Channan Willner - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
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Papers by Channan Willner
Boydell and Brewer eBooks, Dec 31, 2015
Music theory online, Nov 1, 1996
Music theory online, Mar 1, 1996
208-31), I attempted to identify several categories of Handelian hemiolas-cadential, expansion, a... more 208-31), I attempted to identify several categories of Handelian hemiolas-cadential, expansion, and contraction hemiolas-in the hope that their establishment would help us sort out some of the complexities of Handel's phrase rhythm (and that of other composers, for that matter). I also pointed to several types of hemiola that could not be readily stratified. If nothing else, the article demonstrated that the hemiola could assume a great variety of contextually defined senses. The present update is designed to complement my earlier study by pointing to an additional category-overlapping hemiolas-and by assessing its impact on the surrounding elements of the design. After establishing this new category in the first part, I shall seek to revise two of my earlier readings in the second part and, in closing, point to several relatively recent studies that illuminate this complex and elusive subject. (1) [2] Among the difficulties of observing the hemiola and approaching it from a theoretical or analytical perspective is the high degree of uncertainty (not to say ambiguity) that surrounds its articulation. The compositional environment will often suggest hemiolas by emphasizing the third beat of a measure (or the second beat in the following measure) through thematic, textural, harmonic, or registral stresses of varying impact, but it will not necessarily follow it up with an explicitly marked hemiola formation. In other words, it will stop just short of defining three contiguous long, hemiolic beats (each divided into two short internal beats, one strong, the other weak) over the span of two measures in triple meter. Compounding the consequent uncertainty is the well-established absence of a requirement for the hemiola to be articulated by both outer voices: The bass may not necessarily support the suggestion of a hemiola by the upper voice, and the upper voice will not necessarily corroborate its realization by the bass. Especially in such cases, the emphases articulating the hemiola will accrue largely through a series of design stresses-rhythmic accents that (as just intimated) are due to melodic, textural, harmonic, or registral intensification of purely local origin, at the very surface. In borderline instances, it is up to such design accents to try and supplant the metrical accents of the notated meter, whose supporting grid extends to deeper levels of durational
Among the many reasons for our perpetual fascination with composers’ borrowings is the sense of s... more Among the many reasons for our perpetual fascination with composers’ borrowings is the sense of secrecy the evoke. With few exceptions, borrowings are generally kept quiet by the composer and their discovery therefore requires a good deal of musical as well as musicological detective work. Schenkerian methodology, also occupied with hidden matters, would appear to be a suitable vehicle for such an endeavor, despite the serious danger of mixing apples and oranges its use poses: It is all too easy to mix levels and to look for figural borrowings, which occur near the surface, among the linear progressions that reside well below. The benefits of a reductive approach to borrowings reside, rather, in a heightened and more acute sensitivity to the multiplicity of tonal and durational relationships a passage (in either a borrowing or its source) can realize at different levels of structure.
The playful improvisatory interlude that separates two massive sequences near the end of the firs... more The playful improvisatory interlude that separates two massive sequences near the end of the first-movement exposition of Mozart's C major Piano Concerto, K. 467 (Example 1a) is among the most mysterious passages in Mozart's music. We sense that it refers to something, but to what? With its offer of repose after a dramatic series of Baroque Fortspinnungen, the Interlude—however distantly—brings to mind the leisurely second theme of the Allegro (compare the tilted square brackets in Example 1a with those in Example 1b, and note the correspondence between the falling steps at the end of each group of four tones). Yet in its dreamy, even foggy way, the Interlude also recalls a very different kind of music: the Sarabande from Bach's G minor English Suite, and specifically the serpentine and anguished arpeggiation of a diminished seventh chord that occupies the center of the Sarabande (compare the tilted square brackets in Example 1a with those in Example 1c; the Sarabnde is ...
Among the many rewards of our interest in historically earnest performance practice is the renewa... more Among the many rewards of our interest in historically earnest performance practice is the renewal of flexibility in matters of rhythm, meter, and tempo. Such flexibility must have been known to the eighteenth-century musician: Already in 1752, Joseph Riepel demonstrated how changes in meter from common time to alla breve may be implicit in the music but not in the score, as Justin London and William Rothstein have pointed out. In the first system of Example 1, at a), Riepel’s arabic numerals show—quite remarkably—how he groups two bars of common time into what we nowadays would call hypermeasures; the reduction I have added on top brings out the slow underlying ascent, one bar at a time, from C to D and E with which the excerpt begins. The bass I’ve
It is usually assumed that many of the metrics and much of the phrase rhythm of the high Baroque ... more It is usually assumed that many of the metrics and much of the phrase rhythm of the high Baroque are largely irregular, residing outside the metrical grid. While this may be true of some allemandes, courantes, gigues, and fugues, most "irregular" Baroque temporalities fall into several well-defined categories that are set in their ways. 1) An evenly moving,underlying contrapuntal line each of whose tones is composed out differently (Handel); 2) turns of phrase at which the rhythmic and tonal structures are at odds (Handel); 3) material suitable for triple meter that is composed in duple meter (Vivaldi, Blavet, Corrette, Telemann); 4) unevenly divided quadratic phrases and periods (F. Couperin, Handel); and 5) compression and recombination of familiar phrase idioms centering on repetition into new, unfamiliar ones (Telemann).
Euripides: Children of Heracles, 2020
The crumbling paper, the indecipherable hand, and the impenetrable intellectual content that mark... more The crumbling paper, the indecipherable hand, and the impenetrable intellectual content that mark many archival manuscripts bring an aura of romantic adventure to their contemplation. 1 Even a brief encounter with the analytical papers of Heinrich Schenker, preserved in the Oster Collection at the Music Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, will quickly dispel such impulsive notions. 2 To the great challenge of reading Schenker's analytical notation and keeping up with the ever-changing meaning of its verbal accompaniments, one must add several hidden but equally daunting difficulties. Of theses, two are particularly acute: Our confrontation, as practicing analysts brought up in the now well-entrenched North American Schenkerian tradition, with the distinctly European legacy and with the spirit of pioneering enquiry embodied in Schenker's work; 3
Like many metrically dissonant idioms, hemiolas can go by almost unnoticed (when they contribute ... more Like many metrically dissonant idioms, hemiolas can go by almost unnoticed (when they contribute only a touch of spice which the composer adds to the metrical mélange), or they can call so much attention to themselves that they bring the composition to a near halt. 1 Example 1, from the Courante of Handel's E major keyboard Suite, illustrates the first, fleeting kind of hemiolic
Music Theory Online, 1996
In an admirable recent study, David Beach has pointed to a pattern of tonal structure that has be... more In an admirable recent study, David Beach has pointed to a pattern of tonal structure that has been largely neglected by both theorists and musicologists: the use, in major, of the major mediant as a central tonal goal in the development section of sonata-form movements, especially in works of Mozart1. As it happens, this pattern appears with no less frequency in works by Haydn. In the present paper I shall investigate the complex network of relationships and associations between exposition and development that hinges on the use of the mediant in four late Haydn compositions: the opening Allegro of the Piano Sonata in C major, Hob. XVI: 50 (No. 60 in Christa Landon's Wiener Urtext edition); the Finale of Symphony No. 98 in Bk; the first movement of Symphony No. 101 in D; and the Finale of Symphony No. 104 in D.2 Before embarking on an analytical study of the four pieces, let us summarize and look more closely at some of the circumstances under which the mediant may become the vo...
Boydell and Brewer eBooks, Dec 31, 2015
Music theory online, Nov 1, 1996
Music theory online, Mar 1, 1996
208-31), I attempted to identify several categories of Handelian hemiolas-cadential, expansion, a... more 208-31), I attempted to identify several categories of Handelian hemiolas-cadential, expansion, and contraction hemiolas-in the hope that their establishment would help us sort out some of the complexities of Handel's phrase rhythm (and that of other composers, for that matter). I also pointed to several types of hemiola that could not be readily stratified. If nothing else, the article demonstrated that the hemiola could assume a great variety of contextually defined senses. The present update is designed to complement my earlier study by pointing to an additional category-overlapping hemiolas-and by assessing its impact on the surrounding elements of the design. After establishing this new category in the first part, I shall seek to revise two of my earlier readings in the second part and, in closing, point to several relatively recent studies that illuminate this complex and elusive subject. (1) [2] Among the difficulties of observing the hemiola and approaching it from a theoretical or analytical perspective is the high degree of uncertainty (not to say ambiguity) that surrounds its articulation. The compositional environment will often suggest hemiolas by emphasizing the third beat of a measure (or the second beat in the following measure) through thematic, textural, harmonic, or registral stresses of varying impact, but it will not necessarily follow it up with an explicitly marked hemiola formation. In other words, it will stop just short of defining three contiguous long, hemiolic beats (each divided into two short internal beats, one strong, the other weak) over the span of two measures in triple meter. Compounding the consequent uncertainty is the well-established absence of a requirement for the hemiola to be articulated by both outer voices: The bass may not necessarily support the suggestion of a hemiola by the upper voice, and the upper voice will not necessarily corroborate its realization by the bass. Especially in such cases, the emphases articulating the hemiola will accrue largely through a series of design stresses-rhythmic accents that (as just intimated) are due to melodic, textural, harmonic, or registral intensification of purely local origin, at the very surface. In borderline instances, it is up to such design accents to try and supplant the metrical accents of the notated meter, whose supporting grid extends to deeper levels of durational
Among the many reasons for our perpetual fascination with composers’ borrowings is the sense of s... more Among the many reasons for our perpetual fascination with composers’ borrowings is the sense of secrecy the evoke. With few exceptions, borrowings are generally kept quiet by the composer and their discovery therefore requires a good deal of musical as well as musicological detective work. Schenkerian methodology, also occupied with hidden matters, would appear to be a suitable vehicle for such an endeavor, despite the serious danger of mixing apples and oranges its use poses: It is all too easy to mix levels and to look for figural borrowings, which occur near the surface, among the linear progressions that reside well below. The benefits of a reductive approach to borrowings reside, rather, in a heightened and more acute sensitivity to the multiplicity of tonal and durational relationships a passage (in either a borrowing or its source) can realize at different levels of structure.
The playful improvisatory interlude that separates two massive sequences near the end of the firs... more The playful improvisatory interlude that separates two massive sequences near the end of the first-movement exposition of Mozart's C major Piano Concerto, K. 467 (Example 1a) is among the most mysterious passages in Mozart's music. We sense that it refers to something, but to what? With its offer of repose after a dramatic series of Baroque Fortspinnungen, the Interlude—however distantly—brings to mind the leisurely second theme of the Allegro (compare the tilted square brackets in Example 1a with those in Example 1b, and note the correspondence between the falling steps at the end of each group of four tones). Yet in its dreamy, even foggy way, the Interlude also recalls a very different kind of music: the Sarabande from Bach's G minor English Suite, and specifically the serpentine and anguished arpeggiation of a diminished seventh chord that occupies the center of the Sarabande (compare the tilted square brackets in Example 1a with those in Example 1c; the Sarabnde is ...
Among the many rewards of our interest in historically earnest performance practice is the renewa... more Among the many rewards of our interest in historically earnest performance practice is the renewal of flexibility in matters of rhythm, meter, and tempo. Such flexibility must have been known to the eighteenth-century musician: Already in 1752, Joseph Riepel demonstrated how changes in meter from common time to alla breve may be implicit in the music but not in the score, as Justin London and William Rothstein have pointed out. In the first system of Example 1, at a), Riepel’s arabic numerals show—quite remarkably—how he groups two bars of common time into what we nowadays would call hypermeasures; the reduction I have added on top brings out the slow underlying ascent, one bar at a time, from C to D and E with which the excerpt begins. The bass I’ve
It is usually assumed that many of the metrics and much of the phrase rhythm of the high Baroque ... more It is usually assumed that many of the metrics and much of the phrase rhythm of the high Baroque are largely irregular, residing outside the metrical grid. While this may be true of some allemandes, courantes, gigues, and fugues, most "irregular" Baroque temporalities fall into several well-defined categories that are set in their ways. 1) An evenly moving,underlying contrapuntal line each of whose tones is composed out differently (Handel); 2) turns of phrase at which the rhythmic and tonal structures are at odds (Handel); 3) material suitable for triple meter that is composed in duple meter (Vivaldi, Blavet, Corrette, Telemann); 4) unevenly divided quadratic phrases and periods (F. Couperin, Handel); and 5) compression and recombination of familiar phrase idioms centering on repetition into new, unfamiliar ones (Telemann).
Euripides: Children of Heracles, 2020
The crumbling paper, the indecipherable hand, and the impenetrable intellectual content that mark... more The crumbling paper, the indecipherable hand, and the impenetrable intellectual content that mark many archival manuscripts bring an aura of romantic adventure to their contemplation. 1 Even a brief encounter with the analytical papers of Heinrich Schenker, preserved in the Oster Collection at the Music Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, will quickly dispel such impulsive notions. 2 To the great challenge of reading Schenker's analytical notation and keeping up with the ever-changing meaning of its verbal accompaniments, one must add several hidden but equally daunting difficulties. Of theses, two are particularly acute: Our confrontation, as practicing analysts brought up in the now well-entrenched North American Schenkerian tradition, with the distinctly European legacy and with the spirit of pioneering enquiry embodied in Schenker's work; 3
Like many metrically dissonant idioms, hemiolas can go by almost unnoticed (when they contribute ... more Like many metrically dissonant idioms, hemiolas can go by almost unnoticed (when they contribute only a touch of spice which the composer adds to the metrical mélange), or they can call so much attention to themselves that they bring the composition to a near halt. 1 Example 1, from the Courante of Handel's E major keyboard Suite, illustrates the first, fleeting kind of hemiolic
Music Theory Online, 1996
In an admirable recent study, David Beach has pointed to a pattern of tonal structure that has be... more In an admirable recent study, David Beach has pointed to a pattern of tonal structure that has been largely neglected by both theorists and musicologists: the use, in major, of the major mediant as a central tonal goal in the development section of sonata-form movements, especially in works of Mozart1. As it happens, this pattern appears with no less frequency in works by Haydn. In the present paper I shall investigate the complex network of relationships and associations between exposition and development that hinges on the use of the mediant in four late Haydn compositions: the opening Allegro of the Piano Sonata in C major, Hob. XVI: 50 (No. 60 in Christa Landon's Wiener Urtext edition); the Finale of Symphony No. 98 in Bk; the first movement of Symphony No. 101 in D; and the Finale of Symphony No. 104 in D.2 Before embarking on an analytical study of the four pieces, let us summarize and look more closely at some of the circumstances under which the mediant may become the vo...