme in love poetry (Wilhelm Müller’s “Mein” being a paradigmatic example); this emphasis may be a distortion of the expected declamation, but from the standpoint of the meaning of the poem, it is a legitimate reading. The quickness of the declamation of “Lenzdüfte” in measure 13 suggests a sudden breeze bringing the scents of spring.

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Example 1.16a. “Wie bist du, meine Königin,” op. 32, no. 9, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line in duple meter 1= )

' A  ' '  

+ + *+ + A A A A

A* A A* A    

* *

bist du, mei - ne

Wie 2

Kö - ni - gin, durch sanf - te

2

A* A A* 'A     *

Gü - te

won - ne - voll! Du

2 etc.

' * + *+ A  ' ' A A A  läch - le

*+ * A A A A 

* -A* A A* 

A 

A* A A* A    

nur Lenz - düf - te wehn durch mein Ge - mü - te

A* + *+ I  A A *

won - ne - voll!

Example 1.16b. “Wie bist du, meine Königin,” beginning, hypothetical BRDconformant vocal line in triple meter * * * * * A A** A A* ' A * + *  ' '   A A A A A A A A+ A A A   Wie bist

du, mei - ne

3

3

Kö - ni - gin, durch san - fte

Gü - te

won - ne - voll!

3 etc.

Example 1.16c. “Wie bist du, meine Königin,” mm. 6–20, Brahms’s vocal line * * * 0 * * A A * *+ + * * '  A A* A A{ A I 'A A* A+ 0 0 { A A I ? A A '  '     ! A A A   A A A  ! ! !

6

Wie bist du, mei - ne Kö - ni - gin, durch sanf- te Gü - te won - ne - voll! Du läch - le [1.5] [1] 2.5 1 2.5 2.5 1 2 2 2.5 1.5 2.5

* ' *+ A -A* A A* { ' ' {  A ! ! ! 

A !

13

A* A A* A ! ! 

<

nur Lenz - düf- te wehn durch mein Ge - mü - te 2 1 1 2.5

A* A * I A* + * I  A A A *

*

won - ne - voll, won - ne - voll! 3 3 2 [1] 2

Example 1.16d. “Wie bist du, meine Königin,” mm. 28–30, hypothetical vocal line, corresponding to Brahms’s line at mm. 9–11 *+ '  ' '  ? A0 A

ver - gleich 1.5

Murphy.indd 35

A{ 

+ A

*

ich

ihn 2.5

* * A A A ! ! !

A*

A

I

dem dei - ni - gen? 1

2.5

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Example 1.16e. “Wie bist du, meine Königin,” op. 32, mm. 28–30, Brahms’s vocal line

A{ 

+ A

*+ '  ' '  ? A0 A

28

ver - gleich

ich

1.5

* A A* !

*

ihn

dem

dei

2.5

A A *A ! ! 

-

I

ni - gen? 1.5

2

Example 1.16f. “Wie bist du, meine Königin,” op. 32, mm. 44–60, Brahms’s vocal line * * ' + * 0 *  ' '  A+ A+ 'A A { A A0 A0 'A

44

Durch to - te

*+ ' +  ' ' A -A A ob fürch - ter

' ' '

<

*

Wüs - ten wand -le hin,

50

55

* * A * + * I A+ A+ -A -A { A A ! -A A I !  !

*

0 *0 0 * A -A A A

+ A {

'A 

*

*

-

und grü - ne Schat - ten brei - ten sich,

li - che Schwü -le

'A* *

'A 

A *

won - ne - voll,

dort

I

A 

ohn

A* *

+ -A

+ A

A

En - de

brü

A*  *

* *

A

+ A

+ 'A

*

*

A

-

te,

I

won - ne - won - ne - voll.

It is noteworthy that at the end of each strophe, Brahms employs BRDconformant triple-time declamation (similar to that shown at the end of example 1.16b) for the final word “wonnevoll.” This gesture, resulting in a resolution of the dissonance between poetic and musical meter, contributes to a sense of closure at the ends of sections. Furthermore, the relative slowness of this BRDconformant declamation, partitioned off from the preceding quicker declamation and with added repetitions (the poet stated “wonnevoll” only once in each stanza), creates an appropriate sensation of blissful contemplation of the beloved. The effect of resolution and contemplation is enhanced in the third and most modified of the four strophes (ex. 1.16f). Here, the unusual declamation is allied with the minor mode, with strong pitch dissonances, and with a modulation to ♭II—a large-scale dissonance against the tonic harmony. All of this occurs during the most negative images in the song—deserts, shadows, fearful sultriness. The restoration of BRD-conformant declamation at “wonnevoll” coincides with the disappearance of pitch dissonance, and with the return to the tonic key in the major mode.

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Example 1.17a. “Mädchenfluch,” op. 69, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line in duple meter 1= /

*   A A

A A *

A A

A A *

Ruft die

Mut - ter,

2

2

ruft der 2

Toch - ter 2

A

A A

A

A

 A A “Ist,

o

Ma - ra,

lie - be

A A

*

ü - ber 2

Toch - ter,

ist

* *

N

N

drei Ge - bir 2

A A

A A

A

A* A

*

-

ge: 4 etc.

N

N

ge - bleicht das

Lin

-

nen?”

Example 1.17b. “Mädchenfluch,” op. 69, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line in triple meter

  N

A N

*

Ruft

A N

A N

*

*

die Mut - ter, ruft

3

3

*

der Toch - ter 3

A N{

* A N

A N

*

**

ü - ber drei

3

3

Ge - bir 3

N{ -

ge:

6

Example 1.17c. “Mädchenfluch,” op. 69, mm. 3–10, Brahms’s vocal line

0 *   A+{ A A {

3

+ A

*

Ruft die Mut - ter, 1

 A { A! A {

7

*

“Ist,

2

*

o Ma

-

* + A0 A { { A

ruft der Toch - ter 1

+ A ra,

2

*+ 0 * A{ A A {

2

2

* * * + *+ A{ A A A A A{ !  !

*

ü - ber drei Ge - bir

2

1

+ A

lie - be Toch - ter,

ist

ge - bleicht

A

-

ge:

+ A A * *

das

@ [1] etc.

3

1

*+ 0 * A{ A A{

A

A

@

Lin - nen?”

In some of Brahms’s songs in an unexpected meter, his metric choice has to do with deep-level, large-scale aspects of the poem.30 One such song is “Mädchenfluch,” op. 69, no. 9. The poem is in regular trochaic, therefore duple meter; a hypothetical 42 setting is shown in example 1.17a. A BRDconformant triple-meter setting would, of course, be feasible (ex. 1.17b). Brahms begins with an unexpected vocal rhythm within the latter meter (ex. 1.17c): he frequently elongates the second and fourth stresses of lines (mm. 3–4, 7–9, 11, etc.), and places them on second beats of the 43 measures. The elongations occur at important words—“mother,” “daughter,” “Mara” (the daughter’s name), etc.—so that the declamation feels logical, even if the second-beat accents result in metrical displacement dissonance.

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This displaced but regular rhythm alternates with another that departs more drastically from the expectations for 43 meter and, in some respects, also from the BRD. This rhythm involves two dotted eighth/sixteenth-note groups followed by a pair of tied quarter-notes, the tie crossing a bar-line (e.g., mm. 5–6, 17–18). The tied pair, always associated with a strongly stressed syllable, produces an appropriate durational accent; on the other hand, the tie always begins on a third beat, so that the strongly stressed syllable is metrically under-accented. While in one sense this rhythm deviates from the BRD, in another sense it approaches it: the rhythm results in a hemiola (see the 2s above the staves in example 1.17c). It is as if the duple meter of the poem is rattling the bars of the triple meter within which Brahms has imprisoned it. The duple meter becomes more prominent from measure 21 (ex. 1.17d); the displaced triple layer disappears for a time, and the elongated and registrally accented second beat in measure 20 initiates a series of duple groupings of the quarter-note pulse (as shown by the numbers above the vocal line in measures 20–35). Not all of the duple groupings realize the implications of a regular duple-meter BRD; the words “taucht ich noch das” in measures 21 and 23, for example, go by very quickly, while “Linnen” in measures 21–22 and 23–24 is elongated (cf. mm. 5–6 and 17–18). But in measures 25–27 and 31–33, the duple groups are perfectly in accord with the BRD; the vocal rhythm is much like the hypothetical one shown in example 1.17a, except that there are some dotted rhythms. At this point, Brahms maintains the triple-meter notation—but slightly later (after a brief resurgence of the initial non-conformant triple-meter rhythms in measures 39ff.), the poem’s duple meter succeeds in breaking out of its triple-meter cage (ex. 1.17e). The process of liberation of an “imprisoned” duple meter is repeated in compressed form in the final section of the song (mm. 101–28). There are at least two ways of interpreting the relationship between this process and the meaning of the poem. First, it is noteworthy that the duple meter is first freed of its triple-meter shackles when the maiden progresses from announcing that she will curse her lover to actually cursing him; therefore, the full emergence of the concealed duple meter (originating in the poem) coincides with and possibly represents the surfacing of the maiden’s repressed hostility. But a second interpretation is perhaps more convincing. The maiden’s curses are strangely ambivalent; immediately after wishing some dire fate upon her lover, she recasts her wish in positive terms (e.g., the wish that he would hang himself on an evil tree yields to the wish that he would cling to her white throat). The maiden’s ambivalence is perfectly mirrored by the prevailing conflict between the duple poetic meter and the notated triple meter of the music.31 “O kühler Wald,” op. 72, no. 3, is another striking example of the pervasively irregular setting of a regular poem. The simple BRD of Brentano’s poem

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Example 1.17d. “Mädchenfluch,” op. 69, mm. 19–35, Brahms’s vocal line *  * + *+ 0 * { + *+ 0 *+ 0 ** A{ A -A { A A A A{ A A { A A A A @    A { A! 2

19

2

* * A{ A A { A A  !  !

2

2

taucht ich noch das Lin -

“Nicht ins Was - ser, lie - be Mutter, taucht ich noch das Lin - nen, 1

1

2

  A A -A  2

24

-

nen,

2

 

2

denn, o sieh, 2 2

2

<

A{ A A  *

Wie dann erst, [2]

2

2

(2)

A A @ *

2 2

2

*

A A @

o lie - be

2

(2)

*

Mut -ter,

1

* * * + A0 A { A+ N { A 2

2

Ja - wo mir 1

2

A

ge - trü - bet. 3

2

* * + A A{ A N  A{ ! 2

*

2

2

A

*

hätt ich es [1]

2

2

1

*

[1]

2

A A A A 

[1]

3

es hat das Was - ser

2

(2)

1

2

*

*

1 * I A+ A A

A{ A A  *

4 30

2

2

*

*

1

ge - bleicht schon!”

2

3

Example 1.17e. “Mädchenfluch,” op. 69, mm. 51–58, Brahms’s vocal line * * * *  * + * *    A{ A A{ A A A A A A A I A A A A

51

Gä - be Gott 2

im

2

hel - len 2

Him - mel, 2

dass er 2

sich er 2

* A{ A A{ I  *

häng

-

e!

4

could be notated in even half-note values, and in duple meter (ex. 1.18a), but elongation of all or alternate stressed syllables yields the triple-time variants of the BRD shown in example 1.18b and 1.18c. Brahms’s setting, shown in example 1.18d, eschews the duple BRD (although the hemiola at measures 8–9 could be regarded as a momentary allusion to it), and uses the triple variants only occasionally. In measures 11–13, and only there, he employs the rhythm shown in example 1.18b,32 and in measures 4, 16, and 18, he uses rhythms related to example 1.18c. Otherwise, Brahms’s vocal rhythm does not appear to grow out of the poetic rhythm at all. He does not elongate syllables in the predictable manners shown in examples 1.18b and 1.18c; elongations always occur at stressed syllables, but usually at relatively weak stresses (“Wald,” “du,” “dem,” etc.) rather than at the strongest ones (“rauschest,” “Liebchen”). Why this tension between poetic and musical rhythm? Again, there is a large-scale textual reason. The first stanza of Brentano’s poem presents the positive and comforting images of a cool, soughing forest in which the beloved walks, and of

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Example 1.18a. “O kühler Wald,” op. 72, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line in duple meter 1= *

'  ' ''  N

*

N

O

-

küh

*

N

N

ler

Wald,

dem

* *

N

wo

N

N*

mein

Lieb

-

N

N

N

chen

geht?

N

du,

in

2 etc.

2

*

*

N

rau - schest

2

2

'' * ' ' N

N

K

*

K

Example 1.18b. “O kühler Wald,” op. 72, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line in triple meter, with elongation of all stressed syllables

'  ' ''  N

*

3

küh

O

-

*

3

N

ler

Wald,

3

N

* *

3 rau

wo

-

*

N

3

schest

du,

3

3

3

Example 1.18c. “O kühler Wald,” op. 72, beginning, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line in triple meter with elongation of alternate stressed syllables

'  ' ''  A O

N{ *

*

A A

A

N{ * *

*

A A A

küh - ler Wald, wo rau - schest du, in 2 1 1 2

N{ *

dem 2

A A* A *

N{ *

@

mein Lieb - chen geht? 2 1

an echo that understands the poet’s song—but these images are presented as goals of desire rather than actualities. The second stanza renders these images even more elusive. The forest where the beloved walks exists only within the poet’s heart, not in the external world. The echo is silenced by pain, and the wind disperses the poet’s songs.33 The dissonance between poetic and musical rhythm throughout the song subtly reinforces the predominantly pessimistic tone of the poem. More specifically, the music’s apparent inability to join comfortably with the poem suggests the poet’s incapacity to reach the place of understanding and love for which he longs.

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Example 1.18d. “O kühler Wald,” Brahms’s vocal line

'  ' ''  A

O

A{

küh 1.25

-

*

*

lau - schest du, 1.75

'' ' ' K

K

'' * + * ' ' A{ A N

15

*

Her 3

@ A N{

* '' *  ' ' 'A { A N{

19

*

Wie - der - hall, 1.75

* '  ' ''  N{

23

*

-A

weht,

-

dem 2

zen

A A* *

* A A N *

die Lie - der sind 2 1

sind

-A

ver - weht, 1.5

3* *

@

wo 1.25

A @ K

@ A

rauscht der Wald, 1.25 1.75 * @ A N{

da [.5] 1.25

* A A{ A 

in Schmer - zen schlief der 2 2.5 2

[1.5]

K

A

ver - steht? 2

K

*

mein Lieb - chen geht, 1 1.5

*

*

da

'A N

2

+ * A{ A N

-N

tief,

[.5]

* *

3

* * A A -A N

N{

mein Lied 2

'3

A

in

Wie - der - hall, 1.25 1.75

*

*

@

+ * A N

*

A{

A -A N* 'A A N*

'N

*

rauscht der Wald, in 1.25 [.5]

O

mein Lied, 2

*

A

[1.5]

*

3

Im

@

-A N*

der gern 2

N

rau - schest du, 1.25 1.25

K

*

* @ A N{

'' * + *  ' ' A{ A N

11

N

+ * A N

* *

wo

mein Lieb - chen geht? 1 1.5

dem

A{

A

@

ler Wald, 1.75

A A* A

' *  ' '' N{

4

7

+ * A N

*

* * * @ A A A A A A A 

[1.5]

A @

*

die Lie - der sind 1.5 1

K

ver -

<

ver - weht.

3

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Example 1.19a. “In Waldeseinsamkeit,” op. 85, hypothetical BRD-conformant vocal line 1= /

    (

A* A A* A A* A* A A* A A * @ K @ A A A A *

*

Ich sass zu dei - nen Fü - ssen in Wal-des - ein - sam - keit; 2 1 [1] 2 2 2 2 2

A -A    A @

A A -A

* *

*

* *

@ @ A A A *

Seh - nen ging durch die Wip - fel breit. [1] [2] 2 2 2 2

In

[3]

* *

A

A -A A *

Win - des - at - men, 2 2

* * * * A A A A -A A -A A @ A *

das stum - mem Rin - gen senkt ich 2 1 [1] 2 1.5 2

* *   A* -A A* A -A* @ @ A 'A* A -A* 'A* + * -A @ A A A A A   A A  *

*

*

*

Haupt in dei -nen Schoss, und mei - ne be - ben - den Hän - de um dei - ne Knie ich [2] [1] 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2

  *  A @

@

schloss.

A* A A* A

A

Die [2]

   A @ K all,

[3]

2

* *

A A @

A

A* A A* A A *

der Tag ver - glüh - te Son - ne ging hin - un - ter, 2 1 [1] 2 2 2

A* A A A

* * A* A @ @ -A* A A A* A 

fer - ne, fer - ne 2 2

fer - ne, 2

[2]

2

A @ K *

sang ei-ne Nach - ti - gall. 2 3

A Final Example: “In Waldeseinsamkeit” I conclude with a discussion of a song that uses a number of the declamatory devices mentioned earlier with consummate artistry. The first stanza of “In Waldeseinsamkeit,” op. 85, no. 6, begins by outlining the situation: the poet sits at his beloved’s feet in the lonely forest, the wind breathing through the trees. But the emotional intensity increases sharply with the statement that yearning breathes through the trees along with the wind. Brahms sets the matter-of-fact beginning with primarily BRD-conformant declamation; a comparison of the opening of his vocal line, shown in example 1.19b, to the hypothetical BRD-conformant line in example 1.19a, reveals only minor differences. The irregularities in foot durations in Brahms’s setting result from his occasional use of dotted rhythms, and from his use of a half-note at “Füssen” instead of the expected quarter-note. At measure 8, there is a more significant deviation from the BRD: the word “Sehnen” (longing)—precisely

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the word that projects the poem into a more emotion-laden realm—is substantially elongated. The setting of the second stanza (mm. 10–19) departs even more drastically from the BRD. The shorter note values in measures 11–12 do not in themselves disrupt the BRD; because Brahms uses melismas, the rate of declamation remains unchanged. These faster note values, however, render the subsequent three quarter-note duration of the word “Haupt” (m. 12) all the more striking. It is appropriate that this word be linked durationally to the earlier elongation at “Sehnen,” for the protagonist’s placing of his head in the beloved’s lap is a gesture that grows out of his longing.34 After the elongation of “Haupt,” the sudden increase in declamatory pace at “und meine bebenden Hände” (and my trembling hands) is shocking. Here, the eighth-note rhythm does have a direct impact on the BRD, for the declamation is syllabic rather than melismatic; notice the dramatic reduction in foot duration during the line “und meine bebenden Hände.”35 The declamation remains quick throughout the description of the protagonist’s encircling the beloved’s knees with his trembling hands. During his setting of this portion of the poem, Brahms also several times presents strong stresses on beats other than the downbeat. The final stanza of the poem describes the quiet of evenfall. Brahms begins his setting of this stanza (mm. 20ff) with the slow, BRD-conformant declamation of the opening, which is then further slowed during the threefold statement of the word “ferne” (distant)—an indescribably melancholy effect, truly evocative of great distance. The deviations from the BRD in the central section effectively highlight the agitation of the protagonist, in such marked contrast to the peace of nature that surrounds him. Here, as always, Brahms attunes his declamation in a masterly manner to the emotional content of the poem.

Conclusion We have seen that Brahms declaims poetry in many different ways. Sometimes he stays close to the expected rhythm of declamation; at other times he ventures far from it. Two diametrically opposed categories of settings are especially common: those in which the bulk of the vocal line is BRD-conformant and deviations (usually in the form of elongations) occur only occasionally; and those in which the majority of the vocal line does not conform to the BRD, but in which there are occasional allusions to the BRD so that the poetic rhythm is not entirely absent from the setting (recall the refrain “wonnevoll” in “Wie bist du meine Königin,” the hemiolas in “Mädchenfluch,” and the BRDconformant moments in “O kühler Wald”). Brahms’s declamatory choices can invariably be explained with reference to the text; his unusual, unpredictable declamation or, conversely, his progressions from BRD-conformant to

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Example 1.19b. “In Waldeseinsamkeit,” op. 85, Brahms’s vocal line

    (

A* { A A* A N* A  3

A* { A A* A A * @ K  A A A

*

*

Ich sass zu dei - nen Fü - ssen in Wal - des - ein - sam keit; 2.5 3 1.5 1 [1] 2.5 1.5 1.5 /

A -A A

* *

*

A

Win - des - at - men, 2 2

[3]

* * *   * A -A A -A * { -A* + * A* A   A A A A @ @ I A A A A A -A A -A A A A  A  

8

*

*

*

Seh - nen ging durch die Wip - fel breit. In stum - mem Rin - gen senkt ich das Haupt [2.5] 3.5 [1] 2 1.5 2 3.5 2 1.5 2 .5 [1] / /

  A -A A* A -N* I A 'A* A -A* 'A* + *+ + IA -A* A *+ + * I A -A* A        A A -A    A A A   

13

*

*

*

*



in dei - nen Schoss, und mei - ne be - ben -den Hän-de umdei - ne Knie ich schloss, und mei- ne 1 [.5] 1 1.5 [.5] 2 3 [.5] 1 .83 .66 1

*   * *+ + + * + *    A -A A+ A+ A IA EA+ A A N

17

*

*

*



be - ben - den Hän - de

Knie 3

*

*

un - ter, der Tag ver - glüh - te all,

A A A { A  A @

  -N*   

28

* *

sang 4

N*

K

*

K

ich schloss. 3

A* { A A* A A * @ K   A A A

  *  N

22

um dei - ne

A N

Die Son - ne ging hin-

(as in m. 3)

A

N*

fer - ne, 4

A A N{ * *

* * @ A A{ A A A 

* @ N

A

*

fer - ne, 4

A N* {

A

* @ -N

fer - ne 4

@

@ [2] /

<

ei - ne Nach - ti - gall, sang ei - ne Nach - ti - gall. [1] 3 4 7

non-conformant declamation (and vice versa) adds a significant expressive dimension to his lieder. In his essay “The Relation to the Text,” Arnold Schoenberg wrote, “In all music composed to poetry, the exactitude of the reproduction of the events is as irrelevant to the artistic value as is the resemblance of a portrait to its model.”36 Brahms is not always a realistic portraitist, but with his distinctive declamation, he often captures elements of the character of his “model”—the poem—that an exact reproduction of the poetic rhythm would have missed.

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Notes 1.

Elisabeth von Herzogenberg to Johannes Brahms, March 1, 1878; in Johannes Brahms: The Herzogenberg Correspondence, ed. Max Kalbeck, trans. Hannah Bryant (New York: Da Capo Press, 1987), 48. Cited in Heather Platt, “TextMusic Relations in Lieder of Johannes Brahms” (Ph. D. diss., City University of New York, 1992), 63. Another source that implies dissatisfaction with Brahms’s declamation on the part of someone from his circle is a manuscript of “Die Kränze,” op. 46, no. 1, in which someone has penciled in a revision of the declamation in m. 12; see Jürgen Thym, “Johannes Brahms’s Autograph of “Die Kränze,” Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress, http://memory. loc.gov/ammem/collections/moldenhauer/2428116.pdf (accessed 3 April 2015). 2. “Hugo Wolf and the Reception of Brahms’s Lieder,” in Brahms Studies 2, ed. David Brodbeck (Lincoln: The American Brahms Society and University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 97–99. 3. See Wilhelm Kienzl, Die musikalische Declamation dargestellt an der Hand der Entwickelungssgeschichte des deutschen Gesanges (Leipzig: Verlag von Heinrich Matthes, 1885), 77–80; Hugo Wolf, letter to Melanie Köchert, August 20, 1890, in Hugo Wolf Briefe an Melanie Köchert, ed. Franz Grasberger (Tutzing: Schneider, 1964), 11–12; Ernest Newman, “Brahms and Wolf as Lyricists,” The Musical Times 56, nos. 871–72 (September and October 1915): 523–25 and 585–88 respectively, and “Hugo Wolf and the Lyric,” The Musical Times 56, nos. 873–74 (November and December 1915): 649–50 and 718–22 respectively. These sources are cited and discussed in Heather Platt, “Jenner Versus Wolf: The Critical Reception of Brahms’s Songs,” Journal of Musicology 13, no. 3 (1995): 381–82. 4. Platt discusses these accusations in “Hugo Wolf and The Reception of Brahms’s Lieder,” esp. 104–5. 5. See Gustav Jenner, “Johannes Brahms as Man, Teacher, and Artist,” trans. Susan Gillespie, in Brahms and His World, ed. Walter Frisch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 197. 6. Richard Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Johannes Brahms, 2nd ed., ed. Kurt Hofmann (Tutzing: Schneider, 1976), 14. 7. George Bozarth, booklet for Johannes Brahms Lieder (Berlin: Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, 1983), 42–43; cited in Platt, “Text and Music Relations,” 29. 8. Compare, for example, mm. 5–8 of Brahms’s two settings of Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s “Liebe und Frühling I,” op. 3, nos. 2a and 2b: Brahms tries out two different metrical placements of the lines “wie sich weiße Winden schlingen / luftig  .  .  .  ,” beginning on the downbeat in the first setting and midmeasure in the second. 9. Wilhelm Kienzl, Die musikalische Declamation, 77. 10. Hugo Riemann, “Die Taktfreiheiten in Brahms’ Liedern,” Die Musik 12, no. 1 (1912): 11.

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11. George Bozarth, booklet for Johannes Brahms Lieder, 42–43. 12. “Brahms’s Metrical Dramas: Rhythm, Text Expression, and Form in the Solo Lieder” (Ph. D. diss., University of Rochester, 1997). 13. Malin, Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 153. 14. See Rohr, “Brahms’s Metrical Dramas: Rhythm, Text Expression, and Form in the Solo Lieder” (PhD diss., Eastman School of Music, 1997), 44, 149–53, and Malin, Songs in Motion, 154. Heather Platt refers to the possibility of “programmatic declamation” (“Text-Music Relations,” 80). She cites Rufus Hallmark and Ann Fehn’s article “Text and Music in Schubert’s Pentameter Lieder,” 223–44, and Jürgen Thym’s “The Solo Settings of Eichendorff’s Poems by Schumann and Wolf” (PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1974), 317–22, as earlier treatments of this topic with reference to other composers. 15. I discuss the concept of BRD at greater length in “Fancy Footwork: Distortions of Poetic Rhythm in Robert Schumann’s Late Songs,” Indiana Theory Review 28 (2010): 69–73. See also “Motion and Emotion: The Expressive Use of Declamatory Irregularity in the Lieder of Richard Strauss,” Music Theory and Analysis 1 (October 2014): 8–11. 16. Deborah Rohr warns against these notions in “Brahms’s Metrical Dramas,” 7. 17. The idea of multi-level stress in verse is propounded in numerous contemporary sources, for example, Nigel Fabb and Morris Halle, Meter in Poetry: A New Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 18. My multi-level asterisk notation is adapted from the notation developed by Morris Halle, who employs it in all of his writings on poetic stress, including the work cited above. Not all poems require two layers of asterisks. 19. Musical notation of poetic rhythm has frequently been used in the analysis of poetic rhythm. Poets who had some musical knowledge have attempted to capture aspects of poetic rhythm with musical notation: in his intriguing poem Concerto dramatico, for instance, Goethe assigned appropriate time signatures to the various rhythmically contrasting sections. For recent examples of the use of musical notation in discussions of poetic rhythm, see R. T. Oehrle, “Temporal Structures in Verse Design,” in Phonetics and Phonology, Rhythm and Meter, ed. Paul Kiparsky and Gilbert Youmans (San Diego: Academic Press, 1989), 87–119 (esp. p. 91), and John Halle and Fred Lerdahl, “A Generative Textsetting Model,” Current Musicology 55 (1993): 3–23. 20. I restrict the square-bracket notation to rests at line ends (in poems in which line ends are articulated by silences), and to unexpected rests within lines. I absorb less salient, regularly occurring rests within lines into the poetic feet. 21. George Bozarth makes this argument in “The Lieder of Johannes Brahms, 1869–71: Studies in Chronology and Compositional Process” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1978), 98. 22. Malin discusses such changes and their possible expressive motivation in Brahms’s “Liebestreu,” op. 3, no. 1, in Songs in Motion, 156–57. 23. The very opening of the poem is not strictly iambic; “Wie wenn im” would be declaimed as a dactyl. Brahms sets “Wie wenn” as an iamb, thus maintaining

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24.

25. 26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33. 34. 35.

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rhythmic consistency at the opening of his vocal line; this forced regularity functions as a foil for the latter irregularities. This line departs from the prevailing iambic tetrameter, thus constituting an irregularity in this mostly rhythmically regular poem: it consists of three feet— an iamb and two amphibrachs. The surprising brevity of this line accounts in part for the three-measure duration of Brahms’s setting—but had Brahms so desired, he could have elongated it by applying in m. 36 the melismatic setting used for “schauert” in m. 35. He was clearly aiming for an unpredictable declamation at this point of the song. Deborah Rohr briefly discusses the irregular vocal rhythm of “Meerfahrt,” “Brahms’s Metrical Dramas,” 29–30. Scott Murphy pointed out to me that the unexpectedness of this hemiola in the vocal incipit is mitigated by the last two measures of the piano introduction (mm. 5–6), where each of three harmonies occupies a half-note duration. Deborah Rohr mentions this practice in “Brahms’s Metrical Dramas,” 249; she cites the Daumer settings “Wenn du nur zuweilen lächelst,” op. 57, no. 2, and “Unbewegte laue Luft, op. 57, no. 8, as examples of duple-meter texts set in triple meter. Walter Hammermann provides a hypothetical vocal line in 42 time, albeit a less regular one, in “Brahms als Liedkomponist: Eine theoretisch-ästhetische Stiluntersuchung” (PhD diss., Universität Leipzig, 1912), 66. Konrad Giebeler discusses the aptness of Brahms’s vocal rhythm at “deinigen” in Die Lieder von Johannes Brahms: Ein Beitrag zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (PhD diss., Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 1959), 36. Deborah Rohr gives one example: she suggests that the conflict between duple poetic meter and triple musical meter in “Wenn du nur zuweilen lächelst,” op. 57, no. 2, is linked to the irony in the poem (see “Brahms’s Metrical Dramas,” 249). In a setting by Nicholas Rubinstein of what can only be conjectured as a different translation of the same anonymous Serbian poem, the ambivalent, conflicted remarks of the maiden are split between the mother and daughter: the mother does the cursing, and the daughter does the positive recasting. Perhaps Brahms’s translator, Siegfried Kapper, got it wrong and fused what was originally a dialogue into the daughter’s speeches. If so, this was a felix culpa; the ambivalence in the daughter’s speeches inspired interesting conflicts in Brahms’s setting. Rohr mentions this passage as a significant turning point in both poem and music, but does not comment on its conformance with the poetic rhythm; see “Brahms’s Metrical Dramas,” 95. Rohr discusses alternatives for the performance of this unexpected vocal rhythm, “Brahms’s Metrical Dramas,” 97–98. The two moments are also linked by the use of the highest vocal register; I thank Scott Murphy for this observation. Some hastening of the declamation is built into the poem: the word “bebenden” contains an “extra” syllable, which must be pronounced quickly (so that

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“trembling” is suggested even by the poetic rhythm). Brahms’s introduction of triplet rhythm, however, renders the hastening much more prominent than it needed to be (see m. 15 of ex. 1.19a for a more leisurely option). 36. Arnold Schoenberg, “The Relation to the Text,” in Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 144.

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Chapter Two

Temporal Disruptions and Shifting Levels of Discourse in Brahms’s Lieder Heather Platt

In his articles on Brahms’s lieder in the 1915 Musical Times, Ernest Newman maligned the composer’s rhythm as “primitive,” and opined that many instances of supposed rhythmic subtlety are merely manneristic “metrical fidgetiness.”1 Although a century has passed since these aspersions were cast, only in recent decades have music theorists developed the types of analytical tools needed to refute criticisms such as Newman’s, and to fully grasp the complexity and expressive power of the rhythms in Brahms’s lieder. Yonatan Malin has offered one of the most significant contributions to this endeavor.2 Drawing on the rhythmic theories developed by Harald Krebs and Richard Cohn, he parses lieder using the types of syncopations and hemiolas that Krebs labels as displacement and grouping dissonances, respectively. Notwithstanding the acuity and sensitivity of Malin’s analysis, these are not the only rhythmic techniques that contribute to the expressiveness of Brahms’s lieder. In this article I will explore the types of abrupt temporal disruptions and subsequent slowing of the prevailing pulse that Frank Samarotto has termed changes in temporal plane.3 The most startling of these types of shifts occur in shorter songs, which do not include other strongly contrasting passages, and the new pulse is maintained for a brief time before the initial pacing is restored. These contrasting planes are not accompanied by notated changes in tempo or labels such as recitative, but they are paired with dissonances that usually create a harmonic diversion. Despite their disruptive character, the rhythms and harmonies of the slower

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temporal plane are tightly integrated with the surrounding phrases. Moreover, their expressive or dramatic power is a significant element in Brahms’s perceptive interpretations of his songs’ texts, and in many cases their relationships to the sections in the prevailing faster pace (including the conflicts they might create) are crucial to a song’s dramatic trajectory. I will focus on two songs, “O kühler Wald” (op. 72, no. 3) from 1877 and “Mein Herz ist schwer” (op. 94, no. 3) from 1883–84, in which the appearance of unexpected elongated pulses is coordinated with changes to other elements, including harmony, phrase structure, texture, or dynamics. In both songs, the arrival of the slower temporal plane is preceded by an abrupt discontinuation of the established pacing. As Robert S. Hatten has noted, these types of interruptions to the unmarked or expected flow of events are very much like “the way a stream of consciousness may shift from present to past event or imagined future.”4 That is, the new temporal plane creates a shift in the level of discourse. “O kühler Wald” and “Mein Herz ist schwer” are characterized by some of the most dramatic temporal disruptions in all of Brahms’s lieder. By contrast, many of his other lieder employ changes in pacing to underscore less dramatic changes in voice or emphases. In order to further highlight the unusual aspects of “O kühler Wald” and “Mein Herz ist schwer,” I will conclude by briefly describing works demonstrating these types of less pronounced shifts in the level of discourse.

“O kühler Wald” (Op. 72, No. 3) Brahms excerpted two stanzas from Clemens Brentano’s four-stanza poem “O kühler Wald,” and arranged them so that the first stanza’s question “Where do you murmur, O cool forest?” is answered by the second stanza’s “deep in my heart.”5 As the score in example 2.1 shows, the two-measure segment setting this answer strongly contrasts with the surrounding phrases (mm. 12–13). It is the most chromatic in the song, it has longer notes and softer dynamics, and it begins after a cadence in which the concluding dominant seventh slowly fades away to silence. It is as if time has been suspended, and the protagonist journeys deep into his heart—to an earlier time—where he adoringly gazes at his beloved. The distance of this memory is clearly marked by the sudden appearance of ♭VI and the concomitant turn to the darker, pianissimo tonic minor. O kühler Wald, Wo rauschest du, In dem mein Liebchen geht? O Wiederhall, Wo lauschest du, Der gern mein Lied versteht?

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Example 2.1. “O kühler Wald,” op. 72, no. 3

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Example 2.1.—(concluded)

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Im Herzen tief, Da rauscht der Wald, In dem mein Liebchen geht, In Schmerzen schlief Der Wiederhall, Die Lieder sind verweht. Where do you murmur, O cool forest in which my darling walks? Where do you listen, O echo that gladly understands my song? Deep in my heart, there murmurs the forest in which my darling walks; the echo has fallen asleep in sorrows; the songs are dispersed.6

This type of momentary recollection of a lost love is of course the topic of numerous lieder: “Nachtigall” (op. 97, no. 1) is just one of Brahms’s other lieder in which such a bittersweet memory is set to changes in pacing, dynamics, and texture. William Kinderman describes similar instances in Schubert’s lieder as representing a change in perspective from the external to the internal— “from emotional desolation to the consolation of the imagination, the memory of the beloved.”7 Of the passages he mentions, the recollection of the kiss in Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” is the most similar to this segment in “O kühler Wald” in that it involves an abrupt change in pacing. While Brahms could have been influenced by the temporal nuances in Schubert’s lieder, he may also have been influenced by the types of abrupt and dramatic changes in pacing that characterize the instrumental works of Beethoven, as for example in the first movement of the String Quartet op. 130 (see m. 55ff.). Samarotto developed the concept of the temporal plane in response to these types of shifts. He defines temporal plane in an abstract manner “as a segment of relatively stable conditions”; and a change in plane as a sudden “change of several attributes at once and subsequent maintenance of the new set of attributes.”8 These contrasting segments and phrases, therefore, are not only characterized by a new level of pacing, but also by changes in other parameters, such as dynamics and phrase structure, and, most notably, by the introduction of chromatic harmonies. As a result of these changes occurring simultaneously a fissure with the preceding phrases is created; a break that Samarotto terms a disjunction. Samarotto proffers measures 89–116 of the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, op. 47, as an example of this type of abrupt change in plane.9 Like the excerpt in “O kühler Wald,” the new temporal plane is aurally marked by an abrupt shift in pacing, from eighth-notes to whole- and half-notes, coordinated with changes in dynamics, texture, and key. In both pieces, we have entered a state of suspension, an altered state of existence. Some of the other changes in plane in Beethoven’s works are somewhat less marked, but they are nevertheless highly effective. Musical recollections or

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quotations, for instance, may be underscored by a change in plane. Samarotto notes that Beethoven’s quotation of Florestan’s aria in the Leonore Overture no. 3, op. 72b, creates a new temporal plane, characterized by a change in pacing and the introduction of a chromatic pitch. As Schenker observed in Free Composition, this passage conveys a sense of distance, as in a dreamlike vision.10 It is this idea of a vision from another time or place that is similar to the effect Brahms creates in “O kühler Wald.” In some instances, a phrase in a new temporal plane can be understood as a parenthetical insertion: it could be excised and the harmonies of the surrounding measures would nevertheless form a logical structure. The twomeasure segment in the Brahms song functions this way. Even without measures 12–13 (as shown in ex. 2.2) it is possible to set all of the original text of stanza two. This could be done by excising Brahms’s repetition of the second line and placing the words of line 1, which he used in measures 12–13, with the tonic chords of measure 14.11 By omitting these two measures the song’s compound period form becomes clear. The initial antecedent and consequent (mm. 1–5 and 6–11) create a grand antecedent, which is followed by a grand consequent (mm. 14–25), comprising measures 14–17 as antecedent and measures 18–25 as consequent. The consequent in measures 6–11 is an expanded four-measure phrase (see ex. 2.3) that is substantially recomposed and extended in measures 18–25. This large-scale antecedentconsequent arrangement is a perfect match for the question-answer formulation of the text. In effect, the turn to the tonic minor in measures 12–13 interrupts the large-scale harmonic progression and, along with the slower pacing, it removes us from the time of the ongoing discourse, rather like a dream sequence in a movie. The significance of the switch to the minor mode is emphasized by a motivic repetition. Whereas the song’s opening and closing measures present a descending A-flat major triad in the bass, the lowest bass notes in measures 11–13 span an A-flat minor triad. The slower temporal planes in the Leonore excerpt and “O kühler Wald” involve ♭VI, a chord whose expressive power has been noted by numerous other writers. In particular, Susan McClary concludes that although the specific Example 2.2. Hypothetical beginning of stanza 2 of “O kühler Wald”

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Example 2.3. Four-measure prototype of “O kühler Wald,” mm. 6–11

meaning of any particular ♭VI chord or passage ultimately depends on its context, most instances “articulate central 19th-century problems of discontinuity, loss of confidence in the individual’s ability to determine his or her fate, and the turn from rational processes to the irrationality characteristic of Romanticism. A dual perception of external versus internal realities and an inability (or reluctance) to reconcile them adequately is at the root of these compositions.”12 While McClary focuses on discursive and parenthetical passages that employ ♭VI, my analysis of “O kühler Wald” goes beyond the slower pacing of the central “Im Herzen tief” segment to explore the manner in which its pitches and rhythms are connected to the surrounding sections of music, and the ways in which these connections are related to the protagonist’s plight. Ultimately, I will suggest that the protagonist’s struggle to come to terms with the past, or— to use McClary’s terminology—with his internal realities, are not only depicted by the slower temporal plane and its use of ♭VI, but also by the ways in which Brahms manipulates related pitch and rhythmic material throughout the song. Brahms’s question-and-answer layout of the text is marked not only by the “Im Herzen tief” segment but also by a contrasting mood for the grand consequent (mm. 14–25). This new mood implies that the protagonist is not in the same place or same state of mind as he was at the beginning of the song: the parenthetical plane in measures 12–13 has been transformative. The new, more active accompaniment, in which the tenor part transforms the bass’s descending tonic arpeggio of measures 1–2 into ascending eighth-note figures, depicts the rustling trees. But even more than this, the continuous arpeggiations loosen up the plodding chords, as if widening our vista as well as our metrical space. Imagine the rhapsodizing narrator opening up his entire relationship to the listener or reaching his arms out to embrace the image of his beloved. This opening of a broader metrical space is supported by the subsequent melodic phrases, which unlike those of stanza 1, remain in the high register and mostly employ stepwise motion. Scott Murphy interprets the transformation in stanza 2 as the site of a fascinating reversal: “The narrator’s subtle but provocative spatial metaphors open up a dual space where a forest can literally contain a human heart (as the heart

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of the ‘Liebchen’ of the first stanza), but .  .  . [can also] figuratively be ‘Im Herzen.’” He notes that a similar reversal occurs metrically, where the tonic meter (mm. 1–10) contains the “thinner” meter of measures 12–13, but then is itself contained by the “thicker” meter in measures 14–22.”13 The transformative character of measures 12–13 is also suggested by the somewhat unconventional treatment of the unusually voiced augmented sixth in measure 13, which leads from the two-measure segment into the beginning of the main part of the new stanza. The resolution of this dissonance comes as something of a shock, as the augmented sixth moves directly to the tonic, A-flat major. Commentators have noted the striking effect of this type of unusually voiced common-tone augmented sixth in some of Brahms’s other compositions, though some of these instances, including the entry into the recapitulation in the first movement of the Clarinet Sonata in F minor, op. 120, no. 1 (mm. 136–39), involve a resolution to a minor tonic. In “O kühler Wald” the return of the major tonic is all the more startling because the harmonies preceding the dissonance are in the tonic minor.14 Schubert used the same augmented sixth-to-major tonic progression, with the common tone in the bass voice to frame “Am Meer,” a song that Max Kalbeck claimed Brahms alluded to in the first version of his op. 8 Piano Trio. Like the protagonist in “O kühler Wald,” the narrator in Schubert’s song speaks of times past and the woman he still loves.15 Despite the striking contrasts of measures 12–13, and notwithstanding the related rhythmic and psychological transformations, the harmonies and rhythms of this central plane (mm. 12–13) are woven into the fabric of both stanzas. The slower temporal plane begins with an F-flat chord followed by a C♭7, and both F♭ and C♭ pitches reappear in the augmented sixth that concludes the segment (m. 13). Although measure 12 is the song’s first use of F♭, a C-flat chord had already appeared, in measure 8, at the center of a six-measure phrase. As the prototype in example 2.3 suggests, this phrase is based on a four-measure model.16 In Brahms’s version the third measure of this model is expanded by the insertion of a chromatic progression in which the C♭ first inversion chord and the melody’s momentary ascent to the high E♭ color the word “Lied.” But the C-flat first inversion chord, with its reintroduction of the piano’s lowest register, arrives after the high E♭, undercutting its strength and evoking the protagonist’s wistful mood. This phrase expansion, with its word repetitions, slower declamation rate, and hemiola, also creates a slight deceleration that subtly prepares for the cessation of motion on the dominant seventh in measure 11, which in turn provides a more immediate transition into the slower rhythmic plane. During the second phrase of stanza 2, C♭, F♭, and G♭s return as part of the tonicization of the tonic minor, which portrays the sorrowful sleep (mm. 17–19). And although C♭ does not return again, F♭ and G♭s reappear during

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the song’s last phrase (see the annotations in ex. 2.1). At the same time the melody repeats the descending minor third, E♭ to C, which had first appeared on the words “mein Liebchen” (m. 4), the bass line descends A♭–G♭–F–F♭, a chromatic variant of the falling third that had set “Herzen tief.” In this way measure 22 brings together the main themes of the piece: the lost beloved, the heartache, and the songs. The melody’s following, final gesture chromatically ascends a major third, from A♭ to C. As well as contrasting with the descending motions that characterize so much of the piece, including the melody of the “Im Herzen tief” segment, this rising third contrasts with the bass’s subsequent final arpeggiation down to the tonic. In this way, these contrasting vectors in the outer voices graphically depict the dispersion of the protagonist’s songs. Aside from these pitch relationships, the rhythms of the “Im Herzen tief” segment are also connected with those of the encircling stanzas. The type of whole- and half-note rhythms that characterize this segment had appeared in the bass line in measure 1, and in the tenor line at measures 4–5 as well as during the phrase expansion in measures 8–11. Nestled in these low registers with the thick, tree-like chords, these sustained rhythms are associated with the woman whose image is bought into focus as the tenor line of measures 10–11 ascends and leads into the “Im Herzen tief” segment (mm. 12–13). After this segment, however, half-note rhythms only reappear in the bass in measures 18–19, during the echo’s minor-mode sleep, and at the final alla breve cadence (mm. 23–25). As the voice begins its final ascent to C (m. 23), the piano seems to falter halfway through the word “verweht” (scatters), creating a low level disjunction. The eighth-note pulse of stanza 2 breaks off and the piano remains silent for the downbeat of measure 23. When it recommences on the second beat, the piano initiates a new half-note syncopated pattern, alternating notes and rests, that works against the melody’s adherence to the notated meter. As a result of the rests, the return of the A-flat chordal motif from measures 1–2, with its drawn out bass arpeggiation of the tonic triad, is displaced (perhaps in an analogous way to the lovers’ songs). But the dynamic markings above the righthand chords, which were not present during the repeated chords in measure 1, indicate a peak on the third half-note pulse of the measure, suggesting that this motif, unlike the bass’s descending arpeggio, is meant to align with the notated meter, albeit in a contrasting way to measure 1. These various rhythmic dissonances correlate to the contrary motion between the melody and bass line. It is as if the memories bought to the surface in measures 12–13 are once again dispatched to the very depths (in mm. 18–19) and then finally scattered in various directions and pacings (in mm. 23–25). But one wonders whether this represents a complete resolution of the protagonist’s anguish. Owing to the syncopated rhythms, the voice sounds its last note alone, without the piano. ^ along with the Moreover, its conclusion on 3^ rather than the more definitive 1, return of measures 1–2 in the piano, suggest continued disquiet: this is likely

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not the last time that the throbbing quarter-note chords (or heart) will quietly surge and subside.17 In many ways “O kühler Wald” matches Yonatan Malin’s description of reflective moments paired with rhythmic irregularities in Schubert’s lieder: “The poetic-cum-musical persona realizes the true intensity of his or her pain and longing. This may lead to catharsis, but it then typically becomes another moment in the journey, and the journey itself cycles back to song, memory, and trauma.”18 In Brahms’s “O kühler Wald,” the “Im Herzen tief” segment forms the dramatic crux, but it is the manipulation of this segment’s pitch and rhythmic components throughout the rest of the song that convey the psychological journey.

“Mein Herz ist schwer” (Op. 94, No. 3) Brahms’s setting of Emanuel Geibel’s “Mein Herz ist schwer” is in ternary form, with the start of the long inner section (mm. 10–34) being marked by an abrupt change in temporal plane at measure 10 (ex. 2.4). As in “O kühler Wald,” this new sustained plane is short lived, and the song soon resumes its faster pacing; indeed, the resumption of the initial eighth-note pacing is accompanied by the instruction Nach und nach lebhafter. Mein Herz ist schwer, mein Auge wacht, Der Wind fährt seufzend durch die Nacht; Die Wipfel rauschen weit und breit, Sie rauschen von vergangner Zeit. Sie rauschen von vergangner Zeit, Von großem Glück und Herzeleid, Vom Schloß und von der Jungfrau drin – Wo ist das Alles, Alles hin? Wo ist das Alles, Alles hin, Leid, Lieb’ und Lust und Jugendsinn? Der Wind fährt seufzend durch die Nacht, Mein Herz ist schwer, mein Auge wacht. My heart is heavy, my eyes enjoy no sleep, the wind rides sighing through the night; the treetops rustle on all sides; their rustling speak of times past. Their rustling speak of times past, of great happiness and heartache, of the castle and the maiden inside—where did all that go, all that go? Where did all that go, all that go—sorrow, love and pleasure, and youthful thoughts? The wind rides sighing through the night, my heart is heavy, my eyes enjoy no sleep.19

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Example 2.4. “Mein Herz ist schwer,” op. 94, no. 3, mm. 7–15

At first glance the piano’s half-note chords in measures 10–13 could be interpreted as representing the tall trees cited in the text.20 But this is a somewhat superficial interpretation: indeed, there seems to be a contradiction between the poem’s description of the rustling of the trees and the sustained rhythm of the chords. The sound of rustling trees, whispering of love, is referenced in numerous Romantic poems; as noted above, the murmuring forest of “O kühler Wald” is represented by eighth-note figurations. Measures 23–27 of Brahms’s “Meine Lieder” (op. 106, no. 4), however, afford a somewhat more interesting comparison with “Mein Herz” (though this is an example of a lower level shift in temporal plane, and is not preceded by an abrupt disjunction). Here the voice and right hand of the piano have sustained half-note chords but the bass retains the eighth-note pacing of the surrounding phrases and adds a new displacement figuration. In this way Brahms conveys the height and breadth of the cypress trees described in the text, while simultaneously evoking the shadows thrown by the movement of the branches. By contrast, in

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“Mein Herz” only the crescendo–decrescendo in each measure suggest the trees’ whispered sighs. It would seem, therefore, that the passage in the slower temporal plane in “Mein Herz ist Schwer” is not just about trees. Equally—perhaps even more— importantly, the slower pacing suggests the oppressive nature of heartache. Rather than moving on and recovering, the protagonist is held captive, frozen in a past time. The emotional drag of the longing for a lost time is produced not only by these slow-moving chords but also by the melody’s rhythm: measures 10 and 11 each comprise two repeated dotted half-notes. Whereas previous two-syllable words are set so that the first, accented syllable has a longer value, in these measures both syllables of each word are accorded a dotted half, producing a stilted, flat-footed effect. In measure 12, the word “weit,” which is set to the highest note of the song, is sustained for four quarter-note beats, making it one of the song’s longest notes. This extra length, combined with the piano’s dissonance, imparts a sense of yearning.21 An approximate augmentation of the rhythmic dyad (half-note tied to an eighth, followed by an eighth) that pervades the melodic line of the song is created when this long note on “weit” is followed by a half-note. This dyad employs the falling third that is often paired with the shorter rhythm (see, for example, mm. 7 and 14). Throughout the song, these rhythmic patterns convey the emotional tension of the poetic persona because the first note seems to be held for too long and the second rushes into the next beat. (Compare, for instance, the more regular half-note and quarter-note patterns in the melody of Brahms’s springtime love song “Geheimnis” (op. 71, no. 3), in 46 meter—yet another song featuring whispering trees.) Throughout the sustained phrase in “Mein Herz” the piano’s chordal pattern enters after the downbeat. Initially, in measure 10 the right hand’s highest G could be heard as echoing the voice, or as beginning a displaced layer (though this secondary layer never materializes). The piano’s half-note pattern and its dynamic shadings, which accentuate the second half-note, are reminiscent of the right-hand chords in the middle section of Brahms’s Capriccio in C major, op 76, no. 8. Ryan McClelland interprets the Capriccio’s dynamics as indicating that the pattern conforms to the notated 46 meter; by contrast, Amanda Trucks acknowledges that the pattern can also be interpreted as suggesting “a 23 meter that has been delayed from the notated downbeat by a quarter-note value.”22 That a 23 meter may be likewise heard in measures 10–13 of “Mein Herz” is confirmed at the end of the song, in measure 40, where the piano’s bass part divides the measure into three half-notes, against which the right hand creates a displaced layer by repeating the pattern from measure 10 (see ex. 2.5). Thus measures 10–13 are not only marked by a change in pacing and displaced rhythms, but also by a 23 grouping dissonance, in that the voice’s two dotted-halves in 46 contrast with the piano’s three half-note groups.

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Example 2.5. “Mein Herz ist schwer,” mm. 37–43

There is nothing in the structure of Geibel’s poem to suggest Brahms’s isolation of the line “Die Wipfel rauschen weit und breit.” Indeed, in creating this four-measure phrase Brahms almost negates the poem’s original structure. He could have retained the rhythmic patterns he had been employing in the vocal line and set the words to a two-measure segment in 46 meter. It might also have been possible to use the existing harmonies, or alternatively to use a pedal point on A to coordinate with the subsequent phrases. Although this hypothetical structure would have articulated Geibel’s stanzas, it probably would not have alluded to the physicality of the poem’s trees or their rootedness in a past time in the same forceful manner as Brahms’s setting. Ultimately, despite the disruptive nature of measures 10–13, to which I will refer as the “frozen measures,” the passage is intricately tied to the dramatic trajectory of the piece. Somewhat similar changes in pacing permeate the entire song, and, as in the Beethoven compositions that Samarotto discusses, the resulting conflicts between frenzied motion and abrupt halts account for the song’s dynamism and expression.23 These contrasts between motion and stillness map onto the Romantic era’s understanding of a certain type of melancholy. Wilhelm Griesinger, in Mental Pathology and Therapeutics (1867), states that melancholy may take a variety of forms and that in some cases absence of will or energy may alternate with

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extreme restlessness.24 Goethe’s Werther, who passed “from sweet melancholy to destructive passion,”25 may be seen as an example of this type of melancholy: at times he undertook energetic hikes, but at other times he reported restless listlessness, when nothing was accomplished. Brahms was quite familiar with Goethe’s work and specifically associated it with his Piano Quartet op. 60. But whereas this quartet relates to the disconsolate, introverted states that are typically associated with melancholy, “Mein Herz ist schwer” explores the swings to more agitated moods.26 Let us turn now to the structure of the entire song. Brahms begins with a refrain that is subsequently varied and restated at the song’s close. These refrains, which are separated from the longer internal section by rests, set the first two and last two lines of Geibel’s poem, respectively (see above). Although separating these two couplets from their original stanzas in such a clear manner disturbs the poetic structure, Geibel’s repetition of the first two lines at the end of the poem, and the way in which he structured the first and last stanzas, may have prompted Brahms’s organization. The first two lines of the last stanza form one syntactic unit, ending with a question mark. The subsequent restatement of the poem’s first two lines results in a change in voice, as the narrative persona shifts from reflecting on past to present woes. Although the second line of stanza 1 does not end a sentence, there is a similar change in voice, with the first couplet focusing on the protagonist’s present restlessness and the second on the trees, and perhaps also the past.27 The opening and closing refrains, which are marked Unruhig bewegt, doch nicht schnell, are characterized by rapid motion that contrasts strongly with the sustained rhythms of the frozen measures. While the left hand moves in regularly placed quarter-notes, the right-hand’s quarter-notes are displaced by an eighth-note (see example 2.6 for the first refrain). This rhythmic tension is enhanced by the piano’s wide-ranging arpeggio figuration, which quickly ascends and descends, the right and left hands moving in contrary motion. Just as the figuration in measures 10–13 can be interpreted both graphically and symbolically, so too these swirling motions can be heard as representing the wind, which sets the treetops rustling, and the protagonist’s anxiety.28 Moreover, the moto perpetuo character of this figuration perhaps suggests the protagonist’s obsessive nature. In some ways, the mood Brahms creates is similar to the “friction” that Malin hears in the displacements in Schumann’s “Intermezzo” (op. 39, no. 2).29 The tension between motion and frozen time is immediately evident in the juxtaposition of the two temporal levels in the prelude. After the initial three-and-a-half measures, the constant but soft agitation abruptly ceases and is replaced by sustained V7 chords, which anticipate the rhythms of measures 10–13. Aside from the unprepared change in pace, this repeated-note motif is somewhat disruptive in that, like the patterns in measures 10–13, it is displaced

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Example 2.6. “Mein Herz ist schwer,” mm. 1–6

so that it begins on the second quarter pulse of the measure.30 Moreover, although the A (II) chord on the downbeat of measure 4 resolves to the first V7 chord of this half-note pattern, the leaps to the higher and lower registers and the sudden change in pacing create a disjunction. But rather than starting a phrase that continues the new pacing, these chords are followed by a slight silence, signaling the imminent entry of the voice. While the piano recommences its original quarter-note pacing, repeating measures 1–4, the voice moves more slowly. Perhaps taking their cue from the half-note chords in measure 4, but also anticipating the pacing of measures 10–13, the melody’s short segments change pitch on each dotted-half pulse. As suggested in relation to the frozen measures, this slow motion aptly depicts a heavy heart, and the protagonist specifically references this with his first four words—“Mein Herz ist schwer.”31 These segments add an additional dissonant rhythmic layer as the agogic and pitch accents do not align with the notated meter, but rather fall on the second dotted-half pulses of measures 5 and 6.

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Figure 2.1. Rhythmic layers in “Mein Herz ist schwer,” op. 94, no. 3, mm. 5–6

(These emphases might be interpreted as being subtly related to the dynamic stresses on the second dotted-half pulse that occurs during the half-note patterns in measures 4, 10–12, and 32.) The various rhythmic layers of this first phrase are shown in Figure 2.1.32 By contrast with the voice’s initial slow moving segments, the reference to the wind in measure 7 elicits a faster rate of declamation: most of the poem’s second line is compressed into just one measure (example 2.4). Unlike the end of the prelude (m. 4), this phrase ends on a D-major chord; this tonicized harmony is then prolonged through two 46 measures, which retain the faster pacing.33 Despite these agitated rhythms and the right hand’s ascent into the upper register, the harmonies go nowhere; rather the double-neighbor motions in the outer voices of both measures hover around D. This conflict between the movement of pitches and rhythms and the underlying stagnation of the harmony is emblematic of the entire song, and of the protagonist’s anguished state, which likewise mixes agitation and torpidity. After the parenthetical phrase in measures 10–13, the right-hand’s displaced quarter-note pattern and the vocal line’s slower, dragging rhythms return, and are applied to the 46 meter. This new section, which does not use the wide-spanned broken-chord figuration of the refrain, begins with the last line of stanza 1 and continues through the second line of stanza 3. Another change in the piano’s figuration at the start of the last line of stanza 2 subdivides this section into two parts (mm. 14–25 and 26–33). The former leads to a recollection of happier times with the beloved, while the latter portrays yearning for the associated joy and love. As the diagram below demonstrates, Brahms sets the four lines of Geibel’s repetitive structure to two sequences that are based on the same melodic figure. As a result, measures 14–27 form a quasi-symmetrical structure—a type of construction that is quite unusual for Brahms. The bass line progresses from D (mm. 14–16) via E♭ and A♭ (mm. 17–20) to A and a two-measure prolongation of A major (mm. 20–22). Then it retraces these steps moving from A (via G) to A♭,

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E♭ (mm. 24–25), and finally back to D (m. 26). The melody of measures 19–24 is also inspired by symmetry: from a high E♭ in measure 19 it descends to its lowest notes at the start of the A-major segment, measure 21, and then ascends to recapture its high E♭ in measure 24. This trajectory mimics the protagonist’s emotional journey as he travels to a past time, where he sees an image of his beloved, and then returns to the present. Perhaps the gradual stepwise ascent, with the repeated notes of measure 21 contrasting the descending leaps of measures 19–20, alludes to his reluctance to leave the past and his “Jungfrau.” Quasi-symmetrical Structure of "Mein Herz ist schwer, mm. 14–27 Happiness, Heart and “Jungfrau” (mm. 19–22) Sie rauschen von vergangner Zeit, B (mm. 17–18) * Sie rauschen von vergangner Zeit. A (mm. 14–16)

Wo is das alles, alles hin? Bʹ (mm. 23–25) Wo is das alles, alles hin? Aʹ (mm. 26–27)

*Each two-measure segment is based on the same melodic figure. B (and Bʹ) is a transposed version of A (and Aʹ).

The central A-major segment, with its somewhat more consonant harmonies, underscores the image of the beloved. That we have moved to a different time is indicated by the clear contrast between this key and the surrounding flat keys. A major arrives and departs through quick enharmonic modulations, and, to further highlight the significance—perhaps even magical/unreal nature—of these journeys to and from the past, the enharmonic turns are emphasized by louder dynamics. (See the placement of the center points of the hairpin dynamic signs in measures 20 and 23.) But the measures leading into this key area, with their mention of both great happiness and heartache, suggest that even this time was not free from anxiety. In addition to the unresolved dissonances and the piano’s displaced chords, this tension is conveyed by a new type of rhythmic dissonance, which is nonetheless related to the frozen measures. Most of this section subdivides each 46 measure into two dotted half-notes. Although the vocal line in measure 19 retains this arrangement, the tenor line of the piano part comprises three half-notes, and the displaced right-hand chords are similarly grouped into three pairs of quarter-notes. The half-notes recall both the piano’s chords from the prelude and the frozen measures of measures 10–13, but unlike those rhythmic motives this pattern is not displaced: indeed, the start of this rhythmic motif is emphasized by a sforzando on the downbeat. The resulting 23 grouping dissonance is the same type as that which is subtly implied in measures 10–11 of the frozen phrase.

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The harmonic progressions surrounding the centrally positioned image of the beloved are not precisely symmetrical. While the segment that had initiated this quasi-symmetrical unit (mm. 14–16) prolonged D as dominant of G minor/major, the concluding segment begins with this dominant chord (m. 26) but then immediately heads toward B-flat major. It is as though the memories of the maiden have provoked a new, more reflective mood, rather than an exact return to the restlessness of measure 14.34 This interpretation is supported by the appearance of new figuration in the piano. Although the sequential structure and word repetitions connect measures 23–24 to measures 26–27, the changes in the piano’s figuration mark measure 26 as the start of the second part of the song’s central section. The sudden cessation of the constant quarter-note motion in both parts of the piano creates a noticeable change, a weak version of a disjunction, which, along with the changes in the other parameters, suggests that this next subsection could be interpreted as a type of low-level change in temporal plane (and concomitant change in psychological state). Characterized by a lighter and more conventional piano figuration, with fewer harmonic and rhythmic dissonances, this second subsection is somewhat more relaxed than the rest of the song. This reflects the sonic properties of the poem itself: the hard sounds of “Herz” and “schwer” are replaced by the liquid “Leid,” “Lieb” and “Lust.” The displacement on the word “Leid,” so that it anticipates the downbeat, conveys a gently yearning quality, which contrasts with the agitated post-downbeat displacements that permeate the rest of the song. As the poem confirms that the happier times were in the protagonist’s youth, the music gradually moves to B-flat major. Ultimately, however, the voice cadences without the piano: rather than reaching a root-position B-flat chord, the piano enters after the voice’s last note with a weaker second-inversion (46) chord. This B-flat triad brings back the chordal half-note motif, but this time its iterations are marked poco ritardando. Furthermore, the first statement of the motif (m. 32) does not create the same type of abrupt disjunction as it did in measures 4 and 10 because the left hand has already been employing a slower pacing, rather than the agitated, displaced quarter-note patterns. But whereas the chords at the end of the frozen phrase resolve into the start of the song’s central section (m. 14), these B-flat chords abruptly break off. This break is particularly surprising because Brahms had initiated a harmonic progression in which a passing augmented triad could have resolved directly to a tonic (G minor) chord. But instead Brahms leaves the augmented triad unresolved and the section dissolves into a long silence.35 Because we have twice heard the piano’s displaced rhythmic pattern of measures 32–33, with its downbeat rest, the silence on the downbeat of measure 34 is not surprising, but the continuation of that silence creates great suspense. When will the music recommence? Will the sustained chords be restated yet again? When the voice re-enters, it uses

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the same unaccompanied upbeat D as it had to initiate the song. Upon hearing this upbeat one might suppose that the original refrain will return and that a tonic root-position chord will accompany the voice on the next downbeat. But when the piano begins the 49 refrain with the original tempo, the tonic pitch (G) is not recapitulated. Rather the voice repeats its D, on the downbeat, without accompaniment, and when the piano re-enters on the second quarter-note of the measure it is with a bass B♭. Delaying the re-entry of the piano figuration destabilizes the recommencement of the refrain, denying the final section a strong launching point. That the Gs of measure 5 are now absent adds to the tension of this moment. It is as though the protagonist is forever caught in the past, and no new beginning or “start over” is possible. Measures 5–8 are varied in measures 35–38, with the final cadence ending on a G major chord, which is set to a varied repetition of the original brokenchord figuration. The following final five-measure phrase is in a slowing 46 (see example 2.5). The tonic major is retained throughout these closing measures, providing the customary stronger close than the minor would have given, and perhaps also referring back to G major harmonies on “rauschen von vergangner Zeit” (mm. 14–15). Despite the major mode, the displacements in the piano continue, but the ritardando and the change from quarter-note pacing to half-notes results in a lessening of the agitation. In measure 40 the piano’s right-hand pattern is displaced by a quarter-note; in measure 41 both hands are displaced by a quarter (as in measures 4, 10–13, and 32–33); and in measure 42 the song’s penultimate chord is displaced by half the measure; as a result the voice’s last note is mostly unaccompanied. It is as though the quarternote pacing is transformed into the half-note patterns, and in this way the tension between the two temporal planes is eased. Nevertheless, the continued rhythmic dissonances and the absence of a leading tone in the final cadence all suggest the continued restlessness of the poetic persona.36 Just as the “Im Herzen tief” measures in “O kühler Wald” are harmonically and rhythmically related to the surrounding stanzas, so too there are connections between the frozen phrase in “Mein Herz ist schwer” and the rest of the song. I have already noted the most significant recurrences of the half-note rhythms, but there are also some salient harmonic connections. The harmonies of the frozen phrase are chromatic intensifications of the prelude. The prelude begins on a G minor triad; the displaced quarter-note figuration ends on an A major triad, and the slower paced D7 chords punctuate the end of the phrase. Along somewhat similar lines, the frozen phrase begins with a G7 and moves via an E7 to a repeated A7, which ultimately resolves to a D7 as the fast pacing returns. This E7–A7 progression anticipates the A major in measures 21–22, at the fleeting happy memory of the maiden in the castle. The contour of the voice’s first phrase likewise bears a resemblance to that of the frozen phrase. The high points of each segment in the first phrase are G, B♭, and

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E♭ (mm. 5–7), while the melody of the frozen measure comprises G, B♮, and E♮. After reaching their peaks, both phrases quickly descend, with measure 13 cadencing on A and measures 7–8 passing through A to fall to D. At a more abstract level, the G♯ and C♯ of the frozen chords are enharmonic harbingers of the A♭ and D♭ that appear during the modulation to A-flat major at the start of stanza two (m. 17). This move to the Neapolitan coincides with the recollection of past times. A♭s are subsequently featured throughout the final seven measures of the song, where they contribute to the avoidance of a conventional, stable close, and as such are a reminder that the protagonist continues to be haunted by the past (ex. 2.5). These A♭s create a tonally ambiguous close, in which C-minor tendencies seem to be stronger than the expected G minor. In the lead into the penultimate cadence in measures 37–38, the bass doubles the voice in octaves and traces the tetrachord C–B♭–A♭–G.37 The last two notes of the tetrachord are harmonized with an augmented sixth chord moving to a G major triad, which could easily be heard as V of C minor. The following measures, with their repeated A♭–Gs, likewise could be heard in C minor rather than G minor. More significantly, A♭ and F♮ recur in the final cadence. The voice concludes by slowly intoning the neighbor G–A♭–G, imparting a Phrygian, morose quality to the song’s conclusion.38 Moreover the A♭ is so important that it shapes the accompanying harmonies: Brahms replaces the dominant of a conventional authentic cadence with a half-diminished seventh on D, which includes the A♭. The resulting cadence may be heard as a half cadence in C minor, rather than a weakened authentic cadence in G minor. Robbed of a conventional strong close, the music mirrors the protagonist’s final words: “mein Auge wacht.” These various harmonic and pitch connections work in conjunction with the recurring half-note rhythms. The conflicts that these sustained patterns create with the pervasive displaced quarter-note figuration lay bare the emotional tensions experienced by the type of melancholic person who endures uncontrollable mood swings. In Geibel’s poem, this condition is merely alluded to by the contrasting images of a heavy heart and the restlessness of someone who cannot sleep (the latter being represented by the endless winds). Brahms’s music, by contrast, forces us to confront these competing forces. In some respects “O kühler Wald” and “Mein Herz ist schwer” have common elements, such as their syncopated final cadences in which the voice sounds its last note while the piano is silent. Both songs begin with repeatednote melodic segments that subsequently emphasize their second beats with a rise in pitch and a long duration. Similar emphases on second beats recur in measure 6 of “Mein Herz” and at the start of the second phrase of “O kühler Wald” (m. 6). Deborah Rohr notes that in “O kühler Wald” the melodic peaks assist in the formation of patterns that “weaken the role of the measure as a temporal foundation for the phrase, and leave the half-note tactus as the

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only constant element.”39 Thus the half-note is of crucial importance to the entire song, and not just to the central “Im Herzen tief” measures. The same types of connections occur between the frozen measures (mm. 10–13) and the slow moving melody of the refrains in “Mein Herz ist schwer.” From a vantage point further removed, these songs share another feature: both employ highly unusual meters, as the major nineteenth-century lied composers tended to avoid 23, 49, and 46. In Brahms’s output of some two hundred solo songs only one other, “O Tod, wie bitter bist du” (op. 121, no. 3), uses the same meters (23 and alla breve) as “O kühler Wald.” (Although “Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen,” op. 32, no. 2, also uses 23 it does not include a change to a duple meter.) Similarly, 9 4 is also quite unusual: “Während des Regens” (op. 58, no. 2) is one of only a small number of Brahms’s songs to employ this meter, and like “Mein Herz ist schwer,” its 49 phrases alternate with ones in 46.40 Despite these similarities, however, these songs have distinctive affects and employ contrasting temporal planes to different ends. The faster tempo and constant displacements in “Mein Herz ist schwer” create a much more frenetic mood than that of the reflective “O kühler Wald.” Moreover there is much greater tension between the two main types of temporal planes in “Mein Herz ist schwer,” in part because the slower figuration is not confined to the frozen phrase. In contrast to the tussle between the competing psychological states of agitation and stasis, which these contrasting rhythms bring to life, the slower temporal plane in “O kühler Wald” facilitates a psychologically transformative moment, which leads the protagonist to acknowledge that the love he feels is from a past time, and that the associated songs are now forever lost.41

Other Shifts in the Level of Discourse Although “O kühler Wald” and “Mein Herz ist schwer” both portray the pain of a lost love, changes in temporal plane are not confined to songs on this theme. “Unüberwindlich” (op. 72, no. 5) deploys the same type of shifts to a humorous end. Goethe’s text compares the dangers of wine with those of a seductive woman. At the start of the second strophe, just before the protagonist acknowledges he has repeatedly sworn not to trust a particularly lovely woman, Brahms unexpectedly halts the piano’s interlude and inserts a full measure rest. As example 2.7 shows, the piano recommences with a low, hesitant version of the song’s initial repeated-note motif and then the voice answers in canon. Instead of the usual eighth- and quarter-note pacing, Brahms augments the rhythms of the initial motif, and the canon proceeds in half-notes. As a result of these changes, the song’s initial six-measure phrase is extended to ten measures. Further underscoring this phrase, the dynamics rise to forte, and, although the harmonies begin and end on the dominant of A major, in between they veer from the key of B minor to A minor, via a hint of C major. The phrase ends

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with the words “Falschen nicht zu trauen” (not to trust that false one), set to empty parallel octaves. In all, the effect is analogous to similar grandiose gestures in eighteenth-century comic opera. The conclusion of the song’s first phrase, where the words “Flasche nicht zu trauen” (not to trust this bottle) are also set in parallel octaves, prepares for the later hyperbole. While the rhythms of this earlier phrase are only slightly longer than those in the surrounding phrases, the importance of the words is underscored by a prolongation of the dominant of C-sharp minor, which had unexpectedly arrived at the end of the first phrase (m. 8), and by the switch in attack, from staccato to legato. Ultimately, the elongated pacing of the contrasting plane at the start of the second strophe is derived from the half-note motion at the end of the piano’s prelude.42 The gradual expansion of this initial half-note segment into a pronounced ten-measure temporal plane is typical of the types of large-scale development of low-level disjunctive gestures that more commonly occur in longer instrumental works, and Samarotto describes similar procedures in the works of C. P. E. Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven (all of whom were greatly admired by Brahms).43 Unlike the other temporal planes that I have discussed so far, the slower paced “Falschen nicht zu trauen” phrase portrays an increased rhetorical emphasis, but does not represent a substantial shift in the level of discourse. The opera buffa style of exaggeration in “Unüberwindlich” is highly unusual for a Brahms lied, but some of his songs do employ other types of operatic gestures and, as in “Unüberwindlich,” they are occasionally associated with a change in temporal plane. This is especially common in songs such as “An eine Aeolsharfe” (op. 19, no. 5) that employ phrases in recitative style. Typically, recitatives that are inserted into the body of a song (rather than at the very beginning) underscore a shift in the level of discourse. In “An eine Aeolsharfe,” the second recitative phrase occurs at the beginning of the last stanza (ex. 2.8). Here the text suddenly changes focus from melancholy yearning for a loved one to the increasingly forceful winds that accompany intensified grief. Brahms abruptly stops the piano’s gentle arpeggios on a dominant seventh, and uses a recitative style melodic line, accompanied by sustained chords, to set the description of the wind. At the same time, the harmonies veer off track, and instead of resolving the dominant seventh, Brahms inserts and prolongs a diminished seventh. That this phrase functions as a parenthesis is confirmed by the subsequent return of the dominant seventh (in first inversion) and by a repeated E♭–D♭ melodic figure that likewise encloses the recitative (compare measures 70 and 78). Because the melody moves at a faster pace than the piano, and because the song had opened with a recitative, this parenthetical phrase does not create the same sort of dramatic disruption as the slower temporal planes in “O kühler Wald” and “Mein Herz ist schwer.” In general, this type of contrasting temporal plane in which one part retains the faster-paced

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Example 2.7. “Unüberwindlich,” op. 72, no. 5, mm. 38–51

Example 2.8. “An eine Aeolsharfe,” op. 19, no. 5, mm. 69–78

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rhythms established in the preceding phrases is far more common in Brahms’s lieder than the temporal planes in the later two songs, where the pacing slows in all parts.44 In “An eine Aeolsharfe” the shift in discourse, which is emphasized by the contrasting plane, is clearly indicated by the structure of Mörike’s poem. The corresponding lines are prominently placed at the beginning of the last stanza, and the first of these lines, “Aber auf einmal,” is one of the shortest in the entire poem. Changes in temporal plane may also be used to set off other types of strategically marked poetic lines, as, for instance, emphatic lines such as the oath Peter swears in the third song of Brahms’s MageloneLieder, “Sind es Schmerzen” (op. 33, no. 3). Much of this song tells of Peter’s strange mixture of feelings as his love for Magelone begins to blossom. During the final sections, he moves from addressing the stars and meadow to swearing an oath: “If I remain far from her, I will gladly die” (mm. 82–85; ex. 2.9). The phrases immediately preceding this had been dominated by eighth- and sixteenth-notes that reached a climactic conclusion in D-flat major, but as the oath begins Brahms switches to whole-notes and commences a prolongation of A♭, the dominant. This new temporal plane begins on the type of V6 “recitative chord” that, according to Hatten, typically initiates a change in tonal focus and in so doing announces “a shift in thought or utterance.”45 Like the slower temporal planes in “O kühler Wald” and “Mein Herz ist schwer,” the plane setting Peter’s oath is marked by chromaticism: in this case the bass line descends a chromatic tetrachord, D♭ to A♭, underscoring the text’s image of death. But unlike the shifts in temporal planes in these later songs, this phrase and the recitative in “An eine Aeolsharfe” are labeled as existing in a realm different from that of the surrounding phrases. Brahms labeled the recitative in “An eine Aeolsharfe” as such; in “Sind es schmerzen” the oath is indicated “ad libit.” Furthermore the following phrases in each song are labeled with instructions to return to tempo—a clear cue that after a section in some other mode, we are to return to the world of the song’s opening. Like many of the Tieck settings in op. 33, “Sind es schmerzen,” is quite long, comprising some 115 measures, and it includes notated changes in tempo and meter as well as phrases that end with the piano changing to elongated rhythms for rhetorical emphasis.46 In general such substantial lieder allow for more frequent and dramatic shifts in pacing than shorter works. Schubert’s ballads and longer lieder that are characterized by multiple changes in piano figuration (including “Schäfers Klagelied,” D.121) occasionally also include clear changes in temporal plane. In some instances, such as Schubert’s “Der Neugierige” (D. 795) and the first song of Brahms’s op. 121 Vier ernste Gesänge, an entire stanza may be set to a contrasting plane. Similarly, refrains, such as that of Brahms’s “O Tod, wie bitter bist du,” may also employ a different temporal plane to the

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Example 2.9. “Sind es Schmerzen,” op. 33, no. 3, mm. 81–85

main stanzas.47 These types of slower paced stanzas and refrains belong to the category that Samarotto labels as unmarked changes in temporal plane because they align with major divisions of a composition and comprise a substantial number of measures, and thus create significant periods of stability.48 The marked temporal shifts in “O kühler Wald” and “Mein Herz ist schwer” are both dramatically and analytically more significant because they occur in much shorter works, which do not include numerous contrasting sections, and because the slower planes are not maintained for a substantial amount of time.

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The temporal shift in “O kühler Wald” effects a change in the level of discourse: the music of this passage is so intense that it draws us into the deepest interiority of the protagonist’s life. Such contrasting temporal planes are somewhat analogous to the moments in opera that Carolyn Abbate describes as reflexive rather than narrative. These are “moments of peculiar force,” when “beyond reporting events past, the narration conjures up its own content, demonstrating that while it enables us to imagine events, it can also produce them as the narrator speaks.”49 In “Mein Herz ist schwer,” the frozen measures 10–13 also represent the reflections of the protagonist, but the conflict between the recurring slow motif and the frantic pacing of the other phrases is more significant because it re-enacts the alternating moods of the severely melancholic character. Despite the compelling nature of the sustained temporal planes in both songs, they are just one aspect of Brahms’s text setting techniques. Their various relationships to the surrounding phrases and sections are just as important in imparting the psychological depths of Brahms’s interpretations of the texts.

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Notes

1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

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I would like to thank Peter H. Smith and Scott Murphy for their insightful readings of preliminary versions of this article, and Frank Samarotto for his generous critique of an earlier analysis of “O kühler Wald.” This chapter is dedicated to Frank Samarotto. Ernest Newman, “Brahms and Wolf as Lyrists,” Musical Times 56, no. 872 (October 1915): 587. Yonatan Malin, Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Frank Samarotto, “A Theory of Temporal Plasticity in Tonal Music: An Extension of the Schenkerian Approach to Rhythm with Special Reference to Beethoven’s Late Music” (PhD diss., Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 1999), chapter 4. Robert S. Hatten, “The Troping of Temporality in Music,” in Approaches to Meaning in Music, ed. Byron Almén and Edward Pearsall (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 68; and Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 269–70. Hatten cites the end of the last movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet op. 132 to demonstrate the concept of shifts in discourse. Whereas Heinrich August Marschner (1795–1861) set the entire poem (op. 132, no. 2), Brahms chose to set only stanzas 1 and 3. Eric Sams is particularly critical of this procedure; he suggests that this excision may have had its roots in Brahms’s own experiences, in that it rejects the lines holding out hope for the renewal of love. Sams, The Songs of Johannes Brahms (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 242n2. The other stanzas are given in Lucien Stark, A Guide to the Solo Songs of Johannes Brahms (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 237. Translation by Stark, A Guide to the Solo Songs of Johannes Brahms, 237. William Kinderman, “Schubert’s Tragic Perspective,” in Schubert Critical and Analytical Studies, ed. Walter Frisch (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 72. The other songs Kinderman discusses include “Dass sie hier gewesen” and “Ihr Bild.” Samarotto, “A Theory of Temporal Plasticity in Tonal Music,” 129, 141. Justin London examines somewhat similar temporal phenomena, though he develops contrasting terminology and uses the term “thin meter” to denote the types of temporal planes that I focus on in this paper. Nevertheless, he also observes the expressive changes that moving from one pulse to another creates, stating that “shifts from thick to thin meters may be as dramatic, if not more dramatic, than changes in the basic pattern of beats.” London, Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 89. Like Samarotto’s analyses, London’s discussion of these types of changes focuses on the music of Beethoven, and both authors explore the first movement of the Fifth Symphony. Unlike Samarotto, however, London does not explicitly consider ways in which the harmonic structure is coordinated with the rhythmic/metric structure.

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9. Samarotto, “A Theory of Temporal Plasticity in Tonal Music,” 131–33. 10. As cited by Samarotto, ibid., 135. Samarotto likewise observes that a contrasting temporal plane in the first movement of Mahler’s Symphony no. 2 in C Minor imparts “to the passage a special quality of distance from the ongoing discourse” (139). 11. By contrast, Marschner’s 1840 setting of the same Brentano poem does not begin this stanza with word repetitions. However, he also moves to a slower temporal plane that begins on ♭VI, but unlike the Brahms song, the slower pacing continues throughout the stanza. Also unlike Brahms, Marschner follows this stanza with a setting of Bretano’s fourth stanza, which returns to the original triplet rhythms and a repetition of the music used to set Brentano’s second stanza. 12. Susan McClary, “Pitches, Expression, Ideology: An Exercise in Mediation,” 1983; rpt. in Reading Music: Selected Essays (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 4, 9. Thomas Nelson provides an extensive discussion of some of the meanings ♭VI chords convey in Schubert’s songs: see “The Fantasy of Absolute Music” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1998), chapters 3 and 4, and Appendix 1. Of the songs he discusses, “Die Liebende schreibt” (D. 673) offers the most apt comparison to “O kühler Wald” because the tonicization of G-flat major is coordinated with a change to sustained chords in the piano, and a sudden drop in dynamic level. Although the change in pacing is not as marked as the one in the Brahms song, a shift in the level of discourse is nonetheless effected. 13. Here Murphy draws on the dualist language Moritz Hauptmann uses to describe how tonic can both be a dominant and have a dominant. I am most grateful to Murphy for this insightful reading, which he shared via an email of December 15, 2009. He discusses the concepts of logical and rhetorical metric tonics and some of the issues associated with pitch-rhythm analogies in Brahms’s music in “On Metre in the Rondo of Brahms’s Op. 25,” Music Analysis 26, no. 3 (2007): 323–53. 14. The following publications discuss the passage in the clarinet sonata from somewhat contrasting points of view. Peter H. Smith, “Brahms and the Neapolitan Complex: flat II, flat VI, and Their Multiple Functions in the First Movement of the F-Minor Clarinet Sonata,” Brahms Studies 2, ed. David Brodbeck (Lincoln: The American Brahms Society and University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 197–99; Walter Frisch, Brahms and Principle of Developing Variation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984; repr. 1990), 149; Richard Bass, “Enharmonic Position Finding and the Resolution of Seventh Chords in Chromatic Harmony,” Music Theory Spectrum 29, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 84–85, 89. 15. Unlike Brahms’s song, however, “Am Meer” ends with an agonizingly bitter image in which the poetic persona cries “that ill-fated woman has poisoned me with her tears.” Translation from Susan Youens, Heinrich Heine and the Lied (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 65. 16. That my model for these lines has validity is demonstrated in part by Marschner’s setting of the same text. His version also fits these same lines of text, without any repetitions, into four measures of music, but he stretches out “gern” (half-note plus an eighth in 44) and then compresses “Lied” (eighth-note).

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17. Brahms employed the resigned tone of these measures in a number of other songs that similarly portray unrequited love, and like “O kühler Wald” their ^ melodies do not settle on 1. Some of these songs, including “Es schauen die Blumen” (op. 96, no. 3), end by portraying endless yearning, and a number substitute a plagal cadence for the expected final authentic cadence. By contrast, “O kühler Wald” ends with an authentic cadence in which the bass tonic is delayed by an arpeggiation. This cadence suggests that although the poetic persona continues to yearn for his loved one, some degree of closure has been reached. See my “Unrequited Love and Unrealized Dominants,” Intégral 7 (1993): 119–48. 18. Malin, Songs in Motion, 97. 19. Translated by Stark, A Guide to the Solo Songs of Johannes Brahms, 281. 20. Sams, for example, interprets the chords as deep-rooted trees (The Songs of Johannes Brahms, 277). 21. By contrast, a shorter half-quarter pattern only occurs when the text explicitly references youthful times, in mm. 21, 28–29, and 31. 22. Ryan McClelland, “Brahms’s Capriccio in C major, op. 76, no. 8: Ambiguity, Conflict, Musical Meaning and Performance,” Theory and Practice 29 (2004): 88; Amanda Louise Trucks, “The Metric Complex in Johannes Brahms’s Klavierstücke, op. 76” (PhD diss., Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 1992), 237. 23. The Vivace in Beethoven’s String Quartet op. 135 is characterized by some of the same rhythmic techniques as “Mein Herz ist schwer.” Samarotto explores the rhythmic complexities and conflicts that characterize the Beethoven movement in “A Theory of Temporal Plasticity in Tonal Music,” 254–66. 24. See Jennifer Radden, The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 15–16, 225. Radden provides a historical overview of the understanding of melancholy in her introduction to an anthology of writings on this topic. 25. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, trans. Michael Hulse (London: Penguin, 1989), 28, 67, 69. 26. For a study of the relationships of Goethe’s Werther and Brahms’s op. 60 see Peter H. Smith, Expressive Forms in Brahms’s Instrumental Music: Structure and Meaning in His Werther Quartet (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005). Reinhold Brinkmann’s monograph on the Second Symphony is one of the seminal studies of the melancholy character of Brahms’s music, but unlike my analysis of “Mein Herz ist Schwer” Brinkmann (like most other scholars) concentrates on the gloomy downhearted type of melancholy, rather than on the erratic changes in mood: Late Idyll: The Second Symphony of Johannes Brahms, trans. Peter Palmer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), esp. 125–44. 27. Similarly, as I will show, Brahms’s creation of a long inner section (mm. 14–32) that subdivides into two parts also contradicts Geibel’s stanzaic structure. Once again, however, the ways in which Geibel repeated lines, tightly integrating the stanzas, may in part justify the composer’s procedure. 28. Scholars have often cited the advice on song composing that Brahms gave to Gustav Jenner and Richard Heuberger, highlighting in particular Brahms’s

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29.

30. 31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

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emphasis on the relationship between the melody and bass, and to a lesser extent his comments on the importance of pauses. What has been ignored, however, is that Heuberger also recalled Brahms critiquing the piano figuration of one of his songs, and his advice on its correct rhythmic placement. Richard Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Johannes Brahms: Tagebuchnotizen aus den Jahren 1875 bis 1897, 2nd ed., ed. Kurt Hofmann (Tutzing: Schneider, 1976), 14. Malin goes on to state that the Eichendorff poem, which Schumann sets, portrays “no objective self; the poet identifies entirely with his longing, and gives himself over to its dynamics.” Perhaps not coincidentally, Brahms’s “Mein Herz ist Schwer” has the same type of text. More generally, Malin has demonstrated that lieder composers throughout the long nineteenth century often used displacement dissonances to convey the key Romantic concept Sehnsucht. He discusses Brahms’s “Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer” (op. 105, no. 2) along with songs by Schubert, Schumann, and Schoenberg: “Metric Displacement Dissonance and Romantic Longing in the German Lied,” Music Analysis 25, no. 3 (2006): 259–61. Some performers minimize the change in pacing by gradually slowing down during m. 3. In this way the song’s first phrase uses the two temporal planes simultaneously, a technique that Samarotto explores with examples from J.  S. Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion and the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 57: see “A Theory of Temporal Plasticity in Tonal Music,” 146–48. In Figure 2.1, I have used downward arrows above the “voice” line to indicate the stress created by the highest pitches in mm. 5 and 6. However, these stresses are not strong enough to contradict the notated meter entirely. Rather, they function as counter stresses, a term that Channan Willner employs to denote “a rhythmic cross-accent that comes about through an unexpected gesture—a sudden leap, a textural intensification, a change in figuration—that falls on a weak beat within the measure.” Willner, “Stress and Counterstress: Accentual Conflict and Reconciliation in J. S. Bach’s Instrumental Works,” Music Theory Spectrum 20, no. 2 (Autumn, 1998): 280. Although mm. 8–9 are clearly marked as the conclusion of the song’s first refrain, they introduce the 46 meter that is maintained throughout the song’s following central section. The 46 meter more readily lends itself to two-measure segments and four-measure phrases. It also avoids consistent cadences ending on downbeats, which would have worked against the continuity that Brahms created by near constant phrase overlaps. This change in mood partially masks Brahms’s sequential repetition (which parallels the repeated words), and it may well reflect a highly nuanced reading of the poem in which a speaker would intone the line that starts stanza 3 in a different way to its first statement as the final line of stanza 2. By contrast, the first sequence, in mm. 14–17, does not have equivalent changes. The breathtaking climax of Brahms’s “Es träumte mir” (op. 57, no. 3) demonstrates a similar strategic use of silence. The phrase in which the poetic persona acknowledges he has only dreamt the image of the beloved ends with an unresolved augmented sixth that trails off into silence.

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36. Just as the material in the sustained measures in “Mein Herz ist schwer” is subjected to variation, including changes in length and different harmonies, so too similar sustained measures are developed in Brahms’s longer instrumental compositions, including the Allegro giocoso of the Fourth Symphony. In some cases, as for instance the coda in the Presto non assai of the Piano Trio op. 101, material from the slower-paced phrases may be synthesized with elements from the primary sections of the movement. This is somewhat akin to the ending of “Mein Herz ist schwer”; in both pieces this synthesis of materials does not lead to definitive resolutions of the rhythmic tensions. For sensitive analyses of these instrumental movements, see Ryan McClelland, Brahms and the Scherzo: Studies in Musical Narrative (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 202–15, 287–94. 37. This cadence is a transposed variant of the one in mm. 7–8, but the bass in the earlier cadence does not double the voice in octaves; rather it starts the progression on G as a strong tonic. Scott Murphy has described a somewhat similar instance of transpositional and inversional symmetry in the tumultuous “Der Strom, der neben mir verrauschte” (op. 32, no. 4): see “Brahms’s Op. 32, No. 4 with a Twist,” American Brahms Society Newsletter 27, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 1–5. 38. Schumann also used ♭2^ as neighbor to 1^ to signify death in the final phrases of “In der Fremde” (op. 39, no. 1), but Brahms’s setting is more radical because it negates a final authentic cadence and conventional structural close, whereas Schumann’s neighbor motions take place over a tonic pedal point after the structural close. 39. In addition to these changes in pulse, Deborah Rohr perceptively draws attention to the metrical tensions created by the placement of half-notes on the second beats of many measures, including mm. 2 and 3, and also by the registral accents on weak syllables such as the high C in m. 2: Rohr, “Brahms’s Metrical Dramas: Rhythm, Text Expression, and Form in the Solo Lieder” (PhD diss., Eastman School of Music, 1997), 95. 40. Scott Murphy employs metric cubes to explore the variety of ways Brahms manipulates 46 and 49 in the exposition of the Third Symphony’s first movement: “Metric Cubes in Some Music of Brahms,” Journal of Music Theory 53, no. 1 (2009): 7–18. Perhaps not coincidentally Brahms wrote this work around the same time (1883) as he wrote “Mein Herz ist schwer.” 41. The change in temporal plane that occurs on the words “hier nicht” in “Mit vierzig Jahren” (op. 94, no. 1) represents a similarly transformative moment when the protagonist realizes the age of forty does not signify the end of life. I discuss some of the other expressive gestures in this song in “Jenner Versus Wolf: The Critical Reception of Brahms’s Songs,” Journal of Musicology 13, no. 3 (1995): 394–403. 42. The entire prelude, including these half-notes, quotes the opening theme of Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata in D Major (K. 223), a borrowing that Brahms publically acknowledged. Despite this borrowing, the pieces have little else in common, and the Sonata does not transform the half-note pattern into the type of rhetorical gestures that characterize Brahms’s song. Paul Berry proffers a brilliant hermeneutic reading of Brahms’s allusion in Brahms among Friends:

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43. 44.

45.

46.

47.

48. 49.

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Listening, Performance, and the Rhetoric of Allusion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 221–24. Samarotto, “A Theory of Temporal Plasticity in Tonal Music,” 157. Samarotto discusses similar types of passages in which the melodic line of the contrasting temporal plane includes shorter durations than the slow-paced accompaniment. See, for instance, his analysis of the transition from the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 2, no. 1 (“A Theory of Temporal Plasticity in Tonal Music,” 150). In this passage, as in the recitative in “An eine Aeolsharfe,” the shift to longer pulses in the accompanying parts creates a temporal disjunction. Robert S. Hatten discusses the significance of these types of chords in Beethoven’s instrumental works, including the third movement of the String Quartet op. 130: Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 175. In this song, as in many other nineteenth-century lieder, elongated rhythms frequently underscore the last lines of stanzas. While they may be used to emphasize particular words or to intensify the rhetorical tone, they do not normally connote a significant change in the level of discourse. Nor do they create the type of extreme disjunction that I have discussed in relation to “Mein Herz ist schwer” and “O kühler Wald,” in part because the piano might introduce sustained notes while the melodic line retains its preceding rhythmic patterns. Moreover, rather than being characterized by chromaticisms that create harmonic digressions, these phrases often complete progressions begun in the preceding measures and end on the dominant or tonic. Along similar lines, I interpret the repeated measures that recur as the piano’s prelude, interlude, and texted postlude in Brahms’s “Mädchenlied” (op. 85, no. 3) as slight temporal shifts marking a change in psychological state. See my article “Brahms’s Mädchenlieder and Their Cultural Context,” in Expressive Intersections in Brahms, ed. Heather Platt and Peter H. Smith (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012), 102. Samarotto, “A Theory of Temporal Plasticity in Tonal Music,” 148. Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 64. Lawrence Kramer expresses a somewhat similar idea in relation to the ♭VI contrasting plane in Schubert’s “Der Neurierige.” He writes that “the accompaniment . . . consists of a continuous flowing stream of richly textured, widely spaced chords, a lyrical, indeed rapturous, efflorescence that seems to re-enact the lyricism of the brook on a higher level.” (My italics.) Kramer, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 141. Steven Laitz traces the ways in which the ♭VI harmonies of this passage are related to chromatic elements throughout the song and also how these elements reflect the meaning of the text, in “The Submediant Complex: Its Musical and Poetical Roles in Schubert’s Songs,” Theory and Practice 21 (1996): 146–48.

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Part Two

Measuring Phrases

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Chapter Three

Phrase Rhythm and the Expression of Longing in Brahms’s “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” Op. 91, No. 1 Jan Miyake

Brahms’s “Gestillte Sehnsucht” [“Satisfied Longing”] opens with an undeniably warm and lush atmosphere. The score is marked adagio espressivo, and rolling sextuplets immediately provide a sense of motion and an aura of comfort. The harmonic language also contributes to the rich soundscape: dissonant harmonies regularly occur in metrically accented positions—the downbeats of measures 1, 3, and 5 are respectively ii7, vi7, and IV7 chords—and suspensions decorate almost every chord. Finally, the combined timbre of mezzosoprano, viola, and piano (often with both hands notated in bass clef) is low and rich. The instrumentation reflects the function of the op. 91 songs: they were written to be played by Brahms’s good friends Joseph and Amalie Joachim, who were a world-class violinist and amateur singer. Perhaps Brahms chose to write for viola (over violin) because the timbre would better blend with Amalie’s voice; or, perhaps Brahms simply wanted to write for one of his favorite stringed instruments.1 Opus 91, no. 2 (1864) “Geistliches Wiegenleid,” was written to commemorate the birth of the Joachims’ child.2 Opus 91, no. 1 (1884), “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” was Brahms’s contribution to the Joachim’s (unsuccessful) marital reconciliation; he presumably hoped that performing this piece together would help them smooth over their differences.

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One needs only to read the first line of Rückert’s text to understand Brahms’s careful creation of the atmosphere: “In gold’nen Abendschein getauchet” [“Dipped in the golden evening glow”]. In addition to numerous other instances of clear and beautiful text painting, less obvious connections between text and music permeate the piece at deeper structural levels. Expression of a text can occur in ways other than basic text painting, unusual modulations, or form. Phrase rhythm can also be added to this list of techniques. For this analysis, it is, arguably, the primary technique for expressing the essence of the poem: longing. A detailed examination of phrase rhythm reveals metric manipulations of unusually long twelve-measure basic phrases. The musical material within these twelve-measure phrases unfolds at a luxurious pace that contributes greatly to the general sense of longing permeating “Gestillte Sehnsucht.” Phrase rhythm, which encompasses both phrase structure and hypermeter,3 is commonly employed in analyses of instrumental music and larger scale vocal music, but is used only rarely in analyses of lieder. Most analyses that address text-music relationships in lieder focus on declamation and poetic form. While a small group of writers have explored hypermeter or phrase structure in lieder, fewer have related their explorations to the text, and none have forwarded the notion that phrase rhythm can be a primary device for expressing the text.4 Brahms sets three stanzas of Rückert’s four-stanza poem, which is provided with translation below. Overall, the poem traces how the speaker deals with his desires [“Wünsche”] and longing [“Sehnen”].5 The first stanza describes a beautiful evening and introduces the image of wind and birds whispering the world into slumber. The second stanza directly addresses the speaker’s longings and desires, asking when they will sleep. The third stanza, which Brahms does not set, establishes that the longings cannot be put to sleep by the wind and birds. The final stanza answers the second stanza’s question: the cessation of longings will coincide with the cessation of life. We do not know why Brahms chose to omit Rückert’s third stanza. Several advantages, however, arise from its absence. Brahms’s three-stanza form omits the digression between the original second stanza’s question and fourth stanza’s answer: Rückert’s third stanza furthers the drama at a significantly slower rate than other stanzas. The ease of mapping three stanzas onto an overarching ABA form, a popular form in Brahms’s songs, may also have been advantageous. In gold’nen Abendschein getauchet, Wie feierlich die Wälder stehn! In leise Stimmen der Vöglein hauchet Des Abendwindes leises Weh’n. Was lispeln die Winde, die Vögelein? Sie lispeln die Welt in Schlummer ein.

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Ihr Wünsche, die ihr stets euch reget Im Herzen sonder Rast und Ruh! Du Sehnen, das die Brust beweget, Wann ruhest du, wann schlummerst du? Beim Lispeln der Winde, der Vögelein, Ihr sehnenden Wünsche, wann schlaft ihr ein? Ach, wenn nicht mehr in gold’ne Fernen Mein Geist auf Traumgefieder eilt, Nicht mehr an ewig fernen Sternen Mit sehnendem Blick mein Auge weilt; Dann lispeln die Winde, die Vögelein Mit meinem Sehnen mein Leben ein. [Dipped in golden evening glow, how solemnly the forests stand! Mingled with the soft voices of the little birds is the soft breath of the evening wind. What are the winds and the little birds whispering? They are whispering the world into slumber. You desires of mine, always stirring in my heart without let-up! You longing of mine that makes my breast heave, When will you rest, when will you slumber? To the whispering of the winds and little birds, you longing desires, when will you fall asleep? Ah, when my spirit no longer hastens toward golden faraway places on the wings of dreams, when my eyes no longer gaze at eternally distant stars with longing looks; then the winds and little birds will whisper my life away together with my longing.]

The final line (“Mit meinem Sehnen mein Leben ein,” “[will whisper my life away together with my longing”]), which sets the text answering how the longings are to be satisfied, provides an appropriate entry-point to the song’s analysis because it is the moment when a change to a phrase heard twice before results in the growth of a ten-measure phrase to a eleven-measure phrase. As twelve-measure basic phrases consistently appear throughout song, this final phrase—which could be the first eleven measures of a twelve-measure basic phrase—both opens an analytical door to understanding all three phrases as versions of a twelve-measure basic phrase, and offers a deftly prepared moment of “satisfied longing.” (I am employing William

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Rothstein’s definition of a basic phrase as the “original, unexpanded [or uncontracted] phrase.”6) A version of this final cadence occurs three times over the course of the lied (mm. 32–37, 59–64, and 86–92). The melodic rhythm of the first two cadences is identical despite being in opposite modes (exx. 3.1a and 3.1b). Four significant changes, however, distinguish the final cadence from the previous ones and cause it to be drawn out to an almost excruciatingly difficult length—chronologically, psychologically, and dynamically (ex. 3.1c). First, the note values from measures 36 and 63 of the earlier cadences are doubled in the final cadence (mm. 90–91). Second, the rhythm in the piano returns to a sextuplet texture in the previous cadences (mm. 36 and 63) but adopts the most static surface rhythm of the lied in the final cadence (mm. 90–91). Third, in the final cadence, Brahms asks for a swell over the word “Leben” that is absent from the previous cadences. Finally, the rate of text declamation is twice as slow because Brahms does not repeat any of the text in the third stanza’s last cadence.7 From the perspective of phrase rhythm, the dissimilar settings of this cadence call into question which version (if either) is the basic phrase, the ten-measure phrases of the first two stanzas or the eleven-measure phrase of the final stanza. Exploring answers to that question provides an impetus for an analytical journey through the piece’s phrase rhythm, a journey that reveals the central role phrase rhythm plays in the setting of this text. This investigation often requires an analytical choice between an eight- or twelve-measure basic phrase. Eight measures would seem to be the simpler and more normative analytical choice, exhibiting a pure duple division that promotes symmetry and balance (eight measures divide into two equal four-measure parts, which further divide into two equal two-measure parts).8 Mathematically, this structure can be expressed as 2 x 2 x 2. Throughout this analysis, however, I argue for the conceptual primacy of the less frequently encountered twelve-measure length. Twelve-measure phrases have a greater number of possible subdivisions into equal parts, a potential that Brahms explores. A twelve-measure phrase will have a subdivision into three equal parts at some level; these possible subdivisions can be expressed as 3 x 2 x 2, 2 x 3 x 2, or 2 x 2 x 3 (where the first number represents the largest division into thirds or halves and the final number represents the smallest division).9 Figure 3.1 displays schematic diagrams of these possible subdivisions. These unusually long twelve-measure phrases are essential to the expression of longing in this lied. After a brief discussion of the form, I will investigate the phrase rhythm of each formal section and relate my findings to the overarching drama of Rückert’s poem. In short, I will show how an exquisitely nuanced manipulation of phrase rhythm parallels the structure of the text, acts as an important device for expressing longing, and arises as the primary agent for achieving closure in “Gestillte Sehnsucht.” I will then close with a few comments on metrical

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Example 3.1. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” op. 91, no. 1. Three versions of the same cadence, mm. 32–37, 59–64, and 86–92 D

Mezzo

Verse 1

32 # & # 42 ‰ Jœ

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œ œ B # # 42 œ œ œ

&

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œ œœ J

3

œœ # œœ œ œ J‰ J ‰

‰

œ.

Œ

œ

œ #œœ ‰ ‰

3

∑

œ. ‰ # œœ .. ‰

œ J

œœ p n œœ œ œ J ‰ J‰

wann schlaft

?

œ.

œœ‰ œœ‰ œœ‰ œœ‰ œ œ œ œ 3

n œ ‰ ‰ œ œJ ‰ Œ œ

3

dim.

Œ

œ

Œ

œ

mer ein.

œœ œœ J‰

‰

œ.

ihr,

œ J

-

∑

œ. ‰ # œœ .. ‰

jŒ œ #œ dim. ‰ jŒ n œœ ˙

j œœ j œœ

-

Sclum

3

3

3

in

# œ œ œ ‰ ‰ œ œ œJ ‰ Œ

j œ

œ ‰ b Jœœ ‰ œœœ ‰ b œj‰ œœ J ‰ œj‰ ‰ j‰ ? œ #œ œ j œ œ b # œœ œ œœ 3

œ.

œ

Schlum - mer,

3

seh - nen - den

#Verse 3 86 œ ‰ J & #

##

3

3

# œœ & b ‰ œJ p ‰ j & b œ # œœœ

B ##

œ œœ ‰ #œ œ œ ‰

lis - peln die

œœ j œœ j j œ 2 4 ‰ œJ ‰ Jœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœœ ‰ # œœ ‰ # œœ Œ œ J #œ p dim. j ‰ œœ ‰ œj ‰ j Œ ‰ j‰ ‰ j j? œ œ œ œ ˙ œœ 42 n œ œœœ œ œ œ œœ 3

Verse 2

& b

œ

j œ

œ œ J

∑

p

œ œœ J

n œœœ J‰

‰

p

œ J

œ‰ œ‰ œœ œœ 3

3

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(a) 3x2x2

ͳʹ Ͷ

Ͷ

ʹ ͳ

ʹ ͳ

ͳ

Ͷ

ʹ ͳ

ͳ

ʹ ͳ

ͳ

ʹ ͳ

ͳ

ʹ ͳ

ͳ

ͳ

(b) 2x2x3 ͳʹ ͸

͸

͵ ͳ

ͳ

͵ ͳ

ͳ

͵

ͳ

ͳ

ͳ

ͳ

͵ ͳ

ͳ

ͳ

ͳ

(c) 2x3x2 ͳʹ ͸ ʹ ͳ

͸

ʹ ͳ

ͳ

ʹ ͳ

ͳ

ʹ ͳ

ͳ

ʹ ͳ

ͳ

ʹ ͳ

ͳ

ͳ

Figure 3.1. Schematic diagrams of possible equal subdivisions of a twelve-measure phrase: (a) 3x2x2; (b) 2x2x3; (c) 2x3x2

stretching as a primary characteristic of this lied, and Brahms’s diversity of hypermetrical organization.

Form “Gestillte Sehnsucht” consists of three sections (ABA); the moods of the A and B sections parallel the calm–imploring–calm moods of the three stanzas set by Brahms. The stanzas are segmented into a verse and refrain based

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on the rhyme scheme abab (verse) and cc (refrain).10 This segmentation seems particularly apt since the rhymed couplets (cc) all draw on the same set of images of whispering, wind, birds, longing, and sleep [Lispeln, Winde, Vögelein, sehnen, and schlafen/schläft/Schlummmer] in the same order, despite the contrasting moods.11 The work also includes a substantive introduction, coda, and smaller linking passages between each pair of stanzas. In the introduction the viola presents the song’s main melody, which recurs as a countermelody during the verses of the A sections and as the mezzo-soprano’s melody during all refrains. In fact, this melody is absent only from the middle verse and from the coda. I choose to call all occurrences of this recurring melody the refrain (r) because the term represents its most structurally important function. Recognizing the extent to which r saturates the musical surface, the form could also be described as “r | V1r r | V2 r | V3r r | Coda.” (Vertical lines delineate the three stanzas, V1, V2, and V3 refer to the three verses, r denotes the refrain, and the superscripts represent the refrain’s alternative function as countermelody; the lack of a superscript reflects the lack of a countermelody.) The focus on the presence and absence of r reveals that countermelodies are present only when r adopts that function. On a smaller scale, the majority of the music is organized as Schoenbergian sentences. The three versions of r (the introduction, the outer verses’ countermelody, and the refrain to all three verses) are connected by their shared basic idea. The prevalence of sentences in this piece would seem to support readings that identify eight-measure basic phrases, since eight-measure sentences are far more common than twelve-measure ones. Yet I will demonstrate that a reading of longer basic phrases for all sections that include r is stronger, for reasons that vary phrase by phrase and will be elucidated below. The diversity of ways in which twelve-measure basic phrases emerge adds strength to the analysis: there is a sense of the inevitability of a commitment to this longer phrase length. The basic idea plays an important role in setting up an expected hypermeter and basic-phrase length. Since the presentation (usually a basic idea and its repetition) and continuation (a destabilization of the prevailing formal context and drive to the cadence) have equal durations in prototypical sentences, the length of the former projects a length for the latter.12 Examples 3.2a and 3.2b provide sentences of different lengths annotated to emphasize these proportions. The creation of hypermeter in a presentation is thus strongly supported by two factors: its division into equally long repetitions of the basic idea, and the melodic parallelism that identifies these repetitions.13 “Gestillte Sehnsucht” has instances of four-measure and six-measure presentations, although neither leads to an eight-measure basic phrase. In fact, all phrases organized as sentences function within a twelve-measure basic phrase. While it is expected that a six-measure presentation leads to a twelve-measure

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Example 3.2a. Sentence with a four-bar presentation: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata op. 2, no. 1, I, mm. 1–8 presentation phase (4 bars)

continuation phase (4 bars)

. œ. . . . bb . œ. œ œ œ n œ œ. Œ . n œ. œ œ œ œ œ Œ œj œ œ œ n œ œ. & b b C œ. œ. œ œ. œ œ. 3 3 3 basic idea repeated S p basic idea nœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ n œœœ œ œœ œ œ n œ Œ Ó Œ n œœœ œœœ œœœ Œ œœ œ ? bb b C Œ ∑ Œœ b

Œ œœ œ

j œ

S

˙˙ œ œ œ ˙ œ nœ œ œ œ nœ U Œ ˙ ŒŒ ƒ p œ œœ œœ œœ œœœ œU œ œ ŒœŒ Œ Œ œ.

œ . œ œ œ œ. n œœ Œœ

3

Example 3.2b. Prototypical sentence with a six-bar presentation: Joseph Haydn, Piano Sonata Hob. XVI:6, II, Trio, mm. 1–12. presentation phase (6 bars)

. b 3 œ^ mœ œ mœ œ # œ œ n œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œJ # œ^ mœ œ mœ n œ n œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b œ Jœ. n œ^ mœ œ mœ b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ &b 4 ‰ 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 basic idea repeated p basic idea basic idea repeated b & b 43 œœ. œœ. œœ. œ.œ œ.œ œ.œ # œœ. œœ. œœ. n œ. œ œ.œ œ.œ n œœ œœ œœ b œœ œœ œœ . . . . . .

Piano

7

b œ. & b œ. œ. œ. œ. œ . f j b ? & b œœ Œ ‰ œ œ. .

continuation phase (6 bars)

œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. n œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. # œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ . j j œ Œ ‰ n œ œ Œ ‰ # œ œ Œ ‰ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. # œ. œ J œ n œ. œ

Œ

œ. œ. ˙

œ. œ. œ. œ. œ .

basic phrase, it is notable that every four-measure presentation in “Gestillte Sehnsucht” also leads to twelve-measure basic phrases. This less common and longer phrase length, which features 150 percent of the time span of a stylistically conventional eight-measure basic phrase, contributes to the general sense of longing that permeates the piece.

Introduction (Measures 1–13) The introduction consists of one thirteen-measure phrase organized as a sentence (ex. 3.3): the first four measures present the basic idea, with its expected repetition, and the remaining nine gradually liquidate this basic idea down to its smallest motif, x, a rhythmic motif that typically has a function of

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Example 3.3. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” introduction, mm. 1–13

Y

























































Y
























































































Y





































































anacruses. Example 3.3 labels a few occurrences of x and interprets this phrase’s hypermeter using Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s dot notation.14 The first eight measures move from tonic to a secondary dominant (V56/V), and the remaining five measures prolong the dominant—the phrase’s harmonic goal. Metrically, the phrase projects a clear four-measure hypermeter for its first eight measures, but the final five measures are more complicated. Even though unstable harmonies are consistently placed on stronger beats of the hypermeter (those with four or more dots), the first eight measures are metrically stable. A pure duple span, these measures also resemble a sentence with

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four-measure presentation and continuation units. Through the process of fragmentation, the latter four measures (mm. 5–8) are further divided into a 1 + 1 + (1/2 + 1/2 + 1) mini-sentence, a common characteristic of many continuations.15 A change in harmonic rhythm also delineates the division between these two four-measure groups; at measure 5, there is one harmony per measure instead of two. These eight measures, however, do not constitute the entire phrase because they do not end with a cadence; rather, they prepare the phrase’s harmonic goal and eventual cadential arrival with a secondary dominant that occurs at the peak of the phrase (measure 8). The final five measures continue the fragmentation process initiated in the mini-sentence (measures 5–8) by dissolving the basic idea down to a basic motif: the three-sixteenth-note anacrusis, x, that originally preceded each of the first seven measures.16 After a measure of absence (measure 8), x returns as the anacrusis to measure 9, after which it occurs eight additional times consecutively. Since no rests separate the nine occurrences of x, its three-sixteenthnote length conflicts with the notated meter. This saturation of the phrase’s end with a motivic fragment is typical of a sentence. These final five measures are metrically complex. In particular, three factors indicate a metric disturbance. At measure 9, the piano’s sextuplet gestures are initiated every three eighth-notes instead of every two, the harmonic rhythm moves at a slower rate, and the grouping structure in the melody emphasizes the dotted eighth-note (expressed as three sixteenth-notes). Since the metrically regular first eight measures have developed an expectation for four-measure units, it makes sense to entertain an underlying four-measure prototype to explain this metrically irregular five-measure prolongation of the dominant (measures 9–13). This use of the three-sixteenth-note unit implies a change in meter. The song opens in a clear simple duple hypermeter with the strongest hypermetrical downbeats occurring in measures 1, 5, and 9. Beginning in measure 9, the groupings of sixteenth-notes change the music’s pattern of accents from 42 to 6 17 8. Example 3.3 illustrates this change by placing the smallest level of accent three eighth-notes apart instead of two. Three (or more) dots designate downbeats of the perceived meter. This notation assists us in articulating why the five measures of music between measures 9 and 13 feel like four measures of stretched out music: two measures of 86 meter occupy three measures of notated meter (mm. 9–11).18 The overall basic length of the phrase, which can be calculated by counting the number of perceived downbeats (three or more dots), is twelve measures divided into four measures of presentation followed by eight of continuation. These twelve measures are thus divided into three groups of four (each group begins with a five-dot marking), and the hypermetric organization can be described as 3 x 2 x 2 (as in fig. 3.1a).

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Outer Verses (Measures 14–26 and 68–80) The melodic similarities between the organization of the introduction and the outer verses provide a high degree of motivic unity. Example 3.4 provides the first verse. The clearest similarity is the presence of the introduction’s melody, played by the viola; as noted previously, its new function is to provide a countermelody to the mezzo-soprano’s melody. The setting maintains the basic idea that has already been heard, but modifies it in a significant way: it is three, instead of two, measures long. The added measure is easily identified as the first measures of the basic idea and its repetition because these initial measures are distinctly stagnant: all sextuplet motion ceases, the texture thins out to a dominant pedal for the first eighth-note, and the viola part states the first measure of its original basic idea in the phrase’s second measure. Since the first measure (and likewise the fourth) is inserted, the stronger measures of the viola’s hypermeter are the second and fifth measures of the phrase. An additional similarity between the introduction and outer verses is the uncertainty as to how the sense of expansion impacts the basic phrase. In the introduction, the phrase structure of the continuation phase was ambiguous owing to a change in the pulse from quarter-notes to dotted quarter-notes. In the outer verses, the ambiguity concerns the lengths of the basic idea. In these verses, the vocal part reveals that the seemingly removable insertions in the countermelody—two beats of rest across measures 13–14 and 16–17—are actually an essential measure of the phrase. Since the mezzo-soprano part carries the primary melody and text, its phrase structure takes priority over the viola’s countermelody. Thus, while the countermelody is clearly an altered version of the refrain, its three-measure basic idea is necessary in order to align it with the mezzo-soprano’s three-measure basic idea. While the viola and piano’s basic ideas in these verses are expanded to accommodate the three-measure basic idea necessary for the mezzo-soprano, a hypermetrical dissonance arises between the melody and accompaniment. The mezzo-soprano’s line has strong hyperbeats on the phrase’s first and fourth measures (mm. 14 and 17). This reading is supported by two factors. First, its melody implies a I–V–I harmonization for the first three measures, a progression that traditionally aligns with a strong–weak–strong (or in this case strong– weak–weak) hypermeter at a phrase’s beginning. Second, it is easier to hear a strong hyperbeat on the first measure of a phrase instead of the second.19 The hypermetrical conflict arises because the mezzo-soprano has strong hyperbeats on measures 14 and 17 while the viola and piano have strong hyperbeats on measures 15 and 18. Overall, the viola and piano’s hypermeter best describes the combined effect of the parts owing to the hypermetric parallelism with the introduction, increased surface rhythm on stronger measures of the hypermeter,

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Example 3.4. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” verse 1, mm. 14–26

































































































































































































































































































































































































































and durational accent in the second measure of the mezzo-soprano’s melody. This hypermeter in the voice melody is, at best, a weak shadow meter.20 The outer verses’ continuation (mm. 20–26) fulfills the expectation for a twelve-measure phrase initiated by a six-measure presentation. These final seven measures begin in measure 20 with an extended anacrusis that parallels measures 14 and 17, followed by a move to the dominant through a descending 7–6 suspension pattern and fragmentation of the basic idea into one-measure units (mm. 21–23). The phrase then concludes with a traditional harmonic progression to an imperfect authentic cadence in the dominant (mm. 24–26). The hypermetric structure of this continuation is unclear. Certainly, measures 21 and 22 form a strong-weak pair because of the melodic parallelism with measures 5 and 6 and the direct sequencing of melodic material from measure 21 in measure 22. Measures 23 and 24, however, are far more difficult to interpret. In the voice, a new melodic event begins in measure 23, which makes it feel like a strong measure. In the viola, however, a new melodic event

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begins in measure 24, conversely making that measure feel like a strong measure. Our predilection toward hearing binary hypermeters further plays into this conflict. Since the viola’s basic idea and its repetition are clearly expanded versions of the original two-measure basic idea, we are left with the sense that a two-measure hypermeter is being thwarted in the opening six measures. When the continuation begins (m. 21) and the empty measures are removed, we are almost predisposed to hear this moment as a resumption of duple hypermeter and measures 21 and 23 as strong measures in the viola, despite the continuation of a melodic pattern in measure 23 and the start of a new one in measure 24. Measure 24 is accented—drawn to attention—in two further ways. The apex of the melodic line occurs over these two measures (mm. 23–24) as the soprano climbs to d3, the chordal seventh of the dominant, which resolves to the new tonic and c♯3 on the downbeat of measure 24. This measure also features an acceleration of harmonic rhythm. After considering the entire phrase, I find measure 24 the stronger of the pair. As this phrase unfolds in time, however, its metrical status is very unclear, owing to the clear pairing of measures 21 and 22 and our desire to hear two-measure units. This ambiguity is part of the benefit of a six-measure continuation—it has the potential to express a regular hypermeter as three two-measure hypermeasures or two three-measure hypermeasures. As continuations of sentences are often less tightly-knit, it makes sense that ambiguity would occur. This obfuscation leads to a momentary suspension of regular hypermeter, which, in this song, contributes to the sense of longing. The overall thirteen-measure length of the phrase is an interesting by-product of these hypermetrical conflicts. Since the mezzo-soprano’s phrase—and the shadow meter it articulates—starts one measure before the viola and piano’s phrases, these staggered entries add one measure to the overall length of the combined phrases and additional hypermetric ambiguity in the phrase’s continuation. Similar to the introduction, but for different reasons, the outer verses occupy thirteen measures of notated music. In the introduction and outer verses, the sense of longing is present in two ways. First, the phrases’ basic length of twelve measures—rather than the more normative eight—arises from easily perceived changes to the prototypical sentence structure. In the introduction, the four-measure presentation phase leads to an expectation of an equally long continuation phase. The continuation, however, is twice the expected length (eight, rather than four, basic measures). In the outer verses, the basic idea that has been heard in a two-measure form now occupies three measures and carries forward this larger proportion through the remainder of the phrase. Second, an extra measure—the thirteenth—arises through different metrical devices in both phrases. In the introduction, the pulse changes from a quarter-note to a dotted quarter-note during the continuation phase—the shift from notated 42 to

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heard 86. This change causes two perceived measures of music to occupy three notated measures. In the outer verses, the presence of a shadow meter creates a hypermetrical dissonance, an offset of one measure for the voice and accompaniment. These twelve-measure basic phrases are hypermetrically organized and stretched so that they exploit the variety of ways that twelve measures can be metrically divided and contribute to the general sense of longing that permeates the song.

Refrains (Measures 28–37, 55–64, and 82–93) The refrain, which concludes each of the three verses, is the last type of formal unit to utilize the opening viola melody, r. Following the pattern established by the introduction and first verse, the presence of r in the refrain leads to a sentential organization for the phrase. The refrain’s first four measures, the presentation portion of the sentence, repeat the melody and metric organization of the introduction’s first four measures. The continuations of these phrases, however, proceed differently. Metrically, none contain disruptions of meter below the level of the tactus. Harmonically, instead of moving to and prolonging the dominant, these sections complete the motion to the cadence through a four-measure prolongation of the supertonic harmony, followed by an almost-perfect authentic cadence that occupies two (first and second refrain) or three measures (final refrain). Finally, there is a significant difference in how the entire melody is used. Instead of functioning as an introduction or countermelody in the viola, it occurs in the mezzo-soprano and thus claims the poem’s text. Even though the refrains clearly correspond to the introduction, the first two occupy only ten measures: a four-measure presentation followed by a sixmeasure continuation (example 3.5a provides the continuation). Several features within the continuation suggest irregularities in the hypermeter. First, the rate of bass-note change shifts to from twice to once a measure during measures 34 and 35. Second, the weak hyperbeat placement of the cadence is immediately reinterpreted as a strong hyperbeat of the melodic echo in measures 37 through 41. Finally, this echo shifts the melody and harmony by a half-measure. Within the first beat of measure 38, the final tonic is transformed into V7/IV by the addition of C♮ on the weak eighth-note. This harmony corresponds to the second beat of measure 31, which is the anacrusis to the continuation phase. The metric shift is maintained throughout the echo of measures 31 (beat 2) through 33 (beat 2). Even for this ten-measure phrase, I argue for a basic phrase that maintains a four-measure hypermeter. The following analytical question then arises: how does a six-measure continuation phase line up with a four-measure hypermeter?

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Example 3.5a. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” refrain and continuation, six‐measure surface realization



































































































































































































































Example 3.5b. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” refrain and continuation, possible five‐ measure prototype


















































































































































































Example 3.5c. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” refrain and continuation, possible seven‐ measure prototype









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One possible answer is that the two measures containing the change in harmonic rhythm (mm. 34–35) represent one measure of a basic phrase that has been stretched to two in its surface realization. This reading would imply that the continuations are based on a five-measure basic phrase functioning within an four-measure hypermeter, a common occurrence that could take the form shown in example 3.5b. An alternative answer could accept the decelerated harmonic rhythm as part of the basic phrase, and propose that the phrase’s conclusion should maintain that rhythm. In other words, measures 36 and 37 are a contracted version of the basic phrase hypothesized in example 3.5c. The final two measures of the surface phrase (ex. 3.5a) are a contraction of the final four measures of the hypothetical prototype given as example 3.5c. The crux of the issue concerns the change of pacing in measure 34: is the change part of the basic phrase, or is it an expanded version of an underlying basic phrase? Several aspects of the texture support a reading that interprets these measures as an expansion (ex. 3.6b): the bass rhythm slows from a quarter-note to a half-note pace; the viola’s triplets occur once instead of twice a measure; and the mezzo-soprano part uses quarter-notes instead of eighthnotes. Combined with a diminuendo dynamic marking and the piano part’s dramatic descent into the bass register, the entire effect is one of slowing down. In the first two refrains, this effect lasts only for two measures, after which everything but the dynamic and register returns to its previous state (mm. 36ff). This seeming return to normalcy after two measures of lugubriousness supports a reading of an eight-measure underlying phrase, and supports the ongoing expression of longing through phrase expansion. Changes to the final refrain (ex. 3.6) add an additional layer of ambiguity to decisions about the basic phrase. In the final measures of its continuation (mm. 90–92), the doubling of values that created a sense of expansion in the first two refrains continues for an additional two measures. This version closely parallels the hypothetical prototype in example 3.5c, carrying the slower harmonic rhythm through the cadential 46 and its resolution. Even before the change of harmonic rhythm, the text is presented twice as slowly as in the previous refrains, resulting in the syncopations in measures 86–88. Brahms states a portion of the sixth line of the first two stanzas twice. By contrast, the longer last stanza contains no text repeats. Brahms accomplishes this by changing the text underlay at measure 86 (see ex. 3.1c). Previously, each beat had received a syllable, even if the pitch was a reiteration of the immediately preceding note. In this last iteration, only pitch changes receive new syllables. This deceleration of text presentation adds to the finality of the third stanza and sets up the slower harmonic rhythm of measures 88–91. Maintaining this pace of harmonic change also projects a length of two measures for the final tonic. As is common at formal boundaries, however, the onset of a coda overlaps with the final tonic. If this phrase were considered without the length of its final

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Example 3.6. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” final refrain, mm. 86–92 Mezzo

Vla.

Piano

# 2 & # 4 B # # 42

# 2 & # 4 # 2 & # 4

œ J

‰

œ J

œ

86

mit

œœœœœ

œ

j œ

œ œ œ ‰ #œ œ œ ‰ mei

-

nem

j œ

3

3

3

Seh

-

j œ

œ œ #œ ‰ œ #œ œ ‰

œœ œ ‰ œJ ‰ œœ ‰ œœœ ‰ J J p ‰ j ‰ j‰ ‰ j? œ œœ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ 3

œ

3

3

-

œ

-

nen

œ #œœ ‰ ‰ 3

j j œœ ‰ œ ‰ # œj Œ œ # œœ œ #œ j ‰ j dim. œœ œœ ‰ œj Œ œ œ ˙ dim.

Œ

œ

œ

mein

œ ‰Œ œœ J ?

œ. ‰ # œœ .. ‰

˙

œ.

˙

Le

-

œ œ

œ.

ben ein.

∑

œœ ˙˙ Œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙

Œ

œ

˙ ˙

∑

p

œ œœ J

n œœœ J‰

‰

p

œ J

œœ‰ œœ‰ œ œ 3

3

tonic being obfuscated by onset of the coda, it would be twelve measures long, divided evenly into three four-measure groups. This reading is certainly possible, as the final note could be perceived as lasting for two measures, much like the final note at a symphony’s end might be allowed to ring in order to fill the expected hypermetrical space. Given that the introduction and verses are based on twelve-measure basic phrases, how does the meaning of the phrase rhythm change if we consider the refrain as contracted versions of twelve-measure basic phrases rather than expanded versions of eight-measure basic phrases? As expanded versions, we can use the obvious analysis that phrase expansion expresses longing; the greater phrase expansion of the final refrain adds additional gravity and extra expression of longing to the song’s conclusion. While there may seem to be something Procrustean about hearing the first two refrains as contracted versions of a twelve-measure basic phrase, this analysis creates strong parallels with the introduction and provides a more meaningful connection between phrase rhythm and expression of the poem. The parallelism with the introduction occurs in two ways. First, the sense of stretching within these basic phrases’ continuation units—albeit achieved through completely different techniques—is integral to their surprisingly long eight-measure continuations. Second, both phrases have the same harmonic rhythm, devoting the first four-measure unit to tonic, the second to pre-dominant, and the final (mostly) to dominant. In other words, both phrases share a 3 x 2 x 2 hypermetrical organization with similar harmonic timing (see ex. 3.2b). More important, though, is the additional meaning a twelve-measure basic phrase provides to expression of the text. Only in the final refrain do we hear a basic phrase with no internal complications such as echoes, shadow meter, or metric modulation.21 Finally—just as the poem’s speaker receives his answer about when his longings will be satisfied—we hear a simple phrase, as though to express a state of quietude. The contracted versions in the previous

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stanzas still express longing through the stretched feeling within the continuations, but return to a more restless—unstilled—state for their cadential dominants and tonics. In other words, we still feel the presence of the unsatisfied longings. The ambiguity of how to interpret the changes in harmonic rhythm contributes to the unsettled feeling that matches the speaker’s restless longings. Due to the deeper analytical meaning and parallelism with the introduction, I prefer a reading of twelve-measure basic phrases for the refrains.

Summary of Preceding Analysis Overall, I have argued that all passages that draw on the opening melody have twelve-measure basic phrases. In the introduction and refrains, these basic phrases exist within a four-measure hypermeter; in the verses, the basic phrases work within a three-measure hypermeter. None of these basic phrases occupy twelve measures of music. Instead, they draw on a variety of techniques to expand or contract the phrase. The introduction expands a twelve-measure basic phrase to thirteen through a metric change, and the outer verses occupy thirteen measures owing to a long anacruses and a shadow (hyper)meter. Perhaps most notable, the first two refrains contract the basic phrase to ten measures (although an argument can also be made for expanding an eight-measure basic phrase to ten measures), and the last refrain is the only formal section to present an almost unhindered version of a twelve-measure basic phrase. Only the entrance of the coda that overlaps the final harmony prevents this phrase from literally occupying twelve measures of music. The sense of completion and simplicity that emerges from this unmodified twelve-measure phrase adds an additional layer of closure to the ending of “Gestillte Sehnsucht.”

Middle Verse (Measures 42–53) In this middle stanza, the text describes longings that stir without rest or peace, move the heart, and will not sleep. In short, these restless desires that were not even present in the first stanza—which simply set the atmosphere—now rival the narrator in dramatic importance. The change in mode, busier surface rhythms, and more active dynamics reflect the new mood. Even though this section of the form does not include r, which permeates all other important formal sections, the phrase rhythm continues to be an agent of text setting. The middle verse is the only section of the form that actually occupies twelve measures on the musical surface (ex. 3.7). This is misleading, however, because its basic phrase is eight measures long. This eight-measure phrase is

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Example 3.7. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” verse 2, mm. 42–53

























































































































































































































































































































































disguised in three ways. The first two expansions are easily perceived: a onemeasure echo across measures 46–47 and a doubling of note values in measures 52–53 add two measures of length to the surface version of the phrase. The two remaining “extra” measures do not arise from an expansion. Rather, like the introduction, the notated barlines do not coincide with the perceived bar-lines. The (perceived) meter in this verse alternates between 42 and 43 measures for eight (perceived) measures. The four 43 measures contribute four additional quarter-notes to the overall length, thus accounting for the final two “extra” measures. These alternating meters help portray the restless longings featured in Rückert’s second stanza. Example 3.9 shows a re-barred version of the ten-measure basic phrase. It deletes the echo across measures 46 and 47, undoes the durational expansions in measures 51 and 52, and re-measures the twenty beats of the basic phrase into eight measures of alternating 42 and 43

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Example 3.8. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” ten-measure notated basic phrase re-barred as the eight-measure perceived basic phrase subphrase 1

Mezzo

42 j & b 42 ‰ œj œ . œR œJ .

Ihr

Vla.

Piano

Mezzo

B b 42 Œ

2 &b 4 Π? 42 Πb

j & b 42 œ

Wün-sche, die3 ihr

œ bœ œ 3

#œ f

poco

Pno.

œ# œ 3 œ 4 œ

stets euch re - get

œ

œ

œœ

œœ

œœ bœ

‰ œj

42 œ .

œœ‰

42

44

im

j j j j bœ œœ ‰ # œœ 43 ‰ b œœ ‰ œœ ? ‰ œ p œ œ œ œ ‰ # œJ ‰ œ 43 ‰ œ ‰ Jœ ‰ J J

‰

nœ J

Seh - nen,

Vla.

43 œ 3 bœ. œ œ œ R 4

subphrase 3

œ J

#œ J

das

die

œ. 43 48

Brust

œœ

œ

3

3

j œ œ

œ œ œ ‰ 49

be-we - get, 3

œ œ

45

43 œ .

Her - zen son - der

Rast

∑

3

43 Œ

42 œ . œ œ

wann

42 ?

42

‰ j 42 œ

46

und Ruh’!

# œœ

43 œ œ

œ

ru - hest du, wann

∑

œ œ

Du

œœ œœ 2 ≈ 4

# œœ

œ œ 3 œ œ œ #œ œ œ #œ ≈ œ 4 œ œ

subphrase 4

œ J

œ œ œ œœ ® œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ # œœ œ œœ œ #œ œ œ ? 2 ≈ # œœ ≈ n n œœ ≈ b œœœ ≈ œœœ 3 ≈ b œœœ ≈ œœœ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œœ b 4 R R R R 4 œ œ œ & b 42 ®b œ œ œ ® b œ œ œ ®œ n œ œ ®œ œœ œ 43 ®

œ

œ œ œ #œ œ œ 2 œ œ œ 4 œ œ #œ poco f 24 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

œ œ B b 42 # œ b œ n œ œ œ œ 43 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ bœ œ f 3

subphrase 2

œ œ

43 œ .

Œ

œ

schlummerst du?

43 Œ

2 4 42

Œ

œ

œ

&

j #œ

‰ œ

œ œ #œ œ j œœ œœ # œœ œœ 3 ≈ œ ≈ œ # œ œ œœ œ # œœ œ 4 œ œ

2 4 œ œ

3 4 œ œ œ œ œ

œ œ

Œ

meters. The original measure numbers are provided to ease comparison between examples 3.7 and 3.8. The ten-measure basic notated phrase divides into two five-measure phrases that conclude with half cadences. A fascinating aspect of this verse concerns the next level of subdivision, where the five-measure phrases are divided into two equally long subphrases. This creates an overall grouping structure of 2 x 2 x 2.5 (!!). Several beautiful details support this reading. The first subphrases of each phrase (subphrases 1 and 3) are almost the same; the second one reaches a slightly higher apex owing to a more complex harmonization. The second subphrases (2 and 4) are also almost identical, although Brahms’s use of invertible counterpoint disguises the similarities. Example 3.9 shows how these subphrases feature invertible counterpoint between the outer voices. It also shows how subphrase 4 inverts the entire bass and melody lines from subphrase 2 (with augmentation at its end).

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Example 3.9. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” invertible counterpoint in mm. 44–46 and 50–53

& b ‰

44

Mezzo

Pno.

?b ‰

& b ‰

50

Mezzo

Pno.

?b ‰

j œ

y (2 beats)

j œ.

j œ œ œ œ

im

œ J

r j œ œ

œ J

Rast

œ œ

œ œ

œ œ

Her - zen son - der

œ.

œ œ

z z

œ

œ

wann ru - hest du,

j œ œ œ œ

y

œ. œ.

‰ œj

œ. J

z (3 beats)

œ R

Œ

œ

und

Ruh’!

y

j œ ‰ Œ œ

y (based on a two-beat prototype)

œ.

wann schlum

j œ œ

j œ

-

merst

œ

z

œ

Œ

du?

˙ ˙

While aurally clear, the hypermetrical organization of these four subphrases is visually obfuscated because their meter conflicts with the notated meter. For example, the first five-quarter-note subphrase concludes in measure 44. The second beat of measure 44 is hypermetrically stronger than the first beat, which sounds—in retrospect—like an extra upbeat. Three musical factors, however, point to a shifted barline in subphrases 2 (mm. 44–46) and 4 (mm. 50–52). First, since the first and second subphrases share similar rhythms at the outset, interpreting the second beat of measure 44 as a downbeat creates a parallel metrical structure. Second, the latter beats of measures 44 and 45 have durational accents that further enforce the second notated beat as stronger than the first. The viola echo in measure 47, which is not part of the basic phrase, provides a third iteration of this durational accent. Third, the accents in the text (“Her-[zen]” and “Rast,” as opposed to a rest and “son-[der]”) land on the perceived downbeats. The perceived and notated meters realign in measure 48 owing to the second “extra” upbeat (second beat of measure 47) of this verse. In fact, the presence of extra upbeats starts to create a predictable pattern of quarter-note groupings: 2 + 2 + 1, 2 + 2 + (2) + 1, where (2) refers to the echo in measure 46. This pattern continues in measures 48 through 51, where

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the expected invertible counterpoint occurs, but with augmentation at its end. The y motif in measure 51 (ex. 3.9) has been expanded from its four-eighthnote prototype to four quarter-notes.

Variety in Brahms: Stretching Techniques and Divisions of Twelve Stretching phrases is an exceptional way to express longing (“Sehnsucht”) in music.22 This aspect of the phrase structure in “Gestillte Sehnsucht” occurs so frequently that it becomes a defining feature of the piece. Even the basic-phrase lengths of twelve and ten measures seem long compared with the eight-measure basic phrases encountered far more frequently in the wider repertoire. Table 3.1 summarizes the use of stretching techniques throughout the piece. The varied ways that stretching occurs are a testament to Brahms’s rhythmic creativity: they include the meter change in the introduction, which slows the rate of hypermetrical downbeats by fifty percent, frequent augmentation by one hundred percent, the use of static texture in the accompaniment, and echoes. The latter two of these techniques warrant more discussion. Static texture first occurs as a stretching technique in the opening verse. The use of static texture creates the sensation of time stopping. The voice enters in a state of suspension—all rhythmic motion ceases and the mezzosoprano declaims her text over a dominant pedal tone. Motion returns when the violist enters with its countermelody, but everything halts again with the entrance of the second statement of the basic idea. This cessation of motion combined with the unusually late hypermetrical downbeats creates the sense of waiting—in other words, time in being stretched in those long anacruses. The regular cessation of motion in the outer verses creates a pattern of stretching that does not disturb the hypermeter. However, this pattern establishes the groundwork for a later stretching that does affect the hypermeter: the link between the first verse and its refrain. In this verse, a three-measure basic idea begins over a stationary texture in measures 1, 4, and 7 of the phrase. This pattern could have continued, but instead it is absent in the phrase’s tenth measure, which parallels the formal function of this measure as part of the continuation unit—a place of forward motion. Measure 13 of the phrase, however, returns to the motif of waiting. This measure differs from the previous ones in that the sense of stretching is created through a two-measure link in the viola that delays the next hypermetrical downbeat by a measure. In other words, this stretching impacts a sense of hypermeter while the previous ones did not.

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Table 3.1. Summary of stretching techniques. Form

Description

Introduction

perceived bars become longer

Verse 1

three 1.25-measure anacruses

small link

chromatic, outside of the hypermeter for two bars

Refrain

continuation has sense of half-timing

large link

echoes continuation, hypermeter peters out

Verse 2

echo in between the two phrases and augmentation of the cadence

small link

chromatic, outside of the hypermeter for two bars

Refrain

continuation has sense of augmentation

large link

hypermeter and texture peter out

Verse 3

three 1.25-measure anacruses

small link

chromatic, outside of the hypermeter

Refrain

sense of half timing is extended

Coda

extra iterations of a one-bar segment

Echoes offer an additional stretching technique. Two sizable echoes follow the outer stanzas, functioning in the first case as a link between the first pair of stanzas, and in the second case as the coda. Their pitch material repeats the melody of the previously heard continuation unit. Example 3.10 provides these two echoes. As with the metric differences between the refrains, where the final refrain was longer than the previous ones, the echoes share the same first four measures, but the final measures of the latter echo—the coda—occupy more space: instead of a five-measure link, we hear a seven-measure conclusion, extended further through a fermata on the final note. While the first echo may not seem to be an example of stretching, it serves as a prototype for the second echo, which clearly utilizes the stretching motif one final time. Metrical structures in “Gestillte Sehnsucht” also display Brahms’s interest in exploring a range of hypermetrical structures within one phrase. Twelvemeasure phrases have more ways of being subdivided into equal parts than do eight-measure phrases. Eight, as a perfect cube (23), can only be divided into equal parts in one way: 4 + 4, which is further divided into {2 + 2} + {2 + 2}. As discussed earlier, twelve measure phrases can be equally divided in three ways, offering more potential for variety: 4 + 4 + 4, 6 + 6 subdivided into [3 + 3] + [3 + 3], and 6 + 6 subdivided into [2 + 2 + 2] + [2 + 2 + 2].23

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Example 3.10a. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” echo after the first stanza, mm. 37–41 B # # 42

37

Vla.

œ.

œ J

p

n œœ j ? ## 2 ‰ œ ‰ 4 &œ J œœ p3 ? ## 2 œ‰ 4 œœ‰ œ œœ

Piano

œ J

œ

œ J

œ J

œ

j œ

dim.

j œ œ

j j œ j œ ‰ ? œœ œœ ‰ œ ‰ œ J œ œœ œ dim. b œ œ œœ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ bœ ‰ œ œœ

j œ

œ ‰ œœ ‰ œœœ J J

‰

œ

œ‰

j ‰ œ

Œ

œ

‰ œœ Œ J

j‰ Œ œ

Example 3.10b. “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” echo after the third stanza, mm. 92–98 B # # 42

92

Vla.

œ.

p

œ J

œ J

œ

œ J

œ J

œ dim.

œ J

œ J

œ

j bœ œ

j j j j # j j ‰ œj ‰ ? œ & # 42 ‰ œœj ‰ œ ‰ œœ ‰ œœœ ‰ œœœ ‰ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ p 3 nœ œ dim. b œ œ ? # # 42 œ ‰ œ‰ œ œ ‰ œ œ ‰ œ œ ‰ œ bœ ‰ ‰ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ

Piano

œ bœ œ œ

œ œ œ œ

U

œœ

œ œ œ œ

gUœ œ œœ gggg œœ g œ

œ œ œ œ

œ œ gg œ œ œ ggg œ

U

Brahms clearly uses two of these metrical structures: the introduction and refrains are organized as 4 + 4 + 4, and the outer verses as 6 + 6, which further subdivides into [3 + 3] + [3 + 3]. Oddly enough, the ten-measure basic phrase of the middle verse is divided into two equal parts at both levels of subdivision (as though it were an eight-measure phrase): its two phrases have a 5 + 5 structure, which is further subdivided into [2.5 + 2.5] + [2.5 + 2.5]. This variety of subdivisions exploits the possibilities of the basic-phrase lengths and supports the formal divisions of the piece.24

Conclusion: Trajectory of Text and Phrase-Rhythm Relationships The tight correlation between the poem’s content and the nuances of the phrase rhythm clearly demonstrate how phrase rhythm can be a powerful technique for text setting. While deep engagement with the interaction between the poetry and other facets of the music will assuredly yield supporting details, only through this narrow focus on phrase rhythm can we learn that its journey to clarity mirrors the text’s journey to completion. The three stanzas that

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Brahms set have a clear trajectory of (1) setting the ambience, (2) introducing longing as a character and asking a question, and (3) answering the question. Like the text, the phrase rhythm is unsettled until the final refrain. Various obfuscations of the twelve-measure basic phrase include augmentation through a metric modulation (introduction), contraction at the cadence (first two refrains), and out-of-phase hypermetric and grouping structures (outer verses). Furthermore, twelve-measure units in the minor-mode section result from simple expansions of an unusually uneven ten-measure basic phrase (middle verse). The clear presentation of a twelve-measure basic phrase is withheld until the last refrain, where its unambiguous and simple statement provides a finality and “rightness” to this lusciously long cadence. Examining the careful manipulation of phrase rhythm throughout the entire song reveals a profoundly beautiful compositional aspect. Brahms’s setting of “Gestillte Sehnsucht” musically expresses the point of Rückert’s poem: the sense of fulfilled longing only arrives with the finality that accompanies death.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

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Geiringer advances the idea that the viola is Brahms’s favorite stringed instrument in Brahms: His Life and Work, 3rd ed. (New York: DaCapo, 1982), 285. These songs were published in reverse compositional order—no. 2 was written twenty years before no. 1. See William Rothstein, Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1989), 12. Analyses that include descriptions of how aspects of phrase rhythm (hypermeter or phrase structure) express the text include Charles Burkhart, “Departures from the Norm in Two Songs from Schumann’s Liederkreis,” in Schenker Studies, ed. Hedi Siegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 146–64; Harald Krebs, “Hypermeter and Hypermetric Irregularity in the Songs of Josephine Lang,” in Engaging Music: Essays in Music Analysis, ed. Deborah J. Stein (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 13–29; David Lewin, “Die Schwestern,” in Studies in Music with Text (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 233–66; Yonatan Malin, “Metric Displacement Dissonance and Romantic Longing in the German Lied,” Music Analysis 25 (2006): 251–88; Malin, Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Heather Platt, “Text-Music Relationships in the Lieder of Johannes Brahms” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 1992); and Stephen Rodgers, “Thinking (and Singing) in Threes: Triple Hypermeter and the Songs of Fanny Hensel,” Music Theory Online 17, no. 1 (2011), accessed July 13, 2011. All translations come from those provided by Stanley Appelbaum in Johannes Brahms, Complete Songs for Solo Voice and Piano, series 3 (New York: Dover, 1980), xv. Rothstein, Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music, 64.

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108 7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

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As Scott Murphy has pointed out (email communication, August 17, 2010), this change appropriately causes the “Seh-” of “Sehnen” to be the longest sounding syllable up to this point; it will soon be trumped—also appropriately—by the “Le-” of “Leben.” This description of pure duple refers to the equal subdivision at each level of the hypermeter into two equal parts. See Richard Cohn, “The Dramatization of Hypermetric Conflicts in the Scherzo of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,” Nineteenth Century Music 15 (1992): 188–206, esp. 194–95. Cohn, “The Dramatization of Hypermetric Conflicts,” 194–95. Incidentally, this form is called a sextilla, and is Spanish in origin. See Lewis Turco, The Book of Forms (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000), 251 and Travis Lyon, Forms of Poetry (Pittsburgh: TeaLemon Publications, 2004), 231. Interestingly, the poetic meter in this couplet also differs from the rest of the poem. The first four lines of each stanza are predominantly in iambic tetrameter while the concluding couplet prominently features amphibrachs and a tri- or tetrameter form (depending on whether the final syllable of each stanza is an accented “ein”). William Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 254. Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s Metrical Preference Rule 1 supports this claim: “Where two or more groups or parts of groups can be construed as parallel, they preferably receive parallel metrical structure.” Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), esp. 74–75. Caplin (Classical Form, 85) also points to symmetrical grouping structures as a feature that one might expect to find in tight-knit forms such as a sentence. Lerdahl and Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music; see esp. chapter 2, “Rhythmic Structure.” This grouping structure is commonly found when a continuation phase features liquidation, which Caplin describes as the “systematic elimination of characteristic motives” (Classical Form, 11). Liquidation can also be observed in the continuation phase of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 2, no. 1, mvt. 1, mm. 1–8, shown in example 3.2a. While the basic idea does not literally have a three-sixteenth-note anacrusis, each syncopated anacrusis lasts for three sixteenth-notes. 6 meter, not the 6 reading I advoThe grouping slurs on the score imply a 16 8 cate, because they highlight the three-note characteristic motive. However, the anacrusis to measure 9 arises from a metric texture of a binary alternation of strong and weak sixteenth-notes. This accent pattern is maintained throughout measures 9 through 11. Furthermore, the shared attacks with the piano’s sextuplets on two out of every three eighth-notes accents eighth-notes rather than the dotted eighth-notes emphasized by the violist’s slurring. An alternative interpretation could ignore the effect that the different grouping pattern has on the meter and argue instead that the expansion to thirteen

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phrase rhythm and the expression of longing

19. 20.

21. 22.

23.

24.

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measures from twelve occurs in measures 12 and 13. I prefer the metric modulation analysis because it conforms to the grouping structure of the extended continuation. It interprets measure 12 as a strong measure of the hypermeter (measure 3 of a four-measure unit) while the alternative interpretation fights the grouping structure of measures 9 through 12 and interprets measure 12 as a weak measure of the hypermeter (measure 4 of a four-measure unit). See Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s Metrical Preference Rule 2 (Strong Beat Early) in A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, 76–78. In Rothstein’s definition, “A shadow meter is a secondary meter formed by a series of regularly recurring accents, when those accents do not coincide with the accents of the prevailing meter (or hypermeter).” William Rothstein, “Beethoven with and without Kunstgepräng’: Metrical Ambiguity Reconsidered,” in Beethoven Forum, vol. 4, ed. Christopher Reynolds (University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 167. I am considering the overlap of the phrase’s final tonic with the onset of the coda as occurring on the phrase boundary, rather than within the phrase. Yonatan Malin (“Metric Displacement, Dissonance and Romantic Longing”) has beautifully argued for metric displacement as a symbol of longing throughout the Romantic era. The connection between phrase expansion and longing occurs in some of the pieces he discusses, but not to the extent to which it occurs in this piece, where it assumes a primary role for expressing longing. In order to preserve a regular three- or two-measure hypermeter, I am omitting the possibility of mixing a 3 + 3 six-measure unit with a 2 + 2 + 2 six-measure unit within the same twelve-measure phrase. The missing subdivision of twelve into [2 + 2 + 2] + [2 + 2 + 2] could be argued for in the continuations of the outer verses (see ex. 3.4, mm. 21–26). In particular, the similar content of the continuation’s first two measures (mm. 21–22) encourages a strong-weak hearing, and the presence of a new idea in the third measure suggests a strong-measure reading. One analytical payoff for that reading is that Brahms would then have all three possible hypermetric structures for twelve-measure hyperbars in play within a single piece. I found the [3 + 3] + [3 + 3] hypermeter more salient in the continuation owing to the strongly accented return to tonic in measure 24 where the bass pattern changes, the phrase starts its motion away from the climax, and the surface rhythms are altered.

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Chapter Four

On the Oddness of Brahms’s Five-Measure Phrases Samuel Ng

In a letter dated August 10, 1893, Clara Schumann expresses her approval of Brahms’s Rhapsody in E-flat, op. 119, no. 4 in a somewhat cryptic manner: “But now to return to the allegro, how powerful the first motif is and how original and I suppose Hungarian, owing to the five-measure phrases. It is strange, but otherwise this five-measure arrangement does not disturb me here at all—it just has to be so.”1 While five-measure organization is hardly a defining feature of style hongrois,2 Schumann’s depiction of it as “strange” and demonstrative of exoticism highlights the entrenched music-theoretical postulate that irregular phrase lengths—especially odd-numbered ones—are exceptional, or even deformational. Despite, or maybe because of, this view, composers and theorists of Western art music have for centuries been fascinated by these irregular constructions, and have explored their use in practice. Heinrich Koch shows in Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition (Rudolstadt and Leipzig, 1782–93) that five-measure phrases may be derived from four-measure basic phrases (by adding a one-measure extension to a four-measure phrase, for example), or may alternatively be understood as basic phrases when combining two- and three-measure incises.3 Nineteenth-century writers, generally more concerned about symmetry and organicism than their eighteenth-century counterparts, are rather more circumspect in their approach.4 For instance, while advocating the use of irregular phrases, François-Joseph Fétis nevertheless warns that five-measure phrases are “the weakest for the ear” because of the asymmetrical juxtaposition of two- and three-measure units.5 He mandates that five-measure phrases must be organic, not merely as a sum of disparate components, but also as one seamless

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construction that conceals its intrinsic asymmetry. Anton Reicha echoes this sentiment, positing that a five-measure phrase is legitimate only when it is an inevitable manifestation of the musical idea.6 Both theorists thus advise that five-measure phrases should be “true” rather than derived, and their inherent imbalance must be remedied by a larger sense of periodicity that arises from their repeated occurrences. In other words, as Clara Schumann says of the opening of Brahms’s Rhapsody, a five-measure phrase “just has to be so.” In this chapter, I will examine Brahms’s treatment of five-measure phrases in three late piano works: the Intermezzo in C-sharp Minor, op. 117, no. 3, the Ballade in G Minor, op. 118, no. 3, and the Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, no. 4. While abundant examples of irregular phrase lengths can be found in his earlier works, nowhere else does Brahms seem as engrossed in the potential of five-measure phrases as in these late piano pieces. I will argue that “true” five-measure phrases not only establish the periodicity of the opening themes of these pieces, but they also provide impetus for further phrase-rhythmic development, instigate expressive and formal trajectories, and adumbrate important impulses that guide tonal and discursive schemes. In discussing the inevitability of the five-measure phrases, I shall compare them with their potential four-measure models to reveal the necessity of the form and content of Brahms’s creation. A variety of musical and extra-musical factors invite such construction and comparison, and in at least two cases Brahms has provided explicit and significant insights into the analytical process.7 Example 4.1 shows the formal plan of the G-minor Ballade, op. 118, no. 3, as well as the themes that open the A and the B sections of the ternary form. The contrast between the themes is striking: Edward T. Cone has described the theme of the A section as “forthright” and its accompaniment “spasmodic,” and the corresponding elements of the B section as “sinuously smooth” and “flowing.”8 The distant move from tonic minor to major ♯III further underscores the contrast. Even more remarkable, however, is the intrusion of the opening theme into the B section in measures 53–56, which is shown in example 4.2. As Cone points out, despite the intruder’s melodic and rhythmic resemblance to the original theme (a), its articulation and phrase length have been altered not only to fit into the context of the B section, but also to make a retrospective connection with the legato (b) material of the opening A section. We subsequently hear Aʹ in a new light, having recognized the intermediary role of (b) in the radical contrast between A and B. I contend that an equally important connection occurs between the intruder in measures 53–56 and the opening five-measure phrase—a point that Cone has perhaps taken for granted. Example 4.3 juxtaposes the two materials to show the essential parity in their sentential and harmonic structures.9 In this light, the intruder retrospectively serves as a possible four-measure model of the opening phrase, implying that the descending-fifths sequence in measure 3

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Example 4.1. Ballade in G Minor, op. 118, no. 3: formal plan and themes

originates from a phrase expansion. Built upon a <5–10> linear intervallic pattern,10 the sequence elaborates the basic harmonic framework through inserting the harmonic step iv between VI and II, and it prolongs melodic control of the top-voice B♭1 in measure 3 with a motion into the inner-voice g1. Despite the apparent elaborative function of measure 3, a closer look at the opening phrase shows that it is actually indispensable to the expressive character of the primary theme. The opening dynamic level and articulations certainly exude the forthrightness that Cone has described; yet, as example 4.4 shows, the expansion engenders multiple strands of tension between structure and design, such that the initial boldness of the theme is unnervingly held in check. To begin, notice that the sequential expansion doubles the ongoing harmonic rhythm from two to four harmonies per measure, thus signaling the normative harmonic acceleration at the continuation unit of the sentence. The buildup toward the cadence, however, is thwarted by a return to slower harmonic rhythm in measures 4–5. In other words, an unusual sense of deceleration toward the cadence is induced by the faster pace of the sequence in measure 3. Comparatively, the intruder theme in example 4.3 contains little, if any, suggestion of cadential deceleration without the added sequential acceleration in measure 3 of theme (a). The distortion of normative sentential

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Example 4.2. Ballade in G Minor, op. 118, no.3: intruder theme “a” in section b

rhetoric in measures 4–5 creates a feeling of resistance and renders the path toward the cadence an unexpectedly strenuous one. Several melodic details in the alleged expansion further intensify this friction against forward motion. As shown in example 4.4, an échappée motif introduced at the beginning of the continuation unit undergoes two stages of rhythmic augmentation in measures 3–5. The duration of the ascending second of the motif expands from a quarter-note in measure 2 to a half-note in measure 3 and a whole-note in measure 4. Attention to the échappée expansion thus suggests that the sequence in measure 3 proceeds with a melodic deceleration despite its harmonic acceleration. Another more subtle melodic elongation involves a G–F–E♭–D descending tetrachord, which first appears in the top voice in measures 1–2, counterpointed a sixth below by B♭–A–G–F♯.

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Example 4.3. Ballade in G Minor, op. 118, no. 3. Comparison between opening five-measure phrase (mm. 1–5) and intruder theme “a” in mm. 53–56

As example 4.4 shows, an augmented statement of the tetrachord G–F–E♭–D is found in an inner voice in measures 3–5, with B♭–A–G–(F♯) now appearing a third above in invertible counterpoint.11 The slower pace of the replica is orchestrated again by the descending-fifths sequence, which regulates the motion from G down to E♭ at the tactus level of half-notes. The convergence of the échappée and the descending tetrachord onto d1 in measure 5 occasions yet another conflict between surface and structure. In example 4.4, I show that the arrival on d1 completes in the top voice an overall downward arpeggiation of the tonic triad from g2 in measure 1. Although all the notes in the arpeggiation do not belong to the same structural level from a Schenkerian perspective, their surface connection is fortified by their metrical placement on the downbeats.12 The plummet further undercuts the

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Example 4.4. Ballade in G Minor, op. 118, no. 3. Voice-leading reduction of mm. 1–5

potency of the linear structural descent from B♭ to A, which is already hidden in the four-measure model; consequently, the battered candidacy of B♭ as the potential Kopfton becomes even more problematic. As the deep-middleground sketch of the A section in example 4.5 shows, the undermining of the potential Kopfton here motivates an important alteration in the last statement of theme (a) in the A section in measures 28–32: the beginning of this phrase surges to B♭2—the melodic peak of the entire piece—finally asserting 3^ as the Kopfton after its lengthy suppression. The outburst of energy here expresses a determined overcoming of (and perhaps also an impulsive overcompensation for) earlier frustrations. The Kopfton is attained, but only at the price of displacing it to a higher octave, which proves to be unsustainable when the energy that attains B♭2 promptly dissipates, and the structural descent in the Urlinie falls back to the more modest register of a1 and g1. The volatility of the Kopfton thus prevents the Urlinie from completing its journey in what Schenker calls the “obligatory register.”13 In these conflicts, we see that the sequence in measure 3 is much more than a phrase expansion; it induces the central tension of the whole five-measure phrase, and is therefore discarded from the intruder (a) theme in measures 53–56 for it to be integrated into the flowing B section. Cone’s description of the opening theme as forthright and spasmodic is fitting; I would add, however, that ferocious determination and pathological spasms are in fact conceived in opposition against one another to delineate the main expressive element of the Ballade. Following the thematization of these conflicting forces in the

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Example 4.5. Ballade in G Minor, op. 118, no. 3. Deep-middleground sketch of opening A (mm. 1–32)

first five measures, the overall narrative unfolds as one of prolonged suppression of audacity. The “eruption” of the Kopfton at measure 28 and the immediate slip back to the lower register have already given us a glimpse of the failed urgency to break free from the domineering gravity. The monotony of the (b) material in the A section—confined largely within a fourth between g1 and c2, as well as the menacing disturbance of the B section by the intruder theme in the arcane D♯ minor, further stifles the already faltering will to transcend. All these elements, foreshadowed by the effect of measure 3 on the very first phrase, culminate in a withdrawn submission to fate in the last measures, where even the sinuous and flowing B theme is summoned to appear one last time in the anguished G minor. Unlike the G-minor Ballade, the C-sharp minor Intermezzo, op. 117, no. 3, presents no four-measure rendition of its five-measure opening. Brahms’s conception of the main musical theme based on a silent text, which was first discussed by Max Kalbeck14 and more recently expounded by Dillon Parmer,15 nevertheless divulges the pertinence of a four-measure model. Kalbeck’s illustration of the hidden text-setting of the opening five-measure phrase is shown

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Example 4.6. Intermezzo in C-sharp Minor, op. 117, no. 3. Kalbeck’s illustration of hidden text in mm. 1–5

in example 4.6. Although the iambic tetrameter of the poem lends itself to four-measure units, Brahms chooses to set the first two lines to a five-measure phrase, which, as Kalbeck demonstrates, requires repetition of “den Berg hinan” at the end of the second line. In example 4.7, I propose a possible four-measure model that more closely reflects the poetic meter of the text. To preserve the essential formal and contrapuntal structures of Brahms’s five-measure sentence, I begin in example 4.7a with a voice-leading reduction of measures 1–5. Despite Brahms’s monophonic setting of measures 1–4, harmonized restatements of the theme help us reconstruct an “imaginary” harmonic structure of the opening statement, as I show in my reduction. From this underlying harmonic/contrapuntal structure, I deduce in example 4.7b a four-measure rhythmic blueprint that preserves the essential harmonic, contrapuntal, and rhetorical structure of the phrase. In example 4.7c, I elaborate this framework into a four-measure phrase with the same rhythmic and melodic cells as in Brahms’s original. The proposed text setting shows a tighter connection between the poetic meter and the overall phrase structure. A comparison between the voice-leading sketch of Brahms’s phrase in example 4.7a and my four-measure model in example 4.7c reveals an apparent expansion similar to that in the G-minor Ballade. At the beginning of Brahms’s continuation unit in measure 3, a structural descent from G♯1 is delayed by the insertion of a linear third progression up to B1. In both the Ballade and the Intermezzo, the third-progression is similarly initiated by the Kopfton, and proceeds at the tactus level to add one measure to the four-measure prototype. Yet again, the linear progression bestows on the five-measure phrase a radically different expressive profile than the four-measure model. Example 4.8 illustrates the central aspects of this transformation. To begin, the ascending progression in measure 3 may be seen as motivated by a subtle but important

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Example 4.7a. Intermezzo in C-sharp Minor, op. 117, voice-leading of mm. 1–5

Example 4.7b. Intermezzo in C-sharp Minor, op. 117, tonal-rhythmic framework of four-bar model

Example 4.7c. Intermezzo in C-sharp Minor, op. 117, hypothetical four-bar model of mm. 1–5

detail in measure 2—that is, the addition of an F♯ to the repetition unit of the sentence. As the melodic structure of measures 1–2 hinges on a sigh motif’s E–D♯ descent, the leap up to F♯ in measure 2 embodies the first and pivotal ascending impulse of the theme. Aside from being the only ascending leap in the entire phrase (and, as a matter of fact, the only real ascending leap in the entire A section),16 its placement on the downbeat of measure 2 also hints at an apparent E–F♯–G♯ ascent from measure 1 to measure 3.17 Contextualized by this faint suggestion of an initial climb toward G♯, the linear progression

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Example 4.8. Intermezzo in C-sharp Minor, op. 117, no. 3. Melodic analysis of mm. 1–5

in measure 3 may be heard as a more determined attempt to break from the confinement of the sigh motif. Unfortunately, the transient F♯’s role as an appoggiatura (which becomes clearer in subsequent harmonizations of the theme) means that it must fall immediately back to the more stable E. At the phrase level, the surge in measure 3 is similarly held back by the dominating downward pull expressed in measures 1–2. Peaking only at the subtonic in measure 4, the melody plunges at the cadence, dropping even past D♯ toward the leading tone—perhaps as a consequence of a more drastic fall in pitch than in the four-measure model. Significantly, the descent from B4 to B♯ outlines an ominous diminished octave, giving the half cadence a tragic undertone. Tension between the two pitch classes continues to plague the rest of the piece, and finds temporary solace only in the more soothing B section. We may perhaps construct further expressive meanings of the opening phrase by interacting with the poetic imageries of the hidden text. As Parmer has discussed at length, the poems associated with op. 117, nos. 1 and 3—“Schlaf sanft, mein Kind” and “Wehgeschei der Liebe” respectively—share the common theme of an abandoned woman lamenting for her lost love. In both poems, the protagonist struggles between acknowledgment and denial of her pain. This ambivalence pervades “Wehgeschei der Liebe” by juxtaposing the woman’s grief with her nostalgia for happier days. The constant struggle to avert her fate is reflected initially in ascending third-progression in measure 3, which symbolizes her attempt to arise from the depression, and the subsequent fall of the diminished octave at measure 5, which confirms her inability to escape. The incessant reharmonizations of the main theme further underscore the unyielding turmoil of the protagonist as the world continues to evolve around her. This interpretation finds corroboration in the concluding phrases of the A sections of the overall ternary form, which are shown in example 4.9. The first of these—a five-measure construction at the end of the first A section—is interestingly derived from protracting the presentation and repetition units of the opening theme and joining them directly to the cadence in the last

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Example 4.9a. Intermezzo in C-sharp Minor, op. 117, conclusion phrase of A (mm. 41–45)

Example 4.9b. Intermezzo in C-sharp Minor, op. 117, conclusion phrase of A’ (mm. 103–108)

measure. With the continuation function of the original sentence deleted, the ascending progression in measure 3, which I associate with the protagonist’s longing for redemption, is altogether buried in this concluding statement. The very last phrase of the piece, which reharmonizes the first conclusion phrase, even more emphatically seals her fate by adding an extra measure to the final C-sharp minor triad.18 The added weight on the tonic triad perhaps signifies the death of all hopes and reflects the despondency in the last lines of the poem: “if only I were dead and on the way out: for what I was, I never will be!”19 In both the Ballade and the Intermezzo, I have shown that the integrity of the opening five-measure phrase depends on an apparent phrase expansion that plays a crucial part in the theme’s structure and meaning. An even more radical intertwining of tonal, rhythmic, metrical, and expressive elements is found in the opening five-measure phrases of Brahms’s last published piano composition—the E-flat major Rhapsody, op. 119, no. 4—on which Clara Schumann’s comment is cited at the beginning of this chapter. I will argue that the opening five-measure phrases in the Rhapsody are not only irreducible, but their metrical idiosyncrasies also contain the seed for further formal and expressive development in the course of the piece.20 In example 4.10, I offer two preliminary observations on the tonal and rhythmic dispositions of measures 1–5 that will help unpack my thesis.21 First,

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example 4.10a shows that the five-measure phrase is constructed on a five-note contrapuntal framework. Schenker theorizes that irregular phrases may organically emerge from an odd number of principal tones under what William Rothstein has called the “principle of equilibrium.”22 In brief, the principle prescribes a preference for distributing the structural tones of a phrase as evenly as possible in time; a common example is to have each tone controlling the span of a measure. A five-note tonal structure—such as the one in example 4.10a—may be seen as the organic source of an irreducible five-measure phrase. Nevertheless, as Carl Schachter later comments, tonal patterns that contain an odd number of principal tones in practice often conform to a duple ordering, resulting in “the necessity of unequal pacing in metrically patterned music.”23 The question for us, then, is whether the five-note framework of the Rhapsody’s opening could be effectively situated within a four-measure span. Before we answer this question, let us consider my second preliminary observation in example 4.10. The five-note framework, as I show at example 4.10b, undergoes a strategic diminution not only to give structural prominence to the principal tones, but also to bring forth a sense of acceleration and liquidation. Acceleration is perceived in the shrinking of each principal tone from a half-note to a quarter-note. I interpret the E♭s as separate durations because they do not cohere as an expansion of a structural note with tonal diminution. Instead, each E♭—individually accented—has its own rhythmic life, perhaps conjuring the sound of the Hungarian spondee discussed in Jonathan Bellman’s lexicon of style hongrois.24 A more subtle aspect of acceleration resides in the decrease of the number of notes associated with each principal tone—from three for G, A♭, and G in measures 1–3 to two for F in measure 4, and only one for repeated instances of E♭ in measures 4–5. This gradual reduction of “set cardinality” creates a sense of motivic liquidation. The above observations regarding example 4.10 suggest that the tonal structure of measures 1–5 may not be reduced without interfering with the intended rhythmic and rhetorical effect. Consequently, the only way to hypothesize a four-measure model is to pack the entire tonal content into a four-measure unit. example 4.11 explores the theoretical possibilities. On the left hand side, I show all feasible four-measure configurations of the five-note contrapuntal framework that maintain relative rhythmic equilibrium. From these, I derive on the right hand side their surface rhythms by reincorporating Brahms’s tonal diminutions. As it can be seen, cases 1 and 2 are too radically different from Brahms’s phrase to serve as viable models. Not only do their angular rhythmic surface undermine the risoluto character of the opening, but their deceleration toward the cadence also contradict the built-in acceleration of the tonal diminution, thereby subverting the sentential rhetoric implied in Brahms’s rhythm. Case 3 avoids these pitfalls, and its anapest figure in measure 3 arguably enhances the Hungarian character of the phrase.25 One drawback,

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Example 4.10a. Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, five-note framework of the opening five-bar phrase

Example 4.10b. Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, diminution of the five-note framework

however, is that the sixteenth-notes may not be harmonized individually without creating an awkward spasm in the music (and in the hands); this compromises the rigor of Brahms’s accompaniment, which contributes substantively to the resoluteness of the opening. Case 4 seems to best approximate Brahms’s phrase among the four-measure models. Nonetheless, without the added measure, the tonic in the second half of measure 4 is too flimsy as the cadential goal, especially when 3^ and 4^ in measures 1–2 have both received full-measure diminutions.26 Finally, let us consider case 5, which is a five-measure realization of the theme that more closely adheres to Schenker’s principle of equilibrium than Brahms’s version. The five-note framework on the left-hand side is spaced out evenly, while the tonal diminution on the right-hand side preserves this underlying distribution. Obviously, the resulting rhythm is plagued by the same cadential deceleration as in cases 1 and 2. Comparing cases 4 and 5— the two preferred scenarios for various reasons discussed above—we can see that Brahms’s five-measure version circumvents their weaknesses by combining

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Example 4.11. Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, no. 4. Hypothetical models of opening phrase

the best of both versions: putting the cadential arrival in the second half of measure 4 helps maintain forward momentum toward the cadence, whereas the fifth measure then grants the cadential resolution appropriate durational emphasis. Most importantly, Brahms’s rhythmic treatment here results in a metrical idiosyncrasy—shown in example 4.12—that becomes a central issue in the rest of the Rhapsody. As famed pianist Richard Goode points out, measures 3–5 sound as if they comprise two 43 measures because of the strong tonal accent on the second beat of measure 4.27 This results in a reverse hemiola,28 or what Harald Krebs calls a G23 grouping metric dissonance.29 I shall, however, conceptualize the phenomenon of these measures in terms of their effect within a hypermetrical context. To that end, example 4.13 shows my hypermetrical reading of measures 1–20, the first subsection of the opening A section of the Rhapsody’s ternary form. Although each of the hypermeasures consists of five notated measures, the hypermeter is nonetheless not quintuple, but an asymmetrical quadruple because of the implied 43 measures. Each hypermeasure is thus characterized by metrical expansion: the basic hyperbeat of a half-note in the first two measures is expanded to a dotted half-note in the next three measures.

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Example 4.12. Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, no. 4. Hypermeter of mm. 1–20

This metrical expansion by a 3:2 ratio becomes a central factor in subsequent temporal and formal developments. Example 4.13 provides a glimpse of its various transformations proceeding through the principal thematic materials of the ternary form of the entire Rhapsody (which is shown in example 4.13a) Following the unsettling metrical surface in measures 1–20, the expansion impulse is normalized—thus stabilizing the metrical surface—in two progressive stages before reaching the midpoint of the ternary design. First, as I show in example 4.13b, the middle digressive passage of the opening A

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March (vi) Transition Grazioso (IV) March (vi)

B mm. 65–72; 73–84 85–92 93–100; 101–8; 109–16; 117–24; 125–32 133–40; 141–52

mm. 153–7; 158–62; 163–7; 168–72; 173–77; 178–86 187–91; 192–96; 197–204; 205–16 217–21; 222–6; 227–31; 232–6; 237–41; 242–7 248–62

Main theme (VI) Digression (V)* Main theme (I-i) CODA (i)

A

* The digressions in the A sections are harmonically unstable, although their main tonal function may be understood as dominant prolongation between their surrounding statements of the main theme.

mm. 1–5; 6–10; 11–15; Main theme 16–20 (I-V) Digression (V)* 21–25; 26–30; 31–35; 36–40 Main theme 41–45; 46–50; 51–55; (I-vi) 56–60 Transition 61–64

A

Example 4.13a. Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, formal diagram

Example 4.13b. Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, phrase rhythm of middle passage of opening A section (mm. 21–30)

Example 4.13c. Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, phrase rhythm of C-minor “march” (mm. 65–72)

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Example 4.13d. Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, phrase structure of A-flat major “grazioso” (mm. 93–108)

section (mm. 21–40) maintains five-measure constructions, but uncoils the two implied 43 measures back to three measures of 42. The asymmetrical four-measure hypermeter is thus normalized here as a normative five-measure hypermeter,30 although one could alternatively hear a neutralized four-measure hypermeter with extended fourth beats, as annotated in the example. Example 4.13c then shows that regular four-measure subphrases and hypermeasures form the basic units of the C-minor march-like passage at the beginning of the B section; thus, metrical expansion and its resulting temporal asymmetries are gradually subverted.31

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This progressive suppression of expansion and asymmetry, however, is reversed in the middle portion of the B section. As shown in example 4.13d, the A-flat major grazioso theme, which is enveloped within the C-minor march in the B section, artfully resuscitates the pertinence of five-measure units and some elements of the opening metrical expansion. As I have bracketed in the example, Brahms subdivides the eight-measure phrases of the grazioso theme into 3 + 2 + 3, where the last three-measure unit clearly projects a sense of 3:2 expansion of the previous two-measure unit.32 Although there is no expansion of the basic hyperbeat comparable with the opening, the irregular undercurrents of an ostensibly regular surface hint at an ongoing potency of metrical anomalies. Indeed, the return of the A section not only reintroduces metrical expansion in the opening materials, but also brings forth a deeper manifestation of the impulse in larger constructions. Example 4.14 shows the first part of Aʹ (mm. 153–91). Cast in the “wrong” key of C major (thus maintaining the key center of the C-minor march), a lower register and dynamic level, and accompanied by a much lighter texture than the opening theme, the passage is often noted for its tonal and expressive departures from the first A section. Rarely discussed, however, is its fundamentally different temporal shape from that of the original passage. Compared to measures 1–20, the return is clearly more protracted, as if to compensate for its more subdued character. Further examination of the passage reveals that extra phrases in the return help elaborate the original’s hypermetrical structure in an intriguing way. As we saw in example 4.12, the five-measure phrases in measures 1–20 are presented in two pairs of what Samarotto calls Vordersatz and Nachsatz.33 The coupling of these phrases and their alternation between tonic and non-tonic help project a large duple hypermeter comprising two ten-measure hypermeasures. The beginnings of the Vordersätze in measures 1 and 11, which provide tonic anchors and large group onsets, are heard as strong; the beginning of the Nachsätze in measures 6 and 16, which occupy mid-group positions, are heard as weak.34 As I show in example 4.14, this opening phrase-rhythmic structure is then transformed by significant revisions in the return.35 To begin, the reappearance of the opening four phrases in Aʹ (mm. 1–20) is curtailed at the end of the third phrase in measure 167. At measure 168, a new passage presents three iterations of a variant of the principal theme. As a result, the two pairs of Vordersätze and Nachsätze have been expanded to two groups of three phrases: the first group corresponds to measures 1–15 of the original, while the second group develops the main theme sequentially on a dominant lock in the local C major. Although measure 163—the counterpart of measure 11 (the beginning of a Vordersatz)—is first heard as hypermetrically strong, the sharp distinction between the two three-phrase groups at measure 168 resets the hypermeter, and this shift prompts us—at least retrospectively—to reinterpret measure 163

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Example 4.14. Rhapsody in E-flat major, op. 119, no. 4. Hypermeter of mm. 153–87

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as hypermetrically weaker than measure 168. As a result, the two groups of three phrases create a large-scale triple hypermeter made up of two fifteenmeasure hypermeasures (with a two-measure internal expansion in measures 183–84 of the last hyperbeat). Figure 4.1a juxtaposes the temporal structures of measures 1–20 and measures 153–86, and reveals organic connections between these passages and the metrical expansion at the beginning of the Rhapsody.36 Each number in the diagram indicates the number of quarter-notes within a measure or hypermeasure at some level. It can be seen that the temporal structure of Aʹ is derived from that of A via a 3:2 expansion—the same ratio as that of the opening metrical expansion—of each duration. Reference to the opening phrase, however, does not end here. Figure 4.1b presents the metrical hierarchy of the first five-measure phrase in terms of the number of quarter-note beats. A comparison between (a) and (b) reveals an isomorphism between the two temporal structures. In the opening phrase, two measures of half-note (each subdivided into two quarter-notes) in measures 1–2 are expanded to two measures of dotted half-note (each subdivided into three quarter-notes) in measures 3–5. Isomorphically, two hypermeasures of ten notated measures (each subdivided into two groups of five notated measures) in the opening A are expanded to two hypermeasures of fifteen notated measures (each subdivided into three groups of five notated measures) in Aʹ. The larger structure (i.e., the composite of A and Aʹ) thus represents a tenfold expansion of the smaller (i.e., measures 1–5); this means that the five-measure span in the larger structure is equivalent to the quarter-note beat in the smaller structure, betraying at a deeper level the strategic significance of the five-measure duration. Even more remarkable is the analogous tonal profile between the accented quarter-notes (i.e., the molossus) in each of the opening theme’s five-measure phrases and the last group of three five-measure phrases in measures 168–86: the former repeats a single pitch-class with other voices descending chromatically, while the latter features a bass pedal on G, against which upper voices ascend diatonically. In this connection, the repeated Gs in measures 168, 173, and 178 can be heard as constituting a 10:1 expansion of the opening theme’s molossus, clarifying the temporal relationship between figures 4.1a and 4.1b by a distinctive tonal feature that recurs at different hierarchical levels.37 The hypermetrical structure of the coda may similarly be understood as another deep-level realization of the metrical expansion. Samarotto has offered an insightful reading of the coda as a rhythmic normalization of the first five measures.38 I propose in this chapter a complementary rhythmic interpretation of the coda by comparing it not with the opening theme, but also the C-minor march in the B section, which, as we saw earlier in example 4.13b, is a regular duple structure. A kinship between the coda and the march is palpable on three fronts: they are the only two sections that employ the minor

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Figure 4.1a. Rhapsody in E-flat major, op. 119, hypermetrical structures of A and A’

Figure 4.1b. Rhapsody in E-flat major, op. 119, hypermetrical structure of mm. 1–5

mode; they utilize triplet figurations, and their main melodic motives bear some resemblances.39 The coda, which is shown in example 4.15, begins with a threefold presentation of a two-measure motif in measures 248–53. The motif clearly puts measures 248–49 in a strong-weak hypermetrical configuration; its three iterations thus articulate three two-measure hypermeasures.40 Repetitions of the two-measure motif are then broken at measure 254, where the second measure of the motif, appearing above much heavier accompaniment, begins the approach to the final cadence at measure 258. While maintaining two-measure hypermeasures from the preceding passage, the new melodic and textural profile of measures 254–58 also clarifies a deeper hypermeter: measures 248 and 254 are heard as hypermetrical downbeats as they delineate the formal subdivisions

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Example 4.15. Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, no. 4. Hypermeter of mm. 248–62

of the coda. Finally, following the cadence at measure 258, the last four measures recycle the plagal embellishment from measures 5–6. Its inclusion here not only reveals a relationship between the coda and the opening phrase, but it also helps materialize a latent triple hypermeter that was adumbrated by the downbeats at measures 248 and 254. As figure 4.2 shows, the six-measure span between the two downbeats articulates a triple hypermeasure in which each iteration of the twomeasure motif spans one hyperbeat. Another six-measure hypermeasure seems at first unlikely, as the structural accent at the cadence in measure 258 may be heard as the next hypermetrical downbeat, implying a four-measure hypermeasure in measures 254–57. Yet, the perception of a downbeat here is weakened

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Figure 4.2a. Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, hypermetrical structures of C-minor march and coda

Figure 4.2b. Rhapsody in E-flat Major, op. 119, hypermetrical structure of mm. 1–5

not only by the bare octaves (and thus sparser texture) of the cadential tonic, but also by the reinvigorated plagal embellishment, which helps delay the downbeat to measure 260.41 Construed in this manner, the entire coda is made up of two six-measure hypermeasures in triple time, followed then by what I would call an “extended downbeat” in measures 260–62 to conclude the composition with the weightiest metrical phenomenon of the entire work. Recall that the coda and the C-minor march share substantive similarities that warrant their consideration in tandem. As shown in example 4.2, the temporal relationship between the two sections engages once again the metrical expansion of measures 1–5. In example 4.2a, the hypermetrical structure of the basic phrase in the march is juxtaposed with the triple hypermeasures in the coda to reveal a 3:2 expansion of all durations. Their composite is then compared with the temporal structure of the opening five-measure phrase in example 4.2b to divulge a four-fold magnification. This organic temporal relationship, which deepens the formal connection between the two areas,

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bears significant ramifications regarding the highly unusual collapse of the piece into the minor mode in the coda. Modal change in this direction (i.e., from major to minor), as is often remarked, occurs extremely sparsely at the end of compositions. The surprise of such a move seems especially marked in the Rhapsody, considering the close ties between the coda and the opening theme discussed in Samarotto’s analysis. Yet the slippage to E-flat minor, though hardly expected, is by no means accidental. The gravity of the C-minor march, which earlier coerced the return of A to go tonally awry, has perhaps foreshadowed the ultimate downfall of the piece into the tragic tonic minor. That the temporal connection between the march and the coda refers us back to the metrical properties of the opening phrase suggests that the fateful ending may even have been premeditated at the conception of the first five measures. The expansion in measures 3–5, which will regulate the hypermetrical relationship between the march and the coda, has planted the seed for the former to exert its influence on the latter, forcing it to succumb to the minor mode as a realization of something that the march itself had failed to achieve.42

Conclusion In response to the many surprising twists and turns in the tonal structure of the Rhapsody, Samarotto proposes in his analysis what he calls “retrospective incipience” to model the unusual kind of determinacy in the piece. He describes the experience of retrospective incipience as this: “an earlier span not apparently causative of an unexpected event is heard as having latently determinative qualities.”43 I have shown in this chapter that this provocative understanding of teleology may well apply to the wonderfully strange five-measure phrases in Brahms’s late piano works. While we would probably agree that five-measure phrases are in general odd, we may not invariably consider them as the immediate catalyst for subsequent tonal and metrical developments. Yet, as I have shown in this chapter, five-measure phrases in Brahms’s late works are no accidents or afterthoughts; their oddness disturbs, intrigues, and captivates; and they cause us to ponder and wonder. The curious G-minor return of the sinuous B theme at the end of the Ballade, the extra measure at the end of the Intermezzo, and the shocking modal change at the end of the Rhapsody all seem to transport our consciousness back to the oddities of the opening fivemeasure phrase. In Brahms’s hands, pieces that open with irregular phrases may require an analytical orientation that meanders through musical time within an intricate web of determinacy. Strange as these phrases and their ramifications may be, we could still find ourselves agreeing with Clara Schumann’s simple and yet profound statement, “es muß so sein.”

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Notes 1.

2.

3.

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5.

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Berthold Litzmann, ed., Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms 1853– 1896 (New York: Vienna House, 1973), 234. The original German reads: “Nun wieder auf das Allergo zu kommen, wie kräftig ist schon das erste Motiv, durch die 5 taktigen Phrasen so originell, wohl ungarisch!—Merkwürdig, sonst geniert mich die 5 taktige Einteilung, hier aber gar nicht—es muß so sein!” Litzmann, ed., Clara Schumann Johannes Brahms: Briefe aus den Jahren 1853–1896 (Leipzig: Drud und Verlag von Brietkopf & Härtel, 1927), 522. Several later commentators have made similar comments about the alleged Hungarian character of the opening five-measure phrase, including William Murdoch, Brahms (London: Rich & Cowan, 1933), 280; Anthony Hopkins, “Brahms: Where Less is More,” in Nineteenth-Century Piano Music: Essays in Performance and Analysis (New York: Garland, 1997), 271; and Malcolm MacDonald, Brahms (London: Dent, 1990), 361. In his comprehensive treatment of style hongrois, Jonathan Bellman addresses the prevalence of duple meter, but makes no reference to five-measure phrases or hypermeters. Bellman, The Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993). Joel Sheveloff discusses the presence of irregular hypermeter in Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, but makes no mention of five-measure units as a defining feature of the style. Sheveloff, “Dance, Gypsy, Dance!,” in The Varieties of Musicology: Essays in Honor of Murray Lefkowitz, ed. John Daverio and John Ogasapian (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park, 2000), 151–65. Ralph Locke finds correlation between exoticism and irregular phrases in the Hungarian Dances, but again, the phrases in question are six measures long, not five. Locke, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 56. See Heinrich Christoph Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, trans. and ann. by Nancy Baker (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 14–17, 42–43, 133–39. On the increasing awareness of symmetry and organicism in nineteenth-century discussions of form and rhythm, see Justin London, “Phrase Structure in 18th- and 19th-Century Theory: An Overview,” Music Research Forum 5 (1990): 22; and William Caplin, “Theories of Musical Rhythm in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 674–75. François-Joseph Fétis, La Musique mise à la portée de tout le monde: Exposé succinct de tout ce qui c’est nécessaire pour juger de cet art, 2nd ed. (Paris: E. Duverger, n.d.), 52; Fétis, “Cours de philosophie musicale et d’histoire de la musique,” Revue musicale 12 (1832): 163. See discussion in Mary I. Arlin, “Metric Mutation and Modulation: The Nineteenth-Century Speculations of F. –J. Fétis,” Journal of Music Theory 44, no. 2 (2000): 293–95. Anton Reicha, Treatise on Melody, trans. Peter Landey (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2000), 28: “With regard to rhythms consisting of uneven numbers of measures (and many people, through prejudice, do not approve of them), it should be noted that if they do not produce the expected effect, this is not

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the fault of the rhythms (which nature has reserved for certain melodies), but rather the fault of composers who force the melody into uneven rhythms which nature requires to be even, and vice versa.” Another similar comment is found in Gottfried Weber’s Theory of Musical Composition, Treated with a View to a Naturally Consecutive Arrangement of Topics: “even [a five-measure phrase’s] peculiar oddness, irregularity, and strangeness find in music at one time or another their appropriate place” (trans. John Bishop; London: R. Cocks and Co., 1851), 107. Scott Murphy argues for an irreducible seven-measure background in the third movement of Haydn’s Piano Sonata in A major, Hob. XVI:12. Murphy, “Septimal Time in an Early Finale of Haydn,” Intégral 26 (2012): 91–121. In his analysis, Murphy ingeniously combines his own readings of Haydn’s motivic design, harmonic structure, and hypermeter with Heinrich Koch’s formal theory to demonstrate the organic Siebentaktigkeit in the movement. My approach overlaps with Murphy’s, although I spill more ink over expressive ramifications of Brahms’s five-measure phrases. Edward T. Cone, “Music and Form,” in What is Music: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Music (University Park, PA: Haven Publications, 1987), 42. In William Caplin’s well-known taxonomical scheme regarding the sentence structure (“Satz”), the five-measure phrase here is strictly speaking not a sentence, but only sentential. This is due to Caplin’s requirement that the basic idea in what he calls a “sentence proper” must be a two-measure unit. In this present chapter, I relax this restriction as long as the sentential rhetoric is clear. Obviously, in five-measure phrases, the basic idea in the sentential structure cannot be two measures in length, or there will be no room left for the continuation function. For Caplin’s discussion of the distinction between sentential and sentence proper, see Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 51. The term “linear intervallic pattern” (usually abbreviated as LIP) is introduced in Allen Forte, Tonal Harmony in Concept and Practice, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974); and later used in Forte and Steven Gilbert, Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis (New York: Norton, 1982), in their discussion of harmonic sequences. I thank the editor for pointing out the presence of invertible counterpoint in this passage. Richard Cohn discusses at length, from a Schenkerian perspective, the validity of motives that combine tones from different structural levels. Cohn, “The Autonomy of Motives in Schenkerian Accounts of Tonal Music,” Music Theory Spectrum 14, no. 2 (1992): 150–70. Heinrich Schenker explains the concept of obligatory register in Free Composition: “No matter how far the composing-out may depart from its basic register . . . it nevertheless retains an urge to return to that register. Such departure and return creates content, displays the instrument, and lends coherence to the whole.” Schenker, Free Composition, trans. and ed. Ernst Oster (New York: Longman, 1979), 107. The undermining of B♭1’s Kopfton potential and the

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14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

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feeble attempt to transfer the entire Urlinie up an octave prevent realization of the coherence described by Schenker, thus further underlining the sense of frustration I glean from the first five measures. Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, vol. 4 (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-GesellschaftmbH, 1914), 280. Dillon Parmer, “Brahms and the Poetic Motto: A Hermeneutic Aid?,” Journal of Musicology 15, no. 3 (1997): 376–79. There are several other apparent ascending leaps in the B section in mm. 11–14. Yet all these leaps are clearly “contrapuntal” in nature—they either arise from arpeggiating a local harmony (in mm. 11–13) or serve to connect an inner voice to the top voice (from m. 13 to m. 14). The leap in m. 2 to F♯, however, is more genuinely melodic in that it serves neither of these two purposes. Again, this apparent linear gesture cuts across different structural levels from a Schenkerian perspective, but its cogency is enhanced by the metrical placement of its elements on the downbeats of the first three measures. See also note 12 above. Carlton Gamer also discusses the temporal importance of non-five-measure phrases—including two six-measure phrases in mm. 76–81, 87–92, and the sixmeasure coda—in the context of the piece (Gamer, “Busnois, Brahms, and the Syntax of Temporal Proportions,” in A Festschrift for Albert Seay: Essays by His Friends and Colleagues, ed. Michael D Grace (Colorado Springs: Colorado College, 1982), 201–15. For further discussions of connections between the last lines of the poem and the last phrase of Brahms’s Intermezzo, see Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 280–81, and Parmer, “Brahms and the Poetic Motto,” 378–79. Cohn offers one way to view the irreducibility of the opening five-measure phrases: he compares the first twenty measures of the piece, comprising four five-measure phrases, with the first twenty measures of the B section, comprising five four-measure phrases. He calls the two parsings of the twenty-measure span “a kind of higher-level hemiola.” Cohn, “Inversional Symmetry and Transpositional Combination in Bartók,” Music Theory Spectrum 10 (1988): 32. In my analysis, I will focus more on the internal properties of the opening five-measure phrases as well as their impact on phrasal proportions in the Aʹ section. A well-known complication with the opening five-measure “phrases” is that an inner-voice cadential decoration (i.e., the E♭–D–C–B♭ motion from m. 4.5 to m. 6) creates a sense of elision at the downbeat of m. 6. However, the strong melodic parallelism between mm. 1–5 and mm. 6–10 clarifies that these fivemeasure units are indeed phrases—an understanding which Clara Schumann clearly espouses. As Frank Samarotto states, “In retrospect we understand that both [mm. 1–5 and mm. 6–10] are five-measure phrases, but the effect is that the solidity of the opening is undermined, ironically, by the very decorations that would normally reinforce the cadences.” Samarotto, “Determinism, Prediction, and Inevitability in Brahms’s Rhapsody in E-flat major, op. 119, no. 4,” Theory and Practice 32 (2007): 85.

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22. Rothstein reconstructs Schenker’s ideas on rhythmic equilibrium in chapter 1 of his dissertation, “Rhythm and the Theory of Structural Levels” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1981). In his later book on phrase rhythm, he further explains the derivation of irregular phrases from tonal configurations; see Rothstein, Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music (New York: Schirmer, 1989), chapter 1. For Schenker’s own illustrations of how irregular phrases may be organically derived from tonal progressions, see Schenker, Free Composition, 120. 23. Carl Schachter, “Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Aspects of Meter,” Music Forum 6 (1987): 41. 24. For a brief discussion of Brahms’s use of spondee in style hongrois, see Bellman, Style Hongrois, 207. 25. Bellman discusses the use of anapest in style hongrois (ibid., 54). 26. At the presentation of an earlier version of this chapter at the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory, Minneapolis, October 2011, William Rothstein insightfully commented that this four-measure version simply sounds too Russian. He proceeded to play for the audience the opening twenty measures of the Rhapsody without the cadential elaborations (i.e., rewriting the fivemeasure phrases as my case 4). I concur with his assessment. Scott Murphy also graciously points out, in a personal communication, that the cramming of V–I into the last measure happens occasionally in Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. In either scenario, my case (4) in example 4.11 shows that the exotic (be it Hungarian or Russian) character of the phrase may be variously enhanced by surface rhythmic gestures, suggesting again that five-measure organization accounts only partially for any exotic character of this opening. 27. Richard Goode, liner notes to Richard Goode Plays Brahms (New York: Elektra Nonesuch, 1986). 28. For discussions of the so-called reverse hemiola, see Marcia Citron, “RhythmicMetric Conflicts in the Brahms Duos” (MA diss., University of North Carolina, 1968), 11; and Yonatan Malin, Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 63. 29. Harald Krebs, Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 31–34. 30. One could argue that the registral accents in the second half of m. 24 (both at the beginning of the right-hand sixteenth-note gesture and the left-hand octaves) imply a mid-measure metrical accent, thus adumbrating the 43 in the opening phrase. Yet, I hear the harmonic accent on the downbeat of m. 24—created by the return to the tonic following I–vi–IV progression in mm. 21–23—as a much stronger event, which overpowers the registral accents on the next beat and subsumes them within a normalized 42 meter. The equivalent position at the downbeat of m. 4 does not have a comparable harmonic accent to help preserve the notated 42. In fact, the harmonic accent at the downbeat of m. 24 carries such marked weight that it may even be read as the downbeat of a shadow five-measure hypermeter. I discuss this conflict in my dissertation and show an interesting connection to the middle A-flat major section of the Rhapsody; see Ng, “A Grundgestalt Interpretation of Metric Dissonance in the Music of Johannes Brahms” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 2005).

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31. As mentioned above, Cohn argues that the beginning of the C-minor march is still characterized by twenty-measure periodicity, albeit parsing the span differently than in mm. 1–20 (Cohn, “Inversional Symmetry”). In other words, temporal asymmetry is still present at a deep metrical level. Yet, at metrical levels closer to phrases and subphrases, the C-minor march is clearly dominated by symmetrical four-measure hypermeasures. 32. I base my reading of the 3 + 2 + 3 division on a number of observations. The most immediately apparent (although by no means sufficient on its own) is Brahms’s own slurring of the phrase. The divisions are further clarified by registral/textural design of the left hand, which separates mm. 96–97 from the previous three measures as well as the following three. Motivically, a descending fourth (found in the right-hand eighth-notes) underlies each group: A–G–F–E♭ in mm. 93–95; D♭–C–B♭–A♭ in mm. 96–97; and G–F–E♭–D♭ in mm. 98–100. It is interesting to note that in a manuscript Stichvorlage for op. 119, prepared by the copyist William Kupfer, the letters “a b c d e” are penciled in above mm. 96–100, seemingly to draw attention to the occurrence of a subunit formed by those measures. The letters then reappear in mm. 120–4, where the right hand is left blank on the staff. Further, m. 99 was originally engraved in ink as a repetition of m. 98. Changes in the melody were then made in pencil. The original repetition in mm. 98–99 reveals a stronger sense of subgroup division between m. 97 and 98, which, as I have argued, is largely preserved by other musical parameters despite the melodic changes. The manuscript is accessible on the internet in The Juilliard Manuscript Collection (http://www.juilliardmanuscriptcollection.org/composers.php#/works/BRAH). 33. Samarotto, “Determinism, Prediction, and Inevitability,” 85. 34. This hypermetrical interpretation is corroborated by Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s “Strong Beat Early” metrical preference rule, which prescribes a preference for “a metrical structure in which the strongest beat in a group appears relatively early in the group.” Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), 76. 35. Although the return of the opening theme is in the wrong key here, I consider it a true return rather than a false one because of the resulting attractiveness of the overall thematic design and formal proportions—i.e., all of the three large sections of the ternary form are in this interpretation roughly equal in size and similarly divided into a “small ternary” (using Caplin’s term). The appearance of the (a) theme in C major thus marks the true beginning of the return to “A” of the overall ternary form. 36. David Smyth provides an earlier example of exploring connections between temporally remote passages and their formal implications, in “Large-Scale Rhythm and Classical Form,” Music Theory Spectrum 12, no. 2 (1990): 236–46. My design of the temporal structure diagrams in example 4.15 is inspired by similar ones in Gamer, “Busnois, Brahms.” 37. Again, I thank Scott Murphy for pointing out this interesting connection between the opening molossus and the repeated Gs in mm. 168–86. 38. Samarotto, “Determinism, Prediction,” 93.

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39. The march begins with two four-note gestures: C–D–E♭–D in mm. 65–66 and G–F–E♭–D♭ in mm. 67–68. Features of these are combined into the four-note motive that forms the basis of the opening of the coda: E♭–F–G♭–A♭: the first three notes echo the first three of C–D–E♭–D, while the overall ascending fourth inverts the descending fourth of G–F–E♭–D♭. 40. The strong-weak interpretation here is again supported by Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s “Strong Beat Early” rule (A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, 76); see note 33 above. 41. Notice that in the original plagal embellishment in mm 5–6, the arrival at the tonic in m. 6 articulates a hypermetrical downbeat at the beginning of the second five-measure phrase. The analogous gesture here in the coda thus locates the corresponding downbeat at m. 260. This analytical observation may have ramifications in performance decisions: I would recommend that any ritard in the last measures must be delayed until mm. 259–60 so as to avoid creating a sense of metrical resolution at m. 258. This interpretation concurs with how mm. 1–5 are usually rendered: rarely do I hear a pianist slowing the tempo before the tonic chord in m. 4. Any stretching of the beats occurs mostly during the plagal embellishment in m. 5. 42. In my dissertation, I offer further observations regarding relationships between metrical, tonal, and expressive properties of the Rhapsody (Ng, “Grundgestalt Interpretation,” 274–359). 43. Samarotto, “Determinism, Prediction,” 77.

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Part Three

Recasting Hemiolas

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Chapter Five

Hemiola as Agent of Metric Resolution in the Music of Brahms Ryan McClelland

In recent scholarship on nineteenth-century music, metric dissonance has received considerable and worthy attention.1 Analysts have revealed how varying types and intensities of metric dissonance produce structural narratives not unlike tonal ones. Foremost among these studies is perhaps Harald Krebs’s virtuosic book-length exploration of metric dissonance in the music of Robert Schumann.2 Krebs’s categories of “grouping dissonances”—those resulting from layers of motion whose cardinalities are not multiples/factors of one another—and “displacement dissonances”—those resulting from layers of motion whose cardinalities are congruent but which are nonaligned—as well as his nomenclature for distinguishing among different dissonances of each type are useful and widely employed. Throughout the tonal repertoire and especially including the music of Brahms, the most frequently encountered metric dissonance is hemiola, a grouping dissonance that substitutes duple for triple groupings of pulses at some level(s) of the metric hierarchy.3 With its analogy to pitch structure, the term metric dissonance implies a state of tension that resolves when the contrametric elements recede. Yet despite its classification as a metric dissonance, hemiola often performs a stabilizing role. A frequent interaction of hemiola with tonal structure is well-known: hemiola sets up many important tonal arrivals and cadences; this is its characteristic usage throughout the Baroque repertoire and in Classical minuets, and one can quickly call to mind many similar

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instances in Brahms’s oeuvre.4 Hemiola’s ability to exert a stabilizing role on metric design, however, has not been as widely acknowledged. This paper explores hemiola’s restorative metric function in the music of Brahms. After some introductory remarks on hemiolas, the paper demonstrates the potential of hemiola to facilitate the resolution of displacement dissonances and its ability to clarify or alter the relative hypermetric strength of adjacent downbeats. The paper’s final section speculates on possible implications of hearing hemiolas that do not readily appear to perform a metrically restorative function as if they do.

Hemiola in Historical and Theoretical Contexts The most extensive English-language treatment of hemiola occurs in Channan Willner’s studies of the music of Handel and J. S. Bach. In his initial articles, Willner defines four types of hemiolas: cadential, expansion, contraction, and overlapping.5 Willner’s principal interest lies in the relationship between the pacing of underlying tonal events within a hemiola and that within the preceding music. In a cadential hemiola, the arrival of a structural melodic tone is displaced—usually delayed by one beat of the notated triple meter—while the bass line still lends considerable support to the downbeat in the middle of the hemiola. An expansion hemiola, which is commonly found in Baroque cadences, takes two notated measures to present tonal material that would have occurred within a single measure if the preceding pacing of tonal events had been maintained. From the perspective of hypermeter, a topic outside of Willner’s focus and admittedly not always pertinent to the repertoire he discusses, these hemiolas preserve ongoing duple (or quadruple) hypermeter. Thus, although one can imagine ways to recompose these phrases so that periodic hypermeter results without the presence of hemiola, these hemiolas facilitate higher-level meter even as they disrupt the tonal pacing. It is worth noting, however, that these hemiolas can span either the third and fourth or the second and third hyperbeats in a quadruple hypermeter, depending on the relationship between the boundaries of phrases and hypermeasures. In the latter alignment, the hemiola pushes against the accentuations internal to the four-measure unit (assuming one endorses the generally accepted view of an alternation of strong and weak hyperbeats). The contraction hemiola, which is relatively rare in Baroque music, places within one notated measure tonal content consistent with three measures in the established tonal pacing yet in doing so tends to support a broader periodicity of hypermeter or phrase length.6 The same is true of Willner’s overlapping hemiola, where competing aspects of the musical texture project two-measure hemiolas offset by a single measure. This construction occurs in the first three measures of a four-measure unit, and

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Willner does point out this consistent relationship between the placement of overlapping hemiolas and phrase structure. In these various situations, hemiola contributes to a sense of closure or directedness within larger metric units, but in general it does not resolve any preceding hypermetric instability, much less any metric dissonance.7 However, in a recent essay, Willner does locate a few instances where hemiola can be viewed, at least in part, as an agent of resolution at deeper metric levels.8 In the fugal gigue from Bach’s English Suite in E Minor, for example, Willner exposes a shift from “even-strong” to “odd-strong” accentuation patterns that arises from the elision of an abbreviated subject statement with the onset of an episode.9 After this eight-measure episode stabilizes the odd-strong pattern, the subject returns, extended by one measure through hemiola (mm. 42–43). This extra length causes the subject to restore the initial even-strong organization at the cadential arrival. Since the stabilizing impact of hemiola has been so rarely observed, it seems worth quoting from Willner’s concluding comments at length: Disjunctive and even anarchic in effect, the hemiola in the larger scheme of things conveys the very opposite message: the suggestion that a metrical order of sorts—topsy-turvy but at the same time closely controlled—prevails throughout the Gigue after all. Like the other metrically dissonant hemiolas we encountered in this study, the Gigue’s hemiola, when heard within a larger perspective, embodies not only the developmental turbulence of the surface but also the measured calm that prevails below, the equilibrium that rules at the deeper layers of durational structure. Its intervention, however dissonant metrically, may be read as a call to order, and its metrical dissonance as a means to that end.10

This chapter similarly explores the restorative metric function of hemiola in the music of Brahms. In what follows I will limit my purview in three ways. First, I will generally restrict myself to hemiolas that are strongly articulated, and for the most part supported by multiple, or all, lines of the musical texture. Second, I am interested in hemiolas that occur at or near the level of the tactus. In other words, I will not consider examples where the change in grouping is readily taken as a shift between duple and triple subdivisions rather than an event with metric or hypermetric impact. Submetric changes are, no doubt, an important aspect of Brahms’s language, and they frequently cohabitate with hemiolas at higher levels of the metric hierarchy, as Richard Cohn has explored in his treatment of complex hemiolas.11 Third, I have chosen to exclude pieces where hemiola serves as a primary compositional idea, such as the first movement of the Violin Sonata in G Major, op. 78, the slow movement of the Piano Concerto in B-flat Major, op. 83, or the Capriccio in C Major, op. 76, no. 8.12 In pieces where hemiola is so pervasive, it is difficult to disentangle a metrically stabilizing function from a purely thematic one.

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Hemiola as Resolution of Displacement Dissonance Hemiola can resolve displacement dissonances in various meters and with different lengths of displacement. In Brahms’s music, by far the most frequent scenario is a hemiola that spans a single measure within 86 meter and resolves a preceding mid-measure displacement dissonance, as shown schematically in example 5.1. I will illustrate this situation with examples from two expressively contrasting movements: the finale of the Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 101, and the slow movement of the Fourth Symphony, op. 98. Following this, shorter examples will illustrate the operation of hemiola subsequent to other types of displacement dissonances. From the C-minor Piano Trio, I will consider two passages where hemiola provides a stabilizing role within the finale’s sophisticated metric narrative.13 The first passage involves the second theme, the opening of which appears in example 5.2. The theme’s broad harmonic changes suggest 86 meter, but one that places downbeats at notated second beats. As no elements support the notated meter, the initial materials of the second theme (mm. 34–49) present what Krebs refers to as subliminal dissonance.14 The theme then embarks on an antecedent-consequent construction (mm. 49–66), wherein the second half of each of its component sentential phrases resolves the subliminal displacement dissonance. Example 5.3 provides the antecedent phrase, along with the immediately preceding measure. A metrically displaced hearing is encouraged by the periodic returns to E-flat; only the cello’s entry marking the downbeat of the phrase’s fourth measure (m. 53) points to the notated meter. The suddenly angular melodic leaps and hemiola in the phrase’s fifth and sixth measures provide a decisive jolt back to the notated downbeats, and the cadential progression in the phrase’s final measures restores full metric consonance. However, without the preceding hemiolic intervention, the relationship between beats in measure 56 would be much less clear, given the chord change in the middle of the measure and the exact repetition of durations within the measure. Even more striking is the metric resolution earned through hemiola near the end of the movement’s lengthy coda. Example 5.4 provides the coda’s initial measures, which are a major-mode transformation of the movement’s opening theme. While the version heard at the movement’s outset has some displacement dissonance, the coda’s transformation presents a full subliminal displacement dissonance. A fragment from the second theme elides with the phrase’s conclusion (m. 198) and continues the subliminal displacement dissonance. After incorporating nearly all of the movement’s main thematic ideas, the coda arrives at a root-position C-major harmony in measure 228 (see ex. 5.5). Note the melodic content of the two-measure arpeggiation through this harmony, as this melodic line will be recalled in the ultimate metric resolution. The phrase that begins in measure 228 only concludes at the end of the

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Example 5.1. Hemiola as resolution of metric displacement in 86 meter

Example 5.2. Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 101, IV, mm. 34–41

movement—twenty-eight measures later—and resolution of the displacement dissonance does not occur until the movement’s fifth-last measure (m. 253). Example 5.6 shows the phrase’s final segment, which is based directly on the material that launched the coda. Preceded by a violent mid-measure diminished-seventh chord, the segment embellishes the cadential 46 harmony, which literally sounds on the perceived downbeats that are hypermetrically strong at the two-measure level (see the “1” annotations in mm. 246, 248, and 250). When the cadential 46 sounds for the third time (m. 250), it no longer yields to

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Example 5.3. Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 101, IV, mm. 48–57

an embellishing harmony after a single beat. Instead, the arpeggiated melodic line that began the phrase (see ex. 5.5) is recalled. But the two-measure length of that arpeggiation is expanded by half of a measure due to a hemiola in measure 252. This hemiola, strongly projected by the strings and the left hand of the piano part, re-articulates the notated downbeat and prepares for a final reiteration of the cadential 46, which this time resolves. There is an undeniable jolt in the surface rhythmic flow when the hemiola occurs, but at a deeper level its metric function is a restorative one. Somewhat more complex is the deployment of hemiola within the transitions of the sonata-form slow movement of the Fourth Symphony. In the exposition, the transition proceeds in two parts, the first of which is a celestial modulating variation of the opening theme, and the second of which is the

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Example 5.4. Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 101, IV, mm. 190–202

more menacing passage shown in example 5.7. The sharp contrast between the transition’s two parts lends considerable emphasis to the middle of measure 36, and this moment launches a pair of one-beat alternations between winds and strings (see brackets in ex. 5.7). Within the first pair, which spans the notated barline, there is no change of harmony; the second pair of utterances, also without internal harmonic motion, is strongly set off from the first pair by the brightening shift to D-major harmony. These factors, allied with the slow tempo, create a relatively strong mid-measure displacement dissonance. Strictly speaking, one might argue that this dissonance resolves when the strings and winds come together at the downbeat of measure 39, an interpretation further promoted by the emptiness of the second half of that measure save for the murmurings of the horn. These murmurings are themselves

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Example 5.5. Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 101, IV, mm. 228–32

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Example 5.6. Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 101, IV, mm. 243–56

metrically dissonant, although their setting as a distant and coloristic backdrop minimizes their metric impact. Nonetheless, it is only the hemiola in the transition’s final measure (m. 40) that fully clarifies the downbeat location and provides the necessary calm for the hymn-like second theme. To be sure, several of Brahms’s sonata-form transitions end with hemiola—the first movement of the Second Symphony is a well-known instance—but there does seem to be a special role for this hemiola in the Fourth Symphony. Of course, from a thematic perspective, the augmentation of the melodic line draws attention to the second theme’s origin as a lyrical transformation of the transition’s turbulent triplets of rising and falling thirds.

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Example 5.7. Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, op. 98, II, mm. 36–41

In the recapitulation, the transition retains its terminal hemiola but is otherwise completely recomposed. The transition emerges from a developmental treatment of the middle section of the first theme, and here includes only its second part with the surging triplets (see ex. 5.8). This material now begins on a notated downbeat (m. 84), and the preceding context does nothing to undermine this metric status. In the exposition, the broader outlines of the triplet passage were articulated by a tonal move to D-major harmony, as previously noted. A similar hearing in the recapitulation, however, places emphasis in the middle of measure 85 when the bass pedal shifts from B to E. In other words, across three notated measures (mm. 84–86) there is a large grouping dissonance that articulates a binary division, and this passage therefore exhibits both grouping and displacement dissonances. The grouping dissonance is

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Example 5.8. Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, op. 98, II, mm. 84–88

somewhat undermined by the subsequent bass motion to C in measure 86, but the melodic parallelism leaves at least a certain degree of displacement dissonance. Unlike in the exposition, there is no intervening measure between the end of the triplets and the transition-ending hemiola. Thus, whatever metric dissonance is present in the recapitulation is resolved entirely by the transition’s final measure and its hemiola. Hemiolas can operate as restorative agents following other types of displacement dissonances and in meters other than 86. I include only two brief illustrations of such hemiolas within 43 meter. In the first instance, from the Intermezzo in E Major, op. 116, no. 4, the hemiola comes after a quarter-note displacement dissonance. In the second passage, from the String Quartet in A Minor, op. 51, no. 2, the hemiola follows an eighth-note displacement dissonance. In Brahms’s practice, a displacement involving less than half of a measure typically resolves in one of two ways. In the first, the displacement is removed by the intervention of an abrupt, too-early arrival of a structurally significant harmony often at an important formal boundary.15 The other characteristic technique involves the arrival of a sustained chord, whose onset continues the displacement but whose length is such that the subsequent event articulates the notated meter. The expressive effects of these two techniques differ, as the former involves an obvious jolt whereas the latter does not. In the present context, I mention these techniques only to clarify that hemiola is not characteristically found subsequent to Brahms’s displacement dissonances.16

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Example 5.9. Intermezzo in E Major, op. 116, no. 4, mm. 19–25

In the first example, the Intermezzo op. 116, no. 4, both the initial quarternote displacement dissonance and the subsequent hemiola are weakly projected.17 As indicated by the solid brackets on example 5.9, the displacement dissonance arises from a repeated long-short melodic motif. At the outset of the intermezzo, a simpler rendition of this melody was heard, and the memory of that initial and less metrically dissonant version further attenuates the sense of displacement dissonance. In the phrase’s third measure (m. 22), the bass resumes its articulation of notated downbeats and thereby largely resolves the preceding displacement dissonance. Yet a careful listening to the melody, which had carried the displacement dissonance, reveals the presence of hemiola, as shown by the dotted brackets on example 5.9. The hemiola is strongest in the phrase’s fourth and fifth measures, where it is reinforced through pitch repetition. The three-note descent C♯–B–A♯ sounds twice and is altered on its third statement through transposition and elongation. This final iteration leads conclusively to the phrase’s cadence. At a lower level, duple and triple subdivisions are in conflict, and the resolution of this submetric grouping dissonance coincides with the cadential arrival. Rather than viewing the return of the bass downbeats in the phrase’s third measure (m. 22) as a complete resolution of the preceding displacement dissonance, I prefer to hear a more

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gradual metric process throughout the phrase’s third, fourth, and fifth measures, where the gentle rubbing of duple and triple groupings at two levels of the metric hierarchy forestall metric resolution until the cadential arrival. The sensitively judged intricacy of this passage enriches but does not disturb the atmosphere of this “Notturno,” Brahms’s original title for this intermezzo.18 Much less subtle, and debatable, is the intervention of hemiola near the end of the C-major section within the finale of the String Quartet in A Minor, op. 51, no. 2. As Scott Murphy has explored in detail, this is a movement where duple and triple elements appear at various levels of the metric hierarchy.19 The hemiola considered below emerges from the movement’s most metrically dissonant passage, shown in example 5.10. Most evident is the eighthnote displacement dissonance of the violins and violas throughout measures 91–97. Less immediately apparent but much more striking is the simultaneous grouping dissonance shown by the brackets on example 5.10. The 43 meter is supplanted by a four-quarter-note grouping dissonance, meaning that a pure duple organization exists throughout the metric hierarchy.20 Given the elaborate displacement and grouping dissonances, the ongoing duple hypermeter is suspended; in looking at the score, one can observe that odd-numbered measures are hypermetrically strong in the preceding music (i.e., mm. 83, 85, 87, 89, 91) whereas even-numbered ones are strong subsequent to this passage (i.e., mm. 100, 102, 104, etc.). In this musical context, the hemiola of measures 98–99 hardly seems metrically dissonant. Rather, it resolves the eighthnote displacement and reasserts duple hypermeter. Even though it does not articulate the notated 43 meter directly, its coordination with the return to the phrase’s structural dominant harmony—the launching point of the metrically dissonant digression—is easily heard, at least retrospectively, as a hemiola in its quintessential function as preparation for a cadential arrival. The relationship of hemiolas to hypermeter, raised briefly in this last example, is explored at length in the next section.

Hemiola as Resolution of Hypermetric Instability or Agent of Hypermetric Reinterpretation From a certain perspective, one can argue that hemiola’s interaction with hypermetric displacement dissonance is no different than that with metric displacement dissonance. The most frequent scenario where a hemiola resolves hypermetric dissonance occurs in 43 meter with a hemiola that spans two notated measures; a schematic representation of this would be isomorphic to the one in example 5.1 above. The hemiola simply operates at the level of the tactus rather than at the level of the pulse. The distinction between meter and hypermeter is more than a notational one, although there exist pieces where

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Example 5.10. String Quartet in A Minor, op. 51, no. 2, IV, mm. 87–100

hypermeter serves as the perceived meter (and a much smaller number of pieces in extremely slow tempi where the notated meter serves as the perceived hypermeter).21 The various musical parameters differ in their relative importance in projecting meter and hypermeter, and certain deviations from periodicity occur hypermetrically that are not found in common-practice meter, such as the reinterpretation that often happens when phrases (or subphrases) are elided. The following discussion proceeds through short excerpts from the first movements of the Second Symphony, op. 73, the Piano Trio in C Major, op. 87, and the Piano Quartet in A Major, op. 26. Hemiola can be understood to

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perform a hypermetrically stabilizing role in different ways, as represented schematically in example 5.11. In the first two situations, the hemiola emerges from a passage in which there has been some lack of clarity about hypermeter—adjacent downbeats have been competing for hypermetric priority. Most often, the hemiola reinforces the stronger hyperbeats as shown at (a), but it can lend definitive support to an expected weaker hyperbeat as shown at (b). In the latter scenario, the hemiola might be viewed as the final stage in a hypermetric transition, to adopt David Temperley’s useful term.22 In the scenario shown at (c), the hemiola enters in a hypermetrically consonant passage but prepares a hypermetric reinterpretation. The hemiola alone performs a hypermetrically transitional function. In the examples below, some of these distinctions are difficult to assert with absolute certainty, but they are worth pondering. The interconnectedness of metric and hypermetric events of so many different kinds contributes enormously to Brahms’s individual musical language. An additional complication, which arises in the discussion of the piano trio and the piano quartet movements, is the relationship between surface and underlying hypermeters and how hemiola in the surface might negotiate between these levels. A straightforward and well-known instance of a hemiola bringing hypermetric clarity occurs at the end of the pseudo-introduction (mm. 1–44) of the first movement of the Second Symphony, op. 73. Carl Schachter has explained in detail how the expansion of dominant harmony across measures 14–43 involves a breakdown of both hypermeter and meter into pure quarter-note pulse and then a reconstitution of the notated 43 meter and quadruple hypermeter.23 The reconstitution of quadruple hypermeter is marked as minimally as possible; only a pianissimo timpani roll sounds (see ex. 5.12). As Schachter notes, the conductor must already become aware of the reemergence of quadruple hypermeter in order to shape the neighbor-note wind figures so that they possess the same anacrustic hypermetric quality as at the start of the movement. Although Schachter’s reading of hypermeter is without question the best interpretation available, there remains a certain hypermetric hesitancy to the passage. Combined with the lack of subdivisions and the dark color of the trombone chords, this hypermetric tentativeness creates considerable suspense but no clear mechanism for launching the second, and more assertive, component of the first theme at measure 44. The hemiola in measures 42–43 fulfils this role by reinforcing even-numbered measures as hypermetrically strong. The hypermetric parallelism between measures 42 and 44 (at the two-measure level) is reinforced by the repetition of the neighbor-note motif on A. While a fully retrospective view of the passage reveals a reconstitution of hypermeter as early as measure 32, the hemiola at the end of the pseudo-introduction consolidates the hypermetric situation and points toward measure 44 as a moment of initiation.

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Example 5.11. Three interactions of hemiola and hypermeter in 43 meter

Example 5.12. Symphony no. 2 in D Major, op. 73, I, mm. 32–44

In the opening of the Piano Trio, op. 87, hemiola participates in a hypermetric reinterpretation.24 As shown in example 5.13, an overlap at the subphrase level in measure 4 corresponds to a first hypermetric reinterpretation. The overtly sequential design of measures 4–7 leaves little doubt that a hypermetric reinterpretation has occurred and gives hypermetric priority to evennumbered measures. However, a similar sequential progression begins at measure 13. The intervening passage presents a strongly articulated hemiola (mm. 9–12), and this so-called dissonance seems to play a crucial role in shifting the hypermetric priority back to odd-numbered measures. Precisely how to represent these multiple events is not entirely clear, and some explanation of the hypermetric annotations on example 5.13 is in order. If one had to pick a single instant where the hypermetric reorientation occurs, the best candidate

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is the onset of the hemiola in measure 9. Due to the suppression of the second measure of the expected sequential repetition in favor of the new hemiolic material, there is again an overlap at a subphrase level. The simplest representation for hypermeter in measure 9, therefore, would be 2 = 1. Yet there seems to be something digressive about the hemiolic material, as it draws out the dominant seventh harmony to a length considerably greater than the harmonies in the preceding sequence. The feeling of expansion is heightened since the latter pair of hemiolic measures (mm. 11–12) are an embellished repetition of the initial pair. In my view, the most sensitive hypermetric analysis—and the one shown in example 5.13—is a multi-leveled one, where the hypermeasure comprised of hemiolic material provides a surface hypermeter that temporarily suspends the phrase’s underlying hypermeter. This shift in level, an admittedly subtle and speculative distinction, seems to capture the dual sense in which there is some sort of hypermetric adjustment at measure 9, but the full reinstatement of odd-numbered measures as hypermetrically strong comes only when the phrase resumes forward tonal motion at measure 13. In other words, a shifting of hypermetric level acknowledges the hypermetrically transitional function of the hemiola.25 A few other passages from this movement place hemiolas in metrically stabilizing roles, and I will consider two of these, both from the development section. As in several of Brahms’s sonata forms, the development begins with a tonic-key restatement of the first theme, shown in example 5.14. Like at the opening of the movement, the phrase’s fourth measure has an overlap at a subphrase level that corresponds to a 4 = 1 hypermetric reinterpretation and shifts hypermetric attention to even-numbered measures. The sequence is altered by comparison with the exposition, but it still initially proceeds in two-measure modules. Starting at measure 136, the sequential unit fragments to a single measure, and the eighth-note pulses are grouped in threes rather than in twos. In the first measure of this grouping dissonance, there is only a weak change of harmony, but in measures 137–38 the mid-measure harmonic change becomes stronger, which strengthens the metric grouping dissonance. The increasing metric tension and rising dynamics culminate at measure 139, which breaks the ongoing sequence by sounding a 46, rather than a 36, sonority. The 46 sonority is cadential in function, and its impact is enhanced through the presence of hemiola. As at the start of the movement, the hemiola also participates in switching of hypermetric priority from even-numbered back to odd-numbered measures. The annotations on example 5.14 suggest that the hemiola arises from expansion; given that the immediately preceding measures present two harmonies each, the spreading of the cadential 46 and its resolution across two measures can be viewed as an expansion. The recomposition in example 5.15 shows how easily the cadential 46 and its resolution could fall within a single measure.

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Example 5.13. Piano Trio in C Major, op. 87, I, mm. 1–15

Removing the hemiola allows the quadruple hypermeter to flow without interruption, but one feels the cadential arrival on G minor less strongly. The single measure of metric consonance after the intense grouping dissonance of measures 136–38 is less effective—less stable—than Brahms’s pair of hemiolic measures. If one accepts that this is the structural-expressive effect of this hemiola, then its function as a metric dissonance is called into doubt. The final passage to be examined from this movement comes immediately afterward. This next part of the development section consists of an eleven-measure module (mm. 141–51) that elides with its repetition a fifth lower (mm. 151–61, expanded externally by cadential repetitions to m. 165). Example 5.16 provides the second module, whose first eight measures are

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Example 5.14. Piano Trio in C Major, op. 87, I, mm. 129–41

based on parallel descending tenths (C/E♭–B♭/D♭–A♭/C). The pacing of these tenths is irregular: five measures, two measures, and one measure respectively. At the outset, duple hypermeter is strongly projected through the quasi-sentential beginning; it is in the fifth measure (m. 155) where the hypermetric situation becomes complicated. The downbeat is not articulated by the expected dotted-note motif but by an ascending scalar figure. The newness of this scalar figure could support the beginning of a hypermeasure developing this thematic idea, but in the next measure the first move within the underlying parallel tenths occurs. This tonal motion combined with the return of the dotted-note motif suggests a hypermetrically strong identity for measure 156.

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Example 5.15. Recomposition of mm. 139–40 as a single measure

As a result, the ensuing return of the scalar motif occupies a hypermetrically weak measure (m. 157), a context inherently suited to its placid rhythms and articulation and a placement confirmed by the move to the A♭/C tenth in the following measure. Thus despite the complications of the preceding measures, the final arrival in the underlying tenths (m. 158) emerges as a hypermetrically strong event. The hypermetric analysis on example 5.16 continues the duple patterning to the deceptive cadence at measure 161, which elides with a phrase expansion that twice echoes the cadential gesture. Close inspection of the two measures preceding the hypermetric reinterpretation at measure 161 reveals the presence of a hemiola. This hemiola is undoubtedly not as strong as most others mentioned in this essay, as the melodic emphasis on A♭ on downbeats in the piano part along with the overall melodic parallelism between measures 159 and 160 reinforce the notated meter. The outer voices, however, do articulate a hemiola, though it would be even stronger if the dominant harmony arrived on the second beat of measure 160 rather than an applied diminished seventh chord. Yet despite the middling nature of this hemiola there are a couple of ways in which it performs a stabilizing metric function. First, by beginning two measures before the end of the phrase, the inherent emphasis at the outset of the hemiola foreshadows the hypermetric reinterpretation that will occur at the end of the phrase. This is especially apt given that the post-cadential expansion reiterates the two measures that preceded the cadence. By their formal placement, these two echoes (mm. 161–62, 163–64) have a strong-weak hypermetric identity, and this reversal compared to their initial weak-strong occurrence before the cadence (mm.

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Example 5.16. Piano Trio in C Major, op. 87, I, mm. 151–65

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159–60) is wonderfully facilitated by their hemiolic nature. Second, the deemphasis of the notated downbeat in the middle of the pre-cadential hemiola shifts attention away from a measure that is hypermetrically strong at the two-measure level. This de-emphasis, coupled with the continuity of thematic material in measures 158–60, suggests a resurgence of quadruple hypermeter after several measures where hypermeter beyond the two-measure level seems highly speculative. Although I consider it at a surface level, the hypermeter within the post-cadential expansion is easily viewed as quadruple due to the literal repetitions. This regeneration of quadruple hypermeter sets the stage for the next part of the development, where the movement’s opening four measures are augmented to eight measures and treated to sequential repetition. Once again, hemiola eases a shift between hypermetric states, revealing a fluidity in Brahms’s metric language that is not fully celebrated when hemiolas are considered exclusively as dissonant entities, without consideration of their functions in individual musical contexts. A passage from the exposition of the first movement of the Piano Quartet in A Major, op. 26, serves as a final illustration of hemiola’s interaction with hypermeter. The excerpt provided as example 5.17 includes the terminal module of the second theme and the start of the closing theme (mm. 106ff.).26 The second theme concludes with a parallel period that consists of a four-measure antecedent (mm. 95–98) and an expanded eight-measure consequent (mm. 99–106). The phrase expansion includes a pair of hemiolic measures (mm. 104–5), and the relationship of these measures to surface and underlying hypermeters, and the precise metric configuration of the boundary between the second and closing themes, warrant close scrutiny. In order to appreciate the role of the hemiola in Brahms’s expanded consequent, it is productive to imagine what a four-measure consequent would have looked like. The underlying phrase is easily reconstructed given the four-measure antecedent. The recomposition, which is shown as example 5.18, simply removes the extra measures (mm. 102–5), since they begin with a deceptive substitution for the expected tonic harmony. Very minimal recomposition is required because, unusually, the antecedent ended on tonic harmony (with incomplete melodic closure) rather than dominant harmony, and thus the consequent can follow the antecedent and close within its four-measure hypermeasure rather than spilling over onto the downbeat of the next hypermeasure or having an acceleration in harmonic rhythm preceding the cadence. Since the recomposed consequent ends on a fourth hyperbeat, a 4  = 1 hypermetric reinterpretation is necessitated by the phrase design of the closing theme. Although the repetitiveness of the start of the closing theme might admit more than one hypermetric reading, the passing nature of the harmony in measure 109, and especially the melodic parallelisms within measures 110–11 and 112–13, make perfectly clear the hypermetric placement of the closing theme.

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Example 5.17. Piano Quartet in A Major, op. 26, I, mm. 95–114

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Example 5.18. Recomposition of mm. 99–106 as a four-measure consequent

In the recomposed consequent, there is something awkward about the 4 = 1 hypermetric reinterpretation at the outset of the closing theme. Hypermetric reinterpretation generally coincides with an overlap at some level of grouping structure, but the melody emphatically articulates a grouping boundary between the measure’s first and second beats. The burden of the overlap falls entirely on the cello, which does have a genuine overlap given the repetition of its arpeggiated pattern in subsequent measures. Since the constraints on hypermetric structures are less strict than those on meter or harmony in the common-practice period, the recomposed version is certainly not a musical impossibility, but it is difficult to audiate the hypermetric reinterpretation simultaneously with the sharp melodic grouping boundary. The hemiola in Brahms’s expansion participates in a relationship between surface and underlying hypermeters. The passage is quite similar to the one from the beginning of the C-major piano trio (see ex. 5.13 above), except simpler in that the expansion is plainly apparent due to the preceding antecedent phrase; the hemiola occurs only at the end of the expansion rather than throughout. As shown in the hypermetric annotations on example 5.17, in the surface hypermeter there is a 4 = 1 reinterpretation at the onset of the phrase expansion. The expansion itself constitutes a four-measure hypermeasure, and this periodicity is reinforced through the hemiolic measures 104–5 that conclude the expansion. Falling in their most common hypermetric location, these hemiolic measures assuredly prepare a hyperdownbeat at measure 106, the downbeat where the second theme ends and after which the closing theme’s melody begins. In the surface hypermeter, there is no reinterpretation

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at this point; in fact, due to the preceding hemiola the hyperdownbeat is rendered even stronger than usual. This excerpt from the piano quartet provides a salutary reminder that in a musical passage involving phrase expansion “the” hypermeter—to the extent one is able to refer to a definitive interpretation—is not equivalent to the hypermeter of the underlying phrase. The latter is the underlying hypermeter, here the hypermeter shown on the recomposition in example 5.18. In the expanded phrase, there exists surface hypermeter, which does not represent “the” hypermeter either. Rather, “the” hypermeter is the interaction between underlying and surface hypermeters; it is a relationship between two distinct entities. This relationship allows for different qualities of musical time; in this instance, the difference between the quick harmonic changes of the start of the consequent and the broad expansion of the dominant harmony via repeated motions to a chromatic upper neighbor supporting a German sixth chord. Yet this relationship between surface and underlying hypermeters also allows for transformations between strong and weak hypermetric identities. In this case, the renegotiation of the hypermetric identity of the phrase’s final measure by the expansion’s surface hypermeter is facilitated and highlighted through its incorporation of hemiola.27

Hearing Hemiolas Consonantly This final section turns to hemiolas that, from a metric perspective, do not perform an obviously restorative function. I pose a speculative question: What might be the consequences of viewing such hemiolas as if they have an overtly stabilizing role? To offer some possible responses to this question, I return to the C-minor Trio, but this time to its first movement. Asserting greater structural value to some of its hemiolas might reveal somewhat hidden aspects of phrase rhythm and motivate more vibrant dialogues between musicians in performance. Even given its 43 meter, the first movement of the Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 101, seems unusually endowed with hemiolas. Many of these are typical cadential hemiolas, setting up powerful tonic arrivals, as at the end of the first theme (mm. 18–19) and related passages in the coda (mm. 206–7, 213–14, 221–22). In the lengthy coda’s last moments, its antepenultimate and penultimate measures outline a hemiola, preparing the final low, thickly-scored C-minor chord. As in the slow movement of the Fourth Symphony considered above, the transition ends with a hemiola, but the situation is much more complex due to a hypermetric ambiguity within the second theme. I will explore this perplexing boundary later on, but before then I turn to the movement’s initial engagement with hemiola during the first theme.

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This initial involvement with hemiola is subtle and easily overlooked even by acute listeners reading the score. After the opening four-measure motto, there follows the seven-measure expansion of dominant harmony shown in example 5.19. In the fourth measure of this harmonic stasis, the piano’s gestures lose their terminal quarter-notes, meaning that these gestures fall only two beats apart from one another. The resulting hemiola is very slightly obscured through the lack of articulation of the hemiolic beats themselves by the piano, but these beats are consistently articulated by the lowest G available on the violin and cello, both open strings. In fact, in her commentary on a private 1887 reading of the work by Brahms, Joseph Joachim, and Robert Hausmann, British pianist Fanny Davies specifically noted the great importance laid on these iterations of G.28 More relevant to the hemiola’s lack of maximal strength than the piano’s suppressed attacks is the further fragmentation that follows the hemiola. In fact, the fragmentation to three sixteenth-notes already occurs during the last hemiolic beat, and in the following measure the piano not only reduces the gestures to two sixteenth-notes but then introduces faster rhythms as well. The hemiola dissolves; its projection decreases notably within the last beat of measure 9, and from the perspective of measure 10 it provides an intermediate stage in a larger process of motivic fragmentation and rhythmic acceleration. If one takes this hemiola seriously, the measure in which it begins (m. 8) accrues additional emphasis. In the string parts, the downbeat of this measure is also marked due to the change in rhythmic pattern. Unlike in the preceding three measures, the downbeat is not set apart by a sustained pitch. Although the change in pattern by itself distinguishes this measure, the string parts also exhibit considerable flow across this downbeat due to the continuous stepwise ascent traced by their uppermost pitches. The larger implication of the strings’ new rhythmic pattern and the piano’s hemiola lies in a refinement in hypermetric understanding. The downbeat thus emphasized is a fourth hyperbeat, an unlikely location for the inception of a new and sustained rhythmic pattern and an even less frequent site for the onset of a two-measure hemiola. The implication is a 4 = 1 hypermetric reinterpretation, a reading that rationalizes the seven-measure dominant expansion as a pair of overlapping four-measure units. While one does not wish to diminish the sense in which these seven measures represent an unexpectedly long harmonic stasis, the recognition of underlying quadruple spans gives the passage a strength that fits nicely with the powerful chords of the preceding four-measure motto and with the following eight measures of dotted-rhythm material. More broadly, the clarity gained by promoting this hemiola tempers the otherwise bewildering rhythmic boldness of this passage compared with the movement’s overall straightforward construction, a feature consistently noted in contemporary reviews.29 As has often been observed, the only segment of the first theme that returns at the outset of the recapitulation is this seven-measure dominant expansion,

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Example 5.19. Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 101, I, mm. 5–13

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Example 5.20. Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 101, I, mm. 137–42

which originally occurred in the middle of the theme.30 Restricting the thematic recapitulation in this way enables the return of root-position C harmony to fall later in the recapitulation; the second theme attains C major while the coda reverts to C minor. Thus, this seven-measure dominant expansion becomes a pivotal moment in the form, providing a smooth connection between development and recapitulation. Example 5.20 begins at the hemiolic measures, thus giving the final four measures of the seven-measure thematic reminiscence and the start of the following new thematic module, which serves as a transition to the second theme.

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The hypermetric annotations on example 5.20 suggest that the hemiolic element sets up a potent conflict of competing hypermeters between piano and strings in the ensuing new transitional module. Recall that it is only the piano part that articulates the hemiola; the lack of differentiation within the strings’ material diminishes the distinction between hyperbeats, drawing one closer to the surface levels of the metric hierarchy. Thus, the 4 = 1 reinterpretation at the onset of the transitional module in measure 140 is immediately sensed. In the piano part, this downbeat corresponds to the middle of a sweeping arpeggio and is not particularly marked. Moreover, the preceding hemiolic element in the piano part in measures 137–38 keeps some attention on the two-measure level of the metric hierarchy, providing additional disincentive for a 4 = 1 metric reinterpretation. Rather, by pointing the pianist to the distinction between strong and weak hyperbeats, the hemiola encourages the same understanding of the following two measures, indicating that measure 140 fully remains a weak hyperbeat. Instead of hypermetric reinterpretation, the piano part has a competing shadow hypermeter, which comes into alignment with the main hypermeter of the strings when the dominant harmony is rearticulated at measure 146.31 Acknowledging the ability of hemiola to project twomeasure hypermeter facilitates an independent hypermetric life for the piano part and promotes a more active hearing of the relationship among the instruments in the transitional module. I return now to the hemiola that concludes the transition and sets up the lyrical second theme, which begins with a sixteen-measure sentence (see ex. 5.21). As mentioned above, several of the transitions in Brahms’s sonata expositions in 43 meter feature a hemiola across their final two measures. In opus 101, however, the measure following the hemiola (m. 38) is not hypermetrically strong. The quarter-notes of measure 38 clearly belong to the second theme and not to the transition; a cursory glance through the second theme reveals multiple recurrences of this motif, which is derived from an augmentation of the bass line from measures 1–2. Given the presence of open octaves, ^ and the extension of the preceding the rising melodic motion from 5^ to 1, dominant harmony, the quarter-notes of measure 38 are easily taken as hypermetrically weak, as shown in hypermeter A in example 5.21. In other words, the second theme begins with a hypermetric and gestural upbeat (to use terminology I have developed elsewhere32). The grouping boundaries within the presentation of this sentence are therefore a full measure out-of-phase from the hypermeter, something not extremely unusual in a sixteen-measure sentence (compared to an eight-measure one) but worth noting nonetheless. In the sentence’s continuation, hearing odd-numbered measures as hypermetrically strong becomes increasingly difficult. Despite the conceptual separation between hypermeasures and phrase groupings, it is challenging to maintain a hypermeter that is significantly out-of-phase from grouping

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Example 5.21. Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 101, I, mm. 36–54

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structure, as William Rothstein has noted in his “rule of congruence.”33 To illustrate this tension, hypermeter A (in ex. 5.21) maintains odd-strong hypermeter until the elided restatement of the theme begins at measure 54. In this reading, the preceding hypermeasure has several awkward elements: the violin’s ascent to A♭ culminates on a hypermetrically weak measure (m. 52), the subsequent embellished repetition is therefore hypermetrically stronger, and the piano’s restatement of the rising quarter-notes from the theme’s outset no longer constitutes a hypermetric upbeat. Hypermeters B and C suggest an earlier hypermetric reinterpretation, at the onset of the theme’s continuation (m. 46) or at its midpoint (m. 50) respectively. In either location, rising quarter-notes similar to those in the theme’s first measure occur. Herein lies a connection to a consonant hearing of the hemiola at the end of the transition. A consonant hearing of the hemiola in measures 36–37 brings somewhat more accentuation to the downbeat of measure 38 than the above-mentioned open-octave texture and tonal context would otherwise indicate. Thus, the reinterpretation of this motif’s hypermetric identity, which is eventually necessary during the theme, is subtly prepared at the theme’s outset.

Hemiolas and Beyond Some of the interpretations advanced in this essay will not be convincing to all readers. Analysis that moves beyond description necessarily incorporates the analyst’s musical intuitions and aesthetic preferences, and about such analyses musicians sometimes disagree. While this hardly seems necessary to point out, I acknowledge that responses by musically informed listeners to many rhythmic-metric phenomena are considerably more varied than are those to many pitch constructs. Accentuating this perceptual difference is the comparatively more comprehensive encoding of pitch information in score notation. Although I do hope that most of my interpretations are either consistent with readers’ current ones or offer welcome ways of enriching their experiences of these musical passages, an even more important goal is to highlight once again the depth and variety of reflection that can be brought to bear on temporal aspects of Brahms’s music and the payoffs from doing so. Throughout I have argued for recognizing the potential of hemiola to restore metric consonance or to stabilize the metric situation after a period of flux. In no way do I mean to suggest that hemiola never has a dissonant metric function or that it does not disturb the ongoing musical flow. Taken in the larger context of writings on hemiola, this essay aims to emphasize the varied functions that hemiolas can perform. Due to the accepted naming of hemiolas as metric dissonances, especially in regards to nineteenth-century music, functions other than a purely dissonant one have received less comment. In

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addition, the recent literature has paid less attention to the function of hemiolas in their individual musical surroundings and more attention to detecting variations in the projected strength of hemiolas or to specifying how hemiolic durations relate to the notated meter or meters of a given piece and how these relationships might be represented visually. As noted near the outset of this essay, hemiola is the simplest of the metric grouping dissonances. Brahms deployed more complex grouping dissonances, albeit less frequently. An obvious question arises: Can more complex grouping dissonances, such as a conflict between triple and quadruple groupings, ever have a stabilizing metric function? Brahms’s music occasionally presents sesquitertian elements in advance of an important tonal arrival. A straightforward instance appears early in the finale of the Cello Sonata in F Major, op. 99. In the transition, the modulation to the secondary key of A minor (m. 23) is achieved through a circle-of-fifths sequences in which each pair of chords spans three quarter-notes of the cut-time meter. Four groups of three quarternotes are articulated across the three notated measures leading to the tonal arrival; this construction is analogous in function to the hemiolas in Baroque cadences. Later in the movement, groupings of three quarter-notes perform a function that might approach the types of metrically stabilizing roles explored in this essay. The rondo’s last episode concludes with a quarter-note displacement dissonance (mm. 122–25), and the ensuing retransition (mm. 125–28) makes use of three-quarter groupings as part of its preparation for the final rondo refrain. Such situations are admittedly very rare, and their immediate impact is even more unsettling than hemiolas. Nonetheless, they do suggest that the notions explored above might be extended to more complex grouping dissonances, if not to any meaningful degree in Brahms’s music perhaps in relation to other repertoire.

Notes 1.

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Throughout this essay, I will employ the frequently encountered term “metric dissonance” even though these contrametric accentuations often do not undermine our sense of meter and perceived downbeat. For theorists who consider meter to incorporate all layers of periodic motion, such as Harald Krebs, the term “metric dissonance” is fully satisfactory. For writers who view meter as comprised only of the layers of periodic motion that align with the perceived overall meter, contrametric accentuations would more logically be referred to as “rhythmic dissonances.” This paper was read at Brahms in the New Century (New York, 2012), and I would like to acknowledge the feedback received at that time, especially from Richard Cohn, as well as the numerous suggestions offered subsequently by Scott Murphy.

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hemiola as agent of metric resolution 2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

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Harald Krebs, Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). As Richard Cohn has noted, current usage of the term hemiola admits situations where triple groupings of pulses substitute for duple ones. In this essay, I use the term hemiola only in its narrower sense (in any case, this interchange is the one that occurs most frequently in Brahms’s music). See Cohn, “Complex Hemiolas, Ski-Hill Graphs and Metric Spaces,” Music Analysis 20, no. 3 (2001): 295. Two instances of long-awaited arrivals of tonic harmony emphasized by a preceding hemiola occur in the coda of the first movement of the Piano Quartet in C Minor, op. 60 (m. 313) and at the end of the first theme in the initial movement of the Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, op. 115 (m. 25). In some pieces, hemiolas emphasize the endings of phrases quite consistently (e.g., the Andante grazioso from the Clarinet Trio in A Minor, op. 114 and the Romanze in F Major, op. 118, no. 5). Channan Willner, “The Two-Length Bar Revisited: Handel and the Hemiola,” Göttinger Händel-Beiträge 4 (1991): 208–31, and “More on Handel and the Hemiola: Overlapping Hemiolas,” Music Theory Online 2, no. 3 (1996). An example, cited by Willner, is Edward T. Cone’s discussion of the first four measures of Brahms’s Intermezzo in A Major, op. 118, no. 2. Cone reads a hemiola across measures 2–3, and this pacing of tonal events results in a four-measure phrase. See Cone, “Musical Form and Musical Performance Reconsidered,” Music Theory Spectrum 7 (1985): 155–56. It should be noted that many of Willner’s hemiolas—as he acknowledges—are weakly projected, and a large number involve only the upper melodic line. David Schulenberg questions the presence of hemiola in some of Willner’s examples; see Schulenberg, “Commentary on Channan Willner, ‘More on Handel and the Hemiola,’” Music Theory Online 2, no. 5 (1996). Channan Willner, “Metrical Displacement and Metrically Dissonant Hemiolas,” Journal of Music Theory 57, no. 1 (2013): 87–118. Ibid., 109–14. The terms “odd-strong” and “even-strong,” which refer to consistent hypermetric accentuation of odd-numbered and even-numbered measures respectively, come from David Temperley, The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 212. Willner, “Metrical Displacement,” 114. Cohn, “Complex Hemiolas.” Cohn has discussed certain hemiolic aspects of the opening movement of opus 78 (Cohn, “Complex Hemiolas,” 304–7). The Capriccio op. 76, no. 8 is the focus of articles by David Lewin and the present author; see Lewin, “On Harmony and Meter in Brahms’s Op. 76, No. 8,” 19th-Century Music 4, no. 3 (1981): 261–65, and McClelland, “Brahms’s Capriccio Op. 76, No. 8: Ambiguity, Conflict, Musical Meaning, and Performance,” Theory and Practice 29 (2004): 69–94. For a complete discussion of this movement (as well as the work’s second movement), see McClelland, “Metric Dissonance in Brahms’s Piano Trio in C Minor, Op. 101,” Intégral 20 (2006): 1–42. Krebs, Fantasy Pieces, 46–52.

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15. This technique for resolving displacement dissonances is explored at length in Walter Frisch, “The Shifting Bar Line: Metrical Displacement in Brahms,” in Brahms Studies: Analytical and Historical Perspectives, ed. George Bozarth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 139–63. 16. For another different scenario in which hemiola resolves a displacement spanning less than half of a measure, see measures 23–24 in variation 6 of the Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, op. 9. In 86 meter, this variation falls into a D6–2 displacement (measured in eighth-notes), and the reconciliation with the notated meter comes after a G3/2 dissonance. This passage is mentioned in Frisch, “The Shifting Bar Line,” 142–43. 17. Indeed, in his study of hemiolas in opus 116, John Rink does not list this passage as among those with hemiolas; this example is by far the most weakly projected hemiola I entertain in this essay. See Rink, “Playing in Time: Rhythm, Metre and Tempo in Brahms’s Fantasien Op. 116,” in The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation, ed. John Rink (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 276. 18. “Notturno” appears in the autograph (held at the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg), a facsimile of which was published by Henle in 1997. 19. Scott Murphy, “Metric Cubes in Some Music of Brahms,” Journal of Music Theory 53, no. 1 (2009): 40–53. 20. The characterization “pure duple” to refer to a metric hierarchy governed by duple relations at all levels originates in Richard Cohn, “Dramatization of Hypermetric Conflicts in the Scherzo of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,” 19thCentury Music 15, no. 3 (1992): 188–206. 21. The slow movement of the Fourth Symphony, discussed in the previous section, might in fact be an instance where the notated 86 meter is perceived as a hypermeter. (In that case, the perceived meter would be 83.) Brahms’s tempo marking is Andante moderato, but many conductors adopt a less flowing tempo. In all cases, when I refer to “meter” and “hypermeter” I refer to the levels as indicated by the score notation. 22. David Temperley, “Hypermetrical Transitions,” Music Theory Spectrum 30, no. 2 (2008): 305–25. None of Temperley’s examples employs hemiola in a hypermetric transition. 23. Carl Schachter, “The First Movement of Brahms’s Second Symphony: The Opening Theme and Its Consequences,” Music Analysis 2, no. 1 (1983): 55–68. 24. For a thorough discussion of metric dissonance in this work, see William Bosworth, “Metrical Dissonance in Brahms’s Second Piano Trio, Opus 87 in C Major” (MM diss., University of Birmingham, 2012). Bosworth notes the presence of hemiolas proximate to hypermetric shifts. 25. Temperley represents gradual hypermetric shifts by suspending hypermeter with the annotation “transition”; in many of his examples, I would represent this phenomenon through an interaction of surface and underlying hypermeters. To cite one instance: in Temperley’s analysis of Mendelssohn’s Song Without Words op. 30, no. 4 (his ex. 12), I would view measure 18 as a weak measure in the underlying hypermeter that spawns a six-measure phrase expansion

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27.

28.

29.

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due to the extension of the dominant arrival. This expansion (mm. 18–23) comprises six measures with surface hypermeter in a strong-weak pattern, thereby effecting a strong measure when the underlying hypermeter resumes at measure 24. See Temperley, “Hypermetrical Transitions,” 320–22. Frisch discusses this passage in “The Shifting Bar Line,” 143–44. Frisch’s analysis differs considerably from mine since he focuses solely on melodic design, proposing a series of shifting meters that respond to melodic emphases and preserve the metric identity of recurrent motives. Frisch notes that his analysis “is not really adequate, for it fits only the melody”; one important point on which we agree, though, is the grouping boundary between the first and second beats of measure 106, meaning that the closing theme begins only on the second beat of that measure. For another discussion of hemiola and phrase expansion, see my discussion of the quasi-minuet movement from the Cello Sonata in E Minor, op. 38, in Brahms and the Scherzo: Studies in Musical Narrative (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), 113–19. Fanny Davies, “Some Personal Recollections of Brahms as Pianist and Interpreter,” in Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, ed. Walter Willson Cobbett, vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1929), 183. Davies’s essay is discussed and reprinted in full in George Bozarth, “Fanny Davies and Brahms’s Late Chamber Music,” in Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style, ed. Michael Musgrave and Bernard D. Sherman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 170–219. For a discussion of contemporary reception observing a simplification in Brahms’s language in opus 101 see Margaret Notley, Lateness and Brahms: Music and Culture in the Twilight of Viennese Liberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 45–56. As in some of Brahms’s other movements that bypass the opening of the first theme at the start of the recapitulation, the development begins with a (varied) home-key restatement of the first theme’s initial measures. The term “shadow meter” comes from Frank Samarotto, “Strange Dimensions: Regularity and Irregularity in Deep Levels of Rhythmic Reduction,” in Schenker Studies II, ed. Carl Schachter and Hedi Siegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 235. I explore the distinction between gestural and hypermetric upbeats in “Extended Upbeats in the Classical Minuet: Interactions with Hypermeter and Phrase Structure,” Music Theory Spectrum 28, no. 1 (2006): 23–56. William Rothstein, “Beethoven with and without Kunstgepräng’: Metrical Ambiguity Reconsidered,” Beethoven Forum 4 (1995): 173.

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Chapter Six

Brahms at Twenty Hemiolic Varietals and Metric Malleability in an Early Sonata Richard Cohn

Brahms’s career does not fit a standard early/middle/late paradigm, in part because it had not two but three significant points of internal articulation: the death of Robert Schumann in 1856, which triggered a four-year publication hiatus; the success of the German Requiem in 1868, which thrust Brahms permanently into the public eye; and his premature retirement in 1890, which preceded an unanticipated final compositional burst. The terms with which musicologists reference these four stages fluctuate, yet one marker has achieved some measure of permanence. It was evidently Donald Francis Tovey who attached “first maturity” to the compositions of the 1860s. The term was appropriated by James Webster and Walter Frisch, and eventually canonized in George Bozarth’s contribution to the New Grove Dictionary in 2000.1 The canonized term casts a shadow on the earlier music, as it leaves little room to escape its cardinal implication: that the music of the 1850s is immature, premature, juvenile, or some other similarly deprecatory term. That response is in acute tension with Robert Schumann’s famous judgment that the twenty-year old Brahms, “like Minerva, sprung fully armored from the head of Zeus.” The same tension is internal to a claim of Michael Musgrave: “the early works presage virtually all of the elements of the mature style.”2 If the elements are present, then why does Musgrave sense the absence of the quality constituted by them? Perhaps Brahms had acquired the armaments by age twenty, but not yet mastered their deployment in compositional combat.

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This paper seeks to stimulate a re-evaluation of these implications, focusing on the first movement of the early composition that has the best claim to an enduring position in the concert repertory: the Piano Sonata no. 3 in F minor, op. 5. Composed at the Schumann home in Dusseldorf during October 1853, just a few weeks after Johannes first met Robert and Clara, this movement evinces five characteristics that were integral to Brahms’s compositional personality throughout his career. More than local elements, features, or “devices,” each of these five characteristics involves some measure of ordering, pacing, and large-scale planning. To that extent, the characteristics are worked into the bones of the movement. 1.

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Grundgestalt. Example 6.1a presents the opening four measures of the movement, circling the first seven highest pitches. Example 6.1b shows that these tones, in this order, blueprint the tonal plan of the movement: A-flat, the tonic of the second theme; D-flat, the tonic at the close of the exposition and most of the development; G-flat, the key in which the initial theme returns near the end of the development; and B-flat, the target of the tonal discharge in the coda (as discussed below).3 Arnold Schoenberg coined a term, Grundgestalt, for the relationship of detail to larger shape, one of the features that he most admired in the music of Brahms. The term has been a keyword for analysts of Brahms’s music during the last half-century.4 Blurred recapitulatory boundary. Peter Smith has catalogued a number of strategies by which Brahms attenuates the impact of the classical sonata’s characteristic “double return,” postponing its structural and rhetorical impact toward the end of the movement.5 In opus 5, the tonic return of the initial theme sneaks in after an eight-measure phrase that begins off-tonic and terminates on the dominant. Continuities in thematic material, texture, and dynamic level contribute to the sense that the beginning of the reprise, at measure 131, is a response to the previous phrase, rather than a point of articulation and initiation. It is only upon hearing the fortissimo counter-statement at measure 137 that one retrospectively apprehends the stealthy double return characteristic of a reprise. Subdominant conservation. Brahms often holds the subdominant in reserve, and brandishes it at a late point of rhetorical focus. In the movement at hand, an expectation for subdominant discharge at the end of the reprise is stimulated by the treatment of analogous events at the end of the exposition. There, A-flat major was initially presented as the key for the secondary material, but was ultimately converted to a dominant, eventuating in a D-flat cadence twenty measures later, in the exposition’s final measure. At the analogous point of the reprise,

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Example 6.1. Piano Sonata, op. 5, opening measures, juxtaposed with a tonal plan of the movement

4.

5.

the tonic-to-dominant conversion of F major prepares a cadence in B-flat. In the event, the cadence is deceptively deflected into a murky extension, only to return and resolve triumphantly to B-flat at measure 205, seventeen measures before the final cadence. Hemiola. The first movement of opus 5 often presents triple divisions of two-bar hypermeasures, initiating a 𝅗𝅥 pulse that supplants the 𝅗𝅥. pulse indicated by the 43 meter signature. Some of these hemiolas are audible on first encounter (e.g., measures 49–50, 58–59). Others are more concealed, emerging as secondary possibilities that grow in presence and significance through prolonged exposure. Among these are hypermetrically displaced hemiolas, which begin and terminate on weak downbeats (after Willner); expanded hemiolas, whose progress is suspended for later completion (after Ng);6 and some as yet un-named varietals to be explored in this paper. Ambiguity, leading to forked paths of interpretation. “Ambiguity” is another keyword in Brahms analysis. Here I rely on recent work of Peter Smith, who has argued in support of “ambiguity as an irreducible component of Brahms’s aesthetic,” and has shown (after David Epstein) how the term applies to issues of metric as well as tonal interpretation. In an assessment that penetrates to the heart of Brahms’s art and craft, Smith writes: Ambiguity may arise within an initial context in which there is not enough information to signal a univalent metric or harmonic interpretation. The initial context instead plants the seeds for the

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bivalence that is to become the source for musical development. . . . Repeating [material] in shifted positions and in varied musical contexts heightens the overall sense of ambiguity such that the ambiguity itself becomes a narrative thread in a Brahms work. . . . Brahms helps to balance the scales of ambiguity by tipping his formal processes toward those very meanings that may at first have seemed less weighty, only to tip back and forth again and again.7

These final two features will serve as the focus of this analysis. I shall argue that the principal materials of the movement are metrically malleable: they straddle two distinct interpretations, one normalized to the meter signature and the notated barlines,8 the other metrically unstable and incorporating some combination of the hemiolic techniques itemized above. The first three features cited above shall provide a broader frame for my metric narrative. I shall revisit them in the final section, which returns to the question of how good a composer was Brahms at age twenty.

The Opening Measures and Their Consequences The bass opens with a familiar formula: a chromatic descent from tonic to dominant (ex. 6.2a). Initially, the bass tones occur every three beats, suggesting a 𝅗𝅥. pulse that aligns with the notated barlines and clearly projects the movement’s 43 meter signature. D♭ arrives a beat early, clearing space for the dominant arrival on the hypermetrically strong downbeat of measure 5. Since the bass descends in triple octaves, the pianist’s hands are free to occupy the upper register only on the complementary “weak” beats. This creates a registral alternation that suggests the oom-pah-pah profile of a waltz. Yet this comparison hardly seems appropriate, for the music is more aggressive than lilting. The upper voice vaults progressively upward, covering almost two octaves from initial a♭2 to terminal f4.9 Contributing to the gnarly effect is the dissonant relationship between proximate tones in the melody: G♭, for example, forms a dissonant seventh, uncushioned by stepwise resolution, with both a♭2 and f4. Focused on the upper register, our ear has difficulty fusing successive tones into prolonged harmonies. In contrast to the bass, the upper voice challenges us to continually reorient our tonal position. Inherent in the oom-pah-pah of a waltz is the projection of a mild agogic counter-accent on the third beat of each measure. Three factors intensify this upbeat counter-accent in the opening three measures of opus 5. New melodic tones arrive on beat 3, as the target of vaults initiated from beat 2. Each vault is prepared by a thirty-second-note anacrustic figure that throws accentual weight toward beat 3, where new harmonies arrive. Bass notes on downbeats repercuss harmonies already present. The accumulation of these three factors causes

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Example 6.2a. Piano Sonata, op. 5, opening measures, with durational intervals (unit = 𝅘𝅥)

the notated beat 3 to compete with beat 1, as a candidate for the perceived downbeat. This competition, however, is quickly concluded. The bass C at measure 5 initiates a new harmony on the notated downbeat for the first time since measure 1. Both registers sound together for the first time, at their extremes from the center. (This “togetherness” is notional rather than literal, due to the grace notes that precede the eight-voice chord in the upper register.) In measures 5 and 6 and beyond, the perceived downbeat is normalized to the notated one. At this point, there is considerable motivation to relinquish the provisional contra-metric hearing, and retrospectively normalize the phrase to the notated barlines and the descending bass. Yet a second possibility arises. If we have latched onto the upper voice accents and the harmonic changes as the primary determinants of metric induction, then we have motivation to hear the final four beats preceding the dominant arrival as an acceleration. If we invest accentual energy in b♭3 at the end of measure 3, then we are likely to invest an analogous energy in f4 two beats later. Conditioned to hear the bass notes as echoes of harmonies already present, we hear the bass D and D♭ in measure 4 as completions of major and minor subdominants initiated a beat earlier. Accordingly, the final four beats of the twelve-beat span are heard as a bisection, momentarily projecting a 𝅗𝅥 pulse and accelerating the 𝅗𝅥. pulse of the preceding measures. Heard now across the entire twelve-beat span, and focusing on harmonic changes and high-register accents, what is suggested is an irregular division, 2 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 2, as indicated in example 6.2a. In this respect, the opening of this early piano sonata bears a strong affinity with that of the Sonata in F Major for Cello and Piano, op. 99, which Brahms composed thirty-three years later, in 1886. Like its predecessor, the cello sonata begins with a twelve-beat phrase that leads to a prolonged dominant. The bass

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Example 6.2b. Cello Sonata, op. 99, opening measures, with durational intervals

is normalized to the 43 meter signature, with new pitches on beats 1 and 3 of each measure. But melodic initiations, energized by sixteenth-note anacruses, occur on third beats, supported by new harmonies that carry across the barline. As in opus 5, melodic and harmonic rhythm accelerate at the end of the phrase, replacing the 𝅗𝅥. pulse with a 𝅗𝅥 pulse, so that the dominant arrival is positioned at the hypermetrically strong fifth downbeat.10 The cello sonata thus also can be heard to begin with an irregular 2 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 2 division, as indicated in example 6.2b. In a detailed analysis, Samuel Ng shows that this manner of irregularly dividing twelve beats serves as a metric motif that structures thematic materials throughout the movement.11 Ng derives the example 6.2 template by means of what he terms an expanded hemiolic cycle. In this instance, the cycle is composed of a six-beat span, hemiolically divided into three 𝅗𝅥 spans, and the engine of expansion is another six-beat span, normatively divided into two 𝅗𝅥. spans. The template is generated by opening up the hemiolic 𝅗𝅥 𝅗𝅥 𝅗𝅥 division at one of its two internal junctures, in this case the initial one. The initial 𝅗𝅥 span is thereby separated from its 𝅗𝅥 𝅗𝅥 successors, and the gap is filled by the normative 𝅗𝅥. 𝅗𝅥. division. The resulting template can now be seen as consisting of three distinct stages: (1) a partial hemiola, (h) suspended one-third of the way through; (2) a complete pair of 𝅗𝅥. spans (𝅗𝅥. 𝅗𝅥.) normalized to the movement’s meter signature but not to its notated barlines; and (3) the completion of the suspended hemiola (𝅗𝅥 𝅗𝅥).12 Ng’s analysis relies on two moves that might at first seem counter-intuitive. When followed by a series of three-beat spans, a listener might interpret an initial two-beat span as an extended upbeat. That listener would only synthesize Ng’s proposal in retrospect, having heard an accent on the downbeat of measure 5, subconsciously calculated its distance from prior events, and observed that a twelve-beat span is more normative than the ten-beat span that would be consistent with the initial hypothesis.13 A second complicating factor is that a hemiola substitutes a series of 𝅗𝅥 pulses for a set of projected 𝅗𝅥. pulses; at the

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beginning of a composition, there is no such projection for which to substitute. In order to accommodate this complication, we need to entertain the possibility of a “pre-hemiola” that is understood to perturb a pulse that is projected retrospectively, rather than in prospect as in the standard case. There is a body of nineteenth-century music that begins in exactly this way, the prototype of which is Schumann’s Third (“Rhenish”) Symphony of 1850.14 The expanded hemiola resembles the parentheses that arise in the writings of the late eighteenth-century melodic theorist Heinrich Christoph Koch, and that have emerged with some prominence among Schenkerian analysts. In written language, a parenthesis is formed when a secondary utterance is inserted inside a primary one. The reader suspends the primary utterance, prolongs it in memory, and then reengages it, synthesizing its temporally separated components. The coherence of the sentence depends on the coherence of its primary utterance, which in turn requires that the sentence remain well formed when the secondary utterance is excised. Example 6.3a applies this conception to the opening of the cello sonata. The primary segment (labelled A), sutures the initial two-beat tonic prolongation to the first-inversion tonic chord on the third beat of measure 3. The secondary one (labelled B), consists of the first six beats of the cello melody, with barlines shifted one beat to the left. To derive the four measures of the cello sonata, open the primary segment at the point of suture, introduce the secondary segment, shift the barlines of the latter rightward by one beat, and otherwise adjust the notation to accommodate that shift. Example 6.3b applies an analogous conception to our primary object of attention, the opening measures of the F-minor Piano Sonata. Here the primary segment is formed by joining a two-beat tonic prolongation to the four-beat subdominant one that directly precedes the hypermetrically strong dominant arrival, and the secondary segment consists of two three-beat prolongations of diminished-seventh chords. How can we tell whether the primary segments in example 6.3 are “well formed?” In natural language, judgments of this nature are primarily secured with reference to the langue, which exists prior to any specific utterance. Such judgments are more fragile in music, as they rely in greater part on “contextual” features specific to a composition. In its opening measures, a composition is in the process of constructing its context, and hence provides no prior features to consult. It is only when the context has been fully constructed that one may listen back to the opening measures and verify the well-formed status of the structures that were initially hypothesized. The interpretation of a passage as an expanded hemiolic cycle gains in credence if there are associated passages of music in which the primary segment appears intact, with parenthesis excised and components sutured together into a single continuity. The first movement of opus 5 contains two such passages, both rhetorically marked: they involve fortissimo presentations of the principal theme after

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Example 6.3a. Cello Sonata, op. 99, opening measures, generative model

Example 6.3b. Piano Sonata, op. 5, opening measures, generative model

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Example 6.4. Piano Sonata, op. 5, retransition (mm. 119–23)

extended ruminations at a quieter dynamic level. Example 6.4 presents the first passage, which occurs near the end of the development: a pair of two-measure hypermeasures, each of which moves through a tonic-predominant-dominant harmonic cycle, generating a 𝅗𝅥 pulse that cuts against the indicated 𝅗𝅥. pulse.15 The upper-register predominant chord at beat 3 of each hypermeasure, preceding its bass note on the following beat, creates a particularly strong affinity with the hypothesized model at example 6.3b. The same music reappears at the beginning of the coda, transposed to the tonic major. Example 6.5 partitions the final nineteen measures into ten twomeasure hypermeasures, one of which Brahms notates as a single 46 measure. The first two hypermeasures project half-note spans, as at example 6.4. That pulse is carried by inertia into the beginning of the subsequent, otherwise metrically neutral, hypermeasure, initiating a third hemiolic hypermeasure that is extended into the most ambitious hemiolic expansion of the movement.16 The expansion is triggered by the subdominant triad on the second beat of measure 205, which (as observed earlier) discharges tonal tension that has been building since the second half of the reprise.17 That subdominant is prolonged for two hypermeasures, through a series of 𝅗𝅥. spans normalized to the meter signature but displaced from the barline, before the hemiolic cycle initiated at 204 is brought to completion at the downbeat of measure 210. The 𝅗𝅥 spans are continued for three further hypermeasures, the final one of which is notated as a single 46 measure. This measure 214, which initiates the final cadential phrase, recasts the metrically neutral quaver stream of measure 204 in augmentation. Following Krebs, who interprets this measure as a “finely sculpted ‘modulatory’ measure,”18 I have assigned it a pivot function. As the final of six hemiola “hypermeasures,” it projects the 𝅗𝅥 spans of its predecessors by inertia. As the initiator of the movement’s final phrase, it initiates a new 𝅗𝅥. pulse, finally recuperated, or normalized to the barline, for the first and only time in the coda.

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Example 6.5. Piano Sonata, op. 5, coda (mm. 200–218)

hemiola 1

T

S

hemiola 2

D

T

S

D

hemiola 3

2 1 parenthesis: normalized 3/4, displaced Examples 6.4 and 6.5 present strong evidence for the autonomous status of the music that was hypothesized to bear “primary status” in example 6.3b, and hence for interpreting the opening four measures of the movement in terms of a hemiolic cycle expanded by parenthetical insertion. It may be tempting at this point to make a stronger claim: that the generative prototype of example 6.3 is in some sense definitive, that the opening four measures of opus 5 are “nothing but” an expanded hemiola. But that would be incautious, for Brahms complicates matters in the passages to which we now turn. Example 6.6 presents the counter-statement (mm. 17–26), which returns to the principal theme after a ten-measure contrasting episode in C minor. The vaulting soprano is transferred down two octaves into the tenor register, freeing the right hand to enter into a rough inversional canon at one beat’s delay. (The canon is true to rhythm and contour, but to neither chromatic nor diatonic interval.) One result of this alteration is that the third-beat counter-accent is partly neutralized: the vaulting figure is no longer registrally prominent, and beat 3 is no longer uniquely prepared by anacruses. The only remaining factor that supports a rhythmically abnormal hearing is the harmonic rhythm, which

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Example 6.6. Piano Sonata, op. 5, counter-statement of principal theme (mm. 17–21)

initially replicates that of the opening measures. Even here, though, a subtle change tips the scale in a telling way: at measure 20, the major subdominant is extended by an extra beat. The result is that the harmonic rhythm is converted from an expanded hemiola cycle [2 (3 3) 2 2] to a simpler contra-metric structure: an extended instance of displacement [2 (3 3 3) 1]. Example 6.7 gives the principal theme as it is next presented, at the opening of the development (mm. 75–78). Brahms restores the melody to the upper register, and withdraws the imitative voice with its competing anacruses. Nonetheless, this version is even more normalized to the notated downbeats than the counter-statement at example 6.6, because the points of harmonic change are shifted to the notated downbeats. The harmony is also metrically normalized at the reprise (mm. 131–34), where the vaulting theme is withheld altogether, and anacrustic rhythms proliferate, eventually attaching to every beat. Table 6.1 summarizes the treatment of the principal theme across the entire movement, with respect to those properties that most determine its metric interpretation. The nine presentations of the theme are referenced along the top row, by initial measure number. What unifies these presentations, and defines them as a thematic class, is their incorporation of anacrustic thirtysecond-note figures that fill a diatonic third.19 Although anacrustic figures are continuously present from measure 119 to measure 143, the table sub-divides this segment in order to account for subtle changes distributed across it. Listed at the heads of the rows are six features that contribute to the interpretation of the principal theme as an expanded hemiola. The first four features pertain specifically to activity on the third beat of the initial measure of the thematic

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Example 6.7. Piano Sonata, op. 5, beginning of development (mm. 75–78)

presentation. In cases where those same features are replicated at analogous positions in subsequent measures, the table cites only the first measure of the series. • • •

• • •

The first feature is present if the anacrusis precedes a melodic leap upward on the third beat (of the initial measure). The second feature, a sub-class of the first, is present if the anacrusis/ leap combination is in the highest register. The third feature is present if the anacrustic weight thrown onto the third beat (of the initial measure) is not matched by comparable weight on directly adjacent beats. The fourth feature is present if the harmony changes on the third beat (of the initial measure), but not on directly adjacent beats. The fifth feature is present if the harmony changes at the eleventh (penultimate) beat in the twelve-beat segment. The final feature indicates the absence of a chromatically descending bass, whose presence would constitute a strong motivation to hear the theme as metrically normalized.

The most striking aspect of this table is that no two presentations are identical. Brahms evidently took a combinatorial attitude to the bundle of features that together constitute the principal theme of this movement. One can imagine him, anachronistically, sitting at a board with six switches, each of which controls a light that shines on some aspect of the principal theme. If all switches are in off position, we hear the theme as metrically normalized, by default. As the switches are turned on, one by one, the meter becomes increasingly deformed, and we become progressively aware of the potential for the theme to be heard in terms of an expanded hemiola cycle. Surveying the 26 = 64 possible combinations, Brahms rebalances the scales, tipping the interpretation in one direction or the other. These are the tools of his alchemical art.

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No chromatic descending bass

New harmony two beats from end

New harmony unique to beat 3

Anacrusis unique to beat 3

Vaulting figure in highest register

Vaulting figure on beat 3

× × × × ×

1

×

×

Exposition 17

× × ×

75

× × × × × × ×

× ×

×

×

Development 119 123 127

Table 6.1. Treatment of the principal theme across the Piano Sonata, op. 5

×

131

×

× ×

Recapitulation 138

× × ×

× ×

Coda 200

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The C-minor Theme The C-minor period that separates the first two presentations of the principal theme, at measures 7–16, is also metrically malleable, and the script to which it is subject is analogous.20 But only to some degree: because this theme is less frequently present on the surface of the movement, its potentials are not exploited to the same extent as the F-minor principal theme. Moreover, as we shall see, to the degree that they are worked out at all, the approach to them is fragmentary, indirect, and elliptical. They are nonetheless worth pursuing, as they enrich our understanding of Brahms’s metric craft at age twenty. The period consists of two five-measure phrases, the first of which is presented at example 6.8. Each phrase can be heard as a sentence, with a twomeasure presentation, a two-measure continuation, and a cadential measure. The entire period is accompanied by a funeral-march ostinato in the left hand, whose alternation of triple-stroke beat divisions and sustained beat-spans creates a half-note pulse that cuts against both the three-beat measures and the fifteen-beat phrases. The entire ten-measure unit thus manifests a 15:2 grouping dissonance: two fifteen-beat phrases in the right hand, and fifteen two-beat ostinato cycles in the left. This hemiolic ostinato pulse undermines the parallelism of the first two measures, and in so doing, throws the sentential reading into doubt. In the theme’s initial measure (m. 7), the two registral streams present complementary divisions of the spans that separate adjacent beats: lefthand triple divisions after beats 1 and 3, and a right-hand duple division after beat 2. In the second measure (m. 8), the streams come into partial alignment: the chords struck on beats 1 and 3 sustain in both hands, while mid-measure features the gentle rubbing of a sub-tactus 3:2 dissonance. The two streams remain aligned in the theme’s third measure (m. 9), although here it is the first and last beat-spans that are assigned the sub-tactus rubbing, and mid-measure that sustains the attack on beat 2. The fourth measure (m. 10) reengages the complementarity of the first measure, but again with assignments reversed: it is the first and third beat-spans that feature the duple division in the right hand, while the mid-measure bears the ostinato triple stroke. Example 6.9 summarizes the rhythmic profile of measures 7–10, partitioning its twelve beats into three groups. A circle indicates the division by one hand, a rectangle indicates simultaneous division and 3:2 rubbing, and a double-headed arrow indicates that both hands sustain their initial attack. This information is replicated beneath the score, indicating that the beat-span is divided by left (L), right (R), both (LR), or neither (ø) hand.21 The horizontal alignment of these symbols suggests a parenthetical structure: a six-beat primary process, alternating L and R, is placed into suspension; a six-beat secondary segment, alternating LR and ø is inserted; the primary six-beat process is completed; and the dominant arrives at the thirteenth beat, which is the fifth notated downbeat.

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Example 6.8. Piano Sonata, op. 5, C-minor theme (mm. 7–11), analyzed as a sentence

Example 6.9. Piano Sonata, op. 5, durational patterns in C-minor theme

That description also applies to the opening measures of the movement, but with a significant difference. Here, I shall argue, the normative (3 3) division takes the role of primary segment, into which the parenthesis is inserted, and the hemiolic (2 2 2) division is the secondary segment, the parenthesis inserted into the juncture between primary-segment attacks. This reverses the roles in the opening four measures, where the hemiolic (2 2 2) segment held the primary position, and the normative (3 3) one served as the parenthesis. The hypothesized metric structure of measures 7–10 has a precedent in early eighteenth-century music, where hemiolas frequently begin on the weak second downbeat of a four-measure hypermeasure, in anticipation of a cadential tonic that arrives on its fourth downbeat.22 The point of hemiolic initiation confers an accent that contradicts that downbeat’s notionally weak status with respect to the hypermeter. Conversely, the hemiola suppresses the projected attack on the notionally strong downbeat of the third measure, or withholds

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Example 6.10. Piano Sonata, op. 5, C-minor theme, generative model

it entirely. The energy initiating from the hypermetric downbeat is held open through the hemiola, and receives its terminating complement only when the cadential tonic arrives. Example 6.10 presents a generative model of the C-minor subsidiary theme. The conjectured two-measure hemiolic segment is removed, and the initial measure of the phrase is sutured directly to its fourth measure. As in example 6.3b, which bore an analogous relationship to the F-minor primary theme, we will want to assess the plausibility of this generative scheme by asking whether the primary segment is well-formed on its own, without the interpolated secondary span. One factor in support of this conjecture is its internal motivic parallelism: the long tones, circled in the score, expand the section’s head motif. But example 6.10 also contains two features that complicate the interpretation. First, the primary segment has an extra third measure, which has consequences whose exploration I defer for the moment. Second, although measures 7 and 10 project normative triple meter in the score, when juxtaposed in the generative model they form a two-measure segment that projects a hemiolic half-note beat. This suggests that the twomeasure spans from which the four-measure phrase is assembled consist not of one hemiolic and one normative division, as in the principal theme, but rather two hemiolic divisions. Moreover, the spans are not fitted together by

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inserting the secondary segment at an attack-juncture that is already present in the primary one. Rather, the primary segment must be “cracked open” at the center-point of its internal half-note span, in order to create a space into which the secondary segment is inserted. Whereas the F-minor theme can be erected out of the box by an amateur at home, the C-minor theme requires intervention of a musical carpenter. In order to guide our exploration of this anomaly, example 6.11a provides an underlying scheme for the analysis of the opening F-minor theme that was offered at example 6.3b. The primary segment is a hemiolic six-span, into whose initial gap is inserted a normative six-span. Example 6.11b presents an analogous scheme for the C-minor theme. Here the insertion space is created by breaking open an integral 𝅗𝅥 span, separating its initial 𝅘𝅥 span from its final one. Since metric units cannot remain isolated,23 the orphaned 𝅘𝅥 spans attach by default to the 𝅗𝅥 spans that flank them, as at example 6.11c. Accordingly, those spans are augmented, converting from 𝅗𝅥 to 𝅗𝅥. segments, as indicated through the normalized notation at example 6.11d. The interpolation “mends” or “cures” the two-measure hemiola, causing it to default to a normalized triple meter. It is in this cured form that the C-minor theme is susceptible to interpretation as a hypermetrically displaced hemiola, along the lines that Willner has recognized in Baroque music. “Cracked and mended hemiolas” have the aura of mythical beasts, and their status in this Brahms composition is equivocal at best. In order to persuade skeptical readers to reserve a position for them in the bouquet of hemiolic varietals, I turn briefly away from the Brahms sonata for a brief examination of the opening section of Dvořák’s Slavonic Dance, op. 46 no. 1. Its principal theme, presented at example 6.12a without accompaniment, is metrically malleable. Its initial presentation, at measures 2–17 of the Dance, is accompanied by cymbal whacks at two-beat intervals, conditioning an unmistakably hemiolic interpretation with respect to its notation. A later presentation, at measures 57–64, presents the same theme as a waltz, accompanied by oom-pah-pah cello, and triangle attacks on each downbeat. What is of particular interest here is the way that Dvořák primes the transformation between two radically different, equally convincing hearings of the same theme: each six-beat unit is segmented into two autonomous three-beat segments and cycled independently of one another. Example 6.12b presents the music that immediately follows the initial presentation of the theme. The cycling of the rhythmic pattern for the first three beats persuades us to attach beat 3 backward as an unaccented extension of the previous tone, whereas we had previously been inclined to attach it forward as the accented onset of an upper-neighbor figure. Example 6.12c presents music that directly precedes the reprise of the principal theme. Here the cycled rhythmic pattern is that of the theme’s second measure, whose initial

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Example 6.11. Parenthetical model for F-minor theme (a) and C-minor theme (b–d)

Example 6.12a. Dvorak, Slavonic Dance, op. 46, no. 1, mm. 2–9

Example 6.12b. Dvorak, Slavonic Dance, op. 46, no. 1, mm. 18–21

attack had been attached backward as an unaccented upper neighbor when the theme was first presented. The cycling causes the same beat to attach forward, as an accented appoggiatura.24 When the theme returns as a waltz, we recognize that the third beat of the theme, which had previously been heard as the accented onset of a neighbor figure, had potential to be heard as the unaccented echo of the G on the previous beat, in parallel with the unstruck

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Example 6.12c. Dvorak, Slavonic Dance, op. 46, no. 1, mm. 39–43

extension of the same tone in the following measure. Similarly, the fourth beat accrues an accent of registral zenith and melodic change that was latent when the same tone was initially heard as an unaccented neighbor. These comments on the Slavonic Dance are meant to suggest that example 6.10 is plausible and worth entertaining, not that it is necessary or correct. We still have to confront the second anomaly by reintegrating the C-minor theme’s extra fifth measure, which is the extra third measure of the primary segment conjectured in example 6.10. This cadential measure has a three-beat extension, and thus it denies the hemiolic pulse projected by the previous measures in the model. The attachment of the six-beat hemiola to a three-beat span produces a non-isochronous 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 division. Such asymmetrical divisions of a nine-beat span are well formed, even normative, in various musics of southeastern Europe, but can they be regarded as such in the musical traditions in which Brahms participates? They are not unheard of in the west. Lully used them in his 1670 ballet Le bourgeois gentilhomme as a marker of Turkish style.25 The insertion of a six-beat hemiola into a nine-beat span, what we might call a “Balkan hemiola,” occurs prominently at the opening of the minuet from Mozart’s Symphony no. 40 in G Minor, K. 550, without other topical indicators of Orientialism.26 Brahms cultivated them frequently. They occur as marked moments in his first two piano sonatas,27 and thematically in his String Quartet in A Minor, op. 51, no. 2 (fourth movement) and String Quintet in G Major, op. 111 (first movement). Yet it is difficult to make the case that “Balkan hemiolas” are ever stylistically normative in the West, where even a century later they were heralded as a marvelous innovation in Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk.” A case for establishing their well-formation in a particular composition would need to rely on emerging motivic considerations unique to it. As noted earlier, the C-minor theme plays a far more attenuated role in the movement than its predecessor. After its initial presentation at measures 7–16, it only appears once again, near the beginning of the development, in C-sharp minor, where it is varied in some particulars that do not affect metric interpretation. More pertinent to our inquiry is the transition, where a fragment of the C-minor theme is broken off, and presented in isolation. That theme, given at example 6.13, consists of two parallel eight-measure phrases ending in half cadences. The fore-phrase is evidently a sentence whose first two continuation

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measures (mm. 27–28) are extracted from measures 9 and 10, where they served as measures 3 and 4 of the C-minor theme. Example 6.10 isolated those two measures from each other: measure 9 was heard to complete the parenthetical hemiola, while measure 10 was heard to complete the six-beat primary segment that the hemiola placed into suspension. The sentential hearing of the transition reunites these two measures and evidently launches them from a position of hypermetric strength. Yet Brahms undoes the sentential status of this eight-measure unit, just as he did the earlier five-measure one, by stretching a hemiola across the junction between its presentation and continuation. Far from metrically strong, the downbeat of measure 27 is quite understated: while the left hand is tacit, the right hand restrikes a chord (adding a sixth) sustained from the previous downbeat, initiating an anacrusis that transfers accentual weight to the following beat, which leaps up to g♭2. That anacrusis/leap combination parallels one in the bass two beats earlier. It is this parallelism that most saliently suggests the hemiola across the sentence’s mid-section, undercuts the unification of its fifth and sixth measures, and by extension undercuts the prospective unity of the C-minor theme’s third and fourth measures. What is suggested but undone in the fore-phrase is consummated in the after-phrase by three changes that retract the hemiola and convincingly unite their fifth and sixth measures (and, by extension, the third and fourth measures of the C-minor theme): 1) Throughout the phrase, the octave leaps in the left hand are delayed by a half-beat, so that the upward leap at the phrase’s fourth measure no longer bisects the space between the preceding downbeat and the subsequent melodic accent; 2) an octave hike at the downbeat of the fifth measure, together with bass support, confers an accent that was absent at the analogous position of the fore-phrase; 3) rather than continuing to a cadence as in the fore-phrase, the final two measures of the after-phrase repeat the previous two measures, liquidating into a high-register ritardando, and reifying their status as a unity. Thus Brahms, in a subtle and indirect way, tips the balance toward the metrically normalized hearing of the C-minor theme. In the development, he just as subtly and indirectly rebalances in the other direction. The core of the development is dominated by an extended dream fantasy in D-flat major, which immediately follows and liquidates the final presentation of the C-minor theme (transposed to C-sharp minor). Example 6.14 presents the opening measures of that fantasy, which extends until the climactic return of the principal theme in measure 119. These measures are dominated by the sub-tactus displacement of the right hand, which occurs nowhere else in the movement. This beat-displacement causes the music to be drawn perpetually forward across its hypermetric and phrase boundaries,

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Example 6.13. Piano Sonata, op. 5, transition (mm. 23–38)

Example 6.14. Piano Sonata, op. 5, developmental dream fantasy, opening mm. (mm. 91–96)

accumulating significant momentum toward the climax at measure 119.28 This seamless quality is particularly prominent in contrast to the sectionalized, stopand-start phrase rhythm of the exposition.29 The seamlessness is regulated by a series of melodic incipits that preserve the rhythm and contour of the directly preceding presentation of the C-minor theme. The periodic spacing of these incipits fashions the flow into three-measure hypermeter, which endures from measures 88–103. (A harmonic change sustains the hypermeter at measure 100, where the incipit is absent.) The melodic energy of the first two incipits dissipates at the subsequent downbeat (mm. 92 and 95), where the projected melodic attack is delayed until the second beat, converting the projected three-span into a two-span, and initiating a

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hemiola that is completed with the change of bass at the downbeat of the third hypermeasure. According to this hearing, these three-measure hypermeasures are irregularly divided 2 + 2 + 2 + 3. This is the Balkan hemiola structure to which we referred earlier, bringing to the surface the rhythm of the example 6.10 model that was hypothesized to underlie the C-minor music initiated at measure 7 of the movement. That rhythm is thereby reified as motivic to the movement, lending support, if indirectly and abstractly, to the hearing of those measures as parenthetically structured.

What Kind of Composer Was Brahms at Age Twenty? In a wide-ranging and frequently cited assessment of metric techniques in Brahms, Walter Frisch observes that indirect 3:2 grouping dissonance is pervasive in the finale of the op. 1 Piano Sonata, and calls attention to an expanded hemiolic cycle in the Schumann Variations, op. 9.30 Frisch nonetheless cautions that “passages like those from Opp. 1 and 9 remain relatively rare in the early instrumental works. It is not really until the early 1860s . . . that the composer begins to explore such ‘progressive’ techniques in a more systematic and thoroughgoing fashion.”31 Frisch’s judgment has been consolidated into received wisdom in the Brahms literature, to the extent that it has been repeated uncritically even by scholars whose analyses of Brahms’s music of the 1850s present a motivation to nuance it, if not challenge it altogether.32 The first sentence of Frisch’s cautionary claim is essentially a statistical matter, which Ryan McClelland paraphrases as “Brahms’s earliest works tend to be relatively free from the metric dissonance that is characteristic of his mature style.” The evidence that has accumulated since 1990 stands against this claim. To Frisch’s observations about opp. 1 and 9, we can add Frank Samarotto’s analysis of op. 2 in this volume, Yonatan Malin’s approach to the op. 3 songs, Harald Krebs’s analysis of the op. 5 Sonata, and McClelland’s work with the early F-A-E Scherzo, all of which indicate a central role for metric dissonance in at least one movement. The second sentence could be interpreted along similar lines, as a claim about the “systematic and thoroughgoing” nature of Brahms’s developing compositional habits. Yet, on its own, the sentence could also be interpreted as applying to matters of depth rather than breadth: Brahms may introduce metric dissonance into early works, but only as isolated “devices” that goose up the music here and there; it is only in the later works that he explores the potential of these elements to spread across an entire movement in a more systematic way. This interpretation is consistent with claims elsewhere in the same article: that the piano quintet takes up “metrical procedures .  .  . on a much more ambitious scale” than its predecessors, that in the Third Symphony the

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technique is more refined, and that in the Vier ernste Gesänge Brahms “deploys his characteristic devices with unprecedented fluidity.”33 This is ultimately a more difficult claim to assess, since its scale of measurement is unstable. It might pertain to statistical density of metric conflict, to the complexity of techniques, to the rhetorically or formally nodal moments at which they occur, or to their persistence or continuity within a given movement. The analysis presented in this article presents a motivation to reassess this claim about depth as well. In the hands of the young Brahms, hemiola is far more than an inert device that can be applied here and there to a composition in triple meter. It amounts to an entire field of varietal possibilities, through which any number of paths can be pursued. On its own, in counterpoint with harmonic fields, and in dialogue with the traditions of sonata form, these hemiolic paths are worked deeply into the composition, from which depths they are available for retrieval by the adventurous performer or the transfixed listener. In positing matters in this way, I do not intend to imply that Brahms laid out this field explicitly or systematically, nor that performers or listeners must retrace those paths by bringing them to consciousness, much less to articulation in the form in which they are presented here. I merely want to suggest that Brahm’s unarticulated sensibilities toward the possibilities of and relations among hemiolic varietals were deeply ingrained and extraordinarily complex. At the same time, I do not sense that they ever hijack his compositional technique, as, for example, his experiments with fugal and canonic writing sometimes can. From the beginning, Brahms’s technical command of the field of hemiolic possibilities was balanced and integrated with his command of harmony and form. Whence did the young Brahms acquire this craft? Frisch conjectures that his acquaintance with the music of Handel and of earlier Renaissance masters was instrumental in freeing up Brahms’s metric sensibilities. Certainly Brahms took extraordinary inspiration from his extensive exposure to early music, and many aspects of his later compositional technique can be traced directly or indirectly to that source. Yet the evidence of the op. 5 Sonata suggests that his metric mastery had a different origin, as there is no evidence that Brahms had been exposed to pre-Classical music to any unusual degree before the summer of 1854.34 Where else could Brahms have acquired the technical command of such a rich field of possibilities? From Beethoven, whose music he knew from an early age? From Schumann, whose music he only began to study early in 1853? From Reményi, his first Hungarian musical companion at age seventeen, who might have served as a vector of any number of musical traditions from lands to the southeast of Hamburg? These are open questions that can only be answered by researchers in possession of a full knowledge of an encyclopedia of hemiolic varietals that is only now being assembled, and the sensibility to apply them to

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a variety of nineteenth-century repertories. It is also possible that the metric techniques documented here, and the sensitivity to their fields of relation and possibility, are to a large degree sui generis. Whatever inspired the young Brahms to master hemiolic varietals and their compositional deployment, it is likely that Robert Schumann’s early enthusiasm for his young colleague was in part prompted by his recognition of that mastery, which Schumann was uniquely equipped to appreciate. Forty years of concentrated research in music theory has resensitized music scholars and critics to the compositional possibilities of meter, and furnished a model sufficiently nuanced to track responses to those possibilities in all their breadth and richness. Thus attuned, we are positioned to see in the young Brahms’s best work an original aesthetic vision fully formed and expressed through the metric malleability of his materials. This perspective, in turn, ought to prompt a reconsideration of Edwardian aesthetic judgments, which we are not compelled to accept by mere virtue of their orotund aura of authority. It is probably too late to undo the label of “first maturity” in order to eliminate the shadow it implicitly casts on the music of the 1850s. But perhaps we can learn to ironize it, to understand it as a product of a historical moment whose truths need not be ours.

Notes 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

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James Webster, “Schubert’s Sonata Form and Brahms’s First Maturity (II),” 19th-Century Music 3, no. 1 (1979): 53; Walter Frisch, Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); George Bozarth, “Brahms, Johannes,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (London: MacMillan, 2000), 4:183. Michael Musgrave, The Music of Brahms (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), 9. This observation leads to a different view of the piece than that of Frisch, who criticized this movement in part because it fails to “integrate detail and whole” (Developing Variation, 42). Regarding the history of this term and its application to the music of Brahms, see Brent Auerbach, “The Analytic Grundgestalt: A New Model and Methodology based on the Music of Johannes Brahms” (PhD diss., Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 2005), chapter 1; and Samuel Ng, “A Grundgestalt Interpretation of Metric Dissonance in the Music of Johannes Brahms” (PhD diss., Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 2005), chapter 2. Peter Smith, “Brahms and Schenker: A Mutual Response to Sonata Form,” Music Theory Spectrum 16 (1994): 77–103, and Expressive Forms in Brahms’s Instrumental Music: Structure and Meaning in his Werther Quartet (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), chapter 5.

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202 6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

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Channan Willner, “Metrical Displacement and Metrically Dissonant Hemiolas,” Journal of Music Theory 57, no. 1 (2013): 87–118; Samuel Ng, “The Hemiolic Cycle and Metric Dissonance in the First Movement of Brahms’s Cello Sonata in F major, Op. 99,” Theory and Practice 31 (2006): 65–95. Peter Smith, “You Reap What You Sow: Some Instances of Rhythmic and Harmonic Ambiguity in Brahms,” Music Theory Spectrum 28 (2006): 58, 95. “Metric malleability” is a useful term introduced in Justin London, Hearing in Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 15. In referring to “normalization” here and elsewhere in this article, I mean to acknowledge my debt to the writings of William Rothstein, particularly his “Rhythmic Displacement and Rhythmic Normalization” in Trends in Schenkerian Theory, ed. Allen Cadwallader (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 87–113. Brahms may have modeled these initial four measures after the Lebhaft: Marschmässig movement from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 101, where a chromatic descent from F down to C is accompanied by a vaulting upper-voice that positions a1, d2, g♭2, and b♭2 on successive downbeats. Unlike its predecessor, the Cello Sonata prolongs the asynchrony of melody and accompaniment beyond the downbeat of measure 5, through a series of consequent phrases that disunite cello and piano attacks throughout the exposition. Indeed, it is only at measure 48 that the two instruments first synchronize attacks. See Ng, “The Hemiolic Cycle.” Many of these aspects of the Cello Sonata were initially brought to my attention by Carmel Raz, in a seminar paper given at the University of Chicago in 2005. Ruth Deford indicates an earlier origin in the fifteenth-century conception of syncopation, which “applies to complete time units that are interrupted by other complete time units on the same mensural level.” Tinctoris, for example, defines syncopation as “the division of any note into parts by an interposed larger [note].” It is only in the sixteenth century that syncopation affiliated with the modern idea of displacement. See Ruth Deford, Tactus: Mensuration and Rhythm in Renaissance Music (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 42–43. Such an evidently complicated calculation might seem beyond the capacities of the listening ear, yet it is consistent with what is understood about our processes of metric induction. See Danuta Mirka, Metric Manipulations in Mozart and Haydn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 20. See also the openings of the Scherzo to Schubert’s Piano Sonata D. 850, Brahms’s Symphony no. 3, and of several Dvořák movements in Furiant style, including the first Slavonic Dance of opus 46, and the third movement of his Symphony no. 6. These pre-hemiolas are extensions of the Baroque Anfangshemiole, as discussed in Wilhelm Gloede, “Schlusshemiole und ‘Anfangshemiolen’ bei Handel,” Göttinger Handel Beiträge 14 (2012): 215–28, to which Channan Willner helpfully drew my attention. Krebs, Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 221. It is also plausible to interpret the agogic accent on the downbeat of measure 205 as back-propagating a 𝅗𝅥. pulse from the previous downbeat. Yet Brahms,

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17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

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who liberally allocates accents to every attack in m. 204, withholds one at the downbeat of m. 205, suggesting that he wishes the performer to neutralize the accent that it would ordinarily accrue by virtue of its notated downbeat position. Thus an instance of “unfinished business” characteristic of the nineteenth-century sonata-form coda: see Edward T. Cone, “Schubert’s Unfinished Business,” 19th-Century Music 7 (1984): 222–32. Krebs, 224. The table thus does not reference measure 23 and similar passages, where anacrustic third-fills are presented as sixteenth-notes, not thirty-second-notes. These figures are clearly derived from those in the principal theme, but when presented in these slower values, they are always attached to transitional or S-theme material. The principal theme of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F minor, op. 2, no. 1, likewise ends on C major and turns directly to C minor. Because the two-beat ostinato dissonates against the fifteen-beat theme, the details of the consequent phrase are different, but the take-away point remains the same: the both/neither alternation occurs in measures 1 and 4, and the left/right combination in the inserted measures. Willner, “Metrical Displacement,” 93ff. Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), 69. A fuller analysis of this music would note that the motivic circulation in the music of examples 6.12b–c creates agogic accents, in the latter case supplemented by accents of tonal stability, that exert pressure to displace the heard downbeat to the notated beat 2. This complicating factor exists independently of the mending process that I wish to foreground here. Gloede, “Schlusshemiole und ‘Anfangshemiolen’ bei Handel,” 218. Richard Cohn, “Metric and Hypermetric Dissonance in the Menuetto of Mozart’s Symphony in G Minor, K. 550,” Intégral 6 (1992): 15. In the opus 1 finale, the Balkan hemiolas are fitted within a series of 89 measures (e.g., mm. 103–4). In first movement of opus 2, the pattern is stretched across a series of three-measure hypermeasures (170–79). On the association of sub-tactus displacement and Romantic Sehnsucht, see Yonatan Malin, “Metric Displacement, Dissonance and Romantic Longing in the German Lied,” Music Analysis 25, no. 3 (2006): 251–88. Walter Frisch calls attention to this sectional quality, which he criticizes as the deficiency of a composer who could do no better at this stage of his compositional development (Developing Variation, 37). Frisch also notes that the D-flat major music is noteworthy for its position in the arc of the entire sonata, although that position can only be realized in retrospect: it reappears three times in the Andante movement, including in its rhapsodic concluding segment (ibid., 50). Walter Frisch, “The Shifting Bar Line: Metrical Displacement in Brahms,” in Brahms Studies, ed. George Bozarth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 139–63. Much of the material from the article is also present in his Developing Variation,

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31. 32. 33. 34.

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87–95. My account of Frisch’s observations is updated to conform to terminological conventions that consolidated more recently. Frisch, “The Shifting Bar Line,” 142–43. Krebs, Fantasy Pieces, 220; Ryan McClelland, Brahms and the Scherzo (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 27–28. Frisch, “The Shifting Bar Line,” 144, 159, 160. Styra Avins, Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 38.

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Part Four

Shifting Perspectives

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Chapter Seven

Containment and Wave Temporal Experiment in Brahms’s Opus 2 Frank Samarotto

Brahms’s Piano Sonata in F-sharp Minor—his opus 2, but composed before opus 1—begins with a splash (see ex. 7.1). A splattering arpeggio ripples up the keyboard; its force (Brahms marks it energico) rebounds into rising melodic octaves whose surge is abruptly halted, as if hitting a wall. Another splash and another surge brings another lurching slap against that wall— and this time an even greater swell rises up, slowly gathering force, hitting its registral peak and cascading downward to crash against the rock of the opening arpeggio once more. More technically: the opening tonic chord secures the downbeat, the upward arpeggiando providing the hint of an upbeat to the staccato-wedged top note. There follow rising thirds in octaves, but those thirds cut across notated beats; the meter remains unclear until the sudden accent on beat 3. Thus only beats one and three are clearly articulated; in between is only energetic forward impulse. The second measure sequentially repeats the first but on III, initiating an apparent sentence structure. The third leg of that sentence, on V, is cast differently: above a tremolando bass, agitated two-note figures rise higher and higher. The continuous motion has now fully obscured the beat level: we hear only forward impulse, nearly ametrically. The peak D (an implied ninth above the still-assumed dominant seventh) resumes the octave doublings and gives weight to a notated downbeat (m. 7), but the chromatic cascade downward moves relentlessly past any metric markers. Only at the poco ritardando is there a containment of this motion (both in the marking and in the slowing

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chapter seven

Example 7.1. Piano Sonata, op. 2, mm. 1–15 Allegro non troppo ma energico.

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of downward motion by alternating the chromatic steps and the repeated C♯s; see measure 8), suggesting a half cadence might be at hand. Too late: the forward impulse cannot be curtailed and the phrase overflows into its repetition (m. 9), creating an elision. Its energy is contained only by the return of the opening’s articulated downbeat; the counterstatement manages a stop on V only through a lurching (written-out) decelerando (see ex. 7.1 above). These two passes through this powerful opening sharpen our awareness of how music moves through time, and the metaphors we find useful to describe that awareness.1 This passage vividly enacts a contrast between two aspects of

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musical time, a contrast that I will argue is fundamental to musical experience. The first aspect I will call containment; this concretizes a metaphor underlying most conventional conceptions of meter: that meter begins with precisely demarcated points in time that contain and measure (usually) equal divisions of time.2 Containment is essential to coordinating and clarifying musical material: counterpoint and clear harmonic progression would be impossible without defined temporal segments.3 However, by its very nature containment is inert; it says nothing about movement within its boundaries or about how one traverses the boundary between one container and the next. For this, a second aspect can be teased out: I use the term wave to encompass the ubiquitous metaphor of musical motion, the sense of the fabric of music as a continuous sweep of energetic motion. A wave is an accumulation of events, be they rhythmic, tonal, or textural, by which we infer a directness of motion. More properly it is what takes place between events, a moving toward becoming a moving away, the impulse that binds discrete events into arcs of motion.4 Waves are the antithesis of containers; they know no division but only reversal, forming a peak, which may diminish in energy or begin to surge toward another wave. (One may recognize a resonance with Hugo Riemann’s notion of Auftakt.5) Wave and containment necessarily interact: the peak of a wave may coincide with a metric container, while the beginning and ends of wave are by nature less clearly defined.6 Musical time is shaped by the properties of both containment and wave. Containment, whether of temporal units, tonal spaces or formal plans, is grounded in actual sounding events; wave is a listener’s imagination of motion filling, transcending, or overflowing those events.7 One more pass through Brahms’s splashy debut. The first measure strongly foregrounds containment. The first and third beats act as firm anchors, enclosing a tonic triad. The sense of containment is made acute by the reckless waves of motion that threaten to burst that container; we attend to these waves as pure motion because of their rapid attacks, their stepwise filled thirds, their shifting metric placement cutting across the second beat. This measure enacts a conflict of functions, its opening and closing attacks tightly containing a wave of turbulent motion encased in tonic harmony.8 It announces an explicit experiment in shaping the different functions inherent in musical time. Function may not be strong enough a word. The distinction between container and wave is more like that of matter and energy, at least as a metaphor. Containment renders material a duration space between two articulated boundaries; it enables us to compare these durations and perceive them as equal (or not). Wave is energized activity moving through that material space, or better perhaps, it is the energy we imagine to pass between notes.9 (This also distinguishes these concepts from the traditional meter/rhythm divide.) Obviously, these metaphors are basic to musical experience, but, as we have seen, there are moments when they seem particularly foregrounded.10

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Returning to our score brings us another such foregrounded moment, this time at a somewhat larger level. I have already described how the phrase seems to expand from within, spilling over a possible half cadence to elide with the next one. Phrases are containers, delimiting durational and tonal spaces, and many factors can secure their boundaries.11 In this case the containing boundary is insecure; the continuous wave of motion that starts to well up in measure 3 overwhelms the potential containing boundary, yielding only to the re-striking of the opening chords more forcefully than before. Here containment gives way to the force of wave, again actualizing the potential conflict. (More details of this passage will be shown later.) I will argue that the tension between containment and wave can extend itself to even broader levels, perhaps even to entire movements. As I have said, I mean these metaphors to be fundamental to our experience of time (at least within this musical tradition). Without motion, there is no music; without boundaries, that motion is meaningless.12 Brahms did not need any special cues to find himself coming to grips with these elements while composing; nonetheless, I am arguing that this first effort represents a particularly explicit confrontation between container and wave. It may also be instructive to locate precedents for this duality, or rather for the recognition of wave as an independent—and essential—element.13

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That first recognition seems to have arrived fully formed in the thought of Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny (1762–1842). Almost a half-century before Brahms published his opus 2, Momigny’s Cours complet d’harmonie et de composition14 introduced a novel model of musical motion.15 I say “musical” because for Momigny tonal and rhythmic motions are inextricably linked (an assumption that is equally foundational to my notions of containment and wave). His most basic syntactical unit is the proposition musicale or cadence harmonique; significantly, these terms are used interchangeably. Expressed tonally, this unit comprises a dissonant (or conceptually dissonant) pitch or chord moving to consonant one. (This much resounds clearly of Rameau.) The proposition musicale also has a rhythmic profile: it invariably takes the form of a levé (an upbeat or antecedent) leading to a frappé (a downbeat or consequent); if an upbeat is lacking, it is because of an ellipsis. The rhythmic impulse from weak to strong is the most basic syntactical unit of music, part of its natural language.16 This rhythmic motion is so strong that it can override the notated meter; Momigny distinguishes between meter for the eye (as written) and meter for the ear (as heard).17 He construes the shape of the metric unit in a novel way: “The real rhythmic unit is therefore not imprisoned: it should not be considered as enclosed within two barlines, as it does not start with the downbeat and end

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with the upbeat. Rather it straddles the barline, with its first beat to the left and its second to the right.”18 In this passage (and in many others), Momigny explicitly minimizes the traditional role of a metric unit as container, and thus opens the door to recasting the metric unit as a wave. To be sure, there are differences: Momigny’s metaphors are linguistic and logical, not physical, as mine are.19 Further, his proposition/cadence is unidirectional and comprises a single phase of motion; he says nothing about a continuation after the frappé. And, as seen above, he rejects the notion of barline as container entirely, which, I would argue, omits an essential aspect of temporal experience.20 Nonetheless, it will be useful to examine one of his most telling analytical examples. In the Cours, Momigny examines the opening of an Allegro by Handel, and presents that passage in a variety of different ways.21 He first presents the passage “as notated in the works of Handel”22 (see ex. 7.2a.) Momigny next annotates the same passage to reveal the propositions, numbering them consecutively and grouping them into two verses (ex. 7.2b; the letter H stands for hémistiche, a subdivision of a vers).23 The next stage (ex. 7.2c) is a genuine reduction that reveals the logic of the rhythmic impulse: like the harmonic cadence, the rhythmic cadence should proceed from a dissonant or unstable note to a more stable. If this is not the case, an ellipsis must be assumed. Example 7.2d rewrites Handel’s music to remove the need for ellipses; the first G is understood to come from an antecedent D, the second to come from its own antecedent G, and so on.24 Examples 7.2e and 7.2f present two versions of a further simplification that include only a single cadence per measure, presumably rendering the underlying propositions in their most basic form.25 These examples seem to be Momigny’s only instance of a multi-leveled presentation, and they are suggestive. On the one hand I would not endorse the requirement that every downbeat requires a preceding upbeat even when not literally present. On the other hand I do find that Momigny’s analysis captures well the sense of forward momentum coursing through Handel’s Allegro.26 Compare the Andante that precedes it in the suite: similar motivic material is set in afterbeat phrasing rather similar to the slurring in Momigny’s reading (see ex. 7.3a and compare ex. 7.2b.) Equally important is that Momigny’s units of rhythmic motion have a tonal motivation, the impulse to move toward more stable pitches. This is revealed most clearly in examples 7.2e and 7.2f; every second note of the slurred pairs is a local tonal goal. This aspect of Momigny’s approach was not one he was able to render at deeper hierarchical levels, but it is one that we can pursue with more recent methodologies. To engage Handel’s complete Allegro, two complementary approaches are needed. First, a hypermetrical analysis: the Allegro falls easily into four-measure groups (even eight-measure groups are feasible). This is clear enough for the first twenty-four measures that compose the first reprise and for the first

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Example 7.2. Momigny’s presentations of Handel, Suite in G Minor (HWV 432), III: (a) the passage as notated; (b) the propositions revealed; (c) the passage simplified D

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Example 7.2. Momigny’s presentations of Handel, Suite in G Minor (HWV 432), III: (d) the passage rewritten without ellipses; (e) the passage further simplified; (f) an alternative to the previous simplification G

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Example 7.3. Handel, Suite in G Minor (HWV 432): (a) II, mm. 1–3; (b) III, mm. 45–54 D





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twenty-three (!) measures of the second reprise. However, measure 48 is anomalous: it should have trailed off into the last measure of the prevailing hypermeter, but the emphatic arrival at the high B♭ and the initiation of a new sequential pattern bring about an elision, reinterpreting that fourth measure as the first measure of a new group (see ex. 7.3b). The music preceding this reinterpretation takes on the character of a levé leading to a frappé. The hypermeter is now offset by a measure, and a similar reset takes place a few measures later at the re-arrival on the high B♭ (m. 53); note also the similarity in approach to these highpoints. With these observations I mean to transfer Momigny’s proposition musicale to the hypermetric level. I would suggest that the proposition can operate at even larger formal levels, through shaping of tonal processes. This can occur when focal moments in the hypermeter are implicated in the tonal design as well, and this is the second aspect I will consider. A voice-leading analysis of the entire Allegro is given in example 7.3c. Many of the details follow very naturally from Momigny’s examples: the opening ris^ 27 Going beyond Momigny, ing third (mm. 1–2) leads, as a small Anstieg, to 3. ^ I infer that the opening rise to the goal 3 sets in motion a series of ascents to highpoints. In retrospect, the 3^ in measure 2 seems like a weaker representative of the Kopfton, as it is superseded by the rise to 5^ and to 8^ (mm. 5 and 9 respectively). The higher B♭ is achieved in measure 18 but in a weaker harmonic and hypermetric context. It falls to the second reprise, which begins ^ ^ to drive decisively toward 3, securely above tonic harmony; with a focus on 5, it arrives in precisely that emphasized measure 48, and then again in measure 53. The Kopfton ultimately caps off the tonal container, and its delay naturally creates impulse toward it as a goal. All that follows has the quality of dénouement, reversing the Allegro’s registral arc. The piece as a whole takes on the character of an impulse toward a goal, a levé leading to a frappé.28 To summarize: meter and hypermeter act as a container, organizing the surface design, while rhythmic figures may overlap the barlines. Tonal structure acts a container as well, providing boundaries and goals for more active tonal motions within the global tonic enclosure. This may occur very locally, as Momigny describes, but it may also happen at larger levels: in the Handel example, the ascending trajectory of the upper voice is a wave motion shaping a broad swath of the piece; the closure of the Urlinie finally contains it. Thus, temporal and tonal structures, both small and large, may foreground the aspect of stability, of containment, or of movement, of wave. I see, in principle, no limit to the variety of interactions possible. This is what I mean by Brahms’s temporal experiment in opus 2: in this sonata, the tension between containment and wave is stretched, perhaps, to its limit. On the one hand, we will find a synthesis of rhythmic and tonal elements, aligning wave-like and container-like features. On the other hand, wave and container easily—indeed, naturally—conflict with each other, and Brahms finds a myriad of ways to let

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these clash, sometimes quite extremely. The conflict plays itself out throughout the first movement, and increasingly at larger levels in later movements of the sonata, finally overwhelming containment in the extraordinarily open ending of the final movement. To reenter our path through this sonata, I need to touch base again with foundational concepts.

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Consonant intervals are like containers. As simultaneities they snap together to form easily measurable spaces. They guide the motion of passing tones, absorb neighbor notes back into themselves, attract suspensions back to consonance. Dissonances (and conceptual dissonances) are like waves energizing these consonant containers. These waves have definite points of origin and closure but they still are in effect pure motion, motion between the points in musical space that are specific pitches. When bounded by the perfect fifth, the triad is the most ready container of all.29 It is so ubiquitous that it might seem dubious to assign it a special role in a particular piece. But consider again our Brahms sonata. The rising thirds that crackle through the first measure are encased in the span of the F-sharp minor triad, striking against the fifth and third of the chord. This constricted motion achieves a measure of expansiveness by sequencing up a third from I to III (m. 2), but quickly becomes fixed on a dominant pedal, in effect traversing the tonic’s root and third, and halting on the boundary of its fifth. I would submit that this design starkly foregrounds a foundational building block of tonal music—the triad as container of motion. Then how do waves animate this container? Passing tones, to be sure, but there is a more special feature, revealed when an agitated struggle ensues to break free of the dominant pedal: a ninth is introduced, more and more insistently and independently reiterated, until there is nothing but that ninth, quadruple-octave Ds (m. 7), the fullest tension of an energetic pull against the ^ is the first of a pair of half-step neighbor notes C-sharp container. This ninth, 6, that will surround scale degree five; B♯ will be introduced presently (see m. 16 and ex 7.4b). These neighbors are wave-like in that they are energetic, not in the distance they traverse, but rather in the degree of tension they exert as by half steps they pull against the solidity of the triad container.30 The motivic ^ are elements that seek to deform the triad’s neighbors, (flat) 6^ and (sharp) 4, perfect fifth. They provide a means of overcoming the boundaries of the container, even to break through them. To return once more to the opening of the sonata: example 7.4a is an attempt to capture graphically the turbulence of this passage. In deference to Momigny (and with a nod to Riemann), the first chord is prefixed by a small arrow, energy ex nihilo. (Curved arrows will indicate waves; rectangular brackets

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will mark containment.) The arpeggiando supports this, but perhaps only in retrospect can one imagine an actual upbeat.31 As noted, the first measure is treated as a container: the tenuto-like first and third beats enclose the parenthesized waves of sixteenths. But the repetition of quadruple-octave As across the barline provides a small energetic link, an attempt for levé to seek frappé. The next measure repeats this with C♯, and that is the cue for the repeated C♯ in measure 3 to set in motion agitated two-note figures. It is as if that incipient link between measures sets off a surge of activity.32 And here the conflict becomes acute. The sentence-like formation (1 + 1) of the first two measures calls forth a two-measure continuation (+2). But with measure 3, the metric hold is loosened; nothing after the first beat allows one to discern metric location within the measure. This is a stretching out of undefined activity, pure wave cresting on the high D, which grates harshly against

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the now implicit root C♯. The container, F♯, A, C♯, has been laid out as schematically as possible; the wave, 6^ as ninth above V, deforms the container, and, as already noted, undermines a potential half cadence, causing the phrase to collapse back on itself. The counterstatement at measure 9 is less a repeat and more of a recovery (see ex. 7.4a above). It is barely underway when the tie across measures 9–10 allows wave to loosen metric constraint; on cue, 6^ infiltrates again, this time in the form of a VI harmony (understood as arising from 5–6 exchange from I). However, like the aftermath of a wave, this VI quickly loses energy, feebly repeating its latter rising third. It is somehow heavier than before (Brahms marks it pesante) and it lurches back to its containing dominant.33 The moody bridge that follows (mm. 16–39; see ex. 7.4b) is a long slow arc that rises out of the work’s lowest register. Its first low murmurings make ^ ^ ^ 3–5 (mm. the triadic container explicit, doing little more than spelling out 1– 16–17); even the eighth-note C♯ anticipation recalls the repeated notes across the barline in measures 1–2 and 2–3. The two wave elements that seek to dis^ pushing it across the lodge this triad are laid bare as well: the B♯ delays 5, ^ barline; 6 again appears as a ninth above V, and in the corresponding metric position, in the next measure. As before, 6^ asserts itself as its own harmony (m. 21), this time incorporating the just-heard E♯ as its third, F♮. This D is persistent: it remains suspended in the bass even as a recollection of the opening gesture flutters (leggiero!) above it. The pace of events—seemingly slower than Allegro—is set by the bass, and these sixteenth-note bursts seem enclosed in its Moderato container. Gradually, it becomes clear that the bass is executing ^ C♯ rises to D (m.21), passes through C♯ (m. 24) a slow-motion turn around 5; to B♯ (m. 28), which is maintained as part of V of C-sharp minor up until the arrival of the second theme (m. 40). Thus, the bridge gives equal weight to the F-sharp minor triad and to its half-step neighbors, as the latter do the work of preparing the dominant key. It is an uneasy equilibrium. Not so for the second theme. Here containment tightens, approaching the quality of constriction, and wave struggles to achieve a breakthrough. It does but only briefly; containment soon reinforces its grip. This is brought about by structuring the second theme in a highly unusual, perhaps unique, tonal design. The second theme begins in the dominant minor, apparently with an introductory vamp, a four-note motif recurring in the left hand (m. 40). I say apparently because it is not at all clear where the theme as such begins. The four-note motif derives, of course, from the morose opening of the bridge passage (cf. m. 16) but now its character is very different. Equalized and in triplet eighths, it thrashes about within its metric container.34 Just at the point that the four-note pattern would recycle, the motif, assisted by the added right hand, writhes free and becomes a melodic peak. Does the melody begin at the crest of that wave, or at some point before? The transition from accompaniment figure to melodic upper voice has an indefinable beginning, enacting

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the key characteristic of a wave. However, the peak is not a downbeat, but the second beat of the second measure; the quasi-tenuto on that beat implies a hemiola, as if a slow 23 measure. That suggests a call back to the very opening gesture. Example 7.4c shows that the hemiola is an augmentation of the shape of measure 1 (see the inset above measures 40–41), with waves contained within three-beat units.35 These second-theme waves build up enough force to spill over into a third measure (m. 42). One expects a four-measure completion, but the return of the four-note motif shuts out that possibility (m. 43), leaving an oddly lopsided three-measure group.36 With this as premise, things proceed normally, through standard harmonic cycles, at least for a while. The group beginning at measure 49 calls for a return to I, but the tense balance between container and wave gives way at the climactic B♮ in measure 50, contradicting the harmony and making a pointed cross-relation with the B♯ that started the measure (see the score and ex. 7.4c). The new key and the new theme that forcefully emerges is a wave breaking through; there is a palpable sense of escaping the encasement of the constricted three-measure groups. And there is a remarkable thematic transformation: What had been a trailing off of the wave in the previous three-measure groups becomes an exultant initial gesture, expansively celebrating its release. (Compare measures 42 and 51, the latter an elision at the thematic level.) However, escape is not complete. This new theme, otherwise commonplace in its expected cantabile, has one highly unusual feature: it is in E major, emerging as III of the minor dominant and not directly related to the opening tonic.37 It is an outgrowth of V, and fated to be dependent on it. Indeed, this theme never cadences in E; a slightly curtailed antecedent (breathlessly contracted to seven measures; see example 7.4c with the indicated compression of measures) is followed by a consequent whose path goes awry (see ex. 7.4d). Minor-key inflections lead to a feint toward C major (see m. 62) The rising bass pushes instead to A, on which it hesitates, teeters unsteadily, and—at the last minute—transforms its seventh into an augmented sixth (see mm. 65–67 and ex. 7.4d). With almost violent emphasis, the goal is made clear: the cadential 46 in measure 69 confirms a return to C-sharp minor. The container now reveals itself: C♯, E, G♯. The E major theme, which emerged as a wave breaking through the constricted C-sharp minor theme, is inexorably pulled back to that key, impelled forcefully against the accented 46. The entire second theme area, ultimately in C-sharp minor throughout, is constructed as a container enclosing a wave, an even larger gestural augmentation of the sonata’s opening triadic premise. The overall picture is confirmed by the details. The containing C-sharp minor triad is entangled with the same motivic half-step neighbors previously in play against the tonic triad. The augmented-sixth harmony, the agent that enforces the return to C-sharp minor, is realized by 6^ and ♯4^ (both moving to ^ 5), the scale degrees that acted as wave elements in the key of F-sharp minor.

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The pull against 5^ of C-sharp minor persists into the prolongation of the 46, shifting G♯ to A and even A♯ (see the sforzandi in m 71).38 Even at the last moment, the wave motives resist the bounds of their container. The prolonged dominant seeks its release in measure 75; however, provoked by the return of the four-motif (from m. 40), 6^ and ♯4^ persist above the tonic bass, frustrating resolution. (Note the rhythmic elongation of ♯4^ in comparison to the original four-note motif.) The presence of 6^ on the first beat delays the pure tonic triad.39 Remarkably this pitch was a late addition: Brahms’s handwritten copy shows a G♯, and the change was made only in the printing of the first edition.40 This suggests a careful calibration of the tension between container and wave. This tension is heightened in the development, as one might expect. At first, the conflict is temporal. The slow measured pace of dotted half-notes, associated with containment, is set against agitated sixteenth-note waves; compare the slow-paced enclosure of waves in measures 1–2. The pacing of the bass continues unfazed; it executes a slow descent from C♯ (m. 79) to C♯ again (m. 92).41 In the course of this, a modulation to A major is prepared, and the espressivo theme reappears (now dolce), this time less a breakthrough than an easy release. The ease is deceptive: the A major rests on a bass C♯, and the larger context shows that this apparent A major results only from 5–6 exchange over C♯ (see ex. 7.4e). Once again C-sharp minor is the container and the wave 6^ tugs against it (as was the case at m. 75). The A-major espressivo theme is just as caught within the containing C-sharp triad as was its predecessor in E major within the key of C-sharp minor. Not that this dolce theme seems aware of it.42 Its consequent phrase seems headed for closure, repeating its cadential 46 in measure 105 (compare m. 97 and ex. 7.4f). But two measures of hesitant repetition lead to a most extraordinary moment. First, open conflict erupts in measure 108. The measure begins as a cadential 46—i.e., an A major triad—but a wave of sixteenth-notes in rising thirds vehemently asserts C-sharp minor. This is much more than an abrupt change of harmonic rhythm; it is a genuine clash of harmonies, and the precise nature of that clash resides in the motion from the pitch-classes A to G♯, specifically revoking the 5–6 exchange by which the A major was instated. C-sharp minor is attempting to break through, but the roles are reversed: That triad is the wave trying to escape the (too easily!) established A major. These measures (108–11) are genuinely ambiguous; it is not clear who is winning, and only gradually does the main harmony shift from the first chord to the second (see ex. 7.4f). As the focus sharpens (mm. 112–13) the dolce theme makes a quick appearance on the dominant seventh of F-sharp minor—role reversal again, as the container would seem to be closing. The espressivo theme never closes tonally; examples 7.4e and 7.4f reveal the overall bass of the development to ^ ^ ^ 3–5 of be C♯ (mm. 79 and again 92), E (m. 108) and G♯ (m. 112), that is, 1–

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the prolonged C-sharp minor triad. The triadic container quickly falls back to root position V (m. 114); it is ready to resume its place as 5^ of the home key F-sharp. Wave is not so easily suppressed. To be sure, there follows a build-up of dominant-pedal energy—almost too much energy. We await the next containing boundary, a recapitulation in F-sharp minor. What happens next is explosive: Instead of the tonic triad, a furioso B-sharp diminished-seventh chord usurps the opening material (see ex. 7.4f and mm. 123–24). B♯ is♯4^ of F-sharp minor, of course; the wave element ♯4^ has disrupted the formal container at the largest level of the movement thus far.43 This overlap between development and recapitulation would be striking enough,44 but Brahms elevates the intensity by stabilizing the B♯ as its own major-minor seventh harmony (written as C♮; see mm. 125–26), as if to truly abandon the containing F-sharp tonality. Through half-step adjustments (see the inset in the lower right in ex. 7.4f) the real V7 is regained (on the upbeat to m. 129); adding the ninth replicates the

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first theme’s characteristic sonority (in mm. 7–8). In effect, the tonal recapitulation actually begins with the original counterstatement. The rebound off the tonic arrival sets another wave in motion, one requiring even more ponderous deceleration than that of the exposition.45 The half cadence allows a cut directly to the second theme group; with tonic key as container, this section now proceeds mostly as before. There is no coda as such, but its dramatic function is taken by the hyperbolic expansion of the second theme’s cadence. (The new material begins at m. 176.) As before, it is the cadential 46 (of m. 173) that is prolonged, but in a

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way that verges on harmonic contradiction (see ex. 7.4g). The bass outlines C-sharp (with 46; m. 173), then E (also with 46; m. 176), then G-sharp (again with 46; m. 179), a highly anomalous way to prolong a 46. A slice of the omnibus progression (mm. 179–81) and that 46 is regained. Against a swirling cadenza the ^ all of these in metrically accented position bass circles to 6^ and then 4^ and ♯4, with respect to their resolving dominants (see ex. 7.4g.) These motivic wave elements appear at the cadence as before (mm. 191–92; see also note 36), and they are not quite done. At the last moment, ♯6^ and ♯4^ embellish the closing tonic chords as common-tone diminished sevenths. The suppressed dynamic una corda at the last chords sounds as one last attempt to tamp down wave and to seal the container.

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The first movement certainly feels contained, as would any tonal piece concluding on the tonic, but it does not seem to me to be fully closed. The last-minute cadence is too perfunctory, so that closure is enforced but not accepted. Against this backdrop, the second movement is a dark rumination on closure, or rather the lack of it.46 It opens with a muted echo of the rising

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thirds that set off the first movement. That first measure includes an element of wave as well: the last eighth-note, A♯, is tied across the barline, faintly loosening the hold of the bounding meter.47 One can easily imagine a hypothetical version that surrenders to metrical containment and symmetry (see ex. 7.5a.) Brahms’s actual rhythm, and his dynamics, lend a parenthetical air to the even-numbered measures; his biographer Max Kalbeck imagined an antiphonal response in these measures.48 The movement is a theme and variations, but the theme is strangely configured. The first reprise (mm. 1–8), closes on the tonic B minor, but almost as weakly as possible. The second reprise is expanded to ten measures but succeeds only in a halt on a V9; the rising gestures in the right hand bespeak more question than answer. This theme is thus tonally open, quite unexpected for a piece of this type. There is a tonal undertow that runs deeper than the double barlines visually setting off the surface design, a slow wave of tonal tension that flows from the theme into the first variation, with closure held in abeyance. The theme has more subtle tonal disturbances as well. The second reprise begins conventionally on III, but takes an odd turn to G minor, and then E-flat, keys of dubious relation to the tonic (see mm. 10–13 and ex. 7.5b). The E-flat brings a melodic figure, marked dolce, that is both lyrical but also uncertain: Where are we? The way back is deliberately made awkward. Given the E-flat tonicization in measures 13–15 we must hear the B♭ of measure 17 as just that; however, a measure later, it is forcibly reinterpreted as A♯. The pitches E♭ and B♭ conflict with their enharmonic equivalents D♯ and A♯, both much more native to B minor. The flat pitches are foregrounded as disturbances marked for our attention. What do they disturb? Let us recall my image of the triad as container of tonal activity. A B triad could easily contain D♯ within its function; an F-sharp triad normally utilizes A-sharp to express leading-tone function, as it does here. However, E♭ and B♭ do not belong in these containers; they unsettle the stability of tonic and dominant triads. Each of their boundary fifths is being divided incompatibly: for the B–F♯ fifth, the E flat heard as such, is at odds with triadic division; similarly the B♭ within the F♯–C♯ fifth. These tonal conflicts act analogously to wave impulses, undermining triadic stability not from without but from within.49 The open-ended structure of the theme, together with the tonal instability just described, propels us past the limits of the eighteen-measure theme. The first variation begins on the tonic but with the pitch G suspended from the prior V9 (m. 19); surprisingly, that G does not resolve until seven measures later. A larger trajectory is being shaped; ex. 7.5c traces the path of the upper ^ barely enunciated in its low register, is coupled up an voice. Scale degree 3, octave (m. 8) and transferred in register to the high C♯ (in m. 18). It initiates a third progression in that high register in mid-variation (m. 26). The upward

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ascent proceeds by reaching over (see simplified schematic to the right of ex. ^ in the middle of varia7.5c) and culminates in the attainment of the Kopfton 5, tion two, marked by a cascade (repeating the motivic G to F♯) back to the original register. The tonal processes spill over the boundaries of theme and variation; they form a large-scale levé-frappé, a wave overflowing conventional formal containers. There is overflow at the level of this entire movement as well. The final variation—in B major, thus bringing the hint at D♯ to fruition—is as openended as the others (see mm. 68–88). Its final measures are not so much a half cadence as a preparatory dominant. What that dominant prepares is the third movement, which commentators rightly consider to be a continuation of the variation process of the second movement.50 There is a critical difference in closure, however. Even within the rather brief first scherzo section, cadential ^ 51 In its tonal closure is quite secure, with an open and explicit descent from 5.

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trajectory, the relationship between the second and third movements is one of levé-frappé, the latter quite definite indeed. It is clear that force of wave has begun to permeate the boundary between movements, setting the stage for the final movement.

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Compared with the sharply-etched intaglio of the Scherzo, the Introduzione to the final movement is a landscape whose horizons fade off in mist.52 We enter it in soft focus; whence comes that F♯, and what does it betoken? Too slight to be an enunciation of tonic, the F♯ nonetheless sets off the movement’s motivic impetus: the first two notes are a levé-frappé rhythmic figure that propagates throughout the main themes.53 It is as if this introduction begins in the sonata’s past and only gradually ushers us into the present. An attempt to concretize this narrative is detailed in example 7.6a. The initiating F♯ is understood to originate in the common-tone F♯ implicit in the first three movements.54 At the same the bass/tenor F♯ (stemmed up in the bass clef) will pursue a descending tetrachord to V, a motif echoed on the surface in many places in the finale.55 The upper voice takes a less direct path, but nonetheless culminates in the levé-frappé pair D–C♯, a recreation of the dominant ninth so salient in the first movement (see mm. 23–24 and ex. 7.6a). And here again, with the energetic dissonance D, the levé, is placed firmly (and insistently) on the downbeat, as if the wave has reached its crest. Through the D-C♯ pair we enter the Allegro,56 and there we encounter a container that is quite differently disposed. An octave span from 5^ to 5^ is framed by half steps: 6^ (accented!) as a seemingly unprepared ninth,57 and ♯4^ as an actual semitone collision with the upper voice (see ex. 7.6b and mm. 24–26.) That octave span is filled by falling fifths, the first implying tonic, the latter dominant. However, the tonal context is unequivocal: it is a prolonged dominant harmony that is enclosing an apparent tonic. The more mobile dominant conveys the effect of an uneasy container, even as the stability of the ^ framing melodic octave is disturbed by the motivic wave elements 6^ and ♯4. ^ Scale degree 6 exerts an influence here that recalls its role in the first theme of the first movement, but now even more forcefully. Example 7.6c shows that underlying voice leading of the first phrase of the Allegro (mm. 25–32) ^ ^ ^ 6–5 in both upper voice and bass, a hair includes prominent neighbor notes 5– away from parallel octaves (see especially mm. 28–29). This first theme does not lack tonic closure: example 7.6c and the continuation up to measure 60 ^ shown in example 7.6d both plausibly read fifth progressions closing on 1. However, those closural gestures are hardly salient, being covered repeatedly ^ ^ ^ 6–5. As in the first movement, the neighbor note motif C♯–D–C♯ seeks to by 5– spill over the boundaries of phrases, of formal containers.

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Example 7.6. Piano Sonata, op. 2, IV: (a) analysis of mm. 1–23, with connection to prior movements; (b) analysis of mm. 25–26; (c) analysis of mm. 25–32; (d) analysis of mm. 32–55 D





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The loosening of containment is the plan for this finale as a whole. Some context is needed. Example 7.6e summarizes the middleground activity of the movement up to the recapitulation.58 Compared to the exposition, the recapitulation seems tonally less defined. Some of the most stabilizing passages (mm. 51–60) are omitted later on (see mm. 224ff.). Nor is there a clear Urlinie descent (despite the culminating cadence in mm. 247–49). Scale degree 5^ remains unresolved as the closing material unexpectedly dismantles itself (see mm. 253ff). And the tonic is dismantled as well: a bizarre and hyperbolic excursion to the dominant of C major wrests control of the coda, and the bass rises to an anomalous G♮. The sostenuto tempo returns, bringing with it material from the introduction. Quite conspicuously, the bass descends G♮–F♯–E♯; for the first time the motivic half-step neighbors, embodying wave, surround the tonic pitch, and not 5^ (see the voice-leading analysis in ex. 7.6f). The aspect of tonic harmony as tonal container is being dissolved—the tempo seems to evaporate as well. Finally, the movement, as container of its own activity and as completion of the whole sonata, gives up its ultimate closure to the tonal and

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temporal impulses that simply overwhelm it. The piece ends with 5^ unresolved and ♯3^ prominently superposed above it (see the breathtaking registral sweep in m. 278). At its deepest level the movement is structurally unbounded, its final wave dissipating back into the mist.

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This exceptional ending makes plain the extreme range of Brahms’s experiment. The sonata as a whole has enacted a trajectory in which wave gradually challenges the bonds of containment, finally attaining a kind of apotheosis. It may surprise the reader to learn that I do not regard this experiment as completely successful: the first movement is perhaps too schematic; the final coda too diffuse. However, it is precisely the extent of failure that allows the contrasting forces of container and wave to be so clearly set in relief. Brahms would soon learn to calibrate their interplay with far more subtlety, leaving this early work as an especially valuable object of study. To be sure, containment and wave are metaphors; more importantly, however, they are metaphors necessary to understand music as music. This study of Brahms’s opus 2 has allowed the distinction between these two to be laid bare and closely inspected. It opens the door to more subtle understanding of Brahms’s temporal mastery.

Notes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

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It is trivial, of course, to note that performed music must take place in time. The notion that music moves purposefully through time, however, is much more complex, and it is what concerns me here. Compare Suzanne Langer’s claim “Music unfolds in virtual time created by sound,” in Problems of Art (New York: Scribner, 1957), 41. But compare the well-known concerns about the spatialization of time by Henri Bergson, in The Creative Mind (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), esp. 149. See also Janna Saslaw, “Forces, Containers, and Paths: The Role of BodyDerived Image Schemas in the Conceptualization of Music,” Journal of Music Theory 40, no. 2 (1996): 217–43. Processes of growth and decline, termed progression and recession, are essential to the thinking of Wallace Berry; see especially Structural Functions in Music (New York: Dover, 1987). For an excellent introduction, see William E. Caplin, “Criteria for Analysis: Perspectives on Riemann’s Mature Theory of Meter,” in The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Riemannian Music Theories, ed. Edward Gollin and Alexander Rehding (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 419–39. Compare Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World (New York: Pantheon Books, 1956), esp. 171. It is harder to think of wave

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7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

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motion as a “straight-line” impulse, neither growing nor diminishing. An accumulation of events leads us to infer an increase in intensity, which must, at some point, peak and decline in energy (hence, the upbeat-downbeat formation typical of waves). Curiously, the point at which decrease gives way to another surge need not be so well-defined: the wave can be heard as emerging, as it were, from nothing. Of course, meter, once entrained by a listener, does not require an event at every metric division; nonetheless, a lack of such events will gradually cause a listener’s sense of meter to dissipate. Analogously, structural tones must often be inferred from gaps in the pattern of sounding pitches. The functions will overlap, even while they remain distinct. Thus, the chord on beat 1 is the boundary of the container (at the attack of the staccato F♯s) but the arpeggiando hints at a wave preceding this attack and flowing on into the first measure. (This would recall Riemann’s frequent inference of an Auftakt leading into a first downbeat.) Further, the wave motion concludes with the final A octave in the measure, which is simultaneously the containing boundary. More precisely, the listener does not recognize it as boundary until after it has passed. I sense a kind of recoil in the space of the third beat, during which the energy of the wave dissipates in the sustained quarter-note A. This strongly resembles the thought of Ernst Kurth, insightfully summarized in Lee Rothfarb, “Energetics,” in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 927–55. Compare how Rothfarb describes Kurth’s understanding of form as the “transition between mold and process.” Kurth’s language on form resonates well with my containment-wave distinction: “Form is neither movement nor its synoptically grasped rigidity, neither flux nor outline, but rather the lively struggle to grasp something flowing by holding on to something firm.” Bruckner I (Berlin: Hesse, 1925), 234; quoted in Lee Rothfarb, Ernst Kurth as Theorist and Analyst (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 190–91. Compare also Berry: “Musical structure may be said to be the punctuated shaping of time and ‘space’ into lines of growth, decline, and stasis hierarchically ordered.” Structural Functions, 5 (italics original). Many eighteenth-century theorists, most elaborately Heinrich Koch, identify a resting point (Ruhepunkt) to demarcate the ends of phrases or subphrases (Einschnitte), implying a contained cessation of motion. See Koch, Introductory Essay on Composition: The Mechanical Rules of Melody (1787–93), trans. Nancy Kovaleff Baker (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), sections 3 and 4. One is reminded of Hanslick’s “forms moving in sound” (Tönend bewegte Formen), which includes both notions of containment (form) and wave (motion). See Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (Leipzig, 1854). My notion of container is sufficiently similar to traditional formulations of meter as to need no precedent, though its conceptual emphasis changes once the idea of wave is introduced. The notion of wave has some basis in the frequent application of poetic feet to rhythmic motives, but this is more a matter of grouping and accent than of energetic motion.

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14. Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny, Cours complet d’harmonie et de composition, d’après une théorie neuve et générale de la musique, 3 vols. (Paris: L’Auteur, published serially 1803–6). The rhythmic theories appear mainly in vol. 2; musical examples are found in vol. 3. 15. A clear exposition of this aspect of Momigny’s theory can be found in George Fisher, “System and Impulse: Three Theories of Periodic Structure from the Early Nineteenth Century,” Current Musicology 49 (1992): 29–47. Another useful summary is William S. Newman, Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing his Piano Music his Way (New York: Norton, 1988), 171–74. 16. Fisher comments that “it would be hard to overemphasize the role that this concept plays in Momigny’s thinking.” “System and Impulse,” 46. 17. This would seem to lead Momigny to a conflation of rhythm and meter, a distinction more strongly enforced in modern theory (as in the separation of grouping and meter in Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983); but see the challenge to this separation in Christopher Hasty, Meter as Rhythm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Hugo Riemann, who seems to have been influenced by Momigny, takes the full step of redefining meter as a weak-strong phenomenon at multiple levels; see Caplin, “Criteria for Analysis.” 18. “La mesure véritable n’est donc pas cette prisonnière que l’on voit renfermée entre deux barreaux, & qui commence en frappant & finit en levant; mais c’est celle qui, à cheval sur la barre, a le premier de ses temps à gauche de cette barre, & l’autre à droite.” Encyclopédie méthodique; Musique, vol. 2, ed. NicolasÉtienne Framery, Pierre-Louis Ginguené, and Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny (Paris: Veuve Agasse, 1818), 134. Translation by Jean Mongrédien, “Momigny, Jérôme-Joseph de,” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, www.oxfordmusiconline.com, accessed May 17, 2013. I am grateful to Nicholas Meeùs for his help in finding the source of this quotation. 19. However, I agree with Fisher (“System and Impulse,” 32) that “the proposition . . . is the primary agent of impulse.” I reconstrue “impulse” as wave. 20. However, the notion of frappé does imply an attack point that—at least potentially—demarcates a metric unit. 21. Momigny discusses this passage in Cours complet, 2:275–85; the examples are found in 3:95–97. My example 7.2 reproduces Momigny’s examples as closely as possible. The Handel movement is found in the Suite in G Minor, HWV 432, but was first published separately in Pieces à un & deux clavecins (Amsterdam: Roger, c. 1721). 22. Momigny omits a quarter-note G in the left hand, measure 1. It is not clear whether this stems from a faulty edition or is a deliberate omission, perhaps to bolster his upbeat interpretation. 23. Not significant here but interesting is the different placement of the first double bar (marking the hémistiche), presumably responding to the imitation between the parts. 24. Note that the “upbeat” low D was removed in example 7.1c as mere embellishment (broderie); the notated upbeat D in example 7.1d is not a restoration of

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25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

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this D but the inference of another one necessary to provide an antecedent to the actual downbeat G. In example 7.2f, all pitches are included in complete propositions; in 7.2f there are singletons at either end, again requiring that ellipses be inferred. Of course Momigny would intend his approach as de rigueur for any piece of music. A critical difference in methodology is that Momigny’s proposition is fundamentally a two-note figure that begins with an unstable pitch; a linear progression (in Schenker’s sense) must encompass at least a third. A similar analysis viewing a complete piece as an impulse to a goal is found in John Rink, “Authentic Chopin: History, Analysis and Intuition in Performance,” in Chopin Studies 2, ed. John Rink and Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 214–44; see especially 226–35 and the citation of Momigny in fn. 45, p. 228. One might compare this metaphor with Schenker’s notion of Diatonie, which he derives from passing tones filling the space of the triad: see Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition, ed. and trans. Ernst Oster (New York: Longman, 1979), 5 and 11. Half steps surrounding 5^ were to become a nearly obsessive motivic usage for Brahms, with examples too numerous to cite. For a particularly striking instance at the later end of his career, see Frank Samarotto, “Brahms the Autumnal: Cyclical and Progressive Structures and Meanings in Im Herbst, Op. 104, No. 5,” International Choral Bulletin 29, no. 3 (2010): 24–35. See note 8 above. The exposition has no repeat, and the recapitulation is drastically recomposed, so this passage does not recur exactly as at the beginning. Only the counterstatement at measure 9 (and at m. 131) provides a close analogy. Note that this sixteenth-note C♯ preceding the two-note figures is the only note in this measure and those following to have a staccato dot. This small detail aurally connects it to the staccato-wedged C♯ immediately prior (at the crest of the arpeggiated chord). There may well be influence from the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano ^ ^ ^ Sonata op. 57 (“Appassionata”), most notably here in the 5– 6–5 motive. By this point the notated meter is sufficiently established to allow its persistence without explicit articulation. In Harald Krebs’s terms this type of metric dissonance could be classed as subliminal; see Fantasy Pieces (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 46. The hemiola overlays another level of metric dissonance to that already mentioned. I would understand each of the first three of these three-measure groups as arising from the elision of a hypothetical fourth measure. I am not aware of any other second theme groups configured quite like this one. I interpret the cadential 46 to be prolonged from measure 69 through the first two beats of measure 74.

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39. It can be understood as a Leittonwechselklang in Riemann’s original sense of an apparent consonance (Scheinkonsonanz) displacing a tonic Klang; this is indicated in example 7.4d by the notation I+6. 40. As noted by Eusebius Mandyczewski in his editor’s preface to vol. 13 of Johannes Brahms: Sämtliche Werke; Ausgabe der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (n.d., editor’s preface dated Autumn 1927); reprinted with English translation in Johannes Brahms: Complete Sonatas and Variations for Solo Piano (New York: Dover, 1971), vii. Mandyczewski also notes that a corresponding change was made in the parallel passage in measures 191–92. 41. Note that Brahms places the double bar partway through this octave “descent” (that is, before m. 83), but that I take the tonal structure of the development to issue from measure 79. 42. Ironically, the accompaniment in measures 92ff. derives from the C-sharp minor constricted theme first heard in measures 40ff., as if that key were still lurking in the background. Measure 92 even includes an explicit G♯–A motion, echoing the implicit 5–6 motion undergirding this development’s opening. 43. A local detail: the rising sixteenth-note figures are first tied across the barline and then held with a fermata, thus effacing the metric container as well. Note also the suppressed downbeat in measure 125. 44. Again this is reminiscent of Beethoven’s opus 57, first movement. 45. Though this passage hints at IV and ♮II, the bass emphasis remains mainly on 6^ (see mm. 132–34), as in the exposition. 46. The key of this movement, B minor, has a sub rosa linkage to its predecessor. In the first movement, B and D (whether diatonic or chromatic) repeatedly neighbored C♯; in this movement B and D become stabilized in the minor key, but, as it turns out, only precariously. 47. There is a curious detail of articulation found in the first edition: The last eighth-notes of measures 1, 3, 9, and 11 each include a portato dot, even though they are tied across the barline. Kalbeck reproduces the same articulation in the citation below. 48. The Andante is well-known to be based on a Minnelied poem by Count Kraft von Toggenburg; for a full discussion of the documentary evidence and complete analysis of the movement in light of the poem, see George S. Bozarth, “Brahms’s Lieder ohne Worte: The ‘Poetic’ Andantes of the Piano Sonatas,” in Brahms Studies: Analytical and Historical Perspectives, ed. Bozarth (Oxford: Oxford Univerity Press, 1990), 345–78; see especially 353–59. Kalbeck shows a possible setting of that poem in Johannes Brahms (Berlin: Deutsche-Brahms Gesellschaft, 1910–14), 1:222. 49. A comparison with the first movement may be helpful. There the tonic and dominant triads were prolonged by neighbor notes around their respective fifths, which I characterized as wave impulses. In the second movement, it is the third of the chord that is disturbed, by its enharmonic equivalents. 50. See Bozarth, “Brahms’s Lieder ohne Worte,” 358, and Ryan McClelland, Brahms and the Scherzo: Studies in Musical Narrative (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010). The latter includes a full analysis of the third movement; see pp. 29–33.

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51. The intensified repeat of the scherzo (after the trio) is even more definite in its closure, reinforcing the stepwise descent in a four-octave doubling; see mm. 108–9. 52. It may be significant that this page is marked both “Finale” and “Introduzione,” as if the performer might not immediately recognize its function. “Sostenuto” is also not typical for slow introductions. 53. See, for example, mm. 24–25, 28–29, 32–33, 36–37, 43–44, 60–61, 70–71, etc. 54. The unisono texture provides a ready aural connection to the opening of the first movement. 55. Most notably in mm. 99–103, inner voices; the longer note values here simulate the pacing of the Sostenuto. 56. The full marking is Allegro non troppo e rubato; could the latter qualification indicate a loosening of metric hold? 57. This D-C♯ is, in effect, a repetition of that at the end of the introduction, where the ninth was at least locally prepared. 58. Not discussed here but notable is the return of the Sostenuto in measures 197– 203, which recreate the dominant ninth sonority, nearly effacing the structural interruption.

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Chapter Eight

Rhythmic Displacement in the Fugue of Brahms’s Handel Variations The Refashioning of a Traditional Device Eytan Agmon

In recent years we have come a long way in appreciating the complexities of rhythm in tonal music.1 This development is in part an outgrowth of our enhanced understanding of the complexities of tonal music itself: for example, our awareness of hierarchical structure as postulated in the theories of Heinrich Schenker. Tonal structure and rhythmic structure are closely intertwined. In a loose, informal sense, one may even say that tonal structure implies rhythmic structure, for such tonal entities as motives, linear progressions, phrases, and so forth carry with them a durational component at any given level.2 In studying the rhythmic aspect of tonal music, fugues and related genres pose a special challenge. One of the main reasons for this is that tonal structure in fugal genres—even at a foreground level—is extremely complex. For example, fugal writing demands motivically and thematically independent An earlier version of this chapter appeared as “Rhythmic Displacement in the Fugue of Brahms’s Handel Variations: The Refashioning of a Traditional Device” in Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario 13 (1991): 1–20. I would like to thank James Grier, editor of the journal, for kind permission to reprint.

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parts; the rhythmic implications of this independence (which can sometimes be far-reaching) appear not to have been yet systematically studied. A frequently encountered “symptom” of rhythmic complexity in fugal genres is rhythmic displacement, where corresponding thematic statements do not correspond in terms of notated metric position. Broadly speaking, one may distinguish between two main categories of rhythmic displacement in fugal genres. The first category consists of half-measure displacements in common time. In the 1760 Anhang to his Handbuch bey dem Generalbasse und der Composition, Marpurg addresses the issue of half-measure displacement with reference to the three fugal excerpts given here as example 8.1. Evoking a prevalent eighteenth-century conception of common time, Marpurg states that the 44 measure consists of two equally “good” parts, and therefore there is no essential difference between its first and third beats.3 It should be noted that half-measure displacements occur frequently in eighteenth-century music notated in common time, whether in fugal or non-fugal genres.4 The second category of rhythmic displacement is a more specifically fugal one. In this category the non-correspondence in notated metric position between corresponding thematic statements is considerably more acute than is the case with half-measure displacement in common time. For example, thematic statements may occur on successive beats in some given meter, as is typically the case in fugal strettos. Marpurg uses the locution “per arsin et thesin” to refer to this type of rhythmic displacement.5 The subject of the present article is rhythmic displacement in a nineteenthcentury fugue, namely the fugue that concludes Brahms’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, op. 24. Rhythmic displacement in this fugue will be seen as a remarkable refashioning of eighteenth-century practice. Difficult as it is to determine the extent to which this refashioning was a conscious decision on the composer’s part, there is ample evidence to suggest that Brahms was fully aware of the eighteenth-century fugal practice of rhythmic displacement. First, Brahms’s profound interest in music and compositional techniques of the eras prior to his own are well known.6 This interest naturally included the eighteenth century, and particularly the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (Brahms performed a Bach fugue on his very first piano recital). Second, Brahms owned two copies of Marpurg’s aforementioned Handbuch; Brahms and Joachim had agreed to study Marpurg’s text at the beginning of their counterpoint project in 1856.7 Third, many of Brahms’s fugal compositions dating or originating from the late 1850s contain rhythmic displacements of the types described by Marpurg.8 In particular, Brahms’s canon O bone Jesu, first performed in 1859 and eventually published as part of op. 37, originally bore the inscription “canone, per arsin et thesin, et per motum contrarium.” Finally, indirect evidence may be found in Brahms’s annotated scores and Abschriften of early music. On the one hand, Brahms was aware of rhythmic

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Example 8.1. Fugal extracts from Marpurg, Handbuch bey dem Generalbasse und der Composition, 1755–60

flexibilities in Renaissance and Baroque music, as he often took note of deviations from the notated meter, such as hemiolas, triple-meter patterns in duple meter, and so forth.9 On the other hand, Brahms was deeply interested in fugal structure. In his Breitkopf & Härtel edition of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, for example, Brahms made numerous markings, annotations, and corrections, especially in the fugues. In almost every fugue he noted subject entries, key areas, and formal divisions.10 It seems unlikely that Brahms would have failed to note such an obvious rhythmic feature as displacement, even though an explicit reference to rhythmic displacement in a fugal context is apparently lacking in his analytic annotations.11 In the fugue of the Handel Variations the subject in its entirety is never displaced from its original notated metric position. However, the subject’s notated

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Example 8.2. Brahms, Handel Variatons: three possible metrical interpretations of the subject

metric interpretation (ex. 8.2a) is by no means the only such interpretation possible. As shown in examples 8.2b and 8.2c, it is possible to hear the subject as displaced in relation to the notated meter by either a quarter-note or an eighth-note. As it happens, the subject’s first half is more readily perceived in terms of quarter-note displacement, while its second half is more readily perceived in terms of eighth-note displacement (see the framed portions of ex. 8.2). In the subject’s first half the sixteenth-notes sound like upbeats leading to the quarter-notes on the second and fourth beats. In the subject’s second half the D following E♭ sounds as a downbeat, since a tonic resolution of some dominant-type harmony is implied. The notated metric interpretation, on the other hand (ex. 8.2a), derives primarily from the relationship between the fugue’s subject and Handel’s theme (ex. 8.3). The subject’s first half is clearly based on the theme’s initial structural melodic tones, B♭–C–D(–E♭) (see the rounded bracket in ex. 8.3), where B♭ and D represent strong or relatively strong beats. In a quarter-note displacement of the subject, as in example 8.2b, this important relationship is obscured. The subject’s second half contains the five-note figure D–C–B♭–C–D, an important figure throughout Handel’s theme (see the square brackets in ex. 8.3). In an eighth-note displacement of the subject, as in example 8.2c, this figure practically ceases to exist, as the grouping of sixteenth-notes is profoundly altered. Incidentally, the five-note figure D–C– B♭–C–D plays an important role in several of Brahms’s variations, as may be seen in example 8.4.12 From a purely rhythmic point of view it may appear somewhat odd that the reality of a notated metric interpretation is established primarily through association with an “external” source (Handel’s aria), whereas alternative

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Example 8.3. Handel, Suite no. 1 in B-flat Major, HWV 434, “Air,” mm. 1–4

interpretations are inherent in the music as given. Later I shall suggest that Brahms may have had some plan in mind in creating such an unusual rhythmic situation. Be that as it may, as the fugue unfolds, there is hardly any doubt that the predominant meter is the meter as notated; important harmonic points of arrival, for example, almost invariably coincide with the notated downbeats. The status of the notated downbeats, however, is repeatedly challenged by one or the other of the displaced alternatives. Indeed, the inherent metric instability of the fugue’s subject becomes an important compositional issue, to be resolved only in the fugue’s closing measures. In the fugue’s opening twenty-four measures the eighth-note-level conflict seems more prominent than the quarter-note-level conflict. In the exposition, for example, with each statement of the subject following the initial statement in the alto voice, an eighth-note displacement of its second half is strongly suggested (ex. 8.5). Note that the dominant-tonic harmonic implication of the ^ ^ 3) of measure 2 is realized in subsequent statemelodic succession E♭–D (4– ments of the subject, where additional voices are available. Of special interest in this connection are measures 13–17 (ex. 8.6). These five measures are part of an extended transitional episode connecting the single subject entry of measures 11–12 with the new group of entries beginning in measure 25. The episode divides into two parts. The first part (mm. 13–19) is based on the subject’s second half, while the second part (mm. 20–24) is based on the subject’s first half. In measure 12, as in all previous appearances of the subject’s second half, an eighth-note displacement takes place; this displacement is carried over into the

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Example 8.4. Brahms, Handel Variations, five-note figure

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Example 8.5. Handel Variations, mm. 3–8

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Example 8.6. Handel Variations, mm. 11–18

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Example 8.7. Handel Variations, mm. 12–14, as in Brahms’s autograph

following measure (m. 13), where the transitional episode begins. Note that, as a consequence of the eighth-note displacement, the new rhythmic idea introduced in the outer voices is not heard as notated, namely a syncopated figure 𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝅘𝅥 𝅘𝅥𝅮; rather it is heard as an unsyncopated figure 𝅘𝅥 𝅘𝅥 𝅘𝅥. By controlling the various musical parameters in the following four measures, Brahms effects a fascinating process whereby the downbeat gradually assumes its notated position. In measure 14 the harmony changes from tonic to dominant on the second eighth-note of the measure; as a result, the eighth-note displacement established in the previous measures prevails. A glance at the autograph score (ex. 8.7) reveals that Brahms originally retained the upper voice’s B♭ (m. 13) through the first eighth-note of measure 14, exactly as the bass has it two octaves lower. His subsequent decision to have the upper voice anticipate the bass’s downward leap to F by a quarter-note was probably due to the unpleasant effect of parallel octaves. Also interesting in the autograph is Brahms’s slurring. In measures 12 and 13 Brahms extends his original slurs to the downbeats of the following measures (mm. 13 and 14 respectively); he thus gives the performer no opportunity to articulate the downbeats of those measures.13 Measures 14 and 15 are nearly identical. In fact, with the exception of the first and last sixteenth-notes, measure 15 is an exact replica in minor of measure 14 (that is, A♭ and D♭ replace A♮ and D♮, respectively). Had Brahms introduced the shift from major to minor on the second eighth-note of measure 15 (see the hypothetical ex. 8.8), or had he simply not introduced such a shift at all, the metric reality of eighth-note displacement would still have prevailed. However, Brahms introduces the modal shift on the downbeat of measure 15 and thus initiates a process of metric reorientation.

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The modal shift of measure 15 is followed by a more radical harmonic change on the downbeat of measure 16: over a dominant pedal point, the F-minor chord of measure 15 moves to a dominant seventh on G. Finally, in measure 17, the downbeat is asserted both harmonically and melodically, for the seventh F in the upper voice resolves to E♭. Thus, not only are the downbeats of successive measures expressed by progressively stronger means, but the correspondence between successive measures becomes progressively weaker. Measures 14 and 15 correspond most closely; measures 15 and 16 correspond melodically (that is, in terms of the upper voice) but not harmonically; and measures 16 and 17 correspond neither melodically nor harmonically. As a result, our tendency to retain the eighth-note displacement established in measures 12–14 through the so-called Principle of Inertia diminishes as well.14 Ironically, no sooner is the notated downbeat established than an eighth-note displacement once again occurs in measures 18–19 (see ex. 8.6 above). Given that the tendency to effect eighth-note displacement is inherent in the subject’s second half, the lack of such a displacement in measure 26 (ex. 8.9) is striking (see also mm. 28 and 54). Upon closer examination, one finds that Brahms has in fact altered the subject to prevent the eighth-note displacement from taking place. The alteration is seemingly minor (E♭–D♭ becomes F–E♭ at the beginning of the subject’s second half); however, since a change from dominant to tonic is no longer implied on the second eighth-note of the measure, but rather on the second quarter-note, a sense of eighth-note displacement no longer exists. It is as though Brahms has decided to set aside the eighth-note-level conflict for a while, in order to allow the quarter-note-level conflict to become the focus of attention. The shift of attention from the eighth-note to the quarter-note-level conflict, however, does not take place immediately. On the contrary, metric tensions seem to subside as we move to the sensuous realm of D-flat major in measure 31 (the overall sense of a lower level of intensity is reflected in the texture, which assumes a more homophonic character). Like the calm before a storm, however, the surface tranquility is deceptive. The metrical conflicts inherent in the fugue’s subject have not disappeared; rather they lie dormant, awaiting the appropriate moment to unleash their full force. This moment is not long in coming. Beginning in measure 37 (ex. 8.10), Brahms alters the subject again, and this time the alteration affects its first half. Originally the subject’s first half traversed the melodic span of an ascending fourth. Appearing now in inverted form, the subject does not traverse the span of a descending fourth, but only that of a descending third: F♯–E–D♯ in measure 37; B–A–G♯ in measure 38, and so on. The melodic change entails a harmonic change by which a tonic resolution of dominant harmony takes place

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Example 8.8. Handel Variations, hypothetical version of mm. 13–15

Example 8.9. Handel Variations, mm. 25–27

on the fourth beats of measures 37 and 38; the tonic resolution leads in turn to the rhythmic sense of a displaced downbeat. The quarter-note displacement continues in measures 39–44, where the subject’s first half is consistently presented in its altered form. Of particular interest in this imposing passage (mm. 39–44) is the lack of metric coordination among the two hands. This lack of coordination is more than just a natural corollary to the common fugal device of complementary rhythm, for it involves the harmony as well. For example, in measure 39 the

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Example 8.10. Handel Variations, mm. 35–43

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dominant resolves to the tonic on the fourth beat in the right hand, while in the left hand the resolution is postponed to the downbeat of the following measure (see also measures 41, 42, and 44). It is as though the two hands are engaged in a heated debate as to the location of the downbeat. A point of utmost metric disorientation is reached in measures 45–46 (ex. 8.11a). Not only is there metric disagreement between the two hands, but each hand by itself fails to project a consistent metric pattern. Rather, the pattern projected is of a series of progressively shorter durational values: from half-notes (m. 44), through dotted quarter-notes and quarter-notes, to eighthnotes (ex. 8.11b). Schenker writes that in measures 45–46 the performer, like the composer, “strives for metric stability”; for Schenker, the performer’s joy in attaining metric stability two measures later is successfully expressed in Brahms’s forte.15 In measures 49–66 the issue of eighth-note and quarter-note displacement is set aside as the subject undergoes rhythmic augmentation. A transitional passage beginning in the second half of measure 66 (ex. 8.12a) prepares for the subject’s climactic return (simultaneously in its original and inverted forms) in measure 75. As with the preceding D-flat major episode, the surface rhythmic tranquility of the present passage is deceptive. Quarter-note displacement is hinted at in the imitative interplay between the right and left hands in measures 66–71; beginning in measure 72, and especially in the second half of measure 74, eighth-note displacement is hinted at as well. Example 8.12b shows an earlier version of measures 72–74;16 note the more exact imitation at an eighth-note distance between the two hands in measures 72–73. In the final version, an exact imitation at an eighth-note distance may be found only in the second half of measure 74, where the subject’s head motif undergoes further fragmentation in the right hand. A complete statement of the subject appears for the last time in measures 75–76 (ex. 8.13; the statement in measures 77–78 is also complete, but the subject is altered to fit the harmonic scheme). This statement of the subject, with its four-part rhythmic unison, recalls the surface rhythm of measures 1–2; moreover, the appearance of the subject simultaneously in its original and inverted forms constitutes a summary of sorts of the thematic process through measure 48. Note that in measure 75 (the subject’s first half) quarter-note displacement is strongly suggested; in measure 76 (the subject’s second half) the diminished-seventh chord’s resolution on the second eighth-note of the measure suggests eighth-note displacement. It is interesting that Brahms’s articulation in measure 76 supports the notated meter. This is given further support in measure 77, where the harmony changes (with a sforzando) on the downbeat. However, the altered restatement of the subject in measures 77–78 prevents

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Example 8.11. Handel Variations: (a) mm. 44–47; (b) grouping analysis of mm. 44–46

the meter from stabilizing until two measures later (m. 79), from which point harmonic changes consistently correlate with the meter as notated. The climactic pedal-point passage beginning in measure 82 (ex. 8.14a) seems to announce that metric stability has at long last been attained. The notated meter, holding steady since measure 79, is now supported by a strongweak pattern of descending octave leaps in the right hand. However, metric stability does not last for long. As soon as the subject’s first half enters in measure 83, the effect of quarter-note displacement recurs; indeed, the strong-weak pattern of descending octave leaps in the right hand yields to the subject’s metric implications and becomes an ascending pattern, displaced to the second and fourth beats of the measure. The notated meter is reconfirmed in measure 87, and once again in measure 91, which are important harmonic and textural points of articulation (ex. 8.14b); this confirmation only enhances the sense of metric conflict. The downbeat of measure 94 (ex. 8.15a) is another important harmonic and textural point of articulation: the prolonged dominant finally resolves to tonic, albeit in second inversion and with an added flattened seventh (A♭). Brahms deliberately avoids a B♭ bass on the downbeat of measure 94. As Schenker notes, he wants the left hand to outline the subject in inversion (F–E♭–D–C) in measures 94–95.17 Brahms may also have wanted to reserve the low B♭ for the fortissimo bass entry in measure 96. In example 8.15b, a voice-leading sketch of measures 94–95, B♭ is added as an implied bass on the

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Example 8.12. Handel Variations: (a) mm. 66–74; (b) earlier version of mm. 72–74

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Example 8.13. Handel Variations, mm. 75–82.

downbeat of measure 94; the implied B♭ continues to C in measure 95, which continues in turn through D to E♭ in measure 96. Thus the incomplete subject entry in measure 96 is nested within the enlarged statement of the ascending fourth idea. From the rhythmic point of view there exists a particularly strong sense of quarter-note displacement in measures 96–97. This is due, of course, to the syncopated chords of mm. 94–96; however, the lack of harmonic support for the subject’s B♭s in measure 96 is also significant, for the subject’s first and third tones seem subservient to the second and fourth, rather than the other way around. Although the subsequent sequence, measures 98–99 (ex. 8.15a), does eventually restore metric stability (mm. 100–103), tension between the notated and displaced downbeats persists through measure 103, due to the continued presence of the rhythm of the subject’s first half. Finally, in the brief coda (mm. 104–9), Brahms introduces a remarkable rhythmic twist: he displaces the subject’s first half from its original notated metric

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Example 8.14. Handel Variations: (a) mm. 82–84; (b) mm. 86–88 and 90–92

position (ex. 8.16). It is hardly an accident that two rhythmic displacements occur: a quarter-note displacement (mm. 104–5) and an eighth-note one (mm. 106–7). These two displacements correspond, of course, to those implicit within the subject, as initially discussed (see ex. 8.2 above). Since the quarter-note and eighth-note displacements no longer conflict with the notated meter, one may say that in the coda the metric conflicts inherent in the fugue’s subject are resolved, or at any rate dissolved. Quite possibly the coda thus fulfills a symbolic role in the cycle as a whole. As noted above, an unusual rhythmic situation prevails in this fugue, as the subject’s notated metric interpretation derives primarily from an association with an “external”

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Example 8.15. Handel Variations: (a) mm. 93–104; (b) voice-leading sketch of mm. 94–96

source (Handel’s theme). It follows that, in shifting the subject’s opening rhythmic figure from its original notated position, Brahms relinquishes in the coda an important relationship between the fugue’s subject and Handel’s theme. That Brahms loosens the connection with his Baroque model as the composition draws to an end is of course wholly appropriate; perhaps this is even his way of suggesting that, as far as he is concerned, the compositional resources inherent in Handel’s aria have been fully tapped.

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Example 8.16. Handel Variations, mm. 103–9

From an eighteenth-century perspective, Brahms has in a sense inverted the fugal practice of rhythmic displacement. Unlike traditional displacement, where the subject is shifted from its original notated metric position, in Brahms’s fugue an effect of rhythmic displacement is created while the subject maintains its original notated position. Moreover, when Brahms does eventually shift the subject (or at least the subject’s opening motif) from its original notated position, as in the coda, reconciliation with the notated meter, rather than conflict, results. No less innovative from an eighteenth-century perspective is the logic and persistency with which the issue of rhythmic displacement is pursued in the fugue, practically from beginning to end. In particular, unlike rhythmic displacement in the eighteenth century, which often (though by no means always) may be described as a mere “notational accident,” the experience of rhythmic displacement in Brahms’s fugue is real and leaves a lasting impression on performer and listener alike. According to Imogen Fellinger, “In absorbing himself in earlier music and the values it enshrined, . . . [Brahms] was able to reinterpret it in his own compositions with a new and individual spirit.”18 According to a well-known anecdote, Brahms performed the Handel Variations for Richard Wagner when they met in early 1864; Wagner is reported to have responded with enthusiasm, and to have complimented young Brahms for showing “what still may be done with the old forms.”19 While it is doubtful that by “old forms” Wagner had in mind rhythmic displacement in the fugue, the remark is nonetheless appropriate. Brahms has certainly shown that a traditional device in a traditional form can assume, in the hands of a great composer, a new and unexpected meaning.

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Notes 1.

Among the studies that have altered our conception of rhythm in tonal music, we note in particular Carl Schachter’s “Rhythm and Linear Analysis: A Preliminary Study,” Music Forum 4 (1976): 281–334, “Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Durational Reduction,” Music Forum 5 (1980): 197–232, and “Rhythm and Linear Analysis: Aspects of Meter,” Music Forum 6, no. 1 (1987): 1–59; William Rothstein’s “Rhythm and the Theory of Structural Levels” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1981), and his book Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music (New York: Schirmer, 1989); Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff’s A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983); and Joel Lester’s The Rhythms of Tonal Music (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986). 2. For a more detailed consideration of the relation between tonal and rhythmic structures see Eytan Agmon, “Music Theory as Cognitive Science: Some Conceptual and Methodological Issues,” Music Perception 7, no. 3 (1990): 293– 306 (especially 299–306). 3. Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, Handbuch bey dem Generalbasse und der Composition (Berlin, 1755–60; facs. ed. Hildesheim: George Olms, 1974), 315. Example 8.1 corresponds to Marpurg’s Figures 123–25. 4. For a detailed discussion of half-measure displacement in the eighteenth century see Floyd K. Grave, “Metrical Displacement and the Compound Measure in Eighteenth-Century Theory and Practice,” Theoria 1 (1985): 25–60. 5. Marpurg, Handbuch, 300. Note that the example to which Marpurg refers (fig. 109a) is notated in cut time (two beats per measure, rather than four). 6. See, for example, Imogen Fellinger, “Brahms und die Musik vergangener Epochen,” in Die Ausbreitung des Historismus über die Musik, ed. Walter Wiora (Regensburg: G. Bosse, 1969), 147–63; Siegmund Helms, “Johannes Brahms und Johann Sebastian Bach,” Bach-Jahrburch 57 (1971): 13–81; and Virginia Hancock, Brahms’s Choral Compositions and His Library of Early Music (Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1983). 7. Hancock, Brahms’s Choral Composition, 75. See also Alfred Orel “Johannes Brahms’ Musikbibliothek,” in Die Bibliothek von Johannes Brahms, by Kurt Hoffman (Hamburg: Wagner, 1974), 159. 8. See, for example the fugues from the preludes and fugues in A minor (1856) and G minor (1857) for organ; the second movement, “Verwirf mich nicht,” from the motet Schaffe in mir, Gott, op. 29, no. 2, of which the third movement probably originated in 1857; and the first movement “Warum ist das Licht gegeben,” from the motet of that name, op. 74, no. 1, based on the Agnus Dei from the Missa canonica of 1856. 9. Hancock, Brahms’s Choral Compositions, 85, 158–63 and passim. 10. Helms, “Johannes Brahms und Johann Sebastian Bach,” 73–74. 11. Beethoven, by comparison, has used the words “anderer Takt” to refer to rhythmic displacement in the Kyrie Fugue of Mozart’s Requiem. See Bathia Churgin, “Beethoven and Mozart’s Requiem: A New Connection,” Journal of Musicology 5 (1987): 457–77.

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12. The five-note figure in Handel’s theme, and its recurrence in Brahms’s variation, is noted in Edwin Evans, Handbook to the Pianoforte Works of Johannes Brahms (New York: Burt Franklin, 1912; rpt. New York: Lenox Hill, 1970), 144–50. 13. There are two autographs for Brahms’s op. 24. The first, dated September 1861, is available in facsimile together with autographs for opp. 23, 18, and 90 (New York: The Robert Owen Lehman Foundation, 1967); a second autograph, undated, was the Stichvorlage prepared by Brahms for Breitkopf & Härtel and is not yet available in a full facsimile edition. Example 8.7 is reprinted, with permission, from the 1967 facsimile edition of the first autograph. 14. A “Principle of Inertia” (Gesetz der Trägheit), applied to the perception of harmonic progressions, was proposed by Gottfried Weber in his Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst (1817; rev. eds. 1824, 1832). See Elizabeth West Marvin, “Tonpsychologie and Musikpsychologie: Historical Perspectives on the Study of Music Perception,” Theoria 2 (1987): 59–84; Janna Saslaw, “Gottfried Weber and Multiple Meaning,” Theoria 5 (1990/91): 74–103; Saslaw, “Gottfried Weber’s Cognitive Theory of Harmonic Progression,” Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario 13 (1991): 121–44. Andrew Imbrie’s “conservative” (as opposed to “radical”) mode of hearing a shift in metrical structure is essentially Weber’s principle applied to the rhythmic domain. See Imbrie, “‘Extra’ Measures and Metrical Ambiguity in Beethoven,” in Beethoven Studies, ed. Alan Tyson (New York: Norton, 1973), 45–66. 15. “In T. 45–46 ringe man, wie der Komponist, um den Ausgleich im Metrum, . . . und gebe endlich im f der T. 47–48 gewissermassen der Freude über das Gelingen glücklichen Ausdruck.” Heinrich Schenker, “Brahms: Variationen und Fuge über ein Thema von Händel, op. 24,” Der Tonwille 8 (1924): 45. 16. The source for example 8.12b is the first autograph; see note 13 above. 17. Schenker, “Brahms: Variationen und Fuge,” 35. 18. Imogen Fellinger, “Brahms’s ‘Way’: A Composer’s Self-View,” in Brahms 2: Biographical, Documentary and Analytical Studies, ed. Michael Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 58. 19. Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms 2 (Berlin, 1921; rpt. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1976), 117–18.

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Chapter Nine

Durational Enharmonicism and the Opening of Brahms’s “Double Concerto” Scott Murphy

At least three features are peculiar about the opening of Brahms’s Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102. Example 9.1 provides a two-staff reduction of the cello’s opening cadenza, plus the orchestral introduction that precedes it and a couple of measures of orchestral music that follow it. Two of these three peculiar features are found as prescriptions for the cello soloist’s entrance in the fifth measure. One of these two is the relatively rare notation of a half-note triplet. The other is the direction to play the music “in the style of a recitative, but always in tempo,” which is remarkable for the apparent exclusivity of its two constituent phrases. The first part of this chapter explores these peculiarities a little further, and investigates how cellists, at least as portrayed in multiple commercial recordings of the concerto, appear to respond to their co-occurrence. The second part of this chapter explicates a third peculiarity, which resides in the four-measure introduction and resists easy summary here. It then combines this third feature with the first two, giving rise to one form of what I will call “durational enharmonicism,” which in turn suggests one possible resolution to the paradox of an in-tempo recitative. The third part of this chapter deals with theoretical ramifications of durational enharmonicism. A biographical connection concludes the chapter. Clara Schumann referred to this concerto as one of Versöhnungswerk or “reconciliation,” because Brahms wrote it, at least in part, for Joseph Joachim, a distinguished violinist and long-time friend, with whom he had fallen out of favor due to a rather

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Example 9.1. Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102, I, mm. 1–28, in reduction

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unfortunate turn in the proceedings of Joachim’s divorce from his wife Amalie (née Schneeweiss). This divorce arose from Joachim’s mistrust of Amalie, which in turn arose from—as Brahms described it—Joachim’s absurd self-deceptions regarding Amalie’s inclinations toward other men. Durational enharmonicism can also perpetrate convincing deceptions, and in so doing conjure experiences similar to those that Brahms claimed were vexing the work’s dedicatee.

Performing the “Third Notes” in the Fifth Measure The prescription of a notated half-note triplet occurs in the cello’s first and fourth measures (mm. 5 and 8) but then never again, in any part, in the concerto. Compared to many other notated durations, the duration of a “third note,” as Henry Cowell preferred to call it, is scarce both in common-practice music overall and in Brahms’s music in particular.1 From here on, I will use “third note” to refer to the single duration, except in those cases where the adjective might be misinterpreted as an ordinal. I will use “half-note triplet,” as is customary, to refer to a series of three successive “third-note” durations. Example 9.2 catalogues the six other instances of half-note triplets, or their durational equivalents, in the music of Brahms (of which I am aware).2 (In the case of the excerpts from opus 60 and opus 120, no. 1, a pulse of a halfnote-triplet frequency—as indicated by the durational annotations—is clearly projected, even though it deviates from a visually or rhythmically undisguised isochrony.) However, compared with these instances, the half-note triplets of the concerto are particularly unusual because they are unaccompanied: no onsets from another line are present to nudge a listener who is ignorant of, or averse to, the score toward one certain durational understanding of the cello’s entrance and away from another. A second prescription is Brahms’s instruction to the cellist to play the music “in the style of a recitative, but always in tempo.” I suspect that many musicians would concur with Paul Mies’s conclusion that “this is odd because, with the removal of the flexibility of tempo, the most important relationship with genuine vocal recitative falls away.”3 To be sure, such a self-contradictory statement enjoys some degree of precedent. First, this Italian instruction in Brahms’s last orchestral work is nearly identical to a French instruction in Beethoven’s last orchestral work: the cellos’ and double basses’ “selon le caractère d’un recitative, mais in tempo” in the eighth measure of the fourth movement of his Ninth Symphony. Second, performers routinely come across similarly contradictory tempo indications in Brahms’s music, such as Allegro non troppo, ma con brio in the last movement of his First Symphony, op. 68, and the first movements of the string quintets opp. 88 and 111. However, at least in the case of the two antithetical elements in Allegro non troppo, ma con brio, either “con brio” cancels

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Example 9.2a. Instances of half-note triplet pulses in the music of Brahms: Serenade no. 1, op. 11, I, mm. 135–42, in reduction

or more finely adjusts “non troppo” within the single dimension of tempo, or these two directives make their prescriptions within two different musical dimensions; in this case, tempo and character.4 In spite of Mies’s caveat, is either kind of reconciliation possible—or even preferable—for the two antithetical elements in the Beethoven/Brahms directive? The evidence of many recordings suggests not. Figure 9.1 summarizes the cellist’s first three note durations in forty different recorded performances ranging over eighty years, from Casals in 1929 to Capuçon during a live performance at the BBC Proms in 2011. The diamond point represents the first duration, the square point the second, and the triangular point the third; these recordings along the horizontal axis are ordered by the length of time of the first note. However, these values are not absolute durations; rather, they are relative to the tempo of the preceding orchestral introduction. Therefore, the vertical axis is measured in fractions of measures with traditional musical notation rather than fractions of seconds. An × indicates the average duration of a recording’s three notes. This graph affords multiple observations. For example, the fact that the triangular points en masse are generally higher than the other points represents how cellists generally take a little more time on the third of the three notes, in a delayed anticipation of the downbeat of the sixth measure. Allowing for this delay, many performances do not seem to come even close to the isochrony— the particular notated durations aside—that the score prescribes, as shown

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Example 9.2b. Instances of half-note triplet pulses in the music of Brahms: Variations on a Theme of Haydn, op. 56b, Finale, mm. 40–45

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Example 9.2c. Instances of half-note triplet pulses in the music of Brahms: Piano Quartet no. 3, op. 60, IV, mm. 161–65

Example 9.2d. Instances of half-note triplet pulses in the music of Brahms: Rhapsody, op. 79, no. 1, mm. 118–22

Example 9.2e. Instances of half-note triplet pulses in the music of Brahms: Clarinet Trio, op. 114, I, mm. 16–23

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Example 9.2f. Instances of half-note triplet pulses in the music of Brahms: Clarinet Sonata no. 1, op. 120, no. 1, I, mm. 42–51

by how, in many sets of three vertically aligned points, the points in each set are relatively far from one another. (Figure 9.1’s logarithmic vertical axis—by which two of the same vertical distances represent the same rhythmic ratio, as Western notation essentially notates pitch—permits such visual comparisons regardless of absolute differences.) Furthermore, only twenty-eight of these 120 durations fall within figure 9.1’s shaded band, which represents a generous 10 percent just noticeable difference from the third-note duration. (The mottled band will be discussed later.) And only seven of these twenty-eight durations, from recordings marked with an asterisk, are the initial duration (the diamond point), whose primary position establishes for a listener the measuring unit with which subsequent timespans are gauged, and to which similar subsequent timespans are likely to conform categorically.5 One could interpret the “in tempo” component from Brahms’s directive as “in tempo rubato,” in which, to co-opt Fanny Davies’s observations of Brahms’s own performance practice, one feels a fundamental rhythm underlying a contrasting surface rhythm.6 Within the purview of the cellist’s first four onsets, it would be possible to achieve a tempo rubato by maintaining the whole-note

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Figure 9.1. Durations of first three cello notes (diamond, square, triangle) from forty recordings of Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102. × represents the average duration. Shaded and mottled bands indicate a 10% difference from a triplet-half and dotted-quarter durations, respectively.

periodicity, that is, the downbeat pulse. Again employing a liberal 10 percent just noticeable difference, seven of the forty recordings initially perpetuate a whole-note pulse, as can be seen when the average duration (the ×) falls within figure 9.1’s shaded band. Figure 9.1 marks each of these seven with a dagger; four of these were already marked with an asterisk. A great majority of the recordings remain unmarked with asterisk or dagger, signifying that the average recorded cadenza opening is able to be heard more as projecting “the style of a recitative” and less as projecting both “but always in tempo” and the notated rhythm of a half-note triplet. These performances, therefore, collectively appear to choose a more normative interpretation befitting an instrumental recitative, complete with the personalized fluidities and felicitous indeterminacies that a listener would expect from a cadenza. This makes sense: the rhythms of spoken recitations tend to use both less isochrony than music and, consequently, fewer commonplace rhythmic patterns.7 An isolated third-note duration, given its relative rarity, would help to meet the latter, but an accurately played measure-filling half-note triplet might detract from the former. Perhaps overlooking the latter toward

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a concern about the former explains why a cellist’s standard approach to the first four onsets of opus 102—if there is such a standard approach and if my sampling reflects it—is to privilege “in modo d’un recitativo” over “ma sempre in tempo.” Yet the third-note duration is not simply rare. In the context of the concerto’s four-measure orchestral introduction, the third-note durations of the fifth measure, when played “in tempo,” are especially positioned to invoke what I call “durational enharmonicism,” which may provide other ways to achieve the style of a recitative.

The First Five Measures and Durational Enharmonicism To prepare this engagement with durational enharmonicism, which has at its core a tension between sight and sound, let us turn away from the notation of Brahms’s score, and toward a particular performance of this score that, of the forty surveyed, is one of the most faithful to Brahms’s half-note triplet in the fifth measure: a 1964 recording of the concerto with Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Sir Colin Davis leading the London Symphony Orchestra. Although I will not be able to abstain from referencing notational labels completely (as disclosed by parenthetical interspersions, as well as continued references to measure numbers), the deliberate act of closing the score keeps the trappings of time signatures and traditional durational symbols at bay, thus both facilitating a less biased interpretation of each moment’s metrical potential and giving my notion of durational enharmonicism a better chance to emerge. The first five snapshots in figure 9.2 correspond to metric interpretations of the first five measures of Brahms’s concerto. Rather than using images of dotted quarter notes, triplet quarters, and the like, durations in seconds represent note lengths, rounded to the nearest tenth of a second: a serendipitous 2 percent change from the average durations of the LSO recording. (I will refer to the sixth snapshot—figure 9.2f—only when citations of notated durations pick up again.) Each snapshot of figure 9.2 arranges its durations into a two-dimensional grid, where durations in duple ratios fall along a southwest-tonortheast axis and durations in triple ratios parallel a northwest-to-southeast axis. In 2001, Justin London called this general design a Zeitnetz, a reference to the Tonnetz, a two-dimensional arrangement of pitch classes that rose to prominence in nineteenth-century Europe.8 The orientation of figure 9.2’s axes matches that of Richard Cohn’s Zeitnetz-equivalent “ski-hill graphs,” published around the same time as London’s.9 This orientation also allows, again serendipitously, the meters of figure 9.2’s slideshow to move, Muybridge-like, roughly from left to right.

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Figure 9.2. Zeitnetz interpretations of Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102, mm. 1–5. Numbers indicate the number of seconds, rounded to the nearest tenth, of Rostropovich’s recording from 1964. Enclosures include durations that are metrical, or at least potentially metrical. Crossed-out numbers are not present, but implicit or previously engaged: (a) first measure; (b) second measure; (c) third measure; (d) fourth measure; (e) fifth measure; (f) conservative (left triangle) and radical (right triangle) hearings of m. 5+

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Figure 9.2a displays the two durations between adjacent onsets in the first measure: the first is approximately 0.9 seconds (the dotted quarter note), and the second around 0.3 seconds (the eighth note). Since the 0.9-second duration occurs first, it has the projective potential—afforded to all initial durations—to become a periodicity within the work’s primary meter—represented by figure 9.2a’s enclosure—perhaps in the manner of the recomposition of example 9.3.10 However, it does not; with its repetition of the opening three-note motif—modified in pitch but not in rhythm—the second measure initiates 1.2- and 2.4-second (half- and whole-note) periodicities. As shown in figure 9.2b, these periodicities further imply the inclusion of the 0.6-second duration (the quarter note) into the prevailing metric grid, since it duply mediates between the 0.3- and 1.2-second durations; the crossed-out number indicates this pulse’s absence during this measure. This gives the listener the best candidate for a tactus thus far, although it is not present on the surface of the music: the frequency of the implied 0.6-second pulse is nestled snugly within the range (0.5–0.7 seconds) in which listeners prefer to find music’s beat.11 However, the third measure, graphed in figure 9.2c, complicates metric matters. It introduces the 0.4-second periodicity (the triplet quarter notes). Not only does this create an indirect dissonance with the implied 0.6-second pulse from the previous measure, but also it vies for the title of tactus.12 It may be slightly quicker than what is preferred for a listener’s most referential pulse, but, thus far, it is the pulse closest to this range with constant reinforcement, in stark contrast to a beat that has, up to now, only existed by implication. The third measure presents a fork in the road of metric perception: to adopt wellestablished language by Andrew Imbrie, the listener could either “conservatively” cling to the 0.6-second tactus, or “radically” defect to the 0.4-second tactus.13 But, in this case, Imbrie’s terms belie the viability of either option: it seems hardly radical to replace an implied tactus with one that has perpetual material support. As illustrated in figure 9.2d, the 0.6-second pulse materializes for the first time in the fourth measure, turning the third measure’s metric dissonance from indirect to direct. But, of the two incompatible periodicities of 0.4 and 0.6 seconds in this direct dissonance, which is “the dissonant one”? With durations as well as pitches, the qualifier “dissonant” can be applied to individual frequencies as well as to ratios, but only within a context. If one follows the “conservative” branch of the fork in the third measure, then the 0.4-second pulse is the dissonant one, and the disparateness of this pulse becomes even more tangible. If, however, one follows the “radical” branch of the fork—that is, one changes from a 0.6-second tactus in measure 2 to a 0.4-second tactus in measure 3—then the 0.6-second pulse is the dissonant one in the fourth measure. This gives rise to an unusual situation, which Douglas Hofstadter might call a compact instance of a “strange loop”: the 0.6-second periodicity, which

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Example 9.3. Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102, I, recomposition of mm. 1–4.

is now outside the metric grid and grating against it, served as the most primary pulse merely two measures earlier!14 Arithmetic dictates that these two periodicities must be equivalent: the 3/2 increase in tactus speed into measure 3 should be negated by the 2/3 direct hemiola set against this new tactus in measure 4. Yet, owing to a change in metric orientation, these two periodicities are perceived as no more equivalent to another as the tonic triad is equivalent to the subdominant triad ensconced within the dominant key. To summarize: Brahms’s fifth measure may be peculiar, for aforementioned reasons, but the four measures that precede it are also peculiar through their compressed surfeit of conflicting metrical options. Seldom does one find at the very beginning of a common-practice musical work by even such a notoriously metrically elaborate composer as Brahms such a wide array of potential but incompatible metrical pulses in such a short span of time. Furthermore, the experience of a tactus in the fourth measure, and, by extension, the entire experience of meter at this point, is unusually convertible, as if it were designed to make the two possible tactus periodicities almost equally optional, while not simultaneously optional. In this it is not unlike psychology’s rabbitduck illusion, of which one version is provided at http://mathword.wolfram. com/Rabbit-DuckIllusion.html. The orchestral introduction’s peculiarity sets the stage for various enactments of the aforementioned oddities of the fifth measure. Figure 9.2e represents approximations of Rostropovich’s first three durations not with points but with lines, because they represent a collection of metric possibilities. A point on the line that comes close to a point on the Zeitnetz represents a probable durational interpretation: a durational categorical perception. With regards to previously experienced potential pulses, the lines, especially the one representing the cello’s first note, appear to come closest to the 0.9-second duration— the first span of the music. Hence, in this recording, the first duration in the orchestra and the first duration in the cello are categorically, prototypically, the same.15 However, the cello’s durations also come close to a duration that has not been heard between adjacent onsets, let alone been made metrical,

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but is only one vertex away on the current Zeitnetz: 0.8 seconds. This graphical proximity reflects the fact that it can be readily measured in terms of what has already been heard, even though it has not been heard itself. Through conducting, singing, or both, I invite the reader to hear and experience in these two considerably different ways Rostropovich’s first three durations in general, or at least his first duration in particular, which, in terms of pure durational quantity, is the one of the three to most clearly come in between 0.8 and 0.9 seconds. The metrical intricacies and amenabilities of Brahms’s introduction allow us to push this precariously balanced duration one way or another off the fence, similar to how I can take the rabbit-duck picture and encourage one of the two readings, by, for example, grafting the ambiguous head onto the unambiguous body of a rabbit or a duck. As I describe and then compare these two hearings, the peeks back at the score will gradually become more frequent and less parenthetical, beginning in earnest by replacing the numerical points of figure 9.2e with the durational symbols of figure 9.2f. First, the right side of figure 9.2f depicts an option provided by the “radical” hearing, which adopts in the third measure a 0.4-second tactus (a notated quarter-note triplet) that is clearly grouped in threes into a 1.2-second pulse (a notated half note), as shown by the solid line. Conducting a somewhat brisk 3-pattern starting with the third measure and into the fourth, despite the pulses dissonant against this, conveys this experience. In this metric context, the cello’s entrance best fits a 0.8-second interpretation (a notated half-note triplet). This goodness-of-fit is displayed on the right side of figure 9.2f by the proximity of the 0.8-second pulse to the 0.4-second pulse with which is it consonant, shown by the dashed line, and to the 1.2-second pulse with which it forms a 3-against-2 grouping dissonance, shown by the dotted line. Second, the left side of figure 9.2f depicts an option provided by the “conservative” hearing, which adopts by the second measure, if not before, a 0.6-second tactus (a notated quarter note) that is clearly divided in twos into a 0.3-second pulse (a notated eighth note), as shown by the solid line. Conducting a moderate 1-pattern in the arm with slight duple subdivisions in the hand starting in the first or second measure and into the third and fourth, despite the pulses dissonant against this, conveys this experience. In this metric context, the cello’s entrance best fits the 0.9-second interpretation (a dotted quarter note, which Brahms did not notate). This goodness-of-fit is displayed on the left side of figure 9.2f by the proximity of the 0.9-second pulse to the 0.3-second pulse with which is it consonant, shown by the dashed line, and to the 0.6-second pulse with which it forms a 3-against-2 grouping dissonance, shown by the dotted line. The triangles on the two sides of figure 9.2f are vertical mirror images of one another, symbolizing the similarity of the two processes that lead to these two

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interpretations, even if the two interpretations themselves are quite different.16 This symmetry also can be seen verbally in the parallel construction of my two previous paragraphs. One important interferer of this symmetry is the 2.4-second pulse (the whole note), which is the length of the common-time measure, and which has been manifest and uncontested since it began with the second downbeat. This pulse’s proximity to the triangle on the right side signifies that attention to the downbeat pulse supports a duration of 0.8 seconds more than 0.9 seconds, because three of the former add up to the 2.4-second measure. However, at least two factors mitigate this interference. First, a hearing “in the moment” of the cello’s first duration as a dotted quarter note makes no stipulations for this duration’s isochrony. In line with this, if one returns to all forty of the recordings mentioned above, fifteen of the recorded cadenzas begin with a duration that is at most 10 percent away from a dotted-quarter duration, represented in figure 9.1 by the number of diamond points in the mottled band. This is more than twice the number of cello entrances that begin with a duration that is at most 10 percent away from a third-note duration.17 Second, cadenzas and recitatives routinely omit barlines, perhaps more often than in any other type of common-practice music, in part to reflect less support for consistent pulses slower than the tactus. A focus on submetrical discrepancies with less concern for how they impact metrical discrepancies particularly befits music playing a double role of cadenza and instrumental recitative. To be sure, in the fifth measure, Brahms wrote third-note durations and not dotted-quarter durations. Knowledge of the score unquestionably permits a kind of disambiguation of the complexity I have sown, and this knowledge may even embolden some to say that a dotted-quarter interpretation of the cello’s entrance is simply wrong. However, notational markers, even if they may inform and bias our interpretation, should not prevent alternate interpretations, however short-lived, from becoming a part of the text, especially when a distinctive context makes such alternate interpretations viable and perhaps even preferable. Musicians negotiate this territory rather often in the realm of pitch enharmonicism. In an important exploration on this subject by Daniel Harrison, he submits that an enharmonic event may “occur without its being notated” or “be notated without being heard.18 I propose that, with prudence, this language may apply to special cases involving duration as well as pitch. An enharmonic investigation of the cello’s first chromatic event in the concerto—the downbeat of measure 6—provides a particularly appropriate pitch analogy for the durational ambiguity in measure 5. Notated as D♯, this pitch class earlier sounds in measure 3 as part of a sharpward turn toward the double dominant. The orchestral introduction then moves progressively flatward through dominant, tonic, and subdominant functions. The Knüpftechnik of the cello’s entrance not only motivically links the beginning of the cello cadenza with the ending of the orchestra’s music (D–E–F), but also continues

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the subdominant function. Then the D♯ returns, now in the cello, in measure 6. If this D♯ were harmonically accompanied by other notes—as the D♯ in measures 9 and 10 is accompanied by B and A—then these other notes, through pitch-based linkages of their own, would better communicate a notation of measure 6’s chromatic pitch as D♯. Analogously, if the cello’s first halfnote triplet in measure 5 were accompanied by a continuation of some pulse from the first four measures, then this metric reference would better communicate a certain notation of measure 5’s durations. But neither occurs. Rather, the monophony of measure 5, and that of the downbeat of measure 6, each enable a significant degree of durational and pitch enharmony, respectively, accommodating both “conservative” and “radical” hearings. It is unsurprising, therefore, that this particular type of enharmonic game is played out during a cadenza, one of the few types of common-practice music of significant duration easily justified as monophonic. With regards to pitch, a conservative hearing of measure 6 could default to what was established at the outset: the opening’s standing on the dominant and pitch-class-3’s clear harmonic role as leading tone to that dominant; that is, D♯. The cello’s continuation to E as the bass of the weak arrival 46 endorses this conservative hearing, and vindicates its notation. A radical hearing could attend both to the foreground flatward progression and the cello’s immediately preceding F, and prefer a diatonic interval—that is, a relatively simple ratio—from this note, thus hearing an E♭ and potential continuations either like the recomposition in example 9.4a, or the more daring recomposition of example 9.4b. Although what follows in Brahms’s music declines the E♭ in favor of the D♯, the E♭ interpretation is nonetheless reasonable during this note’s timespan—which has been the longest sustained timespan heretofore— just as any augmented-sixth chord, particularly a relatively protracted one, has the potential to function as a dominant seventh chord, even though it may not activate this potential.19 With regards to duration, a radical hearing could attend to the dottedto-tripleted progression—that is, roughly left to right in figure 9.2—and the immediately preceding quarter-note triplets and desire a simple ratio from this pulse, thus hearing Rostropovich’s first duration as a third note. A conservative hearing of measure 5 could return to what was established at the outset—the opening two measures’ use of dotted durations, implied eighth-note subdivisions, and the absence of tripleted durations—and hear Rostropovich’s first duration as categorically equivalent to Davis’s first duration: a dotted quarter note. But, more so than in the aforementioned pitch scenario, one’s chosen hearing—whether radical or conservative—has a good chance of persisting into one or more of Rostropovich’s ensuing onsets, as his durations are nearly the same.

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Example 9.4a. Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102, I, recompositions of mm. 5–9

More and more, I have been liberally referring to notated duration during this analysis, even though, at the outset of this section, I invited the reader to “turn away from the score” with me. How can I claim that a radical listener incognizant of Brahms’s score will nonetheless have an experience of half note triplets in the fifth measure of this recording? For this purpose in particular, and to explore connections between pitch and durational enharmonicism in general, I find an analogy between the flat-sharp pair and the dot-triplet pair useful. Figure 9.3 shows how a rotation ninety degrees clockwise of a judiciously chosen portion of the Tonnetz in a recent orientation, when compared to a portion of a Zeitnetz, brings these analogous pairs into visual alignment, although, in doing so, I am not necessarily advocating one mapping over the other.20 Both elements in each pair are inverses of one another: the flat or sharp lowers or raises a pitch a semitone, respectively; the dot or triplet increases or decreases a duration by a factor of 1.5 respectively. Both modify a basic set of notational signifiers, around seven in each set, which represent quantities that are generated and serially ordered by a single ratio: notationally unmodified durations (𝅘𝅥𝅰𝅘𝅥𝅯𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥 𝅗𝅥 𝅝, perhaps more or less, depending upon the work) ordered by duple ratios and notationally unmodified pitch classes (FCGDAEB, perhaps more or less, depending upon the work and one’s language) ordered by perfect fifths. In common-practice music, the frequency in which these modifiers are singly applied is typically distributed unevenly over both series: 𝅗𝅥. is more common than 3 𝅗𝅥, 3 𝅘𝅥𝅯 is more common than 𝅘𝅥𝅯. (at least as a periodicity), E♭ is more common than E♯, and C♯ is more common than C♭. For all basic values save perhaps one at the end of a series, a double application of one of these modifiers, while extremely rare, creates the enharmonic equivalent of another pitch or duration in the series immediately higher or lower in frequency: C 𝄪 = D, and (𝅘𝅥.). ≈ 𝅗𝅥; C = D♭♭ and 𝅗𝅥 ≈ 3 (3 𝅝). I intend my parentheses to clarify

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Figure 9.3. A comparison of Netze : (a) a portion of a Tonnetz; (b) a portion of a Zeitnetz

the iterative application of a modifier, and, in particular, to distinguish nested dots from the much more unexceptional double dots. I will claim the phrase “twice dotted” for situations such as (𝅘𝅥.).; 𝅘𝅥.. remains double dotted. This equivalence helps to establish a set of boundaries for the durational equivalent of what Harrison has called “pressure zones,” which discourage a multiply altered pitch from gaining considerable perceptual traction.21 Still, within these zones—indeed, because of them—an absolute nominal and perceptual distinction between flat and sharp can still arise. For example, no matter to what key one transposes the concerto, the second melodic note in measure 3 (the G♯ in Brahms’s original key of A minor), will both sound and undoubtedly be notated as sharper, or less flat, than the first melodic note of measure 2 (the C). This is due both to these two notes’ peripheral placement within an expansive but still asymmetric distribution of the concerto’s opening pitch classes along “the line of fifths” (C---D-A-E-B-F♯---G♯-D♯) and to brevity, which removes any risk of a formal key change that invokes a cosmetic enharmonic shift.22 Moreover, one could wager with reasonable confidence that, for any randomly chosen key, the second melodic note of measure 3 uses at least one sharp, given how few and increasingly rare the key signatures that would withhold it are: three flats, four flats, five flats, and apprehensively so on. Sharper and flatter, or less flat and less sharp, on the Tonnetz analogously correspond with more tripleted or more dotted, or less dotted and less tripleted, (or vice versa) on the Zeitnetz. As depicted in figure 9.2f, the first four measures of the concerto durationally cover a lot of northwest-to-southeast (that is, dotted-to-tripleted) ground on the Zeitnetz. The 3:2 ratio from a 0.9-second first duration to the 0.6-second tactus obliges the former to be more dotted than the latter, and the 2:3 ratio from the 0.4-second durations of the third measure to the 0.6-second tactus obliges the former to be more tripleted than the latter. When these two ratios chain together, their endpoints barely squeeze into the available notational space between the pressure zones of “twice dotted” and “twice tripleted”; therefore, the 0.9-, 0.6-, and 0.4-second durations best fit the notations of dotted, unmodified, and tripleted, respectively, independent of

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)

what the base durational notation may be. It is still technically possible for the music’s notation to push up particularly against the “twice dotted” pressure zone, but this requires a rare time signature with 12 or 24 above and 16 (or, less likely, 32) below as in example 9.5. (𝅘𝅥. 𝅘𝅥𝅮. = (𝅘𝅥.).) This matches my reference to rare key signatures in the previous paragraph. The notation of the radical listener’s interpretation of the first cello’s duration would therefore be an unmodified value. But far more likely for the radical listener is an interpretation of the cello’s first duration as tripleted. Coupled with the sensible assumption that the unmodified tactus from the first two measures is a quarter note, this interpretation leads to a radical listener’s inference that Rostropovich’s first duration is a third note. (Other tactus durations are, of course, conceivable; for example, a tactus of a half note would lead to a whole-note triplet. However, each possibility suggests a work of a certain tempo and character for which the resulting tripleted duration would be no less rare.) I hope this long, technical argument certifies that my initial fervor about the rarity of Brahms’s first prescription—the notation of a half-note triplet in measure 5—is not yet another example of a naïve music theorist misguidedly substituting notation for perception. In the context of Brahms’s quick permeation of Zeitnetz space inside its pressure zones, and for a radical hearing of a notationally faithful, “in tempo” performance, the notation of a rare triplet can well represent the temporal experience. Thus, a notationally literate hearer without knowledge of the cellist’s notated durations—for example, a performer in the orchestra—can then well apperceive the peculiarity of the cello entrance’s durations. However, for a conservative listener, who could more easily opt for a dotted-quarter duration over the third-note duration, the fifth measure is no less peculiar. In a conservative hearing of a notationally faithful, “in tempo” performance, the dotted-quarter durations—perceived stand-ins for the notated third notes—repeat, constituting a pulse. While dotted-duration pulses inhere in compound time signatures, they are unusual in pure duple time signatures like 4 4; while a 3-against-8 metric dissonance occurs sporadically in Brahms’s music, it never occurs monophonically without subdivision.23 Further defamiliarizing this interpretation is its anachronistic kinship with certain idiomatic metric dissonances of twentieth-century American popular music.24 For one caught in conscious or unconscious acts of counting, experiencing the performance of other durations besides those Brahms specified (or, as I’ve argued, their enharmonic equivalents) could result in remarkable encounters with this music, and the experience of dramatic durational shifts as reflecting “in modo d’un recitativo” is arguably one such encounter. In work that studies how some twentieth-century cellists approach, sometimes rather extravagantly, other choice moments in Brahms, Roger Moseley concludes that there lie in wait “inexhaustible riches of his music by ‘playing Brahms’ in ways that the venerable composer could not have anticipated.”25 But, if the set of forty recordings I have surveyed for this research serves, albeit far from perfectly, as

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Example 9.5. Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102, I, recomposition of mm. 1–8

representative of a general twentieth-century performance practice of the cello’s entrance, then I believe that still lying in wait are some relatively untapped riches that come from playing Brahms in a way that the venerable composer actually prescribed. On the one hand, this is well-worn and oft-repeated advice when it comes to Brahms: his scores “dictate aspects of temporal flow that typically fall in the hands of the performer.”26 On the other hand, my analysis of the fifth measure of the Double Concerto suggests that this is a special case of this dictum. Interpreting the durations of the fifth measure as straddling a durationalenharmonic fence comports with the indeterminacies and variability called for in a recitative, but on a different level from what we might initially expect. The rhythms of ordinary speech eschew not only the constancies of periodicity, but also the constancies of notation: orators do not typically rehearse or perform their art using musico-durational symbols. Even from one talk to the “same” talk later, we expect this sameness to adhere more to the syllables and words themselves and less to the way they precisely divide time. Likewise, the enharmonically “same” playings of the concerto’s fifth measure, each “ma sempre in tempo,” can be heard and interpreted in durationally divergent ways: one tripleted, the other dotted, each atypical as a pulse but still rational and mensural, yet, in relation to one another, each signifying a very different temporal experience. This music can sound “in modo d’un recitativo” not only because of a temporal variability heard among the notes of a single rubatoindulgent performance, but also because of a temporal variability among different hearings of multiple “in tempo” performances, or, courtesy of recording technology, of even the same “in tempo” performance, like Rostropovich’s

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1964 recording. This last option is one that Brahms, who himself did not make a recording until two years after composing this concerto, may well not have anticipated, but seems quite relevant ex post facto in this era of the musical recording as the dominant listening medium.

Ramifications The notion of durational enharmonicism brings a set of consequences and opportunities to contemporary music theory and composition, and also affords different, perhaps fresh, experiences of other portions of the cello cadenza. In the realm of pitch, the late twentieth-century invocation of equal temperament and enharmonic equivalence upon the nineteenth century’s just-tuned Tonnetz wreaked a topological metamorphosis, transforming this network of pitch classes connected by thirds and fifths from an infinite two-dimensional plane into a finite four-dimensional torus.27 In part, this increase in dimensionality persuaded Justin London, in the aforementioned article that unveiled his Zeitnetz and coined this term, to cast suspicion over analogies between pitch and time, because the appreciable difference in the number of dimensions of their respective underlying spaces renders them incommensurable. Using only a planar portion of the toroidal Tonnetz offers one way around this incommensurability, as various analyses that propose mappings between pitch and time networks have done.28 But another way, at least a partial one, around it is to invoke durational enharmonic equivalence on the Zeitnetz. Each tuning system has its commas: intervals near unison—numerically, ratios close to 1—that represent the difference between two pitch spans each generated using intervals fundamental to the system. For example, the syntonic comma 81:80 (1.0125) is the difference between four pure perfect fifths and a pure major seventeenth (two octaves and a pure major third); tempering the syntonic comma to unison adds one of the two extra dimensions that distinguishes the equal-tempered toroidal Tonnetz from the just-tuned planar Tonnetz. The other dimension comes from tempering the Pythagorean comma, the difference between seven octaves and twelve pure perfect fifths, which also creates enharmonic equivalence. The durational comma in my Brahms analysis is 9:8 (1.125), which is the difference between any duration and half of this duration twice dotted (or double the duration twice tripleted), or, equally, the difference between the two durational interpretations of the cellist’s entrance I have proposed: Brahms’s notated third note and an unnotated dotted quarter note.29 When tempering the 9:8 durational ratio to enharmonic equivalence, the planar Zeitnetz curls into a narrow cylinder, as shown in figure 9.4: not quite the four dimensions of a torus, but more than the two dimensions of a plane. Here the Zeitnetz has been turned 60 degrees from my previous orientations, such

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Figure 9.4. A cylindrical Zeitnetz. Numerals refer to measure numbers in which the duration is potentially metrical.

that duple ratios connect durations that are side by side, and triple ratios connect durations that above or below one another. This graph reflects enharmonic equivalence in two ways. First, equivalent durations occupy the same node, like the dotted quarter note and the third note of the concerto’s first and fifth measures.30 Second, triple ratios in the form of spline curves connect the top and bottom parts of the Zeitnetz. From the right side of figure 9.4’s cylinder looking in, a “tripletward” (analogous to “sharpward”) trajectory is clockwise, and a “dotward” (analogous to “flatward”) trajectory proceeds counterclockwise. Arabic numerals represent the measures in Brahms’s concerto when a certain duration’s metric potential is either actualized as a pulse or at least not denied by pulses, if any, that precede it. A single node represents durations in both measure 1 and measure 5. To simulate the concerto’s opening, one moves away from this node and through the Zeitnetz by following the numbers in sequence, as directed by the larger arrows. In the first four measures, the progression begins unambiguously with two tripletward (or, equivalently, less dotward) moves: first from the dotted quarter to a set of unmodified durations, then around the “Bering Strait” part of the cylindrical Zeitnetz to the triplet quarter. However, to connect to measure 5, either one moves, now in a dotward direction, backward through the path of larger arrows (as facilitated by the conservative hearing and the return of quarter notes in measure 4) or one completes the cylinder’s full circle by following the smaller arrow (as facilitated by the radical hearing). However, “full circle” is perhaps a misnomer, as demonstrated through an analogy with the pitches used for the first four measures of the cellist’s next entrance in the concerto, as shown in example 9.6. A♭ and G♯ may be equivalent pitches under equal temperament in this music, but they are kept distinct through respective sequestration within the dominant chord (E major) of the main key (A minor), and the borrowed subdominant chord (F minor) of the main key’s relative major (C major).31 Likewise, the dotted quarter of measure 1 and the third notes of measure 5 are kept distinct. The generally smooth,

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Example 9.6. Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102, I, mm. 112–15

generally tripletward, durational progression of 𝅘𝅥. -𝅘𝅥𝅮 - 𝅘𝅥 - 𝅗𝅥 - 3 𝅘𝅥 - 3 𝅗𝅥 during the first five measures keeps separate the two enharmonically equivalent durations at its endpoints not only by interposing a series of durations but also by tonicizing these intervening durations—the 𝅘𝅥 and 𝅗𝅥 durations are vital to Brahms’s time signature—and notating the entire passage safely inside pressure zones. If the performer holds onto the quarter-note tactus during the fifth measure and retreats dotward back toward this tactus after playing the half-note triplet, the music has not truly come full circle. While this is both sensible and proper, there is another way to perform and hear this measure, one that takes its inspiration from pitch. Example 9.7 provides a reduction of some music from the retransition of the concerto’s first movement, a progression now famous in music-theoretic circles as the locus classicus of a “maximally smooth cycle.” One begins the cycle with a tonicized harmony—A-flat major—and ends with a dominantized harmony—E major, and the smooth harmonic progression treks incessantly flatward instead of sharpward, quickly exiting the safe area demarcated by pressure zones and requiring enharmonic renotation to allow re-entry. In this scenario, any distinction between A♭ and G♯, although ultimately related by consonant majorthird intervals as in the previous scenario, is much more precarious. The durational analogue for this scenario is accomplished by dividing one or more of the cello’s third notes in measure 5 not into two parts, to which a radical hearing would default, but into three parts, into “ninth notes.” This technically encroaches upon a durational pressure zone, as this subdivision uses a twice tripleted duration. Just as importantly, this hearing summons the enharmonic equivalent of a duration that not only was heard in the opening

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Example 9.7. Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102, I, mm. 270–78, in reduction without soloists

two measures but was also implicitly periodic, metric, and thus referential in the opening two measures: the eighth note, a duration enharmonically equivalent to a third of a third note, using the 9:8 comma. This may strike the reader as excessively fanciful. However, eighth notes dominate the cadenza’s next two measures. I submit that a listener to a performance of this cadenza “ma sempre in tempo” could hear the notated eighth notes of measures 6–7 just as easily as ninth notes than as eighth notes. A conservative performer or hearer who clings to the opening quarter-note tactus and uses a triple subdivision of this tactus to play the half-note triplet (the standard instruction for the performance of this rhythm) will need to convert the tactus subdivision from triple to duple to play the notated eighth notes. The radical performance or hearing that leads to unnotated ninth notes requires no greater of a conversion: the quarter note triplet tactus, initially duply divided, is then triply divided at some point after the downbeat of measure 5 to set up ninth notes in the next two measures. In other situations, surface-level groupings of this pulse might bias the listener toward one enharmonic equivalent or another: gather these relatively quick notes in threes and they make more sense as ninth notes, gather them in twos or fours and they make more sense as eighth notes. However, such groupings are noticeably absent, and almost seem suppressed: the notes simply arpeggiate upward, one note per bow, without any harmonic change. If ^ ^ ^ 3–5 pattern anything, only with the ninth-note hearing would the recurring 1– in this arpeggio would occur at the same frequency as the durations in measure 5. Furthermore, the D♯ beforehand is five notated eighth notes long. Not only does this length in general further strain a precise comparison between the preceding notated third notes and subsequent notated eighth notes, but also its particular duration is the shortest that is coprime with 2 or 3. This means that the onset following the D♯ is unbiased between the two options offered above. This lack of strong partiality toward one durational interpretation or another produces yet another kind of enharmonic scenario. Up to this point, the scenarios in both pitch and duration have in common a general smoothness as chords (sets of mutually consonant pitches) or meters (sets of mutually consonant pulses) progress from one to the next, displaying a preponderance

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of mutually common elements between adjacent sets. A maximally smooth cycle, with its incremental pitch turnover, epitomizes this gradualism in pitch. The sharing of 𝅗𝅥 and 𝅝 pulses between the different meters of measures 2 and 3 in Brahms’s concerto demonstrates this gradualism in duration. A series of smooth relationships can slowly but inexorably lead to an inevitable enharmonic reckoning: some frequency is considerably more flat, sharp, dotted, or tripleted than some other frequency, and yet the two are equivalent. But enharmonicism can also be discretionary or fickle: a disjunctive relationship between two frequencies or sets of frequencies leaves an orthographic or perceptual choice between two options relatively equal and underdetermined.32 In terms of pitch, a good example is an unaccompanied tritone where one note is white (that is, unmodified by accidental) and the other black (that is, modified by accidental): outside of a clear context, either flat or sharp on the black note will do. Another example is a chromatic scale, of which musicians tolerate a great deal of variety in the spelling. In terms of duration, the rhythmic and metric design of Brahms’s cello cadenza permits an abundance of this fickle kind of enharmonicism. Example 9.8 shows five more junctures in the cadenza, in addition to that preceding fifth measure, at which I believe a durational enharmonic shift of the fickle type is feasible, although some more feasible than others. Each of these junctures stands between an unmodified duration and a modified duration, like the chromatic scale’s white and black notes. Moreover, there are very few, if any, common supported periodicities between the meters on either side of each juncture, resulting in a disjuncture. For example, Juncture #2, between measures 5 and 6, follows supported periodicities of 3 𝅗𝅥 and 𝅝, and precedes music that supports 𝅘𝅥𝅮 but neither 3 𝅗𝅥 and 𝅝; the undifferentiated arpeggio sees to the latter. Each juncture is designated in example 9.8 by a “metric modulation” that replaces tripleted note values with dotted note values, or vice versa, effecting a 9:8 or 8:9 alteration. In the chromatic-scale analogy, this is the equivalent to rewriting a sharped pitch as a flatted pitch, or vice versa.33 To opt out of every metric modulation indicated at each of these junctures would mean to perform and experience the cadenza as written. But, the disjunction of these junctures means that opting out is minimally less, no less, or even more conceptually taxing than opting in. An “in tempo” performance or perception of the notated durations requires mentally changing the subdivision of the quarter note pulse between duple or triple, or perhaps also the subdivision of the half note pulse between triple and quadruple, at each of these six junctures. Such submetric shifts are complicated by the cadenza’s complete shunning of these referential quarter-note and half-note durations before measure 19, which also throws into sharp relief their prevalence in the concerto’s second theme, foreshadowed by the orchestra immediately after the cello cadenza, as shown in examples 9.1 and 9.8.

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Example 9.8. Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102, I, mm. 1–28, in reduction, with six metric–modulatory junctures

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To opt in to every indicated metric modulation is not as extravagant as one might initially think: because each modulation undoes each adjacent modulation, the result of a complete “opt-in” is a simple replacement of the third notes with dotted quarter notes, and the “sixth notes” with dotted eighth notes, as in the renotation of the cadenza in example 9.9. In a chromatic scale written entirely with sharps, this would be like replacing all of the “black notes” with their flatted enharmonic equivalents: the unmodified notes remain unchanged. This replacement makes the metric modulation from measure 7 to measure 8 considerably more straightforward than that into measure 5: the earlier transition requires a tight conservative grip on the eighth-note pulse from measures 1–2, whereas the later transition is spoon-fed eighth notes from measure 7. With metric modulations placed at six junctures, each of which may be potentially opted into or out of, there are theoretically 32 (26) possible durational understandings of this cadenza; perhaps more or less if one includes, or excludes from, this set of six certain junctures one finds persuasive or tenuous.34 These 32 options are visualized in figure 9.5. On the left of figure 9.5 is a compression of the planar Zeitnetz excerpted in figure 9.2 from two dimensions down to one, whereby all durations separated by some power of 2 cluster into a single “duration class.” These duration classes, designated with a label like “tripleted,” “twice dotted,” “unmodified,” have been abbreviated using the parenthetical form, and the stemless quarter represents all possible unmodified durations.35 These duration classes are organized into a “line of triples,” mathematically equivalent to the “line of fifths” for pitch classes, to form the vertical axis of figure 9.5’s graph. Its horizontal axis clusters timepoints of the opening of the concerto into seven time spans; thus, each vertex in this two-dimensional space is a particular duration-class interpretation of a certain time span relative to a common-time opening of the work. The two lines extending diagonally to the right from each vertex symbolize the two choices at each juncture: either use the given notation (the solid line), or actualize the suggested metric modulation (the dashed line). Each of the 32 left-to-right paths corresponds to one of the 32 durational understandings of the cadenza mentioned earlier: the path of continuous solid thick lines is as Brahms notated the music, the path of continuous dashed thick lines represents example 9.9. I encourage the reader to try a variety of these paths, first with a performance that is sempre in tempo. Some are easier to perform than others. In general, a path is easier to perform if all of it or a stretch of it stays along the same horizontal stratum, because, although each juncture is locally disjunctive, a relatively horizontal path is globally less disjunctive than one that is not. More specifically, unvarying the eighth-note (or sixteenth-note) pulse and varying the duple or triple grouping of this note leads one fairly smoothly along a continuous dashed-line portion of a path, while unvarying the quarter-note (or

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Example 9.9. Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102, I, renotation of mm. 1–17

half-note) pulse and varying the duple or triple subdivision of this note leads one fairly smoothly along a continuous solid-line portion of a path. Many of these paths use durations within pressure zones, shown in figure 9.5 with gradated shading; the two most audacious of them end with a sextuply modified duration. In performance, one can feel the tug either of a tripletward accelerando or a dotward ritardando when the path angles upward or downward through a metric modulation, but these tempo changes can be tempered. This temperament can also be reflected categorically, where the original notation serves as an enharmonic stand-in for multiply modified durations. For example, consider any path that begins with two tripletward motions, represented as the two leftmost lines that hug the top side of figure 9.5b’s fan. (I find this opening gambit considerably easier than starting with two dotted motions, perhaps due in part to the orchestral introduction’s tripletward momentum, which is not shown on figure 9.5b.) Conceptually switching the last one or two third notes in measure 5 not only from doubly divided to triply divided, but also from a third note to a dotted quarter note, allows the performer to continue using the given notation. Here, the alteration of “more tripleted”

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a.





œ 


































 










































































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Figure 9.5. (a) portion of a linear Zeitnetz; (b) possible paths through linear Zeitnetz in Concerto for Violin and Cello, op. 102, mm. 1–26.

equates to “less dotted,” and one has come full circle back to unmodified durations. This circle, shown in figure 9.6, is the smallest Zeitnetz version of the four used in this chapter, as it imposes both enharmonic equivalence on the linear Zeitnetz of figure 9.6 and “octave” (2:1) equivalence on the cylindrical Zeitnetz of figure 9.5, reducing the duration classes of the former down to two and flattening the cylinder of the latter into a two-step toggle. I also encourage the reader, who is divorced from the score, to try a variety of these paths as a listener to a single sempre in tempo performance. The more the performance is sempre in tempo, the more multiple paths from figure 9.5 are equally available as viable candidates for a durational understanding of the performance. However, the performance does not have to be metronomically rigid to accomplish this multivalence: clearly performed tempered ratios are needed only at the junctures, whereas smooth changes in tempo between junctures are welcome, and could temper changes in tempo that result from excursions into pressure zones. But even with a sempre in tempo performance, some paths, as symbolic of certain notational understandings, are easier to imagine as representative of what is heard than others. Yet, in spite of this fact, my larger point is that, while some paths are more far-fetched, some are quite reasonable; for example, eight paths never enter the pressure zones, and several

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Figure 9.6. A circular Zeitnetz.

paths parallel Brahms’s notation for part of their span. However, only one of these paths bears the notational truth.

Fancies, Errors, and Imagination The slippery slopes of truth, and the conflict between different vantage points on truth, sparked the controversy between Brahms and Joachim that led to their estrangement and ultimately to this concerto’s composition as an olive branch. During Joachim’s divorce proceedings, Brahms publicly sought to maintain some trace of their friendship, but he privately wrote a letter to Frau Joachim rejecting Joachim’s rash conclusions, based on misleading observations, that she was having an affair with Brahms’s publisher Fritz Simrock. The letter became public when Amalie submitted it as part of her testimony, enraging Joachim and driving him away from Brahms. In his 1936 biography of Brahms, Karl Geiringer first published portions of this letter; the omissions were restored twenty-three years later by Artur Holde.36 Early in the letter, Brahms makes his allegiances clear: “Let me say first and foremost: with no word, with no thought have I ever acknowledged that your husband might be in the right—I mean, of course, I could never acknowledge that he was.”37 In the next paragraph, Brahms touts the dependability of his statement: “I do not believe that anyone else can have so clear and accurate an insight into your situation as I have. This may seem to you dubious, though you know that my friendship is older than your marriage.”38 Later, he presents a psychological analysis: “Through Joachim’s miserable prying here and there, the simplest matter is so exaggerated, so complicated, that one scarcely knows where to begin in it and how to bring it to an end. He then twists around so stubbornly in that very small circle, just as—unfortunately—he also does in that great circle of fancies and errors, which can

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deprive him of all his happiness.”39 Holde interprets Brahms’s metaphor as symbolizing Joachim’s deleterious obsession with minutiae. The last of the suppressed language culminates Brahms’s argument: In short, I am afraid it has gradually become such a web of fancies, discoveries, assumptions, and also lying and cheating, that I do not know how Joachim wishes to rescue his life’s happiness from it. I would like to distrust my view of things. But Joachim, stimulated by my opposition, has again raked up everything to convince me. And finally, if he were right, if I were the only one of his friends who was wrong—then indeed everything must have been over long ago! It is weirdly comical that he himself does not think of drawing the only correct conclusion—that he should call everything by its right name. Either error, imagination, or—! To me that has always been a sufficient indication that only his passionate imagination is playing a sinful and inexcusable game with the best and most holy thing that fate has granted him.40

This biographical account and my analytical account correspond at several points. Aligning the cello cadenza’s recitation with a critical character study of the concerto’s apparent dedicatee may seem harsh.41 However, Brahms told Clara Schumann that, if the concerto “is at all successful it might give us some fun,” and she could “well imagine the sort of pranks one might play” in this concerto.42 Surely this is another example of Brahms’s habitual self-deprecation or nonchalance, but, as Jan Swafford tells us, “he did not ordinarily use words like ‘fun’ and ‘pranks.’”43 In the context of this analysis, these words are also not so immediately dismissed; Brahms, after all, found Joachim’s inability to see the truth “weirdly comical.” The movement’s initial four-measure introduction, with its two possible tactuses and its density of duration classes, saturates the listener with metrical information. This profusion of information collaborates with a “passionate imagination” in tempting a listener unaware of the “right name” of the notes in the fifth measure to call them by something else that, while on the one hand consistent with the apparent facts, is quite wrong on the other. This ambivalence opens the door to a “web” of more potential realizations. However, each realization comes about not through an incremental and deductive series of logical steps that culminates in a contradiction either portentous or deceitful, but through labile flights of fancy. These flights either spin the listener around enharmonic “circles” large and small, or shunt the listener onto a fictional track that nonetheless runs parallel with the notation; a deception that, once slipped into, is hard to slip out of. Moreover, it is the cellist and not the violinist—not Joachim—who is entrusted with this cadenza and enlightened by Brahms’s notational verities. In short, the ways in which, and the degree to which, a renotation like example 9.9 feels wrong echoes the ways in which, and

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one possible degree to which, Joachim’s rationalization of his wife’s behavior feels wrong, to Brahms as well as to other outsiders. Echoes subside, however. Writing this concerto seven years after writing the letter, I imagine that Brahms was looking to move beyond this bygone, cheerless episode. Likewise, the cello’s only unaccompanied passage in the concerto is a soliloquial recitation placed at the beginning of the work, rather than the usual virtuosic cadenza placed more customarily toward the end of a movement. It is a disaffiliated prologue not only in terms of form, as it precedes the proper opening ritornello that begins in measure 57, but also in terms of durational enharmonicism, for neither its half-note triplets, nor the particular vagaries of durational understanding that they and other metric situations like them can elicit, occur again in the concerto. As with Beethoven’s instrumental recitative, which, as aforementioned, shares the same two prescriptions as Brahms’s cadenza, this moment may be understood to embody in musical time both a recognition of a more troubled and shadowy past—“O Freund[e], nicht diese Töne!”—and an aspiration for a more sanguine and unclouded future.

Notes 1. 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

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Henry Cowell, New Musical Resources (New York: Knopf, 1930), 54. The half-note triplets of opus 56b are not present in opus 56a, which instead uses opus 56b’s ossia rhythm. To use the forthcoming analogy in this chapter, Brahms “tuned” the rhythm of this line to a different durational component of the texture. Paul Mies, Das Instrumentale Rezitativ von seiner Geschichte und seinen Formen (Bonn: H. Bouvier und Co. Verlag, 1968): “Das ist seltsam, denn mit der Aufhebung der Tempofreiheit fällt die wichtigste Beziehung zum echten vokalen Rezitativ,” 15. Sean Yung-hsiang Wang, “Lost in Time: The Concept of Tempo and Character in the Music of Brahms” (PhD diss., Stanford, 2008), 9, cites Joachim in leaning toward the first option in interpreting Allegro non troppo, ma con brio. A comparison of Mstislav Rostropovich’s three recordings of the concerto reveals a remarkable contrast. His 1964 recording with Sir Colin Davis and his 1979 recording with Bernard Haitink are rather close, both to one another and to an in-tempo half-note triplet, with only a ritardando on the FF in the 1979 recording significantly setting them apart. His 1969 recording with George Szell, on the other hand, is the most extreme outlier among these forty recordings, as his first two notes are nearly twice as long as prescribed, and in fact can be heard as whole-note triplets! Fanny Davies, “Some Personal Recollections of Brahms as Pianist and Interpreter,” in Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, ed. Walter Willson Cobbett, vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1929), 182–84.

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durational enharmonicism 7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

18. 19.

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Anniruddh D. Patel, “Musical Rhythm, Linguistic Rhythm, and Human Evolution,” Music Perception 24 (2006): 99–104: “In every culture there is some form of music with a regular beat, a periodic pulse that affords temporal coordination between performers and elicits a synchronized motor response from listeners. Although early theories of speech rhythm proposed an underlying isochronous pulse based on stresses or syllables, empirical data have not supported this idea, and contemporary studies of speech rhythm have largely abandoned the isochrony issue” (100). Justin London, “Some Non-Isomorphisms between Pitch and Time,” Journal of Music Theory 46, nos. 1–2 (2002): 127–51. Richard Cohn, “Complex Hemiolas, Ski-Hill Graphs, and Metric Spaces,” Music Analysis 20, no. 3 (2001): 295–326. This recomposition highlights one characteristic rhythm—the Lombard rhythm—of the style hongrois, a style that, as John Daverio argues, this concerto sublimates. Daverio, Crossing Paths: Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 224. London, Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 31. Harald Krebs coins metric dissonance’s descriptors of “direct” (simultaneous) and “indirect” (successive) in Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 45. Andrew Imbrie, “‘Extra’ Measures and Metrical Ambiguity in Beethoven,” in Beethoven Studies, ed. Alan Tyson (New York: Norton, 1973), 45–66. Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop (New York: Basic Books, 2007). If Brahms had started the quarter-note pulse in the third measure instead of the fourth, as he does in the third measures of the opening ritornello (m. 59) and recapitulation (m. 292), this strange loop would have never arisen. The cellist’s first two notes span essentially both the same duration and the same D–E notes that the first two notes of the orchestral introduction span. The visualization of these two meters (as triangles), as well as their relation (as reflected around a vertical axis) owes a debt to Daphne Leong’s “Humperdinck and Wagner: Metric States, Symmetries, and Systems,” Journal of Music Theory 51, no. 2 (2007): 211–43. With Leong’s approach, these two meters would relate either by translation or reflection—imagine the dashed lines in figure 9.2f as solid. However, differentiating among constituent durations through some means could help choose between equally applicable relations, like the acknowledgment of register could help choose between transpositional or inversional relationships among pitch-class sets. The first notes from three recordings are no more than 10 percent different from both third-note and dotted-quarter durations: Rostropovich’s two recordings from 1964 and 1979, and Heinrich Schiff’s recording from 1996. Daniel Harrison, “Nonconformist Notations of Nineteenth-Century Enharmonicism,” Music Analysis 21 (2002): 117. A better example where both pitch and duration enharmony occur, and occur nearly simultaneously, is the “Von der Wissenschaft” theme from Richard

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20.

21.

22.

23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

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Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, with its dual commixtures of half-note triplets with eighth notes, and sharped notes tied to flatted notes. Richard Cohn’s orientation of the Tonnetz in Audacious Euphony: Chromaticism and the Triad’s Second Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) puts perfect fifths east-west, major thirds northeast-southwest, and minor thirds northwest-southeast. The spatial mapping between figures 9.3a and 9.3b aligns duple groupings with minor thirds, and triple groupings with major thirds, a mapping I find useful in “Metric Cubes in Some Music of Brahms,” Journal of Music Theory 53, no. 1 (2009): 1–56. Harrison, “Nonconformist Notions,” 141. Steven Rings claims “it is not clear whether we can authentically experience a multiply altered scale degree, even one that is doubly raised or doubly lowered.” Rings, Tonality and Transformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 74. David Temperley, “The Line of Fifths,” Music Analysis 19, no. 3 (2000): 289– 319. I intend “cosmetic enharmonicism” to be the opposite of Cohn’s “essential enharmonicism”: instances of the former “arise as artifacts of notational pragmatics,” whereas the latter requires a “conver[sion] between sharps and flats in order to retain global diatonic logic.” Cohn, Audacious Euphony, 9. Measures 16–18 of example 9.1 do not contradict this, as the dotted-quarter pulse is subdivided into eighths. Richard Cohn, “A Platonic Model of Funky Rhythms,” Music Theory Online 22, no. 2 (2016). Roger Moseley, “Between Work and Play: Brahms as Performer of His Own Music,” in Brahms and His World, ed. Walter Frisch and Kevin C. Karnes, rev. ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 159. Yonatan Malin, Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 154. Daniel Werts, “A Theory of Scale References” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1984), 19; and Brian Hyer, “Tonal Intuitions in ‘Tristan und Isolde’” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1989), 210. The tempering of a pitch-based comma does not necessarily lead to notational discrepancies and the notion of enharmonic equivalence: for example, two pitches separated by a syntonic comma are traditionally notated the same. However, my preference for the term “enharmonicism” rather than, say, “temperament” in constructing an analogy to duration is that notational discrepancies appear to be a necessary consequence of tempering durational commas. Analyses of this sort occur in David Lewin, “On Harmony and Meter in Brahms’s Op. 76, No. 8,” 19th-Century Music 4, no. 3 (1981): 261–65; Cohn, “Complex Hemiolas,” and my “Metric Cubes,” as well as other places. Paralleling how the Greek word hêmiolios and its linguistic derivatives changed from signifying the 3:2 ratio between pitches to signifying the same between durations, one could venture to call the 9:8 durational comma “epogdoon,” the word for “whole tone” (epi- + octo-) misspelled as the header for the tablet held in front of Pythagoras in Raphael’s School of Athens.

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30. Vertically aligning enharmonically equivalent durations within the same node in the Zeitnetz imitates one of Cohn’s methods of displaying enharmonically equivalent pitches on a Tonnetz; see Cohn, Audacious Euphony. 31. Cohn would say that this equivalence “feels like a trick” (Audacious Euphony, 72). 32. Extending the analogy, durationally enharmonic music that best fits this third scenario, like this cello cadenza, is most like atonal music, in that “the notation thus attains an arbitrary status,” caused by “having too little information within the given context” (Harrison, “Nonconformist Notions,” 127). 33. The expression “metric modulation” implies that the new tempo or meter will remain in place for longer than one or two measures, so it may not be the best choice of term, in spite of its relative recognizability. 34. Of the six, Juncture #5 is my preferred choice to be excluded. 35. Unlike “pitch class,” where the 2:1 octave that assigns equivalence is standard for the term, there is no such standard for the term “duration class.” For example, Edward Pearsall, in his textbook Twentieth-Century Music Theory and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2012) uses the term (171ff.) when any ratio reveals a proportional relationship between a series of durations. 36. Artur Holde, “Suppressed Passages in the Brahms-Joachim Correspondence Published for the First Time,” Musical Quarterly 45, no. 3 (1959): 312–24. This letter is also translated in full in Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, selected and annotated by Styra Avins, translated by Josef Eisinger and Styra Avins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 572–74. 37. Ibid., 319. 38. Ibid., 319. 39. Ibid., 320. 40. Ibid., 320. 41. Brahms gave the concerto’s manuscript, inscribed with the dedication “To him for whom this was written,” to Joachim. 42. Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography (Knopf: New York, 1997), 539. 43. Ibid., 539.

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Contributors Eytan Agmon is professor of music theory at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He specializes in tonal theory and analysis, including Schenkerian theory and analysis, aspects of rhythm, and the music of Chopin. He is the author of The Languages of Western Tonality (Springer, 2013). He has held the positions of visiting scholar at the Franke Institute for the Humanities, University of Chicago, 1997–98, and Visiting Slee Professor, University at Buffalo, 2003–4. He is a founding member of ESCOM (European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music). Richard Cohn is the Battell Professor of the Theory of Music at Yale University. He specializes in chromatic harmony, musical meter, and transformational analysis. He is the author of Audacious Euphony: Chromatic Harmony and the Triad’s Second Nature (Oxford University Press, 2011). In preparation is a general model of musical meter with applications for European, African, and Africandiasporic music. Cohn’s articles have twice earned the Society for Music Theory’s Outstanding Publication Award. In 2004, he founded the Oxford Studies in Music Theory series, which he edited for Oxford University Press for ten years. Harald Krebs is Distinguished Professor of Music Theory at the University of Victoria, Canada. He has published widely on the tonal and rhythmic structure of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music. He is the author of Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann (Oxford University Press, 1999), and Josephine Lang: Her Life and Songs (Oxford University Press, 2007) with coauthor Sharon Krebs, for which the coauthors also recorded thirty of Lang’s songs. He was president of the Society for Music Theory from 2011 to 2013, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Ryan McClelland is professor of music theory at the University of Toronto. His research interests include rhythmic-metric theory, Schenkerian analysis, and performance studies. He is the author of Brahms and the Scherzo (Ashgate, 2010) and Analysis of 18th- and 19th-Century Musical Works in the Classical Tradition (Routledge, 2012), with coauthor David Beach. A prizewinner in the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition, McClelland has performed as pianist in numerous premieres. Prior to joining the University of Toronto in 2004, he served for two years as visiting lecturer at Indiana University.

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list of contributors

Jan Miyake is associate professor of music theory at the Oberlin College and Conservatory. Her current research explores issues of sonata form in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. She has presented her work at numerous regional, national, and international conferences, and is published in Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy, the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, Theory and Practice, Music Theory Online, and Essays from the Fourth International Schenker Symposium. She was elected treasurer of the Society for Music Theory from 2015–19. Scott Murphy is professor of music theory at the University of Kansas. His research interests include new conceptions of meter and film music analysis. His research appears in several scholarly journals, including the Journal of Music Theory, Music Analysis, and Music Theory Spectrum. He received the Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Music Theory in 2009, and he was the founding editor of SMT-V: Videocast Journal of the Society for Music Theory. Samuel Ng is associate professor of music theory at the Cincinnati CollegeConservatory of Music. He specializes in tonal phrase rhythm, classical instrumental forms, metrical issues in Brahms’s music, Schenkerian studies, and the relationship between analysis and performance. His research has appeared in Music Theory Spectrum, Indiana Theory Review, Theory and Practice, Music Theory Online, and Intégral. In 2005, Ng was the recipient of the Patricia Carpenter Emerging Scholar Award from the Music Theory Society of New York State. Heather Platt is professor of musicology at Ball State University. Her primary areas of interest are Brahms, nineteenth-century lieder, and Schenkerian analysis. With Peter H. Smith she coedited Expressive Intersections in Brahms: Essays in Analysis and Meaning (Indiana University Press, 2012). The revised edition of her annotated Brahms bibliography appeared in 2011 as Johannes Brahms: A Research and Information Guide (Routledge). Her dissertation on Brahms’s lieder won the inaugural Karl Geiringer Award for Dissertation Research from the American Brahms Society, of which she served as president from 2007 to 2011. Frank Samarotto is associate professor of music theory at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. His research interests include aspects of Schenkerian theory and its application to rhythm and temporality in music. He has publications in Schenkerian collections and international congress reports, and is a former editor of Theory and Practice and an editorial board member of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies. He was a workshop leader at the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies as well as at the first conferences in Germany devoted to Schenkerian theory and analysis.

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Index Abbate, Carolyn, 73 Avins, Styra, 204n34, 293n36 Babbitt, Milton, 3 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 77n31, 144, 145, 240, 241, 258n6 BaileyShea, Matthew, 8n6 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 5, 61, 70, 79n15, 200, 258n11; op. 1, 3; op. 2/1, 79n44, 90, 203n20; op. 47, 53; op. 57, 77n31, 236n33, 237n44; op. 72b, 54; op. 101, 202n9; op. 106, 2; op. 125, 262; op. 130, 53; op. 135, 76n23 Bellman, Jonathan, 121, 135n2 Berry, Paul, 8n5, 78n42 Berry, Wallace, 233n4, 234n10 Bozarth, George, 14, 46n21, 178, 237n48, 237n50 Brahms, Johannes: op. 1/iv, 199, 203n27; op. 2/i, 203n27, 207–27; op. 2/ii, 227–30; op. 2/iii, 229–30; op. 2/iv, 230–33; op. 3/1, 46n22; op. 3/2a, 45n8; op. 3/2b, 45n8; op. 5/i, 179–201; op. 6/2, 24, 26; op. 8, 3, 56; op. 9, 176n16, 199; op. 11/i, 263; op. 19/5, 70–71; op. 24, 240–57; op. 26/i, 164–67; op. 32/4, 78n37; op. 32/9, 34–36; op. 33/3, 72–73; op. 37/1, 240; op. 38/ii, 177n27; op. 39/1, 78n38; op. 46/1, 45n1; op. 47/1, 25, 27; op. 47/4, 27–28; op. 48/7, 29, 31; op. 49/5, 32–33, 34; op. 51/2/iv, 153, 155, 196; op. 56b, 264; op. 57/2, 47n27;

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op. 57/3, 77n35; op. 57/8, 47n27; op. 58/7, 27, 29; op. 59/1, 28; op. 60, 62; op. 60/i, 174n4; op. 60/ iv, 265; op. 63/2, 14–15; op. 63/6, 19–21; op. 68, 5; op. 68/iv, 262; op. 84/1, 20–22; op. 69/6, 28; op. 69/9, 37, 39; op. 71/3, 60; op. 72/3, 38, 40–41, 50–58, 68–69; op. 72/5, 69, 71; op. 73/i, 156, 157; op. 75/4, 13; op. 76/8, 145, 175n7; op. 78/i, 145; op. 79/1, 265; op. 83/iii, 145; op. 85/2, 22–23; op. 85/3, 79n47; op. 85/6, 42, 44; op. 87, 176n24; op. 87/i, 158–64; op. 88/i, 262; op. 90/i, 78n40; op. 91/1, 83–107; op. 91/2, 83; op. 94/1, 78n41; op. 94/2, 28; op. 94/3, 58–69; op. 95/4, 22–23; op. 96/2, 14–15; op. 96/3, 24–25; op. 96/4, 30–32; op. 97/1, 53; op. 98/ii, 148–53; op. 99/i, 182–85; op. 99/iv, 174; op. 101/i, 167–73, 175n13; op. 101/iv, 146–48; op. 102/i, 260–90; op. 106/4, 59; op. 111/i, 196, 262; op. 114/i, 265; op. 114/iii, 175n4; op. 115/i, 175n4; op. 116/4, 153–55; op. 116/6, 4; op. 117/3, 116–20; op. 118/2, 175n6; op. 118/3, 111–16; op. 118/5, 175n4; op. 119/4, 120–34; op. 120/1, 56; op. 120/1/i, 266; op. 121, 200; op. 121/1, 72; op. 121/3, 72; Scherzo from the FAE Sonata, 199; WoO 32/10, 16; WoO 33/13; WoO 33/19

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298

❧ index

Caplin, William: form, 108n12, 108n13, 108n15, 136n9, 139n15; historical studies of rhythmic theories, 135n4, 233n5, 235n17 Citron, Marcia, 138n28 Cohn, Richard, 9n16; autonomy of motives, 136n12; pitch theories, 292n20, 293n30, 293n31; pure and mixed meters, 108n8, 176n20; rhythmic theories, 9n10, 49, 145, 175n3, 203n26, 268; transpositional combination applied to rhythm, 137n20, 139n31 Cone, Edward T., 2, 3, 111–12, 115, 136n8, 175n6, 203n17 Cowell, Henry, 262

hemiola: Balkan, 196, 203n27; complex, 145; consonant, 167–73; cracked and mended, 194; expanded, 180, 183–84, 187–89, 199; higher-level, 137n20; identification with Brahms, 5–6, 200; in op. 5, 178– 201; pre-hemiola, 184; as resolving displacement dissonance, 146–55; as resolving or reinterpreting hypermeter, 155–67; reverse, 123, 138n28; in vocal music, 33–34, 38, 39, 56; Willner’s four types, 144 Herzogenberg, Elisabeth von, 13 Hofstadter, Douglas, 270 Holde, Arthur, 288–89 Imbrie, Andrew, 259n14, 270

Davies, Fanny, 168, 266 Davis, Sir Colin, 268, 274, 290n5 declamation, basic rhythm of (BRD), defined, 17 durational enharmonicism, 260, 273–90 Dvořák, Antonin, 194–96, 202n14

Jenner, Gustav, 45n3, 45n5, 76n28, 78n41 Joachim, Amalie, 83, 262, 288 Joachim, Joseph, 83, 168, 240, 260, 262, 288–90

Gamer, Carlton, 137n18, 139n36 Geiringer, Karl, 107n1, 288 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 46n19, 62, 69 Goode, Richard, 123 Griesinger, Wilhelm, 61

Kalbeck, Max, 56, 116–17, 228, 237n48 Kienzl, Wilhelm, 13 Kinderman, William, 53 Koch, Heinrich Christoph, 110, 136n7, 184, 234n11 Korsyn, Kevin, 2 Kramer, Lawrence, 79n49 Krebs, Harald: on Brahms’s op. 5, 186, 199; contributions to rhythmic theory, 49, 143; on developments in rhythmic theory, 7; direct and indirect metric dissonance, 291n12; displacement dissonance, 49, 143; grouping dissonance, 49, 123, 143; subliminal dissonance, 146, 236n34

Handel, George Frideric, 144, 200, 202n14, 211–16, 235n21, 243 Harrison, Daniel, 273, 276 Hasty, Christopher, 10n21, 235n17 Hatten, Robert S., 50, 72

Laitz, Steven, 79n49 Lerdahl, Fred: with John Halle, 46n19; with Ray Jackendoff, 91, 108n13, 109n19, 139n34, 140n40, 203n23, 235n17, 258n1

expanded hemiolic cycle, 183, 187–89, 199 Fétis, François-Joseph, 110 Forte, Allen, 136n10 Frisch, Walter, 75n14, 176n15, 176n16, 177n26, 178, 199–200, 201n3, 203n29, 203n30

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index Lewin, David, 3; on phrase rhythm, 107n4 London, Justin: Hearing in Time, 10n21, 74n8, 202n8; Zeitnetz, 268, 279 Malin, Yonatan: analyses of specific lieder of Brahms, 14, 16, 77n29, 199; analyses of lieder of Schubert, 58; analyses of lieder by Schumann, Robert, 62, 77n29; Songs in Motion, 5, 6, 24, 49, 58, 107n4, 109n22, 138n28, 203n28 Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm, 240–41 McClary, Susan, 54–55 McClelland, Ryan, 60, 78n36, 175n12, 199, 237n50 metric modulation, 9n19, 99, 107, 283, 285–86, 293n33 metric tonicization, 9n19 Mies, Paul, 262–63 Mirka, Danuta, 10n21, 202n13 Momigny, Jérôme-Joseph de, 210–13, 216–17 Moseley, Roger, 277 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 2, 196 Murphy, Scott, 55, 78n37, 136n7, 155 Musgrave, Michael, 178 Newman, Ernest, 13, 49 Ng, Samuel, 138n30, 140n42, 183 Notley, Margaret, 8n3, 177n29 Pascall, Robert, 8n7 Platt, Heather, 13, 16, 107n4 Reicha, Anton, 111 Riemann, Hugo, 14, 209, 217, 234n8, 235n17, 237n39 Rink, John, 176n17, 236n17 Rohr, Deborah, 14, 16, 47n25, 68, 78n39 Rostropovich, Mstislav, 268–69, 271–72, 274, 277–78, 290n5, 291n17 Rothstein, William, 138n26, 202n8; definition of basic phrase, 86; Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music, 6; principle

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of equilibrium, 121; rule of congruence, 173; shadow meter, 109n20 Samarotto, Frank, 177n31, 236n30; reading of op. 118/4, 128, 130, 134; temporal plane, 49, 53, 61, 70, 73 Sams, Eric, 74n15, 76n20 Saslaw, Janna, 233n3, 259n14 Scarlatti, Domenico, 78n42 Schachter, Carl, 7, 121, 157, 258n1 Schenker, Heinrich: Free Composition, 54, 236n29; general theory, 7, 114, 137n17, 184, 239; obligatory register, 115; on op. 24, 251–52; principle of equilibrium, 121–22, 138n22, 239 Schubert, Franz, 53, 56, 58, 72, 202n14 Schumann, Clara, 110–11, 120, 134, 137n21, 179, 260, 289 Schumann, Felix, 17, 19 Schumann, Robert: influence on Brahms, 5; Krebs’s analysis of, 6, 46n15, 77n29, 178, 179, 200, 201; op. 39/1, 78n38; op. 39/2, 62; op. 97, 184 Seaton, Douglass, 5, 7 Sehnsucht, 77n29, 104, 203n28 sentence (form), 136n9; in op. 2, 207, 218; in op. 5, 191, 196–97; in op. 91/1, 89–92, 95–96; in op. 101, 171; in op. 117/3, 117–18, 120; in op. 118/3, 112 shadow hypermeter, 138n30, 171 shadow meter, 94–96, 99–100; sources, 109n20, 177n31 Simrock, Fritz, 288 Smith, Peter H., 9n19, 75n14, 76n26, 179, 180 Smyth, David, 139n36 Strauss, Richard, 46n15, 291n19 style hongrois, 110, 121, 135n2, 138n24, 138n25, 291n10 Swafford, Jan, 289 Swinkin, Jeffrey, 8n4 Taruskin, Richard, 5, 7

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300

❧ index

Temperley, David, 157, 175n9, 176n22, 176n25, 292n22 Toussaint, Godfried, 10n21 Trucks, Amanda, 60 Wagner, Richard, 3, 5, 6, 13, 257 Weber, Gottfried, 2, 8n5, 136n6, 259n14

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Willner, Channan, 77n32, 144–45, 180, 194 Zeitnetz: circular, 287–88; cylindrical, 279–80; linear, 285, 287; planar, 268–72, 275–77, 279

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CONTRIBUTORS: Eytan Agmon, Richard Cohn, Harald Krebs, Ryan McClelland, Jan Miyake, Scott Murphy, Samuel Ng, Heather Platt, Frank Samarotto Scott Murphy is professor of music theory at the University of Kansas. Cover image: Johannes Brahms (1833–97) engraving, 1908, by unknown artist. Published in The World’s Best Music: Famous Songs, volume 8, by the University Society, New York, 1908. Courtesy of CanStockPhoto.com.

668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.urpress.com

brahms and th e shaping of time

“Brahms and the Shaping of Time deals intensely with all conceivable aspects of phrase rhythms, distortions, and dissonances, well embedded in the current and ever-growing field of analytical approaches to Brahms, meter, and meaning in nineteenth-century music. Within this manifold musical discourse one learns about the function of hemiolas in Brahms’s music and about various ‘levels of discourse’ as well as poetic meanings and metrical displacements in Brahms’s songs, culminating in a fascinating study of ‘durational enharmonicism.’ The well-written (and well-edited) chapters engage in very different topics and perspectives, but they complement each other by their depth and consistency. A must-read for all theorists and performers of nineteenth-century music.” —Frank Heidlberger, University of North Texas

Edited by Murphy

Brahms and the Shaping of Time brings together essays by leading music scholars, each of which analyzes the music of Brahms with a particular focus on the music’s temporality. The volume reveals numerous ways in which Brahms manipulates such basic elements as rhythm and phrase structure in pieces ranging from the Third Piano Sonata and the Double Concerto to a number of his most important and beloved songs. The first two essays examine aspects of rhythm and meter in Brahms’s lieder, recognizing his meaningful deviations from temporal norms. The second two pick up the mantle from William Rothstein’s landmark text Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music. Rothstein’s study focused on the music of other composers, but suggested how a future study might explore the music of Brahms; these essays contribute to such a study while also pivoting the book’s focus from vocal to instrumental music. Each of the chapters of the third pair cross-examines and expands our understanding of the hemiola. The concluding trio of essays promotes, through further analysis of individual works, ways of hearing that encourage the reader to breach the confines of the score’s metric notation. Together, the essays in this volume offer fresh approaches to the life and music of the beloved nineteenth-century composer and incorporate significant new ways of thinking about rhythm, meter, and musical time.

b rahms and th e

shaping of

time Edited by Scott Murphy