Wits and Interpretation: Keyboard Thoughts by Edlund Bengt

Author:Edlund, Bengt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peter Lang

Conclusions

The reading of the minuet just accounted for is not intended to show the workings of an overall cadence lending tonal unity to all middleground voice-leading activities and by extension to all surface motions. No encompassing Ursatz (not even a flawed one) is to be seen in Ex. 5. Instead, and this perhaps belongs to the unique, Mozartian quality of the music, there are no less than five separate “tonal” progressions, one for each period/section.14 These progressions represent in turn their A-major, E-major, towards-E-major, A-major, and A-major tonalities; tonalities that are finally confirmed not by descending, but rather by ascending upper lines supported by local cadences featuring root-position chords. But the minuet seems to have another unifying agent: the fifth-degree e2, held as a structural drone to be eventually released in the first and fourth/fifth periods, eventually established as the local tonic note in the second period, and left-and-eventually-returned-to in the middle section.

In other words, the minuet makes up a coherent and reasonably unified A-major piece of music. It is a pity that it cost Schenker a mistaken third-degree Urlinie to demonstrate its tonal unity. His reading leaves the pervading presence of the fifth degree out of account; and his imposed fundamental structure destroys the fresh start of the second period, degrades the fifth period that actually brings the tonal conclusion, and gives rise to a most questionable b2–b1 coupling/prolongation expressing the dominant – an idea that obliterates the harmonic expansion of the middle section and obscures the form of the piece. In order to show that the music unfolds “organically”, i.e. that it can be pressed into one of his standardized Ursatz corsets, it was necessary for Schenker to resort to unlikely readings of various details and to sheer manipulations. Why else did he enforce a misleading and confusing reduction that the music obviously resists, an analysis that leaves the listeners out of account and the musicians without assistance?15

←191 | 192→Considering the alternative analysis proposed in Ex. 5 from the musician’s point of view, it appears that the connections it brings to the fore are possible and also rewarding to convey because they have not lost contact with the musical surface. There are “long lines” in this minuet – trust Mozart and respect the integrity of his text, and you will find them.

Giving the last word to our pianist, she is still not quite satisfied with the account of the middle section; it is still too Schenkerian for her purposes. It would have been better if Ex. 5 had brought out the appoggiaturas, not their resolutions, in mm. 20–26. She is certainly aware of the rule that “tonal structures” are not supposed to be built on dissonances, that consonances are to be retained when construing reductive connections, but she does not care since in music wine counts for more than water.

Understanding the right-hand melody in this way brings out the similarity between m. 19 and m. 23; cf. Ex. 6. The latter bar will now emerge as a transformed,

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